Inbound Success Podcast: Recent Episodes
Kathleen Booth
What do the most successful inbound marketers do to get great results? Each week, host Kathleen Booth interviews inbound marketers on the front lines with one goal: to “peel back the onion” and learn what works, what doesn’t and what you need to do to really move the needle with your inbound marketing strategy.
What does inbound marketing have to do with large public sector projects?
While it’s not the typical use case we think of when someone says the phrase “inbound marketing”, the same concepts that were developed to attract, convert and close B2B customers can be used to communicate with stakeholders and secure buy-in for complex public projects.
Jeff Risley and the team at Saxum call this “social permitting” and it involves four steps:
- Awareness
- Appeal
- Activation
- Advocacy
In this episode, Jeff describes what social permitting is, how it’s used, and the specific steps that Saxum goes through to help its clients with it as they work to build support for public sector projects.
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
In my experience, there are few marketing topics that inspire strong opinions as press releases do. It seems most companies treat them as a given when they make a new hire, release a new product, etc. But ask any marketer whether the bang is really worth the buck and you’re bound to get an earful on why press releases don’t work.
At the same time, there are plenty of examples of companies that have seen great success from press releases. How do they do it? And when should you invest in sending a press release?
On this week’s episode, eReleases founder Mickie Kennedy shares straight talk on when marketers should - and should not - invest in sending out press releases. He also dives into best practices around how to write a high impact release that will actually get you noticed by the press.
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
Resources from this episode:
- Connect with Mickie on LinkedIn
- Check out the eReleases website
- Take Mickie’s free master class on How to Build a PR Campaign Designed to Get Massive Media Coverage
Essential worker recruiting platform Talroo has been posting impressive growth, much of it fueled by a marketing strategy that revolves around telling customer stories. This year, the company is doubling down on the strategy and has a goal of producing dozens of new customer stories.
On this week’s episode, Talroo VP of Marketing Martha Aviles shares the details of how her team creates and promotes customer stories, and the impact they’ve had on the business.
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
“Let’s make a viral video.”
Every marketer has heard those words at one point or another in their career.
But making viral videos isn’t easy - otherwise everyone would do it.
In this week’s episode, business and marketing consultant Estie Starr breaks down the science of virality to uncover the exact ingredients necessary to make something go viral.
But she also explains why making something go viral isn’t always the best strategy, and shares when you should - and should not - shoot for virality.
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
Stacy Willis is one of the smartest marketers out there. I should know. I’ve worked with her for several years, across four companies. One of the things she’s really good at is content - both strategy and execution. And the content strategies she executes lead to real, measurable revenue.
Stacy has found that while many marketers understand content strategy in theory, what trips most of them up is the execution. In this episode, she dives deeply into the lessons she’s learned about executing content strategies. She covers everything from how to work with subject matter experts to get the background you need to produce great content, to how content is best organized on your website and how you can measure the impact your content is having on pipeline and revenue.
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
High growth companies turn to Pearmill to optimize their paid ads spend. With hundreds of millions of dollars of ad spend under management, the company has built up a considerable amount of data about what’s working on platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
On this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Pearmill founder Nima Gardideh explains what goes into the company’s experimentation framework, and how they’ve used that framework to drive better results for their clients. In addition, he shares some of their learnings around the ad strategies and formats that are working right now on many of the major paid ad channels.
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
Lot’s of marketers talk about creativity, but most seem to think it’s a dark art.
Stratabeat CEO Tom Shapiro sees creativity as more of a science than an art, and in this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, he explains the process that he’s used to spark creativity and develop powerful marketing campaigns.
Tom’s approach includes the use of specific frameworks - including “the opposite” and “cross pollination” - to get people thinking differently. These are approaches that anyone can employ to inspire ideation.
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
Gated launched its “noise cancelling headphones for email” product in March of 2022 and has been growing its user base at 30 to 40 percent month over month.
In this episode, Gated Co-Founder and head of marketing Melissa Moody describes how the company’s “influence marketing” strategy is fueling that growth. Specifically, she details how Gated is growing a network of advisors and advocates to help spread the word about Gated’s product.
Blogging is a mainstay of any content marketing strategy, but with so much content out there - much of it of a very poor quality - what does a world class blog look like in 2022?
CopySmiths content coach Sam Boyd works with clients to create blogs that drive search engine rankings, traffic and revenue. In this episode, he shares the best practices that the world’s top bloggers and content marketers use to get extraordinary results.
From planning your blogging strategy, to writing approaches, to the structural elements (think headings, images, etc.) that make up a great blog, he covers everything marketers need to know to create an outstanding blog.
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
How did one company increase conversation rates by 100% in just 4 weeks?
Experiment Zone founder AJ Davis was the head researcher at Google Optimize, where she had the opportunity to work closely with the team working on conversion rate optimization. It was this experience that led her to create Experiment Zone, where she and her team marry those two disciplines — user research and CRO — to deliver major ROI to their clients.
In this episode, she shares the process they use and breaks down the detailed steps that anyone can follow to get better marketing results, from conducting usability studies (including the the audience size you need, how to structure questions and find audiences, and what tools to use) to how to analyze the results, conduct experiments, and identify opportunities for using optimization to improve conversion rates.
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
Sandy Donovan - otherwise known as “The Email Lady” - helps ecommerce brands get better customer acquisition and retention results with email. Her work generates an average 68X return on brands’ investments in popular email marketing platform Klaviyo, and she’s been able to increase revenue by 600%+ in under 60 days.
How does she do it?
On this episode, Sandy explains why it all starts with proper segmentation of your email list. Whether you’re an ecommerce marketer, or a B2B marketer, the same lessons apply. She breaks down the demographic and behavioral criteria any marketer can use to segment their list, along with strategies for activating and nurturing different segments, guidance on how often to email your contacts, how to craft a winning subject line, and more.
For ecommerce brands, nailing a paid ads strategy is critical. And that takes lots of testing and iteration.
Brighter Click CEO Colby Flood specializes in building scalable paid ads strategies for ecommerce clients, and in this episode he breaks down the testing process that he and his team use to refine their approach and improve the ROI of their clients’ ad campaigns.
In addition to covering his testing framework, Colby shares how he thinks about the role of ads throughout the funnel, what metrics to track, how much you should be prepared to spend, and how the lessons he’s learned from working with ecommerce brands can be applied to B2B SaaS businesses.
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
Erik Huberman’s company Hawke Media has audited and developed marketing strategies for more than 4,000 businesses. Over time, they’ve distilled their process, along with lessons learned, into a methodology for marketing they call the “Hawke Method”.
In this episode, he breaks down how the Hawke Method approaches what they call the “three principles of marketing”:
- Awareness
- Nurturing
- Trust
We dug into all of this, plus the problem with using ROAS to measure advertising effectiveness, why TikTok holds so much potential for marketing, and more.
Beyond open rates, what metrics should you be using to measure email performance?
AWeber customer evangelist Emily McGuire has dedicated her entire career to email marketing and knows what it takes to craft a good email.
In this episode, she explains how email tracking has changed in the wake of recent IOS updates and which metrics you can use to determine whether your emails are actually performing, including:
- Click rates
- Click to open rates
- Conversions
She also offers tips on things like formatting your email, whether and when to include rich media, how to write your email to elicit a response, and more (including a KILLER tip on allowing your recipients to opt out of specific campaigns they might not be interested in receiving - don’t miss that one!).
What does it take to build a high performing marketing team?
Tim Parkin has built his career around answering that question. His approach centers around the thesis that people times process equals performance. What does that mean? Tim digs into it in this episode.
It starts with documenting what you’re doing as a team. From there, the next step is to evaluate the team and identify who needs training, coaching or support - and what kind of organizational change is required to support the processes that have been documented.
In this conversation, Tim gets into the details of his process, including what a well-documented process looks like, how to train your team to create processes, the tech stack he uses to support process creation, what a good meeting cadence and format looks like, and resources you can turn to to learn more about building high performing marketing teams.
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
Bobby Gillespie spent years working in marketing and observed companies making the same mistake over and over again. And that mistake was trying to do marketing without first building a solid brand foundation. To address it, he created his own agency — Propr Design — where he helps companies do just that.
In this episode, Bobby describes the process he takes clients through, including:
- Defining the company’s purpose and core values
- Identify your ideal customer profile
- Establishing a brand personality
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
When Eric Stockton took over as head of marketing for SharpSpring by Constant Contact following the company’s acquisition, he immediately set about shifting the focus from outbound to inbound marketing with the goal of building a pipeline of high intent hand raisers. The result was a doubling of the company’s demo attend rate, from 20 to 40 percent, and a 23X improvement in the number of leads that turned into closed won deals.
While making that shift sounds simple, in practice it requires top to bottom organizational buy in.
In this episode, Eric breaks down exactly what changed, how he built a solid foundation for it via internal communications, what the company’s new demand generation motion looks like, and the new KPIs he’s using to track success.
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
How did Tulip Media Group lower its customer acquisition cost (CAC) by 10X, from $40,000 to $4,000, in a matter of weeks?
As a Storybrand certified agency, it was all about taking their own medicine. They started by interviewing their customers to determine their ideal customer profile, along with their pain points and the keywords that they would need to focus on to reach them.
What they uncovered in those interviews led to a shift in the company’s messaging away from what they do and instead, towards the problems they solve, and away from a strategy focused on events and SEO to one heavily focused on pay per click advertising.
They rolled the new messaging out on their website and in their Google ads and within a week, saw a massive improvement in inbound lead flow at a much lower cost. And they have since applied that same framework to get similar results for clients.
Want to learn more about how they did it?
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
How does a website get more than 3 million visits per month with zero dollars spent on paid advertising?
For Visme, it was all about an on- and off-page SEO strategy focused on creating great content for relevant keywords and then investing time in promoting the content and building up quality backlinks.
The strategy worked so well that they developed a SaaS tool to manage it, and now that tool - Respona - is available for anyone to use.
Farzad Rashidi is the marketer behind the strategy, and in this episode he makes the case for why marketers should be spending more time on content promotion than they are on content creation. He also breaks down the exact process that both Visme and Respona use to get backlinks, and shares what other marketers can do to replicate his results.
LinkedIn has undergone a renaissance in the last several years and today is a central focus for many B2B companies’ marketing strategies. But what does it take to do LinkedIn right?
Mark Raffan of Content Callout is an expert at using LinkedIn for organic social marketing. In this episode, he explains why you should be putting twice as much effort into individual posts as you do company posts, along with advice on things like:
- When to use branded versus non-branded content
- How to create a strong hook
- How to know what you shouldn’t post
- Overcoming objections from subject matter experts who are reluctant to build their personal brands on LinkedIn
- Why responding to comments on your posts is so important
- How to structure your LinkedIn posts to get the most engagement
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
Branded content is any marketing content that does not have a direct sales-related objective associated with it. Because it’s not designed to have a straight line relationship with sales goals, many marketers struggle to justify investing in it.
But branded content has an important place in the marketing mix, and this week, Human Factor Media founder Zack Slingsby explains why.
Human Factor Media specializes in a “branded entertainment” - a subset of branded content focused on video. In this interview, he covers:
- When it does - and does not - make sense to invest in branded entertainment
- How branded entertainment can help differentiate you from the competition
- What good branded entertainment looks like
- Why you should think about creating serialized content
- How to measure the success of branded entertainment
- The channels that you can use to distribute your content
- The brands that are doing branded entertainment really well right now
Check out the full episode to get Zack’s insights on all of this, and more.
With so many new podcasts popping up, how can you create a business podcast that truly stands out from the crowd while also driving revenue?
Lower Street Media founder Harry Morton set out to solve for exactly this challenge and on this week’s episode, is sharing his lessons learned.
TL;DR - he says it’s not enough to simply do an interview-style show. To get results, you need to lead with narrative.
What does that mean, and how can you use podcasting to drive results for your account-based marketing (ABM) strategy?
Check out the full episode for details.
Userflow co-founder and Chief Growth Officer Esben Friis-Jensen has devoted his career to providing SaaS businesses with the tools necessary to drive product-led growth.
In this episode, he explains why, in what some have termed the “end user era”, product led companies are outperforming their sales-led peers, and dissects what marketers need to know to deliver on the promise of product-led growth.
From the importance of making the product the focus of your marketing, to publishing transparent information about pricing on your website, offering an on-demand product demo, creating use cases, and ensuring your content matches what you can actually deliver through the product, Esben goes into detail on the elements of a successful product-led growth strategy.
Check out the full episode to learn more.
Seth Erickson started his career in web design but quickly realized that without a good story, the website (and other marketing efforts) would fail to perform. That’s when he decided to become an expert in storytelling.
Seth spent months studying not just the discipline of storytelling, but the neuroscience behind why stories are so effective, and shared what he learned in his book How to Hack Humans: Storytelling for Startups.
In this episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Seth breaks down the must-have components of an effective story, as well as the neural triggers that happen, and what marketers need to know about all of it to get better results.
There’s a lot of buzz about TikTok advertising in the marketing world right now. But how can you know whether it’s the right channel for your business, and how should you get started?
Reason Agency CEO Will Perry is a TikTok ads expert who has gotten incredible results for ecommerce brands. In this episode, he breaks down exactly how he approaches TikTok advertising, and shares actionable takeaways that any company - ecommerce or B2B - can use to build a profitable TikTok ads strategy.
This week I’m changing things up and don’t have a guest. Instead, I thought I would talk about something I’ve been working on and am particularly excited about — newsletter advertising.
Beginning in 2018, when I was at IMPACT and worked with the team there to launch The Latest newsletter, I’ve seen the potential of newsletter advertising to reach new audiences. Since the, I’ve used this strategy at a variety of early stage startups to test messaging and drive new leads.
In this episode, I’m sharing exactly how I’m using newsletter advertising, the different types of ads and how they perform, along with what you can expect to spend.
What’s the best way to leverage the content you already have to drive more revenue?
Outranking.io founder Pankil Shah specializes in doing just that for his clients, and in this episode, he shares how he does it.
From how to identify existing content that needs to be optimized, to matching the way your content is written to buyer intent, improving internal linking structures, and adding strong calls to action or popups, Pankil explains, step-by-step, how to get more mileage out of your content.
When Yotpo’s global team of employees began to feel disconnected during the pandemic, the company made the decision to form a community powered by NFTs. Today, Yotpo’s “Fabulous Flamingo” NFTs are sought after tokens that signal a sense of belonging, but also serve as incentives for the team to get more actively involved in the company and its community.
On this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Yotpo Senior Director of Brand Marketing Cris Dinozo explains why Yotpo decided to incorporate NFTs into its community strategy, how they’re using them to bring the team closer together, and what the future roadmap holds as far as leveraging the NFTs for Yotpo’s marketing efforts.
What is Web3, what does it mean for marketers, and how can it be leveraged to build community?
Late Checkout is a thesis-driven Web3 community and holding company that is focused on the nexus between Web3 and community, and CMO Vyarda Ndejeru explains what that means, and what marketers should know about how Web3 may change the future of community building.
From defining what Web3, crypto, the blockchain and NFTs are (in plain English!), to explaining why DAOs (those are centralized autonomous organizations for my fellow Web3 newbies) are going to fundamentally change how communities operate, to how to monetize your community, Vyara breaks it all down in a way that is understandable and actionable. And, she shares some of the ways, including memberships, access cards, subscription models, and commerce, that B2B companies could take advantage of Web3 and NFTs.
How can brands use affiliate marketing to drive stronger marketing results?
ClickBank VP of Sales breaks down what affiliate marketing is, who it is and is not right for, and what you should know if you’re planning to use affiliate marketing for your businesses.
From how to manage affiliate relationships to ensure they don’t cannibalize your own marketing, to identifying the right influencers, determining how many influencers you should work with, and how to track and verify affiliate-generated sales, Dominick dives into the details of building a profitable affiliate marketing program.
Check out the full episode to hear what Dave had to say.
What’s one of the most overlooked, yet high impact, marketing strategies?
Dave Gerhardt says it’s building the brand of the company’s founder.
It’s the strategy he used to help Drift become one of the fastest growing SaaS companies of all time, and what he later used to help Privy scale and get acquired.
Now, Dave has consolidated everything he learned through those experiences into a new book, Founder Brand.
In this episode, Dave outlines the three levels of building a founder brand, including:
- Become a storyteller
- Become a publisher and get on social media
- Become a master of the feedback loop
Check out the full episode to hear what Dave had to say.
How can marketing and sales leaders work together to get world class revenue results?
During his time with the company, ActiveCampaign SVP of Sales and Customer Success Adam Johnson has helped scale revenue from $20M ARR to $160M. One key to his success has been building a positive working relationship with marketing.
In this episode, he shares lessons learned and insights on what it takes for marketing and sales to get aligned, from establishing a common language and understanding of the customer lifecycle, to getting on the same page about which channels to focus on, what really constitutes a good conversion rate, and how all of that is going to translate into revenue.
Why should marketers care about Web3? NFTs? The blockchain? Cryto currency?
In this episode, Evergrow.io founder Phillip Alexeev breaks this topic down and explains, in plain English, what the blockchain, Web3 and NFTs are, how they can be used by marketers, and what, specifically, B2B marketers should know about their role in the marketing mix.
If you’ve heard these terms and have been wondering what they have to do with marketing, this is the episode for you.
Check out the full episode to hear what Phillip had to say.
Amazon represents tremendous opportunity for brands interested in entering the world of ecommerce, but pulling off a successful Amazon launch is a hurdle many brands fail to successfully overcome.
In this episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, BellaVix founder Will Haire breaks down what it takes for brands to succeed on Amazon. From how to structure your product listings and write optimized descriptions, to using Amazon’s DSP to advertise and drive demand, he shares insights he’s developed from helping countless clients to nail their Amazon strategies.
For brands engaged in advertising campaigns across multiple channels, what’s the easiest way to know where to focus spend?
On this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Modo25 and Ask BOSCO founder John Readman talks about how leading ecommerce brands are using artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimize their paid ads funnels and drive better business results.
What do venture capital firms expect from the marketing leaders at the companies they’ve invested in?
Heather Gadonniex has filled both roles, having worked as a marketing leader and now as an operating partner at Global From Day One, a New Zealand-based VC fund, and in this episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, she shares her insights on what VCs expect from marketing leaders.
Heather covers:
- The metrics that VCs want to see marketers reporting on
- How to prioritize when investing in your marketing tech stack
- Why rev ops is so important and when to hire for it
- And more
Check out the full episode to hear what Heather had to say.
Podcasting has become one of the most popular B2B marketing tactics for driving top of funnel awareness, but it hasn’t really gained traction for use at the middle and bottom of funnel (and beyond).
Hello Audio is trying to change that with private podcasts, and on this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Hello Audio co-founder Nora Sudduth explains what a private podcast is and how it can be used to drive greater content consumption, nurture leads, improve the customer experience, and boost internal communication.
Patrick Ward has served as head of marketing at three different companies ranging from one million to three hundred million in annual revenue, and repeatedly found success by focusing on five things which he says comprise the “marketing transformation mindset”.
In this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Patrick breaks down those five things which include:
- The company story
- Using the language of the customer
- Growing employee advocates
- Leading with the humans first
- Experimenting with new technologies, but only leaning into them if they produce results.
Check out the full episode to hear why Patrick says these five things are key, and what you should know about them.
The model that most modern B2B businesses rely on to generate leads is broken.
That’s the premise behind Nelson Gilliat’s book “Death of the SDR and Birth of Buyer-Centric Revenue.”
In this episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Nelson explains why marketers need to get off of what he calls the “MQL hamster wheel” and ditch SDRs in favor of creating thought leadership content and investing in organic social.
HubSpot and Salesforce are two of the most common platforms in the revenue stack, but while they’re often used together, they’re the subject of countless complaints by frustrated marketers who can’t get them to play nicely.
Having clean data is foundational to a successful inbound marketing strategy, which means solving the HubSpot-Salesforce challenge is of top importance.
Coastal Consulting founder Lauren Kennedy has dedicated her career to helping marketers optimize their HubSpot and Salesforce instances, both on their own, and in the way they sync data and work together. In this episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Lauren breaks down the most common challenges she sees when it comes to the HubSpot and Salesforce integration, and outlines how she solves them.
Much of the conversation in the marketing world is focused on how to acquire new customers, but Will Laurenson’s focus is on winning the second purchase.
As the founder of Customer Who Click, Will works with e-commerce brands on increasing customer lifetime value through repeat purchases, and he does it through a lens of conversion rate optimization.
While Will’s focus is on e-commerce, the strategies he uses to drive customer loyalty and retention are just as applicable to B2B businesses.
From using customer interviews, surveys and heat mapping tools to gather insights on customer behavior and preferences, to segmenting your customer list, and creating memorable onboarding or unboxing experience, Will shares the techniques he’s used to increase customer second purchases. And he explains the the principles - usability, anxiety, and motivation - that are the foundation of his approach to CRO.
There’s lot’s of good, actionable stuff here for marketers that want to maximize customer lifetime value.
Check out the full episode to hear more.
What’s the secret behind the success of brands like Harley Davidson, Jeep, State Farm, and Salesforce?
All of them have built cult-like brands with strong followings that have reduced their customer acquisition cost, driven up their valuation, and attracted new customers, employees, and fans.
Cult Collective co-founder Chris Kneeland has literally written the book on what it means to build a cult brand, and advises some of the world’s top brands (yes, Harley is a customer) on how to do it. In this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, he shares the 8 things that cult brands do, along with advice and insights that any brand - large or small - can use to build a cult like following.
While there’s no formula for making a video go viral, there IS a tried and true process for creating a funny video that will get significantly stronger business results than your typical corporate video.
Joseph Wilkins has been helping businesses make marketing and sales videos for years, but it wasn’t until he started using his 8 step process for creating humorous videos that he saw consistently strong ROI for his clients. Today, he uses that process as the foundation for his work at funnysalesvideos.com.
On this week’s episode of The Inbound Sales Podcast, Joseph breaks down the details behind each of the 8 steps in his video creation process and shares details on everything from hiring writers and actors, to using your ads budget to test different iterations and discover the right combination of opening hook, video content, format and channel.
What do billboards, car wraps, and TVs in bars have to do with inbound marketing?
They’re all part of the category of “out-of-home” - or OOH - marketing, and an incredibly powerful tool for inbound marketers to use in generating brand awareness and driving inbound interest.
On this week’s Inbound Success Podcast, Onescreen.ai CEO Sam Mallikarjunan pulls back the curtain on OOH and shares examples of where it fits within the marketing funnel, and how marketers can use it to disrupt their industry.
Want your website to rank at the top of Google’s search engine results pages?
Start paying attention to core web vitals.
In this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Peaks Digital Marketing CEO David Finberg breaks down what Google’s core web vitals are, why they matter, and how you can optimize your site for them.
From compressing images to using a CDN, he covers all of it, in detail, with actionable information on helpful tools and systems that make it easy to improve your core web vitals.
What’s the secret behind the success of brands like Dollar Shave Club and Casper Mattress?
Postie co-founder and CEO David Fink says its about combining a mission driven brand message with deep authenticity.
In this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, David explains why it’s so important to develop a strong brand story focused on the organization’s mission. Think Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why”. But he emphasizes that this needs to come from a place of authenticity, and digs into exactly what he means by “authentic”.
This conversation includes plenty of real world examples of brands that are doing it right.
Heinz Marketing founder Matt Heinz is well known throughout the B2B marketing world for his work helping businesses to build predictable pipelines. But he’s also gained a reputation as a community builder by virtue of his involvement in creating and growing the CMO Coffee Talk group.
In this episode of the Inbound Success Podcast, Matt talks about what it takes to win with inbound marketing at a time when it seems like every brand is creating content. From how to create content that stands out and helps build a following and a reputation, to creating communities as a long term marketing investment, Matt shares lessons from his own experience, as well as examples of other brand that are doing it right.
When it comes to organic content strategies, Brad Smith really knows his stuff.
As the founder of Codeless, he’s helped well known SaaS companies like Monday.com, Chargify, and WordStream create high quality, high performing organic content at scale.
And as the CEO of Wordable, Brad and his team are making it easier for content creators and managers to transform content drafts into published articles.
In this episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Brad breaks down the process his team uses to create content, and digs into all the nerdy details that are important to nail as part of a truly world class organic content strategy.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Threefold Chief Marketing Officer Rachel Johnson talks about running marketing for 6 brands at once - with a team of herself and just one other marketer - all while raising three children under the age of 5.
If there ever was a real life super woman, Rachel just might be her!
As CMO of private equity firm Threefold, Rachel runs an in-house agency responsible for marketing all of Threefold’s portfolio companies. Some are franchise businesses, and some are independent, and there are interesting lessons to be learned from all of them.
She does all of this while also the mom of three kids under the age of 5, two of whom have special needs.
How she does it, I’ll never know!
Check out the full episode to hear Rachel’s story, and learn how she’s getting big results for Threefold’s portfolio companies.
Resources from this episode:
- Connect with Rachel on LinkedIn
- Email Rachel at rjohnson@growthreefold.com
- Visit the Threefold website
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Mindtickle VP of Marketing, Brand and Demand Lisa Sharapata explains how she built an account-based marketing campaign that resulted in her winning the B2B Innovator Award and the B2B Vanguard Award at the 2021 B2B SMX conference.
Lisa’s approach relies on intent data to identify in-market accounts. She went all in on this after discovering intent data and joined 6Sense to learn more about it. Now, at Mindtickle, she’s a 6Sense customer and is using predictive modeling to identify the best fit, high intent prospects and market to them at scale.
The result? Conversion rates increased from 9 to 40%.
Want to know how she did it? Check out the full episode to hear Lisa’s story.
Resources from this episode:
- Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn
- Check out the Mindtickle website
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Draft founder Nick Disabato breaks down the advanced conversion rate optimization strategies he uses with his ecommerce clients.
Nick’s results are impressive. He beats the ecommerce industry average CRO results by 4X, typically increases conversion rates by 40%, and average order value by 15%.
In this episode, he breaks down exactly how he does it, with specific examples of CRO tests you can conduct on your own website (ecommerce or not—these strategies work just as well in B2B), and shares information on his favorite tools that make up his CRO tech stack.
Check out the full episode to hear Nick’s insights.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Draft website
- Subscribe to Nick’s newsletter
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Umault Founder Guy Bauer shares his approach to creating business videos that people actually love to watch, and that also get results.
Guy is the author of the book “Death to the Corporate Video”, and the host of a podcast by the same name, and has made it his mission to put an end to boring corporate videos. In this week’s episode, he shares what he calls “the mullet strategy” for making great videos, and breaks down specific do’s and don’ts.
If you’re thinking of using video as part of your business marketing strategy, or already have videos that aren’t performing well, this episode is for you.
Check out the full episode to hear Guy’s insights.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Umault website
- Connect with Guy on LinkedIn
- Read Death to the Corporate Video
- Check out the Death to the Corporate Video podcast
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Ethercycle founder Kurt Elster talks about building communities, growing a podcast, and why authenticity is the key to successful marketing.
Kurt is the host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, widely considered to be “the” podcast for anyone using Shopify as their ecommerce platform. He is also the creator of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders Facebook group, which is now more than 4,000 members strong, and the founder of well known ecommerce agency Ethercycle.
Within the ecommerce world, Kurt has a massive, highly loyal following that relies on him for honest advice about growing an ecommerce business. How did he accomplish that? By fiercely guarding the integrity of his community and preventing spam, and staying true to himself throughout his podcast and marketing.
Check out the full episode to hear Kurt’s insights.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Ethercycle website
- Check out the Unofficial Shopify Podcast
- Apply to join the Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders Facebook Group
Sometimes the best way to market a product to people is not to market the product at all.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Linux Foundation SVP and Chief Marketing Officer Derek Weeks talks about why marketer's should embrace the notion that "helpful is the new viral."
As the new head of marketing at The Linux Foundation, Derek is doing just that by focusing on building a marketing strategy designed to help the organization's audience accomplish its goals. And in doing so, he's creating a future-proof approach to driving top of funnel demand.
Check out the full episode to hear Derek's thinking and learn how he's implementing it at The Linux Foundation.
How does the marketing team at Bigtincan use intent data to influence and close deals?
This week on the Inbound Success podcast, Bigtincan CMO Rusty Bishop breaks down the mechanics behind the company's account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns, including the tech stack they're using, and the nitty gritty details behind their intent data.
Rusty says most companies look to intent platforms to solve their ABM challenges, but wind up spending a lot of money for poor results. In this episode, he gets into detail on the advanced keyword strategies Bigtincan is using to build an intent data set that they can then use to target in-market buyers.
The results have been impressive. For every dollar Rusty's team spends on display, they influence more than $107,000 in pipeline, and more than $27,000 in closed won deals.
Check out the full episode to learn how they do it. (Transcript has been edited for clarity.)
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the Bigtincan website
- Connect with Rusty on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:02): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I am your host, Kathleen Booth. And today my guest is Rusty Bishop, who is the CMO of Bigtincan. Welcome to the podcast, Rusty. I am dying to know the story behind the company name. So let's start with having you make a quick introduction of yourself because I also, I'm going to scoop you a little bit and just say for my guests who are listening, this is going to be fascinating because Rusty has the software company, but he has been a biochemist. He's a guitar player. He's got a fascinating background. So stay tuned to hear about it. Rusty, tell us more about yourself and then also what Bigtincan is and how it got that name.
Rusty (01:01): You got it. So my background, so yeah, after undergrad, I did get a PhD in biochemistry and molecular genetics studying infectious disease research for a big part of my research came out here to Southern California, to the university of California, San Diego, to do post-doctoral research and ended up being on the faculty and staff here in San Diego for about 12 years. So I did about 15 years of biomedical research in my past life. I am no longer consider myself a scientist, although I think it does probably color everything I do for certain. After that I did, I started a company with a guy named Mark Walker, who is the head of sales at a company called Invitrogen which went on to become Thermo Fisher, one of the largest life sciences companies in the world. And then we started a company based on the idea that when, when I was in the lab, when I was a researcher salespeople would come into our lab.
Rusty (01:55): And that was back in the days where you could actually walk in the labs. You can't do that in more, they're all locked down, but they could literally just walk in and they'd be like, Hey, I'm from this company and I want to sell you some stuff. And they would literally break out a paper catalog and try to sell us stuff. And I, you know, at that point iPad was coming out, iPhone was coming out and we just thought, there's gotta be a better way. Mark and I created a company called FatStax which was geared and focused towards sellers, mostly in the life sciences space, those people who were coming to me and as a scientist and trying to sell me things that, that went very well. We had a great exit to Bigtincan in 2018, and I've been there ever since. And I became the CMO less than a week and a half ago.
Rusty (02:41): I worked under our previous CMO who is still here as the president of the company and kind of fought my way up to being the CMO. So marketing is relatively new for me. All of that, totally new. I've been doing it for years as a founder. And of course, you know, here at Bigtincan running marketing for about two years.
Kathleen (02:58): Love it.
Rusty (02:59): Yeah. Lots of weird science stuff in my background. And as you did note, I was a professional musician for about two years before all of that. So it's been a wild ride I'm multitalented guy. I like that. I like to do lots of things.
Kathleen (03:14): So tell me how the company got its name.
Rusty (05:24): Great question. Everyone asks that. So it reminds me that that's actually a pretty memorable name. So the company was found in Australia. And the original concept behind the company was, was when iPad applications were something that people actually wanted. So that the idea was that I'd take all of your content and put it into an iPad application and the original founders, David King, who's our current CEO always talked about how people have this thing where they're communicate through string cans and how that you lose the communication. So they had the idea that if you put everything into the big team can, then you could communicate effectively across your company. So that was the original origin story. Now, of course, that was in Australia with two guys standing and above a coffee shop in Sydney. So what the real name is, I really don't know. So we'll, we'll leave it at that for now. That's how I got his name. And it's been his name for ever since then, publicly traded on the Australian stock exchange. If you want to go learn more about us as a company, there's everything you could ever want to know is right there. I love
Kathleen (06:21): That story. And I definitely, when I was little, definitely connected to tin cans with a string and tried to talk through it, it was a terrible communication method. I will say it doesn't work. It's sort of like a myth, right? Like whoever did that successfully, I don't know. Right. So switching, switching gears, you you've, you know, I love that you bring this sort of brain of a scientist to the way you're doing marketing and you and I talked a little bit before we did the interview about some of the things you're working on. And I was really fascinated hearing you talk about what you guys are doing with intent data and how you're taking this very scientific approach to figuring out, you know, what, what you're going to search for within your intent data platforms to turn up results that are actually going to be meaningful. So let's back up and start with tell me what you're using intent data for in the first place.
Rusty (07:18): Okay. Yeah. Good question. So I'll start with one thing which I want to clarify. I'm sure that everyone that listens to your podcast knows this already, but intent software is not ABM. Everyone seems to get that a little backwards here, especially in our company. They're like, yeah, we're just doing ABM and no, you're not. You're using an ad platform to detect intent out there in the world. So, so what do we, what do we use it for? So we are attempting to detect in market accounts at various stages, we have three different product lines that we can either sell together here on Bigtincan, or we can sell them separately. We also go to market in various verticals and the reason we needed an intent tool was because the amount of keywords that someone could enter into Google to find what we do or to solve their problems more accurately was astronomical. So the chances of us, you know, properly making our website SEO for all those keywords was approaching zero. And so in order to detect all those accounts out there in market, we we do 6Sense and we chose 6Sense. I don't know if that matters, not to the users. I think they all do very similar things. So our methodology from day one was can we detect virtually every account in market using this type of software and is in combination with other things like G2 and other intent data.
Kathleen (08:45): So just out of curiosity, you mentioned you chose 6Sense. Why that platform over any other ones?
Rusty (08:53): You know, it's funny, I had a feeling you were going to ask me that and I tried to go back and look, and that's a year and remember why we chose 6Sense. I think at the end of the day, it was the combination of ease of use for us as well as the second part of 6Sense, which is the ability to do predictive. And that is, you know, once we know and we detected these accounts are in market and they're searching for certain things, and they're also making certain choices with you guys, Bigtincan, there might be opening emails or 15 people that account are doing certain actions. We can now begin to predict how well those accounts are going to move through the funnel and if they are going to close and should we be working them or not?
Rusty (09:32): We're about a year into building our predictive model. I will not say it's a quick process, but it's something I really wanted to get to core science brain. You know, how can we build something that would predict whether we should work these accounts or not, and you know, where we should put more activities from a marketing side. And so that was the ultimate reason we chose 6 cents. You know, in hindsight, I don't know if there's any real reason to choose one over the other, they all except for go and listen to, and really think about what it is that your company needs to achieve with these platforms. That's the key. All the sales people are really good by the way. Oh my gosh. Like, and that space, it must be really intense because the salespeople are all excellent and they will show you stuff that will blow your mind. And you'll absolutely think that this is the greatest thing ever. And you're going to look like a rockstar when you get demo these platforms. And to me, that's sort of like, it triggers one of my middle models, which when I start thinking software is going to make me look like a rockstar, I should probably stop and back up and realize it's not true.
Kathleen (10:32): Yeah. The tool is almost never the solution. Exactly. Yeah. So, so you're, you're using a platform to collect intent data, to look for in market accounts. And then before we dive into exactly how you're setting your platform up, I just want to talk through, like, once you get that data back and it flags these accounts, how are you, how are you adding that into your marketing workflow?
Speaker 3 (10:57): The
Rusty (10:57): Variety of different weights. It depends on where we detect them in the, in the funnel. You know, if we detect them high in the funnel, like they're just coming into awareness that they have a problem. We're mostly just doing marketing. We're mostly doing, you know, ads, LinkedIn ads and those types of things. If we're detecting them far down the funnel based on our predictive model and what they're searching for, I mean, we're going to be doing seriously active outreach. We might have salespeople going after them. We'll be using things like Alice to send them gifts, to make, have them have a conversation with us. We're reaching out to our partners. We partnered with apple, which is a great go to market model for us and seeing if they're working with them. So it really just depends on where they are in the funnel when we, you know, realize that, you know, sometimes they come into funnel really fast. You'll just see a flurry of activity. And so we can, you know, we have a person, I have a person on that team, Tyler who full time monitors, what's going on in six sense. And then, you know, we do a lot of things automated, but some of it's still manual like, oh my gosh, these guys are hot, get, get, break the process and let's go. Right. So it really just depends on where we detect them.
Kathleen (12:00): Nice. All right. So, so let's dig into it. So you've got, you make the decision to get one, get an intent platform and, and you're right. I do think there is a tendency for marketers to look at these platforms and think that they're going to be some sort of a magic bullet. Like I'm going to put it in, I'm going to login my account and the leads are gonna rain down on me. Right. so from, based on my conversations with you, I understand that that is not the case. So walk me through the process that you use to figure out how to get the right data out. Yeah,
Rusty (12:34): No problem. So the first thing I'll point out is that, so when you demo these platforms, the most of the time, they're going to ask you for a keyword list so that they can show you what your data looks like in their platform. And this it's really powerful, actually the way that I would demo it the same way now. So there's a mistake there that it will, I will caution all, anybody who's listening on, which is this, your keywords from your website is probably what you're going to give them. Right? You have all of us have like a data dump of SEO keywords we're going after. You're already ranking for a lot of those terms. You already detecting a lot of people that are searching for those terms. So you're not going to find people far off in the market or far down in market.
Rusty (13:10): You're not going to be able to segment a buyer, a group of buyers with your SEO keyless. But that is when you typically turn these things on, it's already in there for you. And so you think right out of the gate, wow, we're already doing great. We're detecting all of these companies all these types of things. So, you know, for us, it took us maybe like two or three months before we realized this is not showing us in mark. It's showing us some in-market accounts, but it was nowhere near the universe. So my first recommendation is figure out a way to get a baseline. So, you know, but coming from my science background, you always need something that is, you know, zero, you need something that, am I going to get an improvement, or am I going to get a negative out of this?
Rusty (13:49): Right. And that's the way that baseline is. I don't know what baseline might be for your listeners scaffolding. Right? So for us, we get something like G2 where you say, okay, G2, tell us how many people you think are in market. Right? And we might go to Forrester or to another analyst and say, how many, what is the total Tam of, for our market? And then we kind of do some back of the hand envelope kind of math and say, well, we think this many companies should be in market today. Now, if you're a giant company that could be, you know, a hundred of thousands of buyers, if you're very focused company, that might be only 150, 200 people. So knowing a baseline to me is critical because the is going to spit out numbers a hundred percent a good rule of thumb. I like to think about this. If your Tam is a billion dollars over the next five years, right. I seriously doubt $200 million worth as in market. Yeah. Unless
Kathleen (14:40): There's a ton of churn for every solution out there.
Rusty (14:42): Yeah. This is like massive. Like there's always outliers, but like, so just, you know, do some, some real back of the envelope, like, you know, smell, test kind of thing, where you say is this, like, could this many people possibly be out there trying to buy what we sell? So that helps first. And then the next phase, I would say segmentation. So for us, we took the very simple segmentation, which was, you know, on the top level, the buying stages for us that's awareness, which we defined as aware they have a problem. Okay. The second one is consideration, which means they're figuring out they have a problem. And the thinking that what we sell might be one of the things they could solve it with. The next one is decision pretty obvious, right? They've already decided this thing can solve my problem. You know, now I'm looking at the various offerings that are out there and of course the last one is purchased.
Rusty (15:28): So for each one of those what we did is we built a spreadsheet and that's when she had a list of modifiers and then a list of keywords. So let me unpack that for you first, give me some examples and understand what you mean. Here's an example. So I I don't give anything away. I love Peloton. I'm all about it. I ride every day. I could be their marketer tomorrow, if you're hiring, let me know. But so let's just use like a Peloton as an example. Right. So if I'm coming into awareness, okay. I might be searching for things like exercise programs. I might be searching for gyms near me. I might be searching for home gyms. Right. So I might not be actually searching for Peloton. Right. And so the things that I would add as modifiers there, especially for companies that generally sell things that people were trying to solve a problem, or have a pain they'll be searching for modifiers, like solve, troubleshoot, decrease, increase you know, and you build a full list of those modifiers. Okay. So with them, you're going to have all of your, you know, your actual terms that someone could be solving the pain for. So let's say the pain is right. Like I'm, I need to exercise more. Right. So like increase my exercise. You could, and now you just cross reference those two lists into your total list for your world of awareness.
Kathleen (16:45): Yeah. That's interesting. So it sounds like if I understand you correctly, it sounds like when you first start out, you're probably going to want to upload all of what I would term your highest intent keywords. And those are the ones that are going to create the greatest amount of overlap with the prospects you already have in your database.
Speaker 3 (17:09): Okay. Good. Accurate. Okay. So then
Kathleen (17:13): It's the modifiers or another words like making the search strings a little bit more long tail that produce the best results. Do you do any research behind like search volume or anything like that when you do that? Or is it really just intuitive?
Rusty (17:28): So we took a different tack. So we, we tried to do some search volume research long tail, just doesn't it just doesn't register enough in SCM rush or a Google analytics or any other things that are out there. So we were trying to, as I told you, our goal was to detect as many in-market accounts as possible. It was not to detect the companies that are hottest today. Right. So, you know, therefore what we decided to do, which could be completely different for you or for anyone else who's doing. This is effectively, you know, we want to increase the world so that we cash long tail, right. In LA by long tail. We mean that one person out there who's searching for that one thing, which we solve for. But when you have lots of different offerings, like Bigtincan has, there's a lot of things that we solve for, right.
Rusty (18:11): So there's probably a hundred different pain points that we can go in and work with on a customer. So the modifiers give you, if you could imagine, you have to put yourself in your buyer's shoes, I'm sitting down at my computer, I'm going to put something in the magic, Google search bar. I have no idea what I'm looking for, but I know that I want to get more exercise. Right. And somehow I've got to get from getting more exercise to Peloton Peloton marketer. Right. So then in each, so that's that's where the modifier thing, this gives you the world of possible, right? Cause you're going to be running this platform me around just because someone's not searching for it today. Doesn't mean they won't search for it tomorrow or the next day or the next day. So
Kathleen (18:49): You put, so you put your keywords in then with the modifiers and then what it comes
Rusty (18:56): A segment. Right. So we might have an awareness segment. Okay. Let's just take that one, for example. And then, which has a giant list of keywords and their modifiers. So we're trying to find people that are searched. So when someone let's say they're searching for, you know, increase daily exercise, I'll go back to the Peloton example. Immediately we know if we get information from them down the line, they come to our website, et cetera, they were searching for that originally. So their original pain was that. So that gives us the basis for all of that. But then that becomes a segment, right? So then the next step is the further, make it take your segments out. So you might have verticals, you might have geographies, you might have. Well, however it is that you go to market. So now I might have a segment that say, you know, people in, you know, California that are looking to increase their daily exercise. So you just keep taking your segments out further and further until your segments make sense for the way that your team goes to market.
Speaker 3 (19:54): Interesting. Yeah. And,
Kathleen (19:56): And how did that manifest in terms of the flow of leads coming into your go to market strategy? How long did it take also? Oh, that's a great question. That's, that's a very deep, that's a multi-part question, tackle it in whatever order makes sense. How about that?
Rusty (20:14): How long did it take? So you will literally begin to detect things almost instantaneously. Right. But especially if you have a broad enough net, okay. Now what will scare you, right. Is when one of the, some of the things that happened immediately, once we did this, right, was we had salespeople having the mind blown moment, which is like, oh my God, my biggest account is about to buy our competitor. You know, if we went in, because we of course put all those types of terms in there. Right. So our biggest competitor plus pricing. And so that is instant. Like you can, you will literally get instant data, right. So if people are searching for it and how do you, that's,
Kathleen (20:51): That's super interesting. So how do you tackle that?
Rusty (20:54): It's by priority, right? So if, I think, I think we all know if someone is already in purchase phase, you're probably not going to knock them off your competitor. Right. if someone is, you know, up and maybe just coming into decision, or they're just into consideration phase, then it's, you know, you, you prioritize those over the other ones for outreach, everything else you tackle with marketing, with ads or emails and those types of things. So as,
Kathleen (21:18): As the head of marketing, when you have these different leads and some of them are very top of the funnel, as you pointed out their awareness stage, some are more middle and bottom of the funnel, how you parse it, like, are you parsing them all to your sales team? Or are you putting some of them into marketing nurturing? Like, how are you tackling that? Okay. So
Rusty (21:38): Two things here. So w you do not, you do not detect leads, you detect accounts really important. I thought, I thought this too. I thought I was going to get a ton of leads. You do get a ton of leads, but you got to know how to go look for them, right. So you gotta build a step. And we actually built this up. So when when account reaches a certain threshold for us, you know, on our predictability scale they immediately go out to a third party that we've hired. That's, LeadGenius probably shouldn't give that away, but whatever. And then they go and pull the names of the leads based on criteria that we give them an advance that comes back into Salesforce, and then we start our outreach. So that's the way we get an actual lead from it. And back up there, I forgot the first part of your question. I apologize,
Kathleen (22:23): Really a long, how are you parsing it out to your sales team or are you putting them into marketing, nurturing flows? Exactly. So
Rusty (22:30): Parsing out to the sales team is when they come down into the later phases, like bottom, bottom end of our predicting their consideration or decision phase, those would actually so we actually took 6 cents to the next level and bought the piece that goes into Salesforce so that our sellers have access at the account level and they have a 6Sense dashboard so that they can choose accounts to go after and we actually encourage them to do so. Our SDRs also have been trained on how to, you know, when they run out of inbound, which is very rare, but when they run up inbound to go and look for, you know, in market accounts to go out and do outcome for so very everything at the top end, we're using display ads through 6Sense or through other platforms to, again, try to, to move them down. The funnel is a way that I would look at it, right. So how do we engage these people that we've detected, who've hit the awareness phase and give them things that they might be interested in so that they come down into consideration and begin to see Bigtincan as a, as a viable solution for their problems.
Kathleen (23:35): And what specifically needs to happen for somebody to cross the line from, or somebody, some company to cross the line from an account that is in your ad, nurturing to an account that you think is really ready for sales outreach. Like what indicators are you looking at?
Rusty (23:52): I'm looking for multiple people, which you can detect in these platforms by IP address across the organization, searching for the right types of terms. That could be into very, you know, let's say there's multiple in consideration, there's several in decision. You know, that are hitting our search terms that we've specified you know, visiting our website is using indicator that they have at least figured out that we have something that could solve their problem. So the trigger generally, it, it I'm being vague because it's all set in our predictive model and it immediately notifies us when someone has tripped a certain number of the triggers that we've given it to say, all right, you know, there's X number of people at this company doing this there, you know, three people have come to the website, they've gone past the homepage. You know, one of them hit the pricing page at that point. You know, if someone hasn't reached out, I'm probably getting upset. Yeah.
Kathleen (24:44): So tell me about results. Like, we talked a little bit about how this isn't a really super fast thing to get stood up. You've been, and you've been setting this up for how long and, and using it for how long?
Rusty (24:56): It's a great question. So I'd say we did not use it properly for about a year, which is why, hopefully this is helpful to people so that getting this right out of the gate could save you a lot of time. But once I, once I feel like we had a good up and running, we probably had a completely running inside of Salesforce, entire system. Like we want it since January. Okay. Let's call it eight months, seven, eight months at this point right now as, as a simple measure, right? So for the first time ever, we're, we've detected more in market accounts, then G2 tells us are in account in market. So that was, that was a signal that I wanted to get to. So I wanted to say, all right, if people are going to G2 and things like that, right. I realize that you have marketers may not use YouTube.
Rusty (25:44): It's the review side for software, if you don't. So the people that go there are looking for specific things, right? I realized that once we went over that, that we hit a threshold of in-market, that was, was bigger than what we could get from other sources. So then we look at like results. So right now for about every dollar that we spend on display we're influencing $107,000 of pipeline. Wow. In our upper part. And for every dollar we display, we're closing one about 27,000. Wait, say that last part again, we're closing one close won. For every dollar we spend on display 27,000. 27,000 influenced by our platform.
Kathleen (26:34): For every dollar you spend on display, you are-
Rusty (26:39): Influencing a $107,000 of pipeline, and we're influencing $27,000 closed won over the last six months, per month.
Kathleen (26:49): Got it. Got it. Sorry. It took a minute there. Wow. That's great. That's great.
Rusty (26:55): Those are, you know, that's our average right now. So for me, I, I gotta be really happy with that.
Kathleen (27:02): Has it reduced the amount of outbound prospecting that you needed to do?
Rusty (27:09): Not at all. In fact it increases your outbound.
Kathleen (27:13): Just because you have a larger kind of target list to work?
Rusty (27:17): Yeah. You have a larger target list. The level of complexity that adds is you also have to train your outreach teams where their SDRs are salespeople to how to do outreach by looking at what people are searching for. So it, it does add a level of complexity, but what I like about it is one of the things that truly hate is when people try to personalize things for me and they just go out and say like, Hey man, you play guitar. That's cool. Like you want to buy our stuff? And that's not cool.
Rusty (27:48): That's not good outreach. Right. What good outreach is, you know, I've noticed that people at your company are searching for these types of things. These types of problems generally indicate this, you know, would you be interested in talking about a possible solution? That's good outreach, right? So training your teams, how to do good outreach is harder. But so does it, you asked me, did it decrease the amount of outbound, the answers? No. it, it effectively increases it. Right? Cause you're detecting more accounts than market.
Kathleen (28:16): What impact did it have on inbound pipeline?
Rusty (28:19): That's a good, I don't know. I don't know the answer.
Kathleen (28:22): I mean, I would think it would increase it because if you're targeting ads at those people and at least presumably it would, it would result in more inbounds.
Rusty (28:30): Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't have that. I don't have that on my dashboard. I'm looking at currently, but I will definitely go look at it. Cause it does make sense that logically if, you know, you were, they were getting, becoming engaged with your brand, that they would eventually comment and be an inbound in some way. Yeah.
Kathleen (28:46): So if somebody is starting down this path now, like let's say they purchase an intent platform, kind of like you did. What would be your top three pieces of advice for somebody who's starting today?
Rusty (29:01): Top three. Wow. That's a good question. I love it. I think the first one is make sure that your customer facing teams know what to do with the intent data. And that means you, you probably actually need to go and build actual messaging for them.
Rusty (29:25): Because they it's, we as marketers know, I think we sort of, if you're running a campaign or you're doing detection and you're developing these keywords lists, you kind of intuitively know what, how people should be out doing outreach, but your customer facing teams don't so that's, that was a big one, right? Because they'll go, yeah, they're in market and they'll just reach out with, Hey, do you want to buy herself? You've ruined your chance. Right. You blew it. So I think that's probably number one. Number two is what we talked about with the whole segmentation stuff is don't failing to take into account the long tail is probably one of the bigger mistakes that I think that you could make. Now, look, if you're one of these companies or just as magic product product that you can sell it, you can go to tech then 10 and go to town.
Rusty (30:09): Right. But if you're not, if you're a person out there working for a company that solves problems for people that they don't necessarily know that your solution can solve it, then that long tail is really going to help you. Yeah. Final piece, not refining regularly. I mean, you have to constantly refine. I'll give you an example of that. So when we first turned it on our platform on pre COVID one of our SEO terms was remote learning. So as you can imagine, that's sitting there in our 6sense platform, right. So what happened with COVID? Do you know how many people search for remote learning and how can we distinguish that from someone who was looking for learning software, right. A much better modifier you know, sales, learning software, and even much better modifier. Right. Then everyone who was sitting there trying to figure it out at work, how I'm going to train the kids, get them in school. Right. So you'll, you'll get these without we're finding constantly you, you run to a ton of false positives and the false positives are really bad. Right? Cause they'll make you reach out to people who are in market. And you know, I don't, I don't see any reason to blind, like email people. It's not something I do or we do. I guess it works for some people, but it doesn't work for me.
Kathleen (31:22): So how often are you refining? Oh, we never stop. We take a look at it weekly, monthly.
Rusty (31:29): I mean, we have a person who's about half of his job is to run that platform and to do account based marketing on top of it. Right. Not just run the platform, but so the reason I say that is we go to market vertically and the words that various verticals use to describe things are dramatically different. And our sales people will hear those words right. On a demo or on a sales call. And they might come back and say, Hey, you know, so-and-so was talking about this thing called e-detailing. And I'm like, I don't even know what that is. Well, it's the same thing as what we're doing right now, except for it's what happens when a salesperson talks to a doctor. Right. But then there might be another 50 terms that are associated with e-detailing, for example, that you also need to add that, or you're going to hear about and you know, analysts are changing the way they talk about things all the time, easy solution right there. The way that your competitors, right? What are they writing in their books? What are they saying? All of a sudden they change their messaging. I mean, you gotta be constantly refining it. I mean, I'd love to say we have a process where every week we're refining.
Rusty (32:33): One of our mantras around here is if you see something, say something and people are very good about it because we're all remote, like everybody else. And just, yeah. And you got to yeah, basically. Yeah. These days yeah, yeah. Bigtincan's all over the world and everyone's mostly remote. So slack is a great tool and training your people, right? If you see something, say something and that refines your keyword list and these tools. So you said for three, you know.
Kathleen (33:03): You got me three, I love it. And I put you on the spot with that one.
Rusty (33:07): One more, which I'll go for it. The fourth one which is don't just blindly measure intent around your competitors. You will get really freaked out, like really fast. What do you mean by that? So let's say you just, you just entered a competitor's name as one of your search terms, which you're going to do. Like, I promise you if you installed DemandBase or 6Sense, that's the first thing you would put in there, like how many people are searching for my competitor. But you have to realize that when people enter your competitor's name in the search bar, like 80% of those are their users are there. People who've already bought their stuff. So you got to get just blindly getting freaked out about competitors. Names and intent is, is not good business practice. But once you use your modifiers, now you can start to get, now you start breaking those competitors down. Right. And figuring out what people are actually doing. Right?
Kathleen (33:54): Yeah. I could definitely see where people would start to get spun up by that.
Rusty (33:57): Or for the fourth one. But that one actually, that's a good one.
Kathleen (34:03): All right. So we're going to switch gears and there's two questions. I always ask my guests. So I'd love to hear your answers. The first being, of course, this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or an individual that you think is really studying the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days?
Rusty (34:19): Wow. You know, I knew you were going to ask me this question and I went and listened to some of your podcasts and I thought about it. So I want to give you somebody that's unusual that you might not have gotten. So one of my favorite people in the world is Tim Ferris, Tim gets so many inbound requests that he has an automatic responder that denies them all okay. On everything he publishes. He says, don't contact me because I won't contact you back. So if you had to set a gold standard for inbound, I think that's probably it, you know? So what does that let's unpack that, right. So what I'm not saying is you got to be famous to be a great inbound marketer. What I'm saying is you've got to create something that's so valuable that you had so much inbound that you're fighting it away. I think that's that to me is kind of an interesting bar to set. Now, the other side of that bar is like, that's
Kathleen (35:11): Such a, it's a very high bar to hit though.
Rusty (35:15): It is. But I think that we all get caught up into, I need to create this stuff so that people will click on it and download it. And it's not valuable. At Bigtincan we talk about valuable buying experiences every day? It's one of our reasons to be it's written on everything we do. We tell everyone about it. And I don't think it's very viable to send, you know, email. One, have you heard of this email. Two didn't you respond email. Three let's break up. You know, so I set the standard up there. Like we should be creating content that's so valuable that people are breaking down the door to get it now, are we doing it yet? No, but we're sure going to track. So that comes example, that example I've been studying a lot lately is Qualtrics. And the reason I've been studying them is I think that their Play Bigger move. I'll put that in air quotes to move from surveys to XM as a category is fascinating. And the way that they became a category and did inbound around that, it was just amazing. If you ever get a chance to read their 10K that they put out when they went public, it's just absolute messaging clinic. It really is there anything to read their 10K, but it is a message clinic. I mean, it's just awesome.
Kathleen (36:24): Now I'm super curious. I got to go hunt that down.
Rusty (36:26): Yeah. So a couple of unusual things. There's so many people doing great inbound. I mean, you interview them every day. So I think those are two unusual ones.
Kathleen (36:39): Yeah. Those are some good ones. And I'm dying now to read the Qualtrics 10K. You've piqued my interest with that one.
Rusty (36:45): Well, when you make a decision to be a category, you gotta, man, you gotta do it.
Kathleen (36:52): A lot of people give big lip service to it and very few are able to really make it happen. So those are always interesting case studies to look at. Second question is, you know, marketers tend to tell me that their biggest challenge is just staying on top of everything. That's changing all the time in the world of marketing, particularly with digital. So are there particular sources that you rely on to keep yourself educated on the cutting edge, et cetera?
Rusty (37:18): Yeah. I am not a cutting edge guy. I don't know about that. Just in time person, which means, you know and I don't mean that in a way to like give you a flippant answer, but like, you know, if we need to figure out why our segments aren't working in 6Sense, right. I'll go and search like crazy and find the blog on their website, which talks about that as opposed to staying on top of the most modern stuff. I mean that being that, so my mental mode is more to read books. And I read absolutely voraciously, take notes. My, I tell my wife all the time, if I died, just sell the Evernote, it's going to be, it's worth more than we are. But so, but there's like a couple of things that constantly refer back to so one, four hour workweek by Tim Ferriss.
Rusty (38:04): I'll just say it again. I love him to death. I think it's the way it should work. I love Designing Brand Identity by Lena Wheeler. I go back to it. I feel like every day when we're doing brand here at Bigtincan. Monetizing Innovation. I get asked about pricing all the time and segmentation of products. That book is the Bible. I probably have, I feel like a broken my Kindle reader, trying to go back and forth to it back in time. And the last one is On Writing Well by William Zinter. Probably my most favorite book on how to write. My team all the time, writing things and creating content. And they're always saying, how do I get better? And I say, this is the Bible effectively. So those four books I realized that's not how to stay on top of modern marketing.
Kathleen (38:44): No, that's a great answer. And I love, yeah, I love there were some books in there I've never heard of. And I too, I'm a big book reader, as you can see, I'm sure if you're listening, you can't see this, but I, I always, in my interviews, I'm always sitting in front of my bookshelf that has all the books that I love in it. And they're actually stacked two deep in the shelves that have books. Cause I don't have room for them all. So yeah, no, I love books. And thank you for being specific and mentioning titles and authors. That's great. Yeah. All right. Well, if somebody is listening and they want to reach out and ask you a question or learn more about what you talked about, what is the best way for them to connect with you online?
Rusty (39:22): The best way is through Linkedin. It's, it's Rusty Bishop, I'm on LinkedIn. It's pretty obvious who I am. I do react to LinkedIn probably better than anything else. That like most CMOs, I probably get a thousand emails a day. I, I may or may not respond, but yeah, LinkedIn is great. That's the best way.
Kathleen (39:39): Fantastic. And if you're listening and you liked this episode, I would love it. If you would head to apple podcasts and leave the podcast a review, and if you know somebody else, who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I'd love to make them my next guest. Thank you so much for joining me Rusty.
Rusty (39:56): Thank you. I enjoyed it. I did too. Thanks.
How do top e-commerce companies leverage customer referrals to increase sales by 20% or more?
This week on the Inbound Success podcast, ReferralCandy Chief Advocate Raul Galera breaks down the best practices behind top performing customer referral programs.
From when to launch a program, to how to ask for referrals, and how to reward customers who make them, Raul gets into the details that you'll need to design, build, launch and execute your own successful referral program. And he includes specific examples of companies that are doing it right now.
Check out the full episode to get the details. (Transcript has been edited for clarity.)
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the ReferralCandy website
- Email Raul at raulg@referralcandy.com
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I am your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Raul Galera who is the chief advocate for ReferralCandy. Welcome to the podcast Raul.
Raul (00:27): Thanks for having me.
Kathleen (00:28): Yeah, this is a great topic. Selfishly, I'm working on developing a customer referral program right now for my business. And so I am excited to pick your brain and I'm sure there are others listening as well, who want to learn about this before we dig into it. Can you talk a little bit about yourself and your story and how you came to be doing what you're doing now with ReferralCandy and then also what ReferralCandy is?
Raul (00:51): Yeah, absolutely. So actually the reason why I found ReferallCandy, it's kind of related to, to remote work which is a pretty kind of hot topic these days. So just to give you like the short version. So after I finished college, I started working remotely for a consulting firm from Spain, that consulting firm was based in, in Poland, which is where I had studied abroad a few years before that. And after working remotely for a few years, I wanted to work from an office and I also wanted to, to move abroad. So I moved from Spain to Chile and I worked for a startup company in, in San Diego for a couple of years. And then after that, I, I made a couple of decisions. The first one was that I wanted to work for a software company.
Raul (01:37): I wanted to sell software. It was something I wanted to learn about. And I also wanted to work remotely again. So after my, my office experience, I had decided that yeah, remote work was a better, better fit for me. And it's like I was looking for a remote sales jobs and, and I, I came across ReferralCandy on Angel List. I think it was they had a kind of like a remote friendly sales position. And so instead of applying directly through Angel List, I decided to email the CEO directly and tell him why I thought it was a, I was a good fit for, for the company. And he replied to the email, we had a couple of interviews and I guess the rest is history.
Kathleen (02:18): I love that story. I love that you reached out directly to him. I just think so few people do that. Everybody is kind of used to like hitting the submit button on LinkedIn or whatever. And it definitely makes a difference too, to go that extra mile. And I feel like the rest of the world is now starting to catch up with you with these remote positions. I, I also have worked remotely for some time and love it. But that's been interesting to me to see what COVID has done in terms of the perceptions of workplaces and, and, and people who run companies and, and their appetite for allowing remote work. It seems like it's really grown, which is I think a very good thing.
Raul (02:54): Yeah. I mean, I remember a few years ago I had to I mean, I've felt kind of weird explaining that I was working from my living room or my home office instead of from an office. And I would always get these like, weird looks about it, but where, where were you based? And where's the company based and, you know, like you're working from an office, you know, that's yeah, I'm kind of happy that that's how it could have more natural these days and worlds.
Kathleen (03:16): Yeah. There was a time when you had to hide the fact that you were at home and I would be really embarrassed if my dogs barked, which you might hear my dogs bark in this interview because I am still at home and I have two dogs and they bark, but no, it is, it is a good thing for all of us. So, so talk a little bit about ReferralCandy. What is, what, what is that?
Raul (03:35): ReferralCandy is an app that allows e-commerce brands to set up and run customer referral programs. So we, as a company we started working in, in 2010. I joined the company in 2016 and from, from day one with I mean, we've, we've pretty much grown alongside the e-commerce world. We were one of the first referral marketing partners for, for Shopify. And so we kind of like experienced growth as a company alongside all these like big, you know e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Big Commerce, WooCommerce, Magento, et cetera. And so basically what we do is that we allow brands to run these referral programs on autopilot in the way that we do this is by inviting customers to automatically join the, the referral program, the referral program, by giving them a unique referral link.
Raul (04:25): They can share these referral links with their friends on social media, on texts or whatever it is. The friend clicks on the link. And then from that moment on whenever they finish the purchase we're able to track the whole referral process from the moment that they clicked on the link until they completed the purchase. And we send the rewards to the customer that made the recommendation in the first place. So it's all so automated whether it's a coupon payout or, or an actual cash payout, we automate the reward process on our end. So the merchants don't really have to worry about that.
Kathleen (04:58): So customer referral programs, let's talk about this because I do feel like, you know, you guys are doing it particularly for e-commerce, it sounds like, but I would imagine that there are certain fundamental elements of customer full programs that apply to all companies. And so I guess I feel like everybody out there knows that customer referrals are a great way to get new business. Right? You have your, your happiest customers kind of talking about you, almost selling, selling for you, but I think the stumbling block that everybody runs into is how to ask for the referral. And, and so maybe you could address that, like who to ask and how to ask and when to ask
Raul (05:41): Those are all really good questions. I would say so, and I honestly, I have different answers or like I have different sets of answers for each one of them based on what I've seen. I don't think there's like one particular like rule of thumb that works for all businesses. They're all pretty different and the way their customers interact with, with these brands kind like make those interactions a little bit different in terms of when to ask and how to ask the, the main thing that in terms of how to ask I would say that there's, there's two main strategies on this. One of them is to kind of put the emphasis on what you as a customer are are going to get for every friend that you, that you were first.
Raul (06:30): So kind of like putting the emphasis on, you know, refer a friend and you will get $10 in cash or refer a friend and you will get a $10 coupon on your next purchase. On the the other side, it's to put more emphasis on what you can give to your friends. So we've seen referral programs that have worked really well because they've been able to kind of tell customers, look, you're going to look really good in front of your friends, because they're going to be able to give them this really special coupon or this really special offer and both of them work. So it, I guess it really depends on, on maybe how word of mouth friendly your product is in the sense that if you're selling something, that's, that's going to spark a conversation. And you know, that your customers are naturally going to talk about your products, just, just because of the nature of it.
Raul (07:19): Then you can put more emphasis on the friend reward because you know, that your customers are just naturally going to recommend you to their friends and family. But again both of them, both of them work, and I've seen both of them work in, in, in, in in, in different companies, in different industries. Now in terms of when to ask there's two main theories here. So the, the, the two of them are either ask your customers once you have their attention. So that could be like right after a purchase. So, you know, while, while the purchase still fresh, and they're still thinking about your brand because they just bought something from you it's going feel natural to get an email from the brand asking you to join the referral program. Cause you just became, you just became a customer.
Raul (08:02): The other theory is to ask customers to join the referral program after they have received the product. So wait a few days, let him get your product and use it and then hit them with email that asks for a referral. Once again, both of them work, I've seen both of those strategies work, and I guess also depends on the nature of the, of the business. And then in terms of how to ask one particular, how, excuse me, one particular way of asking that I like it's one brands when brands are transparent in terms of why they're asking for a referral. There's one particular example that I, I always like to share. Whenever I get questions about how to ask for, for referrals since it's, it's a company that's called Baronfig and they actually, so they have a page on their website about the referral program.
Raul (08:58): And one of the things that they say in, in this, they have to have kind of like a note from the team explaining why they have a referral program. And the reason that they give is that they want to they're rather spend money on their customers that on Facebook advertising or online advertising, like, you know, we, we, we know you love our product so much that we would just rather give the money to you instead of giving it to all these big corporations. You don't have to follow that particular example. You don't have to you know, like you make it either or, but showing your customers that, the fact that they're going to go out and spread the word about your brand, it's actually going to matter to you and it's going to matter to your business. I think that's really smart. And if you, and again, if you're, if you have honest marketing and your customers know that, that you care about them and you care about the products you're developing that way of kind of asking for other, for the referrals, it's going to come out very naturally.
Kathleen (09:52): I love that example about the Facebook ads, because it's true. Like if you're spending a ton of money on Facebook ads, would you rather give the money to Facebook or would you rather give it to your customers? I know what my answer would be. What do you say to people who push back and say, well, we shouldn't have to pay our customers to refer us. I don't know. I've definitely heard people express opinions indicating that they feel like the transactional nature of that somehow cheapens the referral. Do you have any response to that?
Raul (10:24): Yeah, I mean, I can, I can totally see that. And, and it's all, it's not really about it doesn't have to be a monetary transaction. You can there's, I mean, you can get creative and, and offered things that are going to their customers. Aren't going to appreciate without again, I can see that offering a coupon or offering cash can, you know, raise some eyebrows for some brands and say, Hey, maybe this is going to, to affect the way that we're positioning our brand. We we've seen that with a more kind of like luxury items or brands are they're in that type of business that there sometimes are a little you know, they kind of question the whole, the whole thing, but the reality is that at the end of the day, their customers are going to refer their friends and family anyway.
Raul (11:08): And so, you know, why not, first of all tracking it. And then second, like if you can add something on top of that too, to do have them continue doing so then, you know, it's going to be a win-win for everybody. So, but again, it doesn't have to be doesn't have to be, I'm going to try to turn a section and you can offer a free product. You can offer some like free accessory or you can even like offer them a spot on a new release. If you're going to release a product in the next few months, and you want to have a closer to, to kind of like a VIP group, you can offer that instead. And again, also for, for the customer, if you don't want to offer a coupon, you can, you can offer an additional product or something that's not available.
Raul (11:50): To, to, like I said to, to most people, you can maybe some sort of like a hidden product that's added to your cart if you make a purchase referred by, by an existing customer. So it's all, it's all a matter of making it a little bit special. And also you know, if, if your, if your customers your customers are going to be happy that they're sharing something, that's going to be useful for their friends anyway, which is it's honestly, the bottom line of, of referral programs is that referral programs at the end of the day, what they do is that they incentivize something that's already happened or happening organically, which is word of mouth. So if you can incentivize that even more than your customers are going have be able to add that little pitch at the end, after they sh they shunned the product, and they explained their friends and family, why the product is so good, they're going to be like, and by the way, if you buy using this link that you get a little, a little something, or we both get a little something.
Raul (12:42): So,
Kathleen (12:43): So when it comes to offering a coupon or a gift card, or some sort of monetary compensation, do you have any data that, that would point to how much that should be? Because I feel like, I feel like there has to be a sweet spot, right? Like too low, and it's not going to motivate the desired behavior too high, and it's going to be very expensive. And I don't know B it might just seem egregious, but yeah. What, what's your take on that? I mean,
Raul (13:12): It really depends on the company and kind of like what they can offer just from looking at a, from a financial perspective, like, what are their margins and what are they able to offer? What I would do, what I would suggest is to make sure that it's kind of a unique offer. We have customers that are offering, let's say 10% to, to their, to their customers and their friends for every referral. But at the same time, that's what they're offering to anybody that signs up for the newsletter. So, you know what, when you, when you put it on the same level and you make it a referral, it takes a lot more effort than signing up for a newsletter. And so if you're given that incentive it might not seem too attractive to customers because they can get that discount.
Raul (13:53): And by, by doing something else, that's honestly a lot, a lot easier to do. So what I would do is it's to yeah, like offer something, offer something that you're not already offering hopefully something a lot higher, make sure that it's also not clashing with other type of promotions that you might have in we, we noticed we had a, a client that we would notice that every weekend, their referral sales would go, we'll go down. And we couldn't really figure it out. Why, because the rest of the week, Monday through Friday, you would see kind of like normal sales and then they will drop in during the weekend, which w which was the opposite of what their customers were doing. Their customers were buying more from them over that weekend. W what was happening is that every weekend they had kinda like a a store sale with the same discount had a referral program.
Raul (14:40): And so people were, were just rather use that coupon code and then offer them that using the one that they that we're getting from, from making referrals. So, you know, those little things, like, just making sure that you have kind of like a clear picture of what your, your coupon situation is, and then makes something a little bit more special at the end of the day, making a referral for the customer. It's not, it's not something that's going to happen automatically, just because they're sharing it on their social media, or just because they're sharing the referral link on a, on a, on a group chat doesn't mean that they're, their friends are going to make a purchase right away. So you need to reward them for that.
Kathleen (15:13): That makes sense. So make your referral discount higher than the other discounts you're advertising. Can you talk a little bit about tracking, because you've mentioned a few things that point to that, and I imagine that's key to all of this, because if you're gonna, if you're going to offer these rewards, you have to be able to track whether the action happened and attributed back to the right person and then distribute that reward. So how, how, what's the best practice for handling that? Well,
Raul (15:38): I mean, it's out of ReferralCandy. We do it automatically. So depending on the platform, we have several different ways that we can identify who was the friend and who made the referral. For some platforms we use coupon codes that are specific for, for advocates. And so if we see a transaction with a specific coupon code, we're able to say, okay, this was the advocate, and this is the person that needs to get rewarded for other platforms. We rely more on the referral link and, and kind of like, you know, kind of like the, the, the tracking after they click on it we're able to basically to cookie the friend and then see what's, you know, what's the referral looking like. But what, what I was mentioning earlier about being able to track referrals it's more about kind of like the, the, the, the moment in which brands tend to decide that they need a referral program.
Raul (16:27): They know that they start to getting these early signs that they're getting referrals either because you know, a customer, my, my, mention it to a customer support rep or, or, you know, you might like see referrals happening on social media, just from people that have bought the product, and they're just sharing it or somebody unboxing your product on YouTube. And then maybe people asking them what they can get it, all that kind of stuff. So, like, those aren't kinda like early signs, but unless you have a referral program software on your store it's pretty difficult to, to, to track who are the customers that are, that are coming to you from referrals versus any other channel, because those, all of those referrals are happening organically in a way. And it's, it's kind of more like a, just like a natural conversation so that they might hear from, again, from a friend or my, my look at a video on YouTube, and then just go to the website and make the purchase. And you'll never be able to attribute that purchase to kind of like a referral source. So yeah, so instead of ReferralCandy, we were able to track that with with the referral links and coupon codes. But, but yeah, I mean, th those are kind of like the early signs that brands typically look at in order to decide that, okay, it's time to have something formal in place so we can see where this is going.
Kathleen (17:44): So what are the top three mistakes that you see companies make with referral programs?
Raul (17:52): So I would say that the main mistakes are either going to early so referral programs I mean, it's, it's a, it's an easy way for brands to retain existing customers and acquire new ones. So it's basically, you're turning your customer base into, into your marketing team. But it's a numbers game. And the, the number of advocates that you're going to have in your referral program depends a lot on, on your total number of customers. So how many new orders are you having per day or per week or per month? And then those are, the customers are eventually going to get added to the program. They're going to get the referral link, and then they're going to go out and refer. So it's a, it's a numbers game, really. So you need to have a good number of customers in the referral program in order to be able to see results in the short term.
Raul (18:38): So whenever we have a brand joining joining ReferralCandy and launching a referral program if it's a brand that has, let's say like 10 or 20,000 orders per month, they take off immediately. Because they're, they're getting you know, almost thousands of orders every day. So those are thousands of customers that are being added to the referral program right away. Now, if you're a brand that it's, it's making, let's say a hundred, 200 orders per month, and it's going to take a lot longer. And so it's, it's not that it's a mistake joining the referral program, but what is the mistake in my opinion, is to expect results in, in the short term. And I'll be number one. Another mistake that I typically see is not, not promoting it enough. So like I said, you depend on your customers to perform an action.
Raul (19:23): So you need to remind people about the, the, the existing of the referral program, because there's a lot of things that are happening in our daily lives. And, and, and if we're a, if we're not, if brands are not staying top of mind, then it's difficult for customers to think about it and kinda like generate those referrals. So promotion is key. And then the third mistake, probably the most important one. This is an actual mistake, in my opinion it's not, not being ready or not having a company that's ready for our referral program in the sense that either your products it's not good enough yet, or your customers are not loving your product yet, or maybe your kind of like purchase process, it's, it's complicated and messy, and your customers are not kind of enjoying the whole process. And then or maybe you don't have a customer support team in place.
Raul (20:18): That's like, you know, practically solving problems and your customers are not, not happy overall. So if your customers are not happy and referral program is not gonna be able to solve that. And that's something that I actually see quite often but you know, it, it, at least it's it's kinda like a, it's a way of figuring out if there's something that's wrong with, with the company or with the product. And then, you know, you can think of the company and kind of focus on fixing that. And then I mean, if our referral program is not working, honestly, any other marketing action that you might develop, it's not going to work either if your product is not, it's not
Kathleen (20:53): There. Yeah. That's so true. There's no substitute for a poor product. And you can't market your way out of that either. Exactly. so I'd love for you to give some examples, because I feel like in principle, this sounds like a no brainer if you have a good product and if you're ready for it. So can you maybe talk about the impact that it can have on companies? Like, do you have any real-world examples of companies that implemented a referral program and what that did to the business?
Raul (21:24): Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I brought a few examples of companies in kind of different industries so we can, we can kind of go over it together, but I would say that that one thing that they all have in common is that they obviously have a great product, that their customers are, are loving. They, by the time they launch a referral program, they, they realized that they were already getting kind of organic referrals. And that's what it was just kind of implementing something on top of that, that it was going to be able to streamline the whole referral process. So one of my favorite examples it's a company called Branch Basics. They are based in the US and they are offering a subscription business for cleaning products, which, you know, it's not, you know, initially it's not like, you know, a very attractive product.
Raul (22:11): They're, they're in a very competitive industry. And so it's something that sometimes we just buy kind of automatically you put it on your shopping list and you go to the store and you get it. But that kind of like the twist they, they being able to add to the product that made it so attractive for customers is that they, they realize that most of the ingredients that you buy when you buy cleaning products are plastic and water, so you're, you're buying a container and then you buy a product that's mostly made of water. And so what they, what they've done is that they, they, when you, when you subscribed to brunch basics, they send you a box with different spray bottles and, and, and basically the containers for your cleaning supplies. And then they send you a subscription of different concentrates that you can use to, you know, buy to clean different parts of your house. And all you need to do is just put that the, the, those concentrates inside of the bottles and fill them with water and you're ready to go.
Kathleen (23:06): By the way, I agree. Totally genius. That makes all the sense in the world, especially in terms of lowering shipping costs.
Raul (23:13): Exactly. And, and it's and yeah, it's something that when you think about it, you're like, wait a minute, that's true. I'm just, I'm buying water and plastic.
Kathleen (23:20): Yeah. Yeah. And I'm paying to have it shipped to me. Exactly, exactly.
Raul (23:24): So they, they, they were able to add a twist to this, like, you know, highly traditional industry. But at the same time they had an issue at the beginning, which is how do we break through the noise? I mean, there's, there's like cleaning supply companies are so big and they, they, they take over pretty much any marketing channel available to us that we need to find something else. And so they they realized that their customers were their best advocates, because they were really excited about telling their friends and family about the, the, the, the cleaning products that we're buying. So just to kind of give you some numbers. So right now pretty much since they launched the referral program they saw an increase in by 10% in their, in their total sales and that 10% came from the referral program.
Raul (24:08): And, and ever since they've been able to get like one in every 10 purchases coming from the referral program, which if you, if you look at it from the financial perspective and how much it costs to acquire a customer through a referral compared to any other, you know acquisition method, like, you know, like Facebook ads or Google ads, it's a lot cheaper. And, and also customers aren't coming from a referral tend to stick around longer and spend more. So in the long run, it's, it's made a really big impact on the bottom line of their business, which is their, their revenue. Other examples that I particularly like because it's it's, it's brands that have being able to target a specific communities of customers. So there's, we have a couple of companies that are selling products for, for either babies or toddlers.
Raul (25:01): And obviously the customer here is not the baby and the toddler. It's mothers. And so they're being able to target communities of mothers that, that we're going to be able to buy the products. And then, then we're going to talk about it to, to all their moms. And so in particular we have two companies, one called Momomee and the other one called Riff Raff. And they, they, they pretty much being able to see the same type of results pretty much from the beginning, they were able to increase their sales by 20 and 24% using referral marketing, which is a lot, I mean, it's one of the highest referral rates that I've seen in, in among our customers. And there were, they were able to do so because they, they were targeting a highly engaged community of people that were constantly looking for the best products.
Raul (25:45): And so if you see if you're part of a, of a mother's community and you see a mom being super excited about it, but one particular product, it's very likely they're going to buy it, even if you don't personally know about that person. But, but just the fact that you're both in kinda like the same stage of, of life, it kinda like makes you agree. And, and those referrals typically happen very, very naturally. So those are two that particularly like, because of the, kind of like the, the, that the way that they being able to, to target these communities. And then I mean, and then I would say that those are kind of like the 20, 24% referral rates I mean, are achievable because we have several customers that are, that are being able to get those to get to those percentages.
Raul (26:32): But then, you know, you see customers having anywhere between five and 15% referral rates that are, you know, kind of all over the board in terms of companies that are they're operating in the, in the clothing or apparel industry companies are selling gadgets or, or sporting sporting goods. And they all have a kind of different ways that they've been able to target themselves sorry, market themselves to their customers and their referral programs. But I would say that products that are, are word of mouth friendly are those that are either truly revolutionary in the sense that it's nothing that you've seen before, or their products from a traditional industry with the twist, kind of like the example of Branch Basics. They, they, they're not in a very traditional industry, but they being able to add something that you know, all of a sudden it makes it look like a, like a no-brainer. But if we look at the, kind of like the traditional or the kinda like the most famous classic referral programs, Dropbox, Uber PayPal, those were truly new products. And so when you were talking to your friends and family about those products, you were, you were sharing something that was brand new, something that anybody had never heard of before. So that's, that's what makes, in my opinion company's word of mouth friendly when, when the person that's talking about your brands, truly excited about what, what they're about, what they're saying.
Kathleen (27:58): So that makes all the sense in the world. And, and I think that that also makes it easier to onboard people into the customer referral program if they're excited. But I guess the other thing that I wonder about is activation because like, with anything, it's one thing to get the person to join the program, and it's another to then get them actually spreading the word and doing it consistently. So do you have any best practices or examples you've seen of companies that have done a really good job with activation?
Raul (28:27): Yeah, so I would say that the most the most common examples of this are companies that are, that have a pretty consistent promotion schedule for the referral program. And so they are either reminding customers, let's say sending me an email every couple of weeks to their customers to remind them about the program, they're sharing it on social media or even like giving incentives that they get people excited about sharing. One particular example that I, that I really like talking about it's a company called Thread Beast and they are subscription box for just apparel basically. And so whenever you buy a box, you get maybe like a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and a hat and a belt, and maybe a pair of shoes as well. And the way that they've marketed the referral program is that instead of giving so it's, this it's a subscription, right?
Raul (29:18): So instead of giving a coupon code on your future subscription or in your feature invoice what you get is every time you refer a friend, you get an additional box. So if you refer three friends, you're going to get your box plus three other boxes, full of clothes. And then your friend, the friends, I think they get like, like like 50% off or something like that. So it's pretty easy for the friends to to get started as well. And so when you are basically not capping the type of the, the, the type of rewards that they can earn it gets people really excited about sharing the referral link. So and actually, if you go on YouTube and you search for Thread Beasts, you're going to see tons of videos, a lot of them from, for the past few days, because people just keep renewing their videos unboxing, what they got from, from Thread Beast then.
Raul (30:07): So they, they do like a, maybe 10 minute video explaining all the different products they've, they've gone. And then they also shared the referral link and to tell people how to get started on Thread Beast as well. So those type of rewards in which you're not necessarily capping it that works really well. Also companies that offer cash instead of coupon codes. So if you're, if you're selling a product that, you know, your customers are not going to buy from you anytime soon, and I always give the same example mattresses.
Kathleen (30:34): Oh yeah. That's so true.
Raul (30:36): If you're selling mattresses. I mean, that, that's kinda like the iconic example of a product that you're not going to buy a, you buy once, and then you're not going to buy it anytime soon. So if you're, if you run a referral program, and you're a mattress company, you can either maybe offer up, offer free product, which might be some sort of accessory that you can use under your bed.
Kathleen (30:54): Or something. Yeah, exactly.
Raul (30:55): Or you can offer cash and people are going to be happy to share and get cash because, you know, nobody's going to say no to that. So again, promotion and then being a little creative with the rewards typically helps with activation. And then something that we've also seen with with customers is that they they they're being able to add a little bit of a gamification to the process. So Riff Raff, the example that I was mentioning before they, they offer, they have like, kinda like a limited set of products. I think they only have like five or six items that they sell, but you can collect them in a way. And so instead of giving cash or giving a coupon to their customers, to give them a free product, every time they refer, I think it's five friends. And so if you end up referring, you know, 15, 20, 25 friends, you might end up getting all the different items of the collection. So you can, you can kind of collect all these, all these different products. So yeah, it's like I said, I mean, they're all I can't really give like one particular you know strategy that would work for all businesses, but it's all about getting a little bit creative and also knowing what truly get your customers excited.
Kathleen (32:05): Yeah. And I think hearing some of those examples is helpful, cause it's just stipulates that the ideation, all right, we're going to switch gears because we're coming towards the end of our time. And I want to make sure I have time to ask the two questions that I always ask. First one being you know, the, the world of inbound marketing and digital in particular is changing really, really quickly. Some of it fueled by technology, some fuel by regulatory things around privacy. You know, there's just so much platform changes. There's so much happening. How do you personally stay educated and on top of all that, are there certain sources of information that you really rely on?
Raul (32:44): Yeah, so I so I don't have like one particular news outlet that I follow for, you know, for anything related to marketing or e-commerce but instead I rely on community. So I'm part of several Slack communities. And from, you know, people that have worked in, in either in, in, in direct to consumer or people that work in, in e-commerce technology. And they, I tend to rely on those communities to get information that's going to be relevant. I think that when not necessarily a cause I used to be really active on Twitter. And I used to get a lot of my news from Twitter, but, you know, Twitter is just a little bit out of hand. I mean, I got out of hand in, in my opinion. And so I decided to kinda focus on kind of like smaller communities, more niche communities, and, and that, I think the quality you might not get as many articles to check every day, but the quality in my opinion has improved a lot. And there is. And then there's also an interesting conversation whenever somebody shares something, if it's, if it's truly interesting, there's going to be people that are going to like, you know, go back and forth about it. And that's also, my opinion is super valuable because allows me to learn from people that I've, you know, they're like, that are really way smarter than me. And and that that's always good.
Kathleen (34:00): Any particular Slack communities that you really love?
Raul (34:02): Yeah. So I'm my favorite one it's called Partner League. And it's a community for Shopify partners. It's, it's not run by Shopify it's, it's kind of like a, it was organized by by several Shopify partners. It's, it's a little bit independent and I think that's what makes it interesting, in my opinion, there's like really, really interesting conversations that happened there. And then also whenever somebody shares anything, anything that affects the industry, there are some really interesting conversations about this. So, so yeah, Partner League, if you're in Shopify I totally recommend
Kathleen (34:33): It. I am in that one as well, and I think it's good. So now we know we can Slack each other. Great. And then the second question is, of course, this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Are there particular companies or individuals that you think are really setting a great standard for what it means to be a really good inbound marketer these days?
Raul (34:57): Yeah. So whenever I look for, for example, so people, companies doing good marketing, I like to look at my inbox. I, I unsubscribe whenever I make a purchase, I end up subscribing from like, I don't know, 75, 80% of the brands that I, that I buy from. Cause I, you know, I ended up just not enjoying the content they send me, but those that remain in my inbox type. Those are the ones that I particularly like, and there's one company that's called Back Market. They sell a refurbished products so, you know refurbish technology. So, you know, iPhones, some computers you know, whatever, actually my, my last two iPhones are from, from them. So I a I'm a really good really with customer of them, but I like the way to do marketing because, well, first of all, they've been able to educate people on you know, kinda like all the electronic waste that we're producing.
Raul (35:49): And that they've been able to kind of like remove the, the, the stigma that most, a lot of people had on, on buying refurbished products for products that are not brand new. And so I think they've done a really good job educating what refurbish means and what's the impact that you can make for, for the environment. And then also I like the tone. So they I mean, I get, so I'm based in Spain, so I get their content from their Spanish site, but I don't know if the US site will be a little bit different, but they're pretty funny. They use humor a lot in the way that they that they interact with with customers. And I think that's key to be honest, like whenever, whenever I see their emails, even if I'm clearly not going to buy another iPhone in the next year or two, but I still look at their emails and I read every single one of them, because I think they're really smart. And that any time that I don't have a referral program, by the way. So from here, if anybody from Back Market is listening to me, we should, we should talk. But anytime that I hear somebody that wants to buy some sort of electronic site typically think of them because of how exposed I am.
Kathleen (36:50): Well now I definitely want to go and subscribe to their emails because I love collecting just emails that are, that are well-written. And I love email, and I love corporate marketing. That's done with humor. So a hard thing to pull off and to do it like to hit the right tone. And then right note, like it can go wrong pretty easily, but for the companies that pull it off, it's incredibly powerful.
Raul (37:12): One thing that they do that I think helps a lot, and that's something that pretty much every single brand can, can copy is that they these emails are not sent from black market. It's sent from somebody inside of Back Market. So you get it, you get a first name and in the email. So you can always kind of like, think about who's the person that's writing, the, the email that you're reading. And so it feels a lot more personal rather than getting an email from kind of like a faceless corporation. And so, and that's actually something I copied myself. So I have a newsletter for, for my agency partners had ReferralCandy that I write myself, but I also make sure that it's not sent from ReferralCandy's sending from, from my name. I think it, I think it helps to, to get your message across and, and we tend to put a voice on what we're reading. So if I can get people to read it with my voice, that's even better.
Kathleen (38:03): Totally agree. And I do the same thing, my newsletters and all my emails, excuse me, come from people who nobody forms a, an emotional relationship with contact at or info at. It just doesn't happen. So I totally agree. All right. Well, we have reached the top of our time. So if somebody is interested in learning more about ReferralCandy, or just wants to connect with you and has a question what's the best way for them to to connect with you online?
Raul (38:32): So ReferralCandy.com for anything related to ReferralCandy, and then they can just email me directly. So my email is raulg@referralcandy.com. So raulg@referralcandy.com and I'm always happy to continue the conversation there.
Kathleen (38:48): Great. And I'll put that link in the show notes. So head there, if you want to get in touch with Raul and if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, consider heading to apple podcasts and leaving the podcast a review. That's how other people find us. And we would very much appreciate it. And in the meantime, if you know another marketer who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me Raul.
Raul (39:18): Thank you so much.
What's the quickest way to build and execute a content strategy that will deliver big inbound lead gen results in a short amount of time?
This week on the Inbound Success podcast, Trimble Director of Demand Generation Lindsay Kelley breaks down how she and her team grew inbound deals from 22% to 66% of the company's pipeline in just six months with a content-driven strategy.
As Lindsay says, the company's website was "skinny" when it came to content. Upon joining, she immediately set about creating "cornerstone" content and then repurposing that into other assets. Her name for it is the "Thanksgiving Turkey" approach - meaning you break up big content pieces and make lots of other things out of them, just like you do with a Thanksgiving turkey after the big day.
She also explains how she worked with her internal team to encourage cross-departmental collaboration on content and other marketing efforts.
Check out the full episode to get the details. (Transcript has been edited for clarity.)
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the Trimble website
- Connect with Lindsay on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:03): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is my good friend, Lindsay Kelley, who is the director of demand generation at Trimble. Welcome to the podcast, Lindsay.
Lindsay (00:45): Hi, Kathleen. So excited to see you so excited to be here. And I love your podcast so much. And it's like a dream pinching myself to be on the podcast.
Kathleen (00:56): Okay. True story. I was thinking about who should be my next guest and I was thinking about people. I know. And I thought of you because I've known you for a really long time, and I'll say in a minute how we know each other. And honestly, when I first thought of this, I was like, oh, I already interviewed her. And this has happened to me a couple of times recently where I'm like, oh, I already interviewed that person. But then when I looked, I was like, wait, no, I haven't. So this has been a long time in coming. I met Lindsay. I don't even remember what year it was. It was at HubSpot's inbound conference.
Lindsay (01:29): 2013.
Kathleen (01:31): Holy cow. We just happened to sit next to each other, like during a big keynote. And the rest is history. We became fast friends, even though we were at competing agencies, but we never, I don't think ever thought of each other as competitors. And it's just been a wonderful professional relationship and personal friendship over the years. And man, I will, I I'll stop going on and on about it, but it's, I'm just so happy we finally did this.
Lindsay (01:55): I know me too. And you did ask me six months ago and I said, give me six more months because as I was new, newer to my role and I was still in building phase, I may say I don't have anything great to share yet. So you came to me at the perfect time six months later, almost exactly.
Kathleen (02:13): Yeah, I know coincidentally. Right. and now you do have some great stuff to share and, and it's no surprise to me because just for those listening, like Lindsay is she, is she used to be from the agency world, like I did, and now she's, in-house like I am. And I just have, I have a lot of respect for you as a marketer and how you think about marketing and your execution and everything. And so let's start by having you just tell folks who are listening a little bit about yourself, your background and where you are now and what Trimble is.
Lindsay (02:42): Absolutely. So I started my career in Baltimore in the late nineties. And I started an ad agency, which was a really great experience learned a lot. I was on the B2B side and so that kind of set the stage for my career. I spent my entire career in the B2B of the house. But fast forward a couple of years after some in-house, you know, marketing coordinator marketing specialist working your way up. I finally landed at a place in Baltimore where I met John Shea, who, you know, and John Shea and I went out and started our own agency and it was a sales and marketing alignment agency, and really learned a lot. There, had a great time wanted to grow a little more of the marketing side. So ended up he went sales side.
Lindsay (03:29): I went marketing agency side, joined up with another dear friend Darrell Amy. And I think you've had Darrell on the podcast too. And so Darrell and I were partners for about three years and we built an agency that was focused on the copier industry. So we would go in, we would help them build websites. We put the inbound methodology in place and, you know, we were HubSpot gold partners. So we were a little smaller. But it was a really, really great time. And you just learned so much when you start your own agency.
Kathleen (04:02): Oh my gosh. Yes.
Lindsay (04:06): I think one of my favorite stories was calling a friend one day and it was a Thursday and I said, it just hit me that I haven't showered since Monday. And if you're doing nothing but working and I'm like, and I can't remember the last time I had lunch, you know, it's ruling, but yeah, it really does teach you a lot. So when I when I eventually decided to go back into the corporate world, it was because my daughter was really having a hard time with me traveling. I traveled so much giving the inbound marketing workshops, traveling to clients since she was eight. So I said, I'm going to go agencies. I'm going to go out of the agency world and into corporate America, joined up with an organization called Telit. Had a great time there for about three years.
Lindsay (04:48): And then I was actually recruited away in the middle of COVID. So what an experience to interview and and go through that process during COVID, it was a very unique experience. And so the, the companies was originally called e-Builder. It still is e-Builder. It's a product. And so we have a SaaS tool that's designed specifically for construction owners. So we really kind of sit in the, in the arena of the guys that sit in the office and go, okay, I need to build 10 hospitals this year. I need a, a tool to manage that. So, so that's really the software that, that I focus on today and that's part of Trimble. And, you know, Trimble's made a lot of acquisitions over the years to really be able to build this connected construction strategy. And so we're kind of in the middle of it now, and we're, we're working on the connected scale.
Lindsay (05:40): So by 20, 25, we'll all be together. But I will say, like, I have had such a ball meeting all of these amazing marketing folks across the different sectors. So I feel really lucky that I found this and you know, my my team is I absolutely adore working with them every day. And so we've done some really fun stuff and they've all said, wow, this is, this is different than what we've done in the past and we're enjoying it and it's fun. So I think for them, it was a little bit of a new adventure. And they're, they're enjoying it. It's, you know, there's always going to be a little rough road, but we we're just, we're loving it and we're killing it.
Kathleen (06:20): That's great. I love that story. And I mean, your background is so similar to mine in that sense. Like I owned an agency for 11 years and then my kids reached a certain age where I was like, I need to be more present for them and left and went in-house. And so we've had really oddly parallel career journeys. Although I would say I've been at smaller companies, more series a startups, and you've been at some slightly larger companies. And so it's kind of cool to be able to trade those experiences. You know, you came into tremble and this is an established company. So this, like, I tend to come in and there isn't marketing. And so I build it out and I get to like do it out of whole cloth, right? I'm like, not, I'm not undoing anyone else's stuff or changing anything.
Kathleen (07:01): You have a different situation. You came in to a plane that was already flying. And so you have to like, you know, there's, there's always challenges you have where you maybe want to do some things a different way, or you need to tweak things, but you need to do it so that it doesn't take the plane down. Right. Like you've got the plane in the air, how do we keep it in the air, but maybe make it perform better. And so talk a little bit about like, when you first joined the company, how was it doing its marketing and what did it go to market strategy look like?
Lindsay (07:29): Yeah. And, you know, for, for a long time, e-Builder has been such a well-respected and known brand amongst all the owners that we serve. So really for a long time, it was just, you know, name recognition and, you know, people could pick up the phone and have a conversation. Oh, we build there. Okay. No, I've heard of you guys. This is great. And you know, how it goes said, competition comes into the marketplace and becomes a little more challenging. And the ways that you did it before, aren't quite as successful. Not that they're not still successful in a way, but they're not as successful as, as they could be in this new environment. And so, you know, with buyers changing the way that their buying habits are doing a lot more research learning online it was something that when I first came in, they were doing a lot of email marketing.
Lindsay (08:18): It was to an existing database. So they had, you know, a really solid, good, a number of contexts that they were able to reach out to that they had built up over the years. And, and so, you know, we had, you know, the customer marketing department, we had the demand generation and we had inbound and they all kind of worked on their own. And, you know, they were great friends. They had a really good chemistry, but when it came to the, the business side of it, they were pretty siloed. And so we spent a lot of time breaking through that to figure out, you know, how we could take it from, you know, the, the top of the funnel all the way through to the customer customer marketing. So that's been a lot of fun. The, the team has really enjoyed getting to do more brainstorming together and understanding more about, you know, the power of strategizing together and, you know, people coming up with different ideas and pulling them together and saying, actually, you know, what if we did this this way?
Lindsay (09:14): So I think for them, it's been a lot of fun. But they, they really were very heavily relying on email marketing some paid sponsorships and events. The events person had just left right before COVID hit and they hadn't rehired the position. So we actually just recently rehired the position because we really, you know, we were trying to figure out what it was going to look like when there were no events. So so heavy, heavy reliance on email had a couple of pieces of content that were, that were very well put together. Product marketing was solely responsible for all of that. So when I came in, I said, well, what goodness? And like, be like product marketing has so much to do. They really you know, really should have some, some assistance for them. So what we did was we said, all right, sales, foot sales, friends, how do you sell what does it look like?
Lindsay (10:08): What does that journey look like for you guys from start to finish? And so, you know, a couple of the guys had some really nice well put together slides that really showed, you know, the, the biggest challenges that these guys were going through. And I'm realizing this really isn't represented on the website. The website was, was I call it skinny. It was skinny content. So it really didn't say enough about the benefits of, you know, bringing in a product like e-Builder, because they really hadn't had to in the past, everybody just kind of knew who they were. So, you know, we really kind of, for the first six months, it was just fast and furious let's build content. So we, we had started a blog. We were able to put at least one piece out a week, if not two, we had white papers that we produced.
Lindsay (10:57): And really the biggest reason that I did this dirty little secret is they hadn't spent the money in the first six, six months of the year. And it's one of those use it or lose it. So I'm like I got all this money, let's hurry up and get some, some really nice pieces of content put together. So we kind of changed the process of how content was created and started bringing in some expert writers. Some that I've used in the past others that, you know, they had used in the past as well. And so we have a nice little mini arsenal of freelancers. So all we do is we put these freelancers together with the product marketing team, because they're the ones with the message, the go-to-market strategy, but years and years of construction experience. And we were able to come up with some really nice pieces of content. And it was funny cause we did a very poor job for the first six months of really putting it out there in any real form or fashion that was valuable to anyone aside from just putting it on the blog. So we were in go, go, go mode. So we created as much as we could. And then at the end of Q4, we started saying, okay, what are we going to do with this stuff? Yeah. Okay.
Kathleen (12:01): Before you go down that path, hold on. I'm going to stop you. Cause I know you're getting to the good part. Okay. So, okay. So table setting, you came in, the website was skinny with content. You had this opportunity because of the budget to go out and all of this and quickly create more, which I love. And, and you, you sort of alluded to this, but this, this was a different way of marketing for your team. Like before you joined, there was a lot of email marketing, et cetera. There wasn't a lot of content creation and you, you are a part of a large enough team that, again, it's the flying, it's the, it's the flying building the plane while you're flying it. Right. So when you come into a company like this and you have product marketing, you have you know, events or you don't have events or, but you have all these different people on the team who are used to doing things a certain way. It can, I know from experience, it can be very disruptive and sometimes like you can really shoot yourself in the foot by trying to like change it too fast if you don't manage that process. Well, so can you just talk a little bit about how you manage that? Cause it sounds like it went really smoothly with your team and they were really happy with what you came up with, but I'm curious to know how you, how you ushered that change in.
Lindsay (13:17): So the team today looks a little different than it did when I first came in. So, you know, we, we did have a couple of folks leave. And we did, I had a great opportunity to bring my team together to interview for filling these roles because culture is such a big part of, you know, not only the e-Builder culture, but you know, the Trimble greater culture. They were very, very well aligned, which is why the owners were happy, you know, when, when the acquisition happened, cause it very similar cultural values. Part of what we had to do was really just start breaking down the why, so why are we going to do this? Okay. Because we've always done it this way is a very standard answer.
Lindsay (14:01): And I'm like, well, let's challenge that. So little by little, over the weeks when we had our team meetings, you know, I would start a conversation with them whether they really knew what I was doing or not, I'm not sure I'm giving it all away now. Now they're all going to go back and listen to like, oh, that's how she did that. But just kind of saying, okay, so, so, you know, you have this project coming on. So what, you know, what's another way that we could do that. What's another way you could engage the audience or utilize some of these materials or be here in customer marketing, so you don't have to recreate the wheel. And so we started having brainstorming sessions and they would get really excited because they really hadn't done that before. And having that kind of collaboration, I think helped excite them.
Lindsay (14:45): And they started doing it on their own without me, which was really the goal. And so you know, the team as a whole really came together and I think some of the, some of the new folks we were able to bring in as well have really helped with that cohesiveness. A lot of times, you know, it's a lot of times it's finding the right people that fit with the team that really helped the team come together. And so I had you know, a critical hire that came in who's my, my graphics and web guy that I brought with me from my last, my last company. And it's just, he's one of those people that has like a collaboration, it's his middle name. He loves doing that kind of stuff. And so it was a really great person to bring in so easy to work with.
Lindsay (15:30): And I think that honestly was a very nice glue that wasn't just me sitting there saying, Hey guys, why don't we do this? Why don't we do that? So I think that was a big part of it. I also had, you know, two really strong senior managers on the demand gen side and on the customer marketing side and they just wanted to succeed. And they saw how much we were doing with content. And you know, it was, it was a little challenging cause it, it went from, you know, demand gen and email, email, email, and demand gen is getting all the leads too, but all the exciting stuff that's happening on the content side. Yes. But take that. And now what can you do with it on the email side, on the paid side, what can we do with it? Give me some ideas. So it was kind of helping them get there on their own. And to be honest, like they, they did this themselves, they just, they just needed a little, a little bit of guidance.
Kathleen (16:24): And the raw materials, the content, you know, you got it. Yeah. You've got to have that there to work with it. Otherwise you can't, you can't, you know, multiple if you don't have any clay.
Lindsay (16:33): Exactly, exactly. And I think part of the, the really, really instrumental piece of this for me was my, my VP of marketing is so supportive. I mean, he, he very admittedly he's like, you know, demand gen isn't my, isn't my strong suit. So I had his support every step, every turn. He's been an amazing mentor and he's just one of those guys that you love coming to work and working with. And the whole team loves him as well. But you know, this team had been really without a leader for a year. And my, my manager, my boss was, was doing his best to, to keep them all together and keep the wheels on the bus. And he did a great job of doing that, considering all of the other things that he's responsible for. So I was given a lot of flexibility and freedom to bring these new ideas to the table and he supported me. And that really makes all the difference. And the fact that the leadership team was willing to listen, let me present ideas, you know, show them things that have worked for me in the past. And then given me that opportunity. So that's why I always get that.
Kathleen (17:40): Yeah. It sounds like an amazing place to work which is, is so wonderful. And I think coming into an environment where you have the confidence of the people above you to your job, you know, to just do your job the way, you know, it needs to be done. That is huge. So we were about to get into the part of this conversation that I love. Cause I got a little preview before we started talking. So to recap, you came in, you started immediately creating a lot of content. But let me ask you one question about that. Did you have any kind of like particular strategy or framework behind that content? Like what is it that you were creating?
Lindsay (18:18): Absolutely. And you know, I come from a HubSpot background you know, partners, you are a HubSpot partner. I was a HubSpot partner, you know, and one thing they do really well is they help you build the foundation of inbound and they, they teach you that methodology. So I brought that methodology with me. Even though we're not on HubSpot now, so they have that pillar content strategy. So that's, we sat down with sales and said, Hey, this is what we're trying to create. You help us feel like in your journey that you take the prospects through, we now have to digitize that because COVID is here and you can't get on a commune anymore. So help me help you. And we had a really instrumental sales guy being Mike who had a great slide. And it was literally like, like plucked from the pages of inbound. And he's like, it's kind of like this. And I'm like, nah, that's what we need. So that was really the framework for building these, these pillar pages, we call them cornerstone pages internally. And so, you know, they really,
Kathleen (19:18): These are like exhaustive really in-depth guides on a particular topic. Right?
Lindsay (19:25): Exactly. They're like, call them meaty. They're the meaty ones, the skinny website that was there before coming from the vegetarian
Kathleen (19:35): Steak house now.
Lindsay (19:38): So so yeah, so that's really what we started from. And so the person who was in the role at the time, who since has gone on and I'm very happy for her, she got an amazing opportunity in a very similar startup world that you're in now constantly. But really, you know, she, she helped build the foundation of of this, this content strategy. And she went out and worked with all of our subject matter experts. She knew the, the framework and we, we worked very hard together on what that framework looked like and, you know, we were able to build and just build, build, build, build, build. So that's, that was really what we started with. And we got those on the website made sure that they were properly linked. We had an amazing SEO company called Amps Digital in Manhattan, and I've been working with them for years. And so they were instrumental in helping us from an SEO perspective make sure we are properly optimized going after the right terms and attracting the right type of the right type of folks to the website.
Kathleen (20:42): Got it. So you created some cornerstone content as you called it so that you would have some meaty pieces of content on the site. And then, and then what, so like you, you, you fattened up the website a little bit. What did you do from there?
Lindsay (20:57): Okay. So from there, we went into a strategy. I affectionately liked to call it Thanksgiving Turkey.
Kathleen (21:02): I'm seeing a theme emerging, by the way, were you hungry when you developed the strategy?
Lindsay (21:09): I'm a vegetarian, I don't even eat Turkey. But, but we call it Thanksgiving Turkey. And the premise behind it is after Thanksgiving, obviously how many different dishes can you make from this one Turkey with this massive amount of leftover meat that you have? So we take almost every piece of content and we chunk it into as many different pieces of content forms of content as we possibly can. So an example may be we'll have a webinar and it will be a 45 minute webinar in depth talking about, let's say document management and we'll, we'll have a client on and we'll have this, you know, amazing turnout of all these people coming well afterwards we'll take, and we'll transcribe that webinar. Then we bring in some freelancers, we bring those subject matter experts back and we say, okay what kind of a blog post can we get out of this one blog post two blog posts.
Lindsay (22:05): So we'll get two really great blog posts that fit. And then we'll publish those on the website. Then we'll go back and we'll say, okay, we have 45 minutes worth of footage here. So we'll Chuck it out into what we call snackables. And the snackables are really 90 seconds to two minute clips of a client answering a question. So it'll be a nice little video with the question that's been asked. So that's your thumbnail. And you put those on social media and it kind of attracts people in and then you can drive people to that webinar on demand. Then we'll, we'll also take these snackables, we'll create a web page, we'll put all the snackables on one webpage and each one has their little phone. Now the question and we put just a little bit of content on it, cause we don't want to compete with ourselves on the big meaty blog. So we'll take all of those pieces and put them on there really great asset for sales to have as well. So that sales is able to share that with their prospects and say, oh, well, here are some of the questions that you might, you know, might see in one of these webinars. And so they'll, they'll take and use that to hopefully they're using it a lot.
Lindsay (23:14): So little things like that, we'll, we'll do that all day long. We'll take the cornerstone pieces of content that we have and we'll we'll create web webinars from those. So we can either bring in a customer or we can have all of our internal experts and sit down and just talk about it, have another webinar there. We, we took one of our big long webinars and we chunked it into 15 minute, 15 minutes segments. And this was for our other product that's geared towards general contractors. We call it project site in a flash. Same thing, push it out on social. Did YouTube live every week? It's the same content, just repurposed in multiple different ways. And then one of the, one of the greatest things that we have so far, that's been a really nice lead generator for us is we took those six cornerstones and we created them as PDF white papers. So we repurposed them, laid them out sent them out individually, marketed them individually. Then we took them, we put them all on one page and call it the ultimate guide. And it's all six and you can download all six. And it's all in one page and it has a little tiny synopsis on each one. So we've Thanksgiving Turkey'd everything we possibly can.
Kathleen (24:32): So I'm just going to stop and say, I love the theme here from skinny website to meaty content, to Thanksgiving, Turkey to snackables. So I love the whole food theme. We, I think we need to come up with an overarching name for this, like the culinary approach to inbound marketing or no, I think it's great. I think it's great. And I love how much you repurpose your content because that's that whole theme of doing more with less is really important for marketers in general. So tell me a little bit more than about what this did for you because you came into, as I said, a plane that was flying and it was flying pretty well. Like this is a company that was successful and getting good leads and had a steady stream of business. So, so what, what impact did this have?
Lindsay (25:24): So, so what we did was in the very end of Q4 in 2020, we started strategizing all of this, this content and we started building it out and optimizing it, making sure it was in the right place. So from a lead generation perspective, when I'm looking at our opportunities the opportunity value in January of the website and the conversions from the website was 22.43%. And last month in July.
Kathleen (25:54): So inbound represented 22.43% of your overall lead volume?
Lindsay (25:57): Yes.
Kathleen (25:57): Pipeline
Lindsay (25:58): Yes. Of our pipeline. And then in July it accounted for 66.67%.
Kathleen (26:07): Hold on, pause.
Kathleen (26:08): Okay. If you're listening that's in six months, you tripled basically the, you tripled the percentage of inbound leads as a percentage of the total pipeline. Like that's massive. From 20 something to 60 something percent in six months.
Lindsay (26:31): Yes.
Kathleen (26:33): Wow.
Lindsay (26:34): Yes. And that, and that allows us to also try to make better decisions as to, you know, we want to be good stewards of the money. So, you know, we're, we're utilizing money to, to drive really high quality content and you know, taking from other areas, you know, like we were talking about before, there's no events anymore, so I could take that budget and move it. You know, we're, we're still spending on media brand is so important. You know, being out there in the marketplace is so important. But you know, at the end of the day, if I have a question or if one of our owners has a question, they're gonna ask the magical Google search bar and we want to make sure that we're there, that we're coming up both organically, you know, and in, in PPC.
Kathleen (27:17): You mentioned when we were talking earlier that when you first joined almost all of the inbound traffic to the website was coming through branded search, correct?
Lindsay (27:25): Yeah. 95% of our inbound, our, of our website traffic was branded search. So somebody's physically typing in the word e-Builder,
Kathleen (27:36): An incredible testament to the value of your brand.
Lindsay (27:41): When we look at our search appearances let's see, July is up 66%. Non-branded.
Kathleen (27:53): That's amazing. Yeah. That's amazing. I mean, kudos to you. My hat goes off to you.
Lindsay (27:59): It's not me. It's, it's such a huge team effort. And, you know, if we didn't have product marketing and the, the rock stars that we have on that team, helping us drive the message the right way you know, demand gen needs that we, you know, we're not the stewards of all of the information and knowledge like these guys are so good at helping us craft the right message, put the right thing out in market and just knowing what to do with it, watching the numbers and, you know, working from there.
Kathleen (28:26): So what do you think if you had to narrow it down to three or fewer key things that were the drivers of your success with, since you've joined the company, like in, in, in achieving what we just talked about, what do you think those three things would be?
Lindsay (28:41): Oh, well, the first, the very first thing is, I mean, it might be a standard answer a lot of people give, but it's, it's teamwork. You can't do this by yourself. You need all of these people to, to be bought into the process. So I would say that I would also say another key success metric is vulnerability. You know, you really have to be vulnerable with with some of the folks who you're, you're working with to help them understand, you know, this should work. I'm not going to promise you that it will. This has worked for us in, in different industries that we worked in. But I had to be really vulnerable with them to, to say this, this industry is new for me, that we could go in on this and it could flop. And they were like, okay, well, let's take the ride. So I think that was, was another, another big one. And I think trust, you know, I mean really like my manager, me and my team trusted me. And if they didn't, if they, if they weren't along for the ride, if they weren't bought in it, it would not have been so successful. You can't push a boulder up hill for that long.
Kathleen (29:54): The other thing I'd want to ask is you talked about collaboration and teamwork, and I feel like people use that word sometimes and everybody kind of tunes it out cause it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, teamwork. But I mean, I live this all the time, you know, we're, and we're not as big a company as you are, but having to collaborate between products and engineering and customer success and sales and marketing everybody, I think, does it differently, I'm curious, like how do you achieve that collaboration? And like, if you could be specific, like, is there a certain cadence of meetings or, you know, cause I think when it comes to teamwork and collaboration, it's very easy to err on the side of like death by meetings and talking too much and not getting stuff done. But then it's also easy to air on the other side of just like, screw it. I'm going to go do it all in my son, my own and I'm going to get it done, but then you're not, you know, you're not being collaborative. So what is your, how do you balance that?
Lindsay (30:48): That's a really great question, Kathleen. I have a cadence where I have a, a full hour team meeting every week and beginning of the week. I have one-on-ones religiously with every person every week for 30 minutes. And they, and I've encouraged some of my leaders to go out and I'm like, well, collaborate with so-and-so or collaborate here, see what you guys can figure out. Now they do it all the time. So I'm not in a million meetings anymore because they take it and they come back with a strategy. They work together. So that was a big part of it. I think the other really big part is just across all of Trimble. Different groups are starting to come together. We have like a little brain trust. That's all content people. We have a little brain trust. It's all demand gen people and we share and we share and we get ideas. And then my team gets excited because they learn something or they share something and there's so much positive feedback. So those are really big values. You know, for not only myself, but for the whole company is to foster that kind of collaboration as, as far and wide as we possibly can. And I love it. Oh my God. I love it.
Kathleen (32:02): Do you have any like set recurring meetings with other teams within the company? Like, do you have a meeting with your sales team or your customer success team or anything like that?
Lindsay (32:14): Right now I'm, I'm, we're working on getting better. Cause you know, as marketers, we, we do death by meeting. I'm getting better at meeting more with my BDRs meeting with the BDR leader. And so next quarter I've made a promise. I stayed there like they just promised two days ago. I said, next quarter, I'm going to make sure that every month both of our teams are sitting down and we're talking through this it's kind of like, you know, you're, I'm trying to chunk it out cause it doesn't get that.
Kathleen (32:41): I feel like I'm a professional meeting, goer. All I do is go to meetings.
Lindsay (32:45): It is, it's like, oh, it's back to back and back to back. And you know, and I often laugh because sometimes I have to take the laptop I'm in my shed, which is, you know, across the way from my house. And I see if had a bathroom in here, it'd be much more convenient. But you know, my husband will see me on the ring, the ring system, walking across the yard on a call with my laptop. Cause I just don't have time in between meetings. And I'm like, if this meeting's about to end then I'll have 30 seconds.
Kathleen (33:12): Yeah. It's, it's hard. It's hard. I mean, I love your story. I love that you have been able to affect the results you have in the amount of time you have that's so, so impressive, especially cause it's easy to do something like that. If you come in to a startup like I'm in, because you're nobody nobody's been doing marketing before, but it's, it's really especially impressive to come into a company like yours, where you have an existing marketing team and to achieve that level of results in a short amount of time. So again, kudos. All right. We're going to shift gears because otherwise we're going to run out of time and we could talk forever. I, I know we could. But I always ask my guests two questions and, and I want to make sure we squeezed them in here. The first being you know, the challenge I hear from most marketers is that it's what we've been talking about. Like doing, doing it all. How do you do it all? And one of the things that often falls by the wayside is like continuous education and staying on top of everything that's happening in the world of marketing. So I'm curious, how do you do that? How do you continue to educate yourself? And do you have certain sources of information that you rely on to keep yourself up?
Lindsay (34:18): Oh yeah. No, there's so many, first of all my team and I were about to do a, an exercise in values and one of my core values that I shared with them was education. We do a quick 10 minutes of what did you learn last week? Every single meeting. But I love digesting Chris Penn's Almost Timely News.
Kathleen (34:40): I love him.
Lindsay (34:42): Love him. And he's a, he's a Baltimore guys and Maryland guy like us. But I, his stuff is absolutely phenomenal. So I, I do a lot of that. And then I do a lot of books on tape, like just listening to things. I mean, in right now I'm trying to focus a lot on, you know, leadership qualities and capabilities. Cause I'm now leading leaders. So, you know, I'm trying to make them the best leaders that they can be. So I'm really digesting a lot of Brenee Brown right now. It's just, there's, there's so many different sources that, that I love. Chief MarTech. Scott, Brinker. Love his stuff. Keeping up with the technologies that are out there and the processes that you put in place for those. So those are some of my top ones right there.
Kathleen (35:28): Those are some good ones. And I love the Christopher Penn shout out. He was a guest at one point. He was my last interview of the year, I want to say two years ago. He closed out, maybe it was 2019. I'll have to look but great guy. Great guy and super smart. All right. Second question. Along these lines. Of course this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual right now that you think is really knocking it out of the park when it comes to setting the bar for being a great inbound marketer?
Lindsay (35:59): Oh my gosh. I always go back to this and I can't help myself, but myself and my team, we just read and we just devour everything that HubSpot puts out. And you know, even though we don't use HubSpot internally, their methodology and you know, what they're doing is just spot on. But lately one that's been taking over HubSpot for me is Drift. Nick Sal has really done a lot for that company along the lines of education, certification teachings and trainings that he's putting into place there. And I'm loving them. I'm digesting them like candy. It's amazing.
Kathleen (36:40): Because people who are listening probably don't know, but Nick Sal is a former colleague of mine. We worked together for two years, one of my favorite human beings on the planet other than Lindsay Kelley. Of course. So now I'm gonna, I, it's funny, I don't know if I've interviewed Nick Sal, so maybe he's going to be my next guy, but you're right. He's amazing. He was in HubSpot for many years was like one of their leading HubSpot Academy professors, you know, and now he's back in, in a role that really allows him to show his incredible skills at Drift and another amazing Boston-based company. So love that name.
Lindsay (37:19): Yeah. Yeah. Really, really great stuff. I highly recommend checking it out. It's not just like conversational marketing sales. They have events certification for virtual events and it's, there's just so many nuggets of wisdom in their Insider's club. It's absolutely phenomenal and it's free to join the insiders club.
Kathleen (37:37): That's so great. Okay. I'm definitely gonna gonna go do that after this. Lindsay, if somebody wants to learn more about what you've talked about and connect with you online, or ask you a question, what is the best way for them to do that?
Lindsay (37:50): Definitely LinkedIn. And I am the super easy one, linkedin.com/Lindsay Kelley. So I'm there. I'm listed as a Trimble employee and I would love to love to connect.
Kathleen (38:06): Great. And I will put a link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So had there, if you want to connect with Lindsay and if you're listening to this episode and you liked it or you'll learn something new, which I hope you did, I certainly did. Please take a moment and go to apple podcasts and leave the podcast or review. That's how people find us. That's how we acquire new listeners. It would mean so much, especially if you're a loyal listener. Who's been listening to the podcast for a long time. So head there and leave a review. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork and I would love to have them be my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Lindsay.
Lindsay (38:49): This was a ton of fun. Thanks for having me.
Pricing a new product or service is one of the biggest challenges you may take on as a marketer. What do you need to know before embarking on a pricing exercise?
This week on the Inbound Success podcast, podcast host and clean.io CMO Kathleen Booth talks about pricing. From who should be involved in determining pricing, to what type of research you'll need to do, choosing a pricing survey methodology, and evaluating different pricing structures, she goes into detail on how to conduct a pricing exercise and what you should expect once you nail down initial pricing.
There's plenty of actionable advice included in this episode, but if you want access to Kathleen's full swipe file on pricing (including sample presentation decks for customer research calls), all you need to do is Tweet her or send a LinkedIn DM and she'll give you full access.
Check out the full episode to get the details. (Transcript has been edited for clarity.)
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the clean.io website
- Connect with Kathleen on LinkedIn
- Follow Kathleen on Twitter
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, it's a little bit of a special episode because I don't have a guest. We are over 200 episodes into the podcast and I generally try to really shine the spotlight on other marketers who are doing, you know, outstanding marketing work and learn from them. I mean, I learned so much when I interview them and I figure if I'm learning then, so are you well, this week it occurred to me that there's something I've been working on, that when I set out to do it, I really didn't know anything about, and I didn't have any good resources that told me how to do it. And so I thought today I could be my own guest and share with you the experience I had specifically with pricing. So some of you may or may not have been responsible for pricing in your career.
Kathleen (01:08): It's one of those things as a marketer, that when you are given ownership of it, it can be very intimidating because pricing is something that goes out to the world. It has a direct and immediate impact on the attractiveness of the product, the likelihood of people to convert, how you're positioned competitively, as well as how much revenue you bring in. So knowing how to price is such a valuable tool to have in your marketing tool set. And yes, marketers are, you know, people who should have some responsibility for pricing. Very often though, I will start by saying that, you know, very often in companies pricing is a committee exercise. It's something that more than one person within the company does. And so I would suggest that whether you're given ownership for pricing or your company's talking about pricing, step number one is to form a pricing committee and who, who is on that will depend on how your company is structured.
Kathleen (02:07): But certainly if you have anyone that owns product marketing, they should definitely be involved if not be in the lead position, but you would want to have somebody from, you know, product slash engineering, somebody from sales, certainly. And you know, you can, you can add other people to that committee as need be perhaps customer success, if you have people in those roles. But the whole idea is to get cross-functional people on the committee so that you get all of the different perspectives on how pricing could impact not only customer acquisition, but retention and also the sales perspective as to how it affects your ability to position yourself competitively. So the first thing is to form a pricing committee. And once that committee is formed, really the next step in a pricing exercise is research. And that really starts with what I guess would call economic value analysis.
Kathleen (03:03): That's sort of a fancy term, but the bottom line is you want to study the economic impact that your product has on the customer. You know, are they saving money with it? Are they saving time? And does that translate into money? How does it affect their sales velocity, et cetera. Now, some products won't have a direct financial impact, but the whole idea of this exercise economic value analysis is to begin to quantify whether there's any sort of an economic impact that the product has on the end customer. And there are a variety of ways to do that. You know, if you do, in my case, I was pricing out a SaaS product that actually did have a direct economic impact. So it, it held the potential to save money by reducing the incidents of sales that were affected by discounts or promotions.
Kathleen (03:58): And so we had a variety of market research tools we use to figure out like, what percentage of sales would this affect, how large are those sales? If we're able to prevent promotions from being activated in this case at checkout, what, what size of promotion are we talking about? Like, is this a 5% off, a 10% off, et cetera. So these dynamics are going to be different for every company, but really understanding what that impact might be is, is crucial. And then looking at industry benchmarks for pricing. So in our, in my case, as I said, this was SaaS pricing. In some industries it's easier to find competitor pricing than others. You know, if I used to own a marketing agency and at that time, so many agencies were posting their pricing on their websites. So it was very easy to, to benchmark and to figure out like what the market was willing to tolerate for SaaS.
Kathleen (04:56): So I turned to open view partners and their mastering SaaS pricing research to understand industry benchmarks around average revenue per customer, by customer target segment. And that was really helpful for me, as I began to think about how I might segment our customers. And then, you know, I also looked at a competitive analysis. So what were other companies in our space charging? What, not just how much were they charging, but what was the structure of their actual pricing? So this is where you definitely need to, as a marketer have already done your research. And usually let's face it usually with pricing, you're talking about a new product. So at this point you have to have already done your research and really settled on who is the audience that we're targeting, who is the, and what other, in this case, software products are they buying?
Kathleen (05:51): So whether you have a direct competitor or not, you know, what are the other players in the space and are they structuring their pricing? So that would be what I would call a peer cohort, right? You identify your peer cohort of SaaS solutions and then figure out what they're charging. So in my case, I looked at a number of different companies that sell products that affect checkout for e-commerce stores, because that was what we were really selling into and looked at the structure of their pricing. So in some cases, these companies were charging a fixed monthly fee plus a variable fee. For example, it might be a percentage of the customer's revenue. So like if you are selling something into checkout, presumably your product affects e-commerce revenue. So the, a lot of these companies had a variable amount that would scale as customer revenue scaled.
Kathleen (06:46): In other cases, there was a fixed fee plus a fee that had to do with the number of orders processed. So there's a lot of different ways to do it. Some companies only charged a fixed fee, some only charged a variable fee, but the more I dug dug into it, the more you started to get a sense for the actual pricing structures that these companies were using, how they were developing different customer segments, how that pricing scaled whether it was annual or monthly, et cetera. So there's a lot in there that's really important to understand so that you can figure out, first of all, why is pricing structured that way? Is it because that's what, you know, the customer set is used to seeing is that what they're comfortable buying because if that's the case, then having a pricing structure that's dramatically different than what they're comfortable with is going to introduce friction in the process, which is not to say that you can't do it, but it's something that you need to factor in when you're thinking about your pricing structure.
Kathleen (07:45): The other thing you have to look at once you've done that competitive analysis is really how do we want to structure our pricing? And so there are a variety of common pricing structures, there's usage based pricing, which aligns really closely to the value that a customer receives from the product and enables you to fully monetize customers who use the product more. So, you know, there are, there are plenty of examples out there on usage based pricing you know, everything from I do rent the runway and the more I do a monthly subscription and the more items I want to include in my monthly shipments, the more I'm going to pay, right? That's an example of something that I guess you could call it SaaS, but it's really sort of a, more of a subscription model. Volume pricing is a little different that gives one defined price for all items purchased with the price per item, determined by the total quantity purchased, meaning put simply quantity discounts, volume discounts.
Kathleen (08:52): So the more you're getting the less you're paying very common when you're buying hard goods, especially if you're buying them wholesale. For example you see that in a lot of different in a lot of different industries, then there's tiered pricing, which allows companies to offer multiple packages with different combinations of featured features offered at different price points. That's really common in SaaS. We see that all the time, you know, there's your silver, your gold, or your platinum package, or, you know, it used to be a HubSpot partner and they had basic professional and enterprise and the feature sets differed pretty dramatically based on what was included. And then there is value based pricing, which uses the perceived value of the product as a benchmark for price setting. And based on the rule of thumb that I saw generally, you want the value that the product provides to be at least 10 X the price.
Kathleen (09:52): So, you know, and I mentioned, I had a marketing agency earlier. That's an industry where I think you do sometimes find value based pricing, for example when you hire agencies to do rebrands or big strategy projects those are not often like time and materials contracts. There's a perceived value for brand work for strategy work that is very high compared to more commodity type services. Like for example, Hey, we'll write your blog for you. There's usually a fixed price for that. And it is somewhat commoditized and, and therefore you can charge as high of a margin. So usage based pricing, volume pricing, tiered pricing, and value based pricing. You really need to start to narrow down from your research, what pricing structure you want to go with before you can get to the next stage in the pricing process. So everything I've described so far, just to recap, it's all background research, it's all information that's publicly available, whether that's what competitors are charging based on information from their websites, or whether that is research into, you know, what buyers can tolerate as far as pricing or whether that is you know, economic value analysis and what you think you'll be able to state as claims to your customer, that the product will have as an impact on their life.
Kathleen (11:18): All of this research goes into then helping you narrow down, what do I think my price structure should be? And what incentives or disincentives will that provide the customer once you get there, once you are at the point where, you know, what you think you want that structure to be? In my case, it was a fixed monthly fee plus a variable fee that was based on the number of orders, the customer processed every month, because we were present at checkout. And so we felt that that would enable our pricing to scale with the customer, larger customers that processed a high volume of orders could pay more than customers who processed a lower volume of orders, but it would also allow us to peg that fee in a way that as the pricing scaled, it would, can keep a degree of consistency in terms of how it affected their revenue and their margins.
Kathleen (12:14): So they could budget really easily for it. So that's what we settled on in my case, once you think you have your pricing structure and your pricing committee is all in agreement about this, because let's be honest, if you have a committee, that's really what it's about at this stage is consensus building. Then you want to enter into the next phase of market research, which is actually speaking to potential customers. And in our case, we decided to onboard free beta customers before we did our pricing research, so that we would have at least 10 to 15 users who were experiencing our product and could speak to the value it was delivering. And so we did our customer research with our beta users. I got an, they weren't paying anything prior to this and these customer research interviews, they take 30 minutes or less.
Kathleen (13:10): They're really pretty quick. And I had, I got some great feedback from other SaaS marketing leaders. I know who shared with me really fantastic examples of presentation decks to use for these calls. And if you're somebody out there who's going to be charged with doing pricing, and you want an example of a deck like this, tweet me at work, mommy work, and I can DM you and get you a link to a template for this. It saved me a ton of time. And let me just tell you, it worked incredibly well, but the basic structure that we used for these 30 minute customer conversations was the following. So I would let them know in advance that I was going to be asking them questions about the product and about pricing. And I made sure I had the right people on the phone. So people involved in, in making decisions about purchasing the product and about using the product.
Kathleen (14:03): And then I had my deck ready. And I started out with just a quick overview of the, kind of the rules of the conversation. So like, I really want your feedback. I need you to be honest, there are no wrong answers, et cetera. It's really important to do that table settings so that people aren't trying to be polite. If they have negative feedback, you need to really encourage them to be completely candid. Then I would go into a recap of what the product did. And I'm sorry, before that, then I would actually ask everybody on the phone, what their role was with the product. So are you involved in making purchasing decisions? Are you involved in using it? Who else that's not on this call is involved or would need to be consulted just so that I could get a sense of, you know, who the players were on their side and what that customer journey might be like leading to a purchase.
Kathleen (14:53): Then I went into background description on the, on the product, even though they're already using it, everybody uses it differently within a company. And so I wanted to level set and go in with a shared definition of what the product was just in terms of functionality. Then I made a list of, from all of the conversations I had had prior to this and all of my research, as well as all of my assumptions, I made a list of what I thought the pain points were that the customer might be experiencing, that our product could address. And in my case, I kind of was able to sum those up into six distinct pain points. And I, I framed those as first person statements. So an example would be I feel like I can't trust my attribution reporting for my affiliate marketing program. And I put those in quotes.
Kathleen (15:47): So it's like, it's like a statement coming out of a customer's mouth. I had six of them, each of those six hit on very different pain points. And then with the group on the phone, I had those pain points listed out in a table on a slide. So I had a slide deck that I took everybody through. And the first the first slide I showed them on the pain points, had the list of the pain points. And then it had a second column. And I asked everybody on the phone to force rank the pain points, one through five, one being the most painful five being the least and just put them in order. And they all had to agree. So they went through a conversation, they agreed, I made notes on the screen so they could see it as they were talking. And we came up with a rank choice, a list of pain points.
Kathleen (16:35): And in order from worst least, you know, at least effecting, okay, then this is where it got really interesting that tells you like, w you know, in what order do they prioritize the pain points, but it doesn't tell you like how much more painful is one of those things than the next. So the next slide was the exact same list of pain points. But this time, instead of saying rank them one through five, I said, okay, I'm going to give you a hundred dollars to spend to solve the pain. And I want you to tell me based on how painful each of these five things is, how would you allocate that $100 across these five pain points in order to solve them? And what was fascinating about that is in many cases, like the pain point that they had previously ranked number one, they would say, you know, we want to put $95 on that.
Kathleen (17:31): And then $1 on each of the other ones, like that's how much more painful it is. That's so, so, so telling in terms of, you know, giving you the information you'll need later to hit on in your marketing, but also to understanding that when you do your pricing, your pricing needs to speak to how, how the price correlates with the value the product will deliver and solving that pain that they're saying they really want to get rid of. And so, in my case, what I learned when I, when I summed up all of these kind of dollar based questions, like the, the more qualitative questions around pain, I learned that there were two themes that really emerged that our customers felt very keenly. The first is the need to take back control over something that they weren't able to control previously. And the second was to increase their profit margins.
Kathleen (18:28): And so immediately we knew those were the two themes we had to hit on in our pricing and in our marketing messaging then, so still on the same call, we did the exact same exercise, but we did it for product benefits. So it's kind of the other side of the same coin. Like I listed out the pain points. And then on the other, this new slide I listed out here are the benefits that I think our product will deliver. So examples of those were re retain more revenue from your sales, in other words, increase your profit margins. Now one was, get better insights into how customers are using your coupon codes. Another one was improve the accuracy of your attribution reporting. So there were five or six different benefits that we listed out. And I went through the same exercise. So the first slide where I asked them to rank to force rank one through five, the benefits, one being the one that was most important to them, five being the least, and then the same exercise where I asked them to put the dollars behind getting those benefits and the same thing, funny enough happened again, there was one benefit that like leaped out far and away above the others, and it had to do with revenue retention or incremental gains in profit margins.
Kathleen (19:39): So that was really interesting. And it was a really fun exercise to go through. The, what I would say is that at, at the after that, then in that conversation in those customer interviews, I went into, this is going to be a bunch of big words, a simulated van Westendorp price, sensitivity analysis. So I'm going to pause here and explain what I mean by that. There are a lot of, not a lot. There are a few various, very common well-known methodologies, very scientific methodologies that you can use to conduct a pricing survey. And at some point, if you're doing pricing, particularly if it's SaaS pricing, you're probably going to need to do a survey. And I knew that, that we were going to eventually get there. We happened to wind up using Qualtrics for this because they were able to supply us with a really good audience.
Kathleen (20:34): And after all the research I did, I settled on this methodology called van Westendorp. And I liked this methodology because it's really simple and straightforward and quick in the sense that it gives you a very clear picture of exactly what your price should be. So the reason for that, and the way van Westendorp works is this, it is really just four questions. The first question is at what price would you consider the product or service to be priced so low that you feel that the quality can't be very good. That's the question. Number one, and effectively that sets the absolute rock bottom floor for pricing question, number two is at what price would you consider the product or service to be a bargain, a great buy for the money. So still kind of honing in on the lower end of the pricing scale, but like in a way where it becomes very attractive and would incentivize someone to buy it because they're thinking I'm getting a deal question.
Kathleen (21:36): Number three is at what price would you say this product or service is starting to get expensive? It's not out of the question, but you'd have to give some thought to buying it. So this starts to get into the upper end of the pricing band, where if you do price something at this level, it, it would begin to introduce some friction. People might question whether something was worth it. Question number four, the last question is at what price would you consider the product or service to be so expensive that you would not consider buying it? So questions one and four are the absolute lowest and the absolute highest you could possibly ever charge and questions. Two and three are the ones that are meant to really hone in, in that middle area, which puts simply as like your pricing sweet spot. So I knew I was going to do this survey through Qualtrics.
Kathleen (22:29): But I decided to verbally ask these questions in my customer research interviews. And the reason is that when you do an actual survey, you need to have a sense for like, what scale are you giving, letting people answer on your, it's not an infinite scale. You're not saying like on a scale of zero to 3 trillion, right? Like you need to know we're talking about between a hundred and a thousand dollars a month, or, you know, 5,000 and $20,000 a month, whatever whatever's appropriate for you, but you need to know where to set the floor and the ceiling. And that's where I think questions, number one and four can really help. If you ask them verbally in customer interviews, they will help you understand where to set that scale so that when you develop your survey, whether you're using Qualtrics or some other product like survey monkey, you'll have a good starting point for that.
Kathleen (23:20): So I did ask those questions, got some really great answers. And I was able to kind of like put that together into an analysis in order to come up with like, Hey, we need to be within this range. We know that based on these conversations and the other great thing about the customer interviews is you can ask why. So I had some people say a certain, you know, upper limit for pricing. And then they explained like, Hey, the reason I said this upper limit is that that's similar to what we pay for this other tool. And every single person in our company uses this other tool, but with your tool, we think only one department would use it. And so paying more for a tool that only one department would use would be much harder, you know, in comparison. So that was just fascinating.
Kathleen (24:05): It was really interesting to understand the why behind some of the answers. And so if you do these customer research interviews and you get some of these pricing answers, I encourage you to dig in and ask why that's where the gold is. So then lastly, I also, in these interviews showed customers a loose product roadmap. I, I shared with them over the next nine months. You know, these are 10 to 12 features that we're thinking of introducing to the product. If you could choose only three of them as being most important to you, which three would you choose. And that was also a really interesting exercise. It helped me understand, like, you know, what really do customers want out of this product? Where do they want to see it go? And then even more importantly, I asked, what's not on here. That should be so interesting.
Kathleen (24:54): You know, not on here in terms of product features, product roadmap items. It was so interesting because almost everybody answered the same thing. Like we had missed. We had missed a thing that in hindsight seems so glaringly obvious, but we never would have caught it where it not for that question. And so that was incredibly valuable, even just on top of the pricing insight we got. So that really kind of sums up the pricing interviews with customers. I think the last thing you do in those meetings is you give them an open forum. Hey, any other feedback you have for me? Any questions you have, anything you think I should know, it's just a wonderful opportunity for some back and forth for you to understand, you know, what's happening with your customers, how they're experiencing your product, what their pain points are, what they love, what they hate, et cetera.
Kathleen (25:41): I did I think it was between five and 10 of those 30 minute interviews. And that gave me a really nice small data set, but a consistent data set. The feedback I got was consistent, which was really helpful going into structuring the actual van Westendorp survey. So in this case we settled on what was called a sort of a three part tariff, which is like a combination of a fixed fee plus a variable fee every month. But it also included a base amount of let's call it usage in the fixed fee. So if they exceeded that there might be an overage charge and there are a variety of reasons for that. Partly, you know, we felt that the fixed fee component should be value-based because we wanted it to convey the premium nature of our product. We wanted the variable fee to be based on a volume metric so that it would scale with customers and, and they would as though it was worth it to continue paying for the product as they grew.
Kathleen (26:49): And we wanted pricing to incorporate elements of a tiered approach by providing customers and higher price brackets with premium feature sets. So it could be more support or other value added features like enhanced reporting, things like that. That was, that was what we went in thinking three-part tariff. So then, then we needed to segment our customers. And you know, we, again, this is where your competitive research can really come in handy. But we, we decided to segment them based on order volume, you know, the number of orders they process every month, which was sort of a proxy for revenue, which is also kind of a proxy for, you know, stage of growth, if you will. And we, we did a lot of research using, you know, publicly available kind of database information on how many companies in our addressable market fell into each of those price buckets so that we could see like do these pricing segment sizes make sense.
Kathleen (27:53): And a lot of that information you'll find whatever industry you're in. It's very publicly available with all of that. Then we went out and did the survey, and of course the survey was those four basic van Westendorp questions that I explained earlier, but then it also had other questions I threw in because I simply wanted to know the answers to them. So I wanted to be able to segment people's answers based on their company size and some other demographic criteria. So I asked them for how many orders they processed every month, that would give me a sense of which of our customer segments they would fall into. I asked what their job title was, what their job function was, or are they marketing? Are they finance? Are they sales, et cetera. And all of those questions super helpful. Then I asked them a few other questions that had to do with whether they were a good fit for our product, but in any case, we got the results back.
Kathleen (28:49): And I think we, I want to say it was, it was, you know, thousands of answers which was really helpful and we processed it and what's great is on the internet. There are actually Excel spreadsheet templates that you can download that do van Westendorp analysis for you, and they will show you where your pricing sweet spot is. So as a result of this, we literally knew exactly where we needed to land with pricing. And then it was just a matter of assigning that pricing based on customer tier and coming up with our feature sets for each customer tier so that they felt differentiated. Sort of the last question we had to answer was, should this be a monthly subscription or an annual one? And we started out with it as a monthly subscription, because that seemed to be what was most in our marketplace.
Kathleen (29:43): I'll get in a minute to why we've changed that in what we're playing with, but we felt like monthly would help to, you know, help us focus on new customer acquisition, which is what we were optimizing for at that moment. Versus, you know, later down the line, when maybe you're optimizing for reduced churn, when annual contracts can be really attractive. So there are a lot of different considerations there, but I think you need to look at what is your competitive set doing? What is the customer going to expect? And you know, honestly, like what can you get away with? Like, I know a lot of VCs like to see annual contracts because there's more revenue predictability. And especially if you're going out to raise another round of venture capital funding, that might be really important to your business. So sometimes it has nothing to do with the customer.
Kathleen (30:30): And it has a lot to do with like positioning yourself as an investment target. Now that has to be balanced with customer needs because you can't, you can't structure pricing fully in favor of investors in a way that would harm your ability to acquire customers, but they're, they're all things to consider. So we made that decision and then honestly, you know, when you, once you've kind of quote unquote, settled on pricing, the most important thing to understand is it's going to change, right? You will have gone through this massive exercise and feel like you've accomplished so much. And you know, you pat yourself on the back and you go to market with pricing, and then you're immediately going to start to get impact from the market, right? As soon as you start to try to sell, and you begin talking about pricing with people, they're either going to love it, or they're not.
Kathleen (31:15): In our case, we went, you know, we knew we were going to need to change it, but we wound up changing it much more quickly than we thought we started getting immediate feedback that people either didn't understand the pricing or it wasn't exactly what they would prefer. And so we did adjust not so much the amount of the pricing, but how we were determining our variable fee. I think it started out as a percentage of revenue, the customers revenue, and we switched it to being a percentage of their monthly orders or based on a percentage of their monthly orders. It just was a metric that they could wrap their head around more easily. So, you know, your feedback could be different. Somebody might say that's too expensive or that's, you know, that seems really cheap. Is it really worth it? Is it good?
Kathleen (31:56): Is it any good? You, that's why a pricing committee is so important and that's why it's so important to have multidisciplinary people on your pricing committee so that you start in the beginning, you meet once a week after you launch your pricing, you meet once a week and you get sales feedback immediately. What are you hearing in the market? What are people saying on your sales calls? And as soon as you start to see consistent patterns, a feedback, that's when you can test different variations to pricing. This was one reason we did not publish our pricing on our website in the very beginning, because we wanted to retain the ability to test different pricing models in our sales conversations. In general, I'm a huge fan of published pricing, but this is a great reason why in certain cases you might not want to do it.
Kathleen (32:43): So in the beginning, test those different pricing levels, structures, et cetera, get it to the point where you're really happy with it and you feel comfortable with it, and then you can always publish it and, and then you can still adjust it once it's published. It's still easy to do. It's just that you can do it much more quickly and nimbly in the beginning if it's not published. So that is a, a very quick overview of how I approached pricing. I have a huge swipe file on this, including, like I said, sample customer, interview decks and links to articles on van Westendorp, pricing methodologies. I'm happy to share all of it. You know, when I first started this podcast, it was all about helping people learn how to get better results from their marketing in a way that was really actionable. Nothing drove me nuts.
Kathleen (33:35): Drive drives me nuts more than going to a conference, sitting through a session that's supposed to be educational and coming out and feeling like somebody talked all about why to do something like in this case, it would have been like why to do pricing. Or why do you use the van Westendorp method and not how to do it? Like how is so important? We're all under tremendous time pressure. We all need to produce results. So we all need to know how to do things. So I hope that this was helpful to you. And if you do think that my swipe file could be valuable, like I said, tweet tweet me at work, mommy work. Or if you're not on Twitter, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. And I will share all of my resources with you. And hopefully then if, and or when you are made responsible for pricing, you'll have an easier time of it than I did when I first set out to learn how to do this.
Kathleen (34:26): But it was a great exercise to go through and, and I'm grateful I had the opportunity to do it, and it made me understand so much more about our customers than I otherwise would have those customer interviews were invaluable. So with that I will just segue and say that, you know, the podcast is slightly over 200 episodes. Now it's been going for four years, which I can hardly believe when I really think about it. And we're at the point where I need your feedback. I want to keep going. I learned so much from my guests, but I want to do it in a way that provides value to you. So whether you're a longtime listener or somebody listening for the first time, I would really be grateful if you would just take a moment. And again, either tweet me or DM me on LinkedIn or email me if you have my email address and do two things.
Kathleen (35:21): Number one, tell me what it is you love. And don't love about the podcast in its current format. And to send me the name of somebody you think would make a great gas too. I have not yet interviewed let's figure out who the next kind of chapter of great marketers are in the history of the inbound success podcast, and let's do it together. So with that, thank you so much for listening. I, you, the fact that you dedicate, you know, 30 to 60 minutes of your week listening to this podcast, it means so much to me and I truly hope I'm delivering value to you. Have a great week. Thanks for listening. Leave a review. If you haven't done so already and tweet me at work, mommy, work. If you know somebody else who's doing kick marketing, cause I would love to make them my next guest. Thanks for joining me.
What happens when you take on a new role as CMO and develop a new marketing strategy, only to have a pandemic hit just months later?
This week on the Inbound Success podcast, Planful CMO Rowan Tonkin talks about his experience since taking on the role of head of marketing at Planful. It all started with a complete rebrand (including a company name change) that was rolled out at a company meeting in January 2020, just prior to the onset of COVID.
Rowan explains how a focus on the customer, and their needs and pain points, helped his team determine how and when to shift their marketing strategy, and he talks about what it means to create a new category (including why it's so important that your competitors embrace it).
Planful's ability to remain nimble and adapt to their customers' changing needs helped fuel significant increases in pipeline and revenue, much of which was driven by organic and branded search.
Check out the full episode to get the details. (Transcript has been edited for clarity.)
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the Planful website
- Connect with Rowan on LinkedIn
- Follow Rowan on Twitter
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Rowan Tonkin, who is the CMO or chief marketing officer at Planful. Welcome to the podcast, Rowan.
Rowan (00:27): Thanks Kathleen for having me. Really excited to be here. I've listened to lots of episodes of inbound, and I'm really glad that I can, I can actually be on the show.
Kathleen (00:35): I'm really excited to have you here. I think you have such an interesting story, especially in the last few years, and I can't wait to dig into it for listeners. Before we do that, maybe take a moment, introduce yourself, tell us who you are and your background, and also what Planful is.
Rowan (00:52): So firstly, you may notice from my accent, I'm not American. I grew up in Australia in a little place called Woolongong, which is about an hour south of Sydney. And I actually started my career in, in technology in Australia, working in customer support for a marketing company back then we would provide services to agencies and white goods and brown goods manufacturers to basically get the best images for, for, for catalogs, right, for, for the things that we all receive in our, in our letterbox. And and that turned into a MRM space where I worked in pre-sales. So for those that are familiar with MRM, it's kind of like the old Asana and Monday.com and helping marketers do all that project management, budget management, things like that. I moved to London for 10 years selling MRM software, working with lots of marketers over there.
Rowan (01:44): My role was increased sales and customer success and doing actually implementation work as well. And I managed to convince myself that product marketing was actually where I had most fun. So I joined product marketing and and have been in the marketing space ever since. I'm now at, at Planful. Planful is a financial planning and analysis platform for finance and accounting professionals. We basically help finance professionals basically become super agile in the way that they work by getting them out of spreadsheets and getting them into a connected and collaborative platform. And you know, my background in marketing planning, if you will, helping marketers manage their budgets has kind of translated into me telling the stories of, of those finance professionals and how they do their work for, for all of us. Right. If you think about the team of finance you know, there's the accounting team that are recording everything that happened and there's fantastic FP and A teams that are kind of helping us trying to figure out what will happen in future.
Kathleen (02:47): Yeah. And speaking of what has happened and what will happen, you joined the company, was it in 2019? Is that right?
Rowan (02:54): In September of 2019. Yeah.
Kathleen (02:56): Yeah. So, you know, at interesting time and I know that you came on board and there was a lot of change already happening in the company. And you proceeded to, to make some really significant changes on the marketing side, and this is all happening, like on the eve of COVID, it's crazy. I say 2019 and that feels like a really long time ago, but, but it really wasn't and a lot has happened since then. So let's actually rewind the clock and start when you came in and, and what was, what were you setting out to do and what was the scenario when you joined?
Rowan (03:31): Yeah, sure. So Planful had been actually called Host Analytics before that. And many of your listeners may know of Host Analytics. And we were acquired by a private equity firm in December of 2018 and they went on the search to to find a new CEO and they found someone that I'd worked with before. Grant Halloran. And Grant joined as CEO, I believe like 1st of July or something like that. And in 2019, 3 months later, he brings me in and had devised a lot of the strategy. And the strategy that we were going to to execute upon was to really focus on segments specific segments. So what we call the lower mid-market and the upper mid market and selectively play in the enterprise, right. And, and traditionally, you know, Host played across all of those segments. So we really wanted to focus.
Rowan (04:24): The second thing that we wanted to do was reposition the company. The world of FP and A, and the space that we play in has a category definition called enterprise performance management or, or corporate performance management. The funny thing is only analysts talk about that. Buyers don't call it. They call it FP and A software or planning, budgeting, and forecasting. They don't, they don't call it CPM or EPM. And so and then unfortunately for Host Analytics created by Jim Eblen back in 2001, the word Host and Analytics has changed a lot in that time. Right. And so really important to us that as we repositioned, we decided to change the company name. And when you think about doing that, that's a really intense exercise. So we decided to just put the guard rail of let's do it in 12 weeks.
Kathleen (05:17): Ripping the bandaid off.
Rowan (05:20): Correct. Yeah. And, and so actually we did that at our company kickoff. We everyone walked into the company kickoff in January at San Diego all of the swag. Yeah. And, and everything was branded Host Analytics. Everyone got their gifts as Host Analytics in the keynote, we dropped the big reveal, switched to Planful and all the signage and everything had been changed outside the room. And everyone had new swag bags and everything like that. And at the time we, we repositioned the company to, from, from enterprise performance management to what we continuous planning. And that's now the kind of category that we, we have tried to define if you will. Now as you do that, you want to create new campaigns and new things to go to market with. And we did a lot of that and continuous planning sounds great now, after everyone's been planning for the last 18 months, but back then it was a new concept.
Rowan (06:20): And we were trying to evangelize that concept and created lots of great top of funnel campaigns, ready to launch posts. That event had them live for six weeks and then the pandemic hits. And we're sitting there with this fantastic campaign that was beautiful for the moment. Beautiful for the time, very positive, very uplifting, very empowering for our audience. But as soon as the pandemic hit, that's not what they want to hear. Then like they're in, we call it the ambush they're in the ambush mode. If you think about what your finance team may have been doing in the middle of March, it was trying to figure out, are we going to thrive, survive cashflow.
Kathleen (07:03): It went from, I imagine, continuous planning to crisis planning.
Rowan (07:06): Effectively. Yeah. Cashflow forecasting became, you know, scenario planning. What if analysis became the, the top use cases, if you will, or the top things that finance professionals wanted to care about. Right. And capital management, liquidity, all of those things. And and so we're sitting there with this fantastic campaign that we've spent lots of money and worked with some amazing agencies on. And and the, the other thing is our audience. We're just in a bunker trying to figure out what's going on. They didn't want to talk to us. So we went very like many companies, we went very much into support mode, right? How can we help our audience through this? What can we do? And did a lot of those things, built communities, hold weekly meetings, you know, how can we support? You tried to educate them on, you know, different ways that they could use the platform.
Rowan (07:59): And and, and internally I, I, I converted my product marketing team to a research analyst firm, you know, who will survive, who will thrive and, and how can we go and target those people and educate them on what we do, but the message just wasn't right. You know, selling and telling the story about continuous planning in the middle of that environment, wasn't what people wanted to hear. And so we spent you know, we spent probably too long trying to continue to evangelize that, you know, the, the commitment and consistency of like, oh, we put this great thing together. Let's just keep doing our work.
Kathleen (08:39): Gosh darn it, we planted our flag in the sand.
Rowan (08:42): Exactly. And so you know, I had a conversation with Grant one day and I said, I just don't think like, this is the time to, or this is the place to be pushing this message. And and, and we thought back to kind of core marketing principles, and many of your audience will know about, you know, the five stages of awareness from, from sports. Right. And so we looked at that and we said, well, where is where is continuous planning fit here? Right. Well, it fits for the most aware people are customers or people that have bought this technology before, and they really understand it. So we can keep pushing it to that audience for the completely unaware per person. It makes, it actually makes sense as a thought leadership play as a play around storytelling and, and actually evangelizing that.
Rowan (09:30): But for the people in the middle, right, the people that we're actually trying to get to buy or get you know, get into our final or convince them to buy versus a competitor, it didn't work because they were trying to figure out, well, actually my pain point is not continuous planning. I kind of, you haven't really even explained what that means, what that is, how that works, you know, where am I on that journey? They want to know, how can I do scenario management? How can I do cashflow forecasting? Can I do direct method, cash flow, forecasting, or indirect method? Where are we with our, what if scenario analysis and, and those types of things. So what we did was we stepped right back and said, all right, let's create a use case strategy. Very tactical, very much at the pain point level of, of what our audience is going through.
Rowan (10:22): And so, you know, as, as all businesses where, you know, we're going through, what's going to happen for us. And, and actually coming out in the back of you know, that first initial ambush, we were hitting record pipeline numbers in kind of Q3, right? Amazingly everything was going well, we had this use case campaign. It was going well, what we did tactically for that campaign was create landing pages all around. Those specific use cases, I actually used the pandemic. One of my strategies as I was planning to come to, to plan for we we'd been very much a lead acquisition company. And I wanted to use the reposition and that mode to, to move the market into demand creation mode, as opposed to lead acquisition mode. Now it was kind of good because everyone was just so focused on, you know, how many opportunities are we getting every day into our, into our funnel.
Rowan (11:23): And so effectively, I was able to turn off every MQL report that we ever had which is great. And now no one really asks me about MQL. They're always asking me about, you know, opportunities. And so I was able to use that time to transition away from, you know, classic sales and marketing, talking about MQL calls. Well, now we're talking about pipeline creation and, and what we call, you know, stage one opportunities, S ones. And so during that period, I was also trying to shift our strategy away from very much, you know, purchase nurture leads, right? And, and then hopefully that they convert over time. I wanted us to move to a, build a brand, build awareness in the market and, and, you know, bring them to us. And and, and over that time, that sort of started to happen which was great.
Rowan (12:18): And, and we saw the results of that in Q3. And then as the second wave of the pandemic came again in Q4 and Q4, for those that don't know, every finance professional is about to enter their either favorite or their worst time of the year planning season. And so again, you know, these people had been planning for so long Q3 was pent up demand, and then Q4 became a really hard time for us as well, because, you know, you're starting to see people get back into their planning season. And and, and, and now we're back into that mode of just really accelerated growth. I mean, we've, we've hit all of the kind of records that we would want to be hitting as a software company this year, so far growing like crazy, which is, which is really fun. And a lot of that is off the back of the fact that we really just stepped back to basics and created these use case use case plays. And so, as I was saying before, it's a landing page. It's a, an ungated demo on that landing page. It's having case studies on each of those landing pages. It's, it's the social proof inside of that. It's telling a story about how you go from use case to use case and the value chain that is associated with that for someone when they buy a platform, right? Because like most technology, we're a platform. You can do lots of things with it.
Kathleen (13:40): So I have so many questions for you. Going back to the beginning, you talked about coming in and the company being founded in the early two thousands and being called Host Analytics. And what had changed in the time from when it was founded to when the PE firm bought the company. And it was funny, you, you said something along the lines of like the meaning of Host had changed. And the first thing that popped into my head was, was it that Airbnb happened and everybody thought, you know, is your company about analytics for like hosts who rent their houses out? Or like, what were you alluding to there?
Rowan (14:18): Yeah, actually we'll say, let, let me start. So Host Analytics and the name was, so Jim Eblen founded the company, created the name. Back then we were taking a box into someone's office and hosting their financial analytics for it. Right. So very literal and, and Host actually means army of angels. And so that was another reason for the name, you know, the army of angels are coming to help you with your finance department. Now, you know, fast forward to 20 where hosting is now all about service providers, right. Or in your, in your mind, Airbnb?
Kathleen (14:59): Well, certainly not on-prem software.
Rowan (15:01): Yeah. Yeah. Correct. And actually host was the first FP and A platform, EPM platform to move to the cloud. So I think we did that in, in 2011, 2012. And and then there was a race for, for cloud financial planning platforms you know, Anaplan and, and Adaptive Insights and some other other companies came along.
Rowan (15:25): And so there was this, you know, a big race for, for people to, to move to the cloud from the on-prem world. And and so Host was a big part of that, that, that race and that shift from on-prem to the cloud. And unfortunately though, like, you know, if you sit back in the middle of 2019, and you're calling someone in finance, and you say I'm from Host Analytics, the first thing that I think of is maybe Airbnb analytics, depending on their industry, or most of the time it was what you're going to analyze my cloud service usage or something like that. Like, they, they kind of be like, actually there was this cognitive dissonance that people would have, and ultimately they wanted us to like, they're like, oh, you should speak to it. This is, this is not for me, I'm in finance. Why, why are you trying to talk to me about hosting and analytics? Like so that was the major trigger there. In terms of what had changed is frankly, just cloud, on premise, all of that had changed and, and the term hosting had become synonymous with, with cloud cloud platforms, cloud software, cloud.
Kathleen (16:38): Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. When I hear you talk about this, you know, the CEO was new, you came in, you were new, the company had just been acquired. And the it's the first big meeting of everyone. And you introduce a new brand and you start, like I said, earlier, you rip the bandaid off. Right. I feel like that could go in two directions as, as somebody who's been a head of marketing has navigated rebrands being the new people. If you don't play it right. It can definitely, I think exacerbate like friction, fear frustration, et cetera, amongst people who've been around for awhile. If they think, oh, this new person's coming in and they're changing everything and they haven't taken the time to like really understand us and, you know, kind of build consensus, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. Or it could, or if you navigate it correctly, it could really engender a lot of excitement and breathe new life and et cetera. So I'm curious, how did you navigate that in a way that it built excitement and trust and momentum and didn't cause friction?
Rowan (17:45): I don't think you can do a rebrand without causing friction. This is my second one that I've led. And you're going to have naysayers. I think, you know, for anyone listening, that's contemplating a rebrand. You're going to have those people that basically say, I don't like the new name. I don't like why you're changing it, what's wrong with the current name, you're going to get all of that. And, but most importantly, you've really got to focus on you know, what's the intention and why are we changing it? We weren't changing the name for, for our employees. We were changing it for our audience, for our customers. Like they, they deserve a name that is more befitting of, of what they actually do. And so for us, when I think a couple of things helped us.
Rowan (18:40): So firstly Grant and myself had come from this space before and we had created, Grant,was the CMO at one of our competitors and had created a category over there. And that company is doing very well and had gone public. And so there was a perception that, okay this new CEO is coming and he knows what he's doing. I'd also led rebrands before. So, you know, able to sit there and say, Hey, I, I also know what I'm doing as part of this process. So we were able to create some trust because it wasn't, you know, the first time it wasn't a first time category creating it. Wasn't the first time rebranding. Secondly we anchored the rebrand very intentionally on our customer. And at the same time we were going through things like a rebrand at a culture level, we had a new chief people officer and she's out building a new company values, right.
Rowan (19:40): For the new new company and our number one value is customers. So as you think about that, we're able to anchor on, okay, well, we now have our new values and isn't it befitting for our customers to have a name that recognizes them. And if we think about financial planning and analysis folks, they are Planful. It's a real word. It means to be rich and methodical and full of plans. And that's what our buyers and our audience and our customers are. They espouse that every day. So that was really the way that we tried to overcome a lot of that by, by making it or intentionally making it about other people, other than us, it wasn't us trying to rebrand the company. Cause we, we like rebranding companies. It's very expensive to do. It's very hard to do, and it creates lots of friction and you know, lots of people, you know, people believe and perceive that there's lots of brand equity as well.
Rowan (20:40): Right. And so lots of people had those questions. Well, what about, you know, we're an 18 year old company, what about all the brand equity that we've built up? And those types of questions are really important that you have answers, which is okay, that's, that is true. Yes. but actually psychologically people move on for a rebrand really quickly. They adapt we humans, we adapt really well to things and, and also we wanted to espouse the new vision for the company. Right. And, and having a name that fits that new vision was also really important.
Kathleen (21:15): Now you have mentioned a phrase a couple of times that I want to ask you about, because it's a phrase that gets thrown about a lot these days in the world of marketing and that is category creation. And I feel like it's, it's almost become this very generic term that people use for a lot of different things. So can you just explain a little bit about when you think about category creation, how do you think about it? Why did you think it made sense to do that? Because, I mean, it's something I've looked at, and I know it's, it's, it's quite an undertaking and you have to go in with your eyes open and be realistic about what you're going to be able to achieve. And then, can you just talk a little bit about your strategy for doing that in this case?
Rowan (21:59): Yeah, so, I mean, I may be quite simplistic in my view of category creation, but I think you need to just think of it from your audience's perspective, your audience needs to quickly recognize what do you do and where do you play in the ecosystem? And your definition of that category, if you will, whether that's creating a sub category, if you, if you've you know, read those books from the 22 immutable laws, right. If you can't create a category, create a sub category. The that's the simple way I look at it, right? And, and we had been playing in the enterprise performance management category, and when buyers are searching for for products, they're not looking for that they're looking for planning software. So the first thing that we wanted to do as we were going through this category creation and reposition, rebranding, the company, reinvigorating you know, changing the way that the company operated new segmentation, things like that, where it's to make sure that people could find us really easily.
Rowan (23:08): And so if you think about that, it's okay, well, what do you do? Well, we're in the planning space. And you know, we also have capabilities, you know, you know, in our platform for, for accountancies and things like that. But the majority of people are looking for a planning platform. So we wanted to create a category inside the planning space that play to our strengths. And so when you think about planning, what we have is some capability in our product that allows us to do that more frequently than other competitors. So that's continuous, right. And, and that had already been coined by other analysts. So we were able to basically co-opted from them and, and then use it as our position. And, and so when I think of category creation, I think we just simply think of it as, how do I want my buyer to perceive me, what ecosystem do they want to think about me in? And and then can they find our USP inside of my category description of that?
Kathleen (24:11): I like it. So it's funny that you, you, you phrased it that way, because one of my questions was going to be, when you set out to do this, were you hoping that, that, you know, analyst firms would build a quadrant around you, but I really didn't hear you say that. I mean, I heard you say analysts have used the term, but it sounds like success for you. Is, are customers using the term not so much is like Gartner using the term, is that accurate?
Rowan (24:34): Yeah, that's accurate. I mean Gartner have changed in our category, right. So they have gone from FP and A to what's called XP and A, and they're going to have now two quadrants for us. Other analyst firms call it the enterprise performance management category still. Now we want them to change away from that whole term because that's, that's pretty old. Now it's about 30 years old as a category. And our perception is buyers just don't use it. Consultants use it you know, us in the industry. We use it, that buyers don't use it. They don't know what it means. So we'd rather, they yes, we want them to change it, but I don't necessarily mind what they call it. And yes. Do we, do we care about being in those those quadrants, those waves, those, yes, absolutely.
Rowan (25:28): But it's not about naming, like trying to define the category for an analyst. I think the, you know, this is a it's a more mature market as well. So the analysts already have their perspectives of, of what's in the market. And so our positioning was, should never really have been about trying to do that for us, like at our stage, at our maturity of market. I think if, if I was at an early stage company where there was no quadrant, yeah. You'd absolutely be trying to get them to, to redefine or create a quadrant around you having been there before you, the other thing you have to do though, is you have to go and get your competition to also call it the same thing. So that becomes interesting.
Kathleen (26:13): There's no such thing as a category of one.
Rowan (26:16): Yeah, correct.
Kathleen (26:17): Yeah. So, so one of the other things I wanted to dig into you, you talked about you joined shortly before COVID hit, you did the rebrand, you had all these plans, then the pandemic hits and the customer's priorities started to change, and their immediate pain points started to change. Talk a little bit about how that changed, how you approached your strategy.
Rowan (26:43): So the first thing I think it's really important to recognize is prior to that, you know, customers had gone through their annual planning cycle, right. And they were in the midst of rolling out and trying to operationalize their 2020 plans, you know, finance teams or like, okay, well, we've just, you know, some of them hadn't even closed Q1 yet. And normally we all joke, you know, every, every annual plan is, is dead on arrival. Well, that is even more true of 2020. Everyone's plans had been thrown out the window for a finance team's perspective though. Their first thought was, how do we make it through like firstly, a lot of customers just delay payments, right? Cashflow becomes super important. So rather than have a net 15 on invoices, my new standard is net 60 net 90, and you're trying to hold all the cash inside of your business.
Rowan (27:45): Everyone's doing it to each other. And so, you know, cash becomes king. And so one of the use cases that we can operationalize with our customers is cashflow forecasting. So firstly, we wanted to make sure that customers of ours that had an implemented that use case realized that they could do that. And the other thing that became really important was speed became super important. You know customers and prospects, aren't going to want to go through a big finance transformation in the middle of a situation like that. They want things to happen fast. So we created a package of implementation services. We call Planful now, right. Get up and running in less than 30 days, make it make the, the folks that do want to buy or can buy, make them realize that it's not a, it's not a 12 month ERP implementation or CRM transformation or anything like that.
Rowan (28:43): So very much focused on, okay, what can we do for people? What can we do for them right now, if it's if it's an existing customer, how can we help them with, with those key priority use cases which were cashflow forecasting for them and scenario on what if analysis, you can imagine the, what if analysis that folks needed to do in in kind of March and April of last year, that's all many companies were doing was trying to figure out what if, what if, what if, and looking at it from all sorts of lenses.
Kathleen (29:14): Yeah. And then I also loved the thing that really stood out from what you said to me. Cause I really believe this so strongly is about really focusing on brand and knowing that if you, it, it, it is very much a kind of a longer play. But knowing that if you build a really strong brand, the demand is going to follow, right. People love working with brands that they love and it fo it, it functions like a magnet to pull in the right leads. A lot of times though, and I, and I've talked to other marketers, who've experienced this you can, as the head of marketing strongly believe in the power of brand but unless you work for a CEO and and you are a part of a leadership team that also believes in the power of brand, you can get a lot of pushback because it can be very tempting for those people to say, no, we just need, you know, keep the MQL flow going. And sometimes during that pivot, when you're like really shifting your focus, sometimes things can slow down as you do that, but you have to kind of like do it, knowing that you're slowing down to speed up if you will. So I'd love to hear just what your experience was with that.
Rowan (30:32): Yeah. So, so firstly, I think your key point there was having a CEO that understands the power of, of brand. And I'm thankful that Grant was a CMO that is a blessing and a curse for those that ever want to go work for a CEO who has been a CMO. They can get right into the weeds as well. And that can be, you know, not as enjoyable as you want it to be. But it does mean that they understand the power of the marketing machine and you know, Grant has very similar philosophies to me on, on that. Like he's done rebrands before. He's done brand refreshes. Really cares about the power of brand. And that's a lot of what we talk about. You know, position brand, narrative, things like that. We talk about that a lot.
Rowan (31:23): And so as I think about going through that exercise, it was much easier, right? I didn't have you know, it was part of why I came was I knew that we were going to get to build a brand and rebrand the company. So that was part of the excitement of joining the company was, oh, wow, we're going to do this. This is going to be fun. Now I wish, you know, I wish the timing had been different because as I said, we had a great campaign ready to go. It was really fun. And we had, you know, all this spend that we wanted to put behind it, well, in the middle of a pandemic, you know, you're not going to get the same return for that dollar. Right. As I said, our, our audience was ambushed. So we pared back a little bit responsible thing to do, make sure that we hit our growth goals in an economical way.
Rowan (32:14): The, I think the second part about brand that you mentioned is the leadership team actually also valuing that. And I think that's something that I was lucky to have. Here was people that understood that this is a transformation and to do the transformation we needed the power of a brand behind it, as well as the flexibility to to really go through that change. Now, the I guess the, the benefit of doing that through the middle of the year, like 2020 is, no one knows what the numbers would have been like before. Right. Like, you know, we talk about this a lot internally, like never compare to 2020 cause who knows what those numbers should have been or could have looked like. So we always do a lot of, you know, a year over year, but year over 2019 as well. Right.
Rowan (33:07): Because that was a more normalized year. Yeah. So I did get the, the lock or the the challenge of doing that through a pandemic. And that meant that no one knew what the numbers would have been anyway. So I was able to focus on what we wanted to do, right. The intentionality of, you know, the power of that brand. And so there was no, well, we're expecting this many MQL this week, this month, and you're not getting them because we weren't expecting a normal period at that time. So that was actually I won't say luxury.
Kathleen (33:44): It sounds like take advantage of those black Swan events when they happen.
Rowan (33:49): Take advantage of a crisis. And so frankly, that's what we were able to do. And actually, that's, that's also, when you think about how you want to build that brand, we want to do it in the most economical way possible, right? Like when I worked for a PE company, I don't just have billions and billions of dollars to spend on, on brand. So we're able to focus on the places where building a brand actually makes sense. So I have a podcast like you have a podcast, right? We very much focused on organic social and doing that in a way that is, is really powerful for us. We focused on being more creative than our competition. So as you look at our advertising, you look at our color scheme, it's very different to what's out there and that's all intentional to, to kind of be a pattern interrupt for our audience. And so those things allowed us to, I believe, build faster. You know, a lot of our competition do you use blue, right? What's a safe, trusted finance finance colors, right? Blue, everything's good, no red. We're able to use color and creativity in a way that our competitors aren't using. And so that's how we're trying to stand out to our audience.
Kathleen (35:03): I love all of that. I'm a huge fan of the pattern interrupt. And it's funny because I've always, I've always worked in B2B tech and my dream has been to work for a company where I can have the primary color and our brand be purple just because nobody ever picks it. And I'm like, the fact that no one picks it is why we need to do it. Like let's pick crazy colors and go with that. But I, you know, still working on that, the dream of purple someday.
Rowan (35:29): Well, I'm getting to live the dream of purple and for those that ever want to know why, why purple. Well purple actually has association with royalty, rich and richness, and wealth. So it's actually a great color for a finance company.
Kathleen (35:43): Yeah. And sometimes, honestly there doesn't need to be a reason, like just the fact that it's different is great reason. Right? well, we're coming close to the end of our time. And so I want to sort of wrap up this segment of the interview by just asking, can you, are there any like results that you can speak to? Like we talked about the journey coming in and changing things up and then having to grapple with the pandemic hitting and your customer's priorities suddenly shifting, like what's, what's been the outcome of all of this so far?
Rowan (36:18): Well, so I think in, in a couple of key things, so firstly right now in 2021, we our, our pipeline creation to one ratio has increased by 5%. And, and well, not by 5%, it's probably by like 150% or something silly like that, but it's a five percentage point increase if you, if you compare the two numbers. And so that means we're getting high intent buyers coming to us. And that means our deal velocity is much faster. So, so that cycle of what we're trying to create with a brand, people come to us, giving us that momentum has absolutely worked. Our website traffic is up you know and it was 180% year over year, and it's like 140% year over 2019. And, and that is all organic. So not the paid stuff, it's not paid, that's driving all the website visits.
Rowan (37:16): That's, that's organic traffic. Branded search terms are up, right. So people are looking for the words like continuous planning or Planful. And, and so that's really important to us. Ultimately for me, it's about it's about revenue and, and that's up, you know, we're we're about to have a press release soon. And, you know, our, our revenue numbers, sales, bookings numbers are drastically up like year over year, but also again, you're over 2019. And so that changes significantly that marketing shift, that, that fundamental shift is starting to have the realization now. And a funny blessing is that now also lots of other organizations are using continuous planning. And I, I suspect that's because everyone planned continuously last year. So we were lucky in the fact that we kind of coined it and owned it prior to everyone realizing that that's actually, it's the new, it's the new normal.
Rowan (38:19): So everyone is planning all the time and it's going to be an interesting for us planning season, because for those folks listening in marketing, go and give you a finance professional, a hug, please, because they have been going through a really, really tough time, consistently planning, planning, planning, re-planning. And now they're about to go into planning season again, which means sleepless nights for them. And we really want to make sure that we can alleviate that. And I think burnout and finance teams is something that's going to really appear soon. And we're hoping to alleviate that for, for organizations.
Kathleen (38:56): Amen to that, because I work with an amazing CFO, Josh Shenker at my company clean.io, and he has been continuously planning for, since I've met him and we are already in planning for next year. So everything you just said is absolutely spot on. So shout out to Josh. All right. Shifting gears. I have two questions that I always ask my guests at the end of every interview, and I'd love to hear your answers to them the first being I, you know, and you just really gave me the perfect segue, which is that things change so quickly in every industry, marketing certainly being one of them. You know, in marketing, we have the added elements of, you know platform changes, algorithm changes, regulatory changes, et cetera, all of which affect how we do our jobs. And I think most of the marketers I talk to say that staying on top of all that is one of their biggest challenges. And so I'm curious how you do that. How do you keep yourself educated and are there certain sources you turn to, to stay on the cutting edge?
Rowan (40:00): I would actually counter that and say, I, you know, you've heard me talk today. It's been a lot about brand. It's been a lot about fundamentals. And so you know, I started my career very much in the tech side, always being like, you know, very big fan of Scott Brinker's MarTech slide, and always priding myself on knowing who was what and who was who and how it was all going. And then I couldn't keep up. You know, I don't think even Scott could probably keep up. And so what I found myself gravitating back to is actually more of the fundamentals, more of the psychology, more of behavioral, you know, behavioral understanding of buyers, psychology of things like color and words, and, and coming back to basics of things like copywriting. Now I have a great team, thankfully that stay on top of all of the technology aspects, but I also see the trends going away from more relying on that technology now, you know, with all of the Apple's privacy changes and impending, Google, privacy changes and things like that. I actually think coming back to basics is, is what more of us should be doing. And so I've been doing a lot more of that, like rereading the classics and you know, going in you know, a lot of kind of persuasion and reading a lot of psychology books which has been interesting, but that's what I've been doing.
Kathleen (41:20): Well, I think that's, that's so smart and I agree with that. You know, if you solve for people, you will always win. If you try to solve for machines, the machines are trying to solve for people. So you'll just be one step behind the machines, right. So solve for the people. It works every time. Second question is the, in terms of this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular person or company that you think is really setting the bar for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days?
Rowan (41:56): So I work with Eddie Schreiner at Very Good Copy. And I think Eddie, like it, I look forward to Eddie's email every week, right. So if I think about inbound marketing, right? Yeah. That's outbound, but I'm excited to get his email all the time. And so, you know, I think someone like Eddie is out there creating demand for his services, but doing it in a way where he's consistently educating me and my team and I'm sure his audience the other folks that I really admire right now is the team at Metadata. Some of their advertising captures my attention. We talked about pattern disrupts, you know, they're doing things that other companies aren't doing. And, and even though it's, you know, it's, it's MarTech and it's one of the things that I'm not keeping up to date with. They're using more of the core principles to actually get my attention. And so I would say, you know, the, the folks there at Metadata are doing really good.
Kathleen (42:55): Awesome, well, we'll have to check those out. And I also love Very Good Copy. I get that newsletter and I'm a huge fan of it. So check that out if you haven't done that already. And if you are listening and you want to get in touch with Rowan, Rowan, what is the best way for somebody to do that? Where can they find you online?
Rowan (43:15): Yeah, so definitely my LinkedIn is the best for business chat. My, my Twitter, which is @RowanTonkin is mostly golf and rugby. So unless you're, unless you're in that golf, rugby and marketing cohort, I would go to my LinkedIn and simply just Rowan Tonkin. You'll, you'll find a picture of a man behind a purpose.
Kathleen (43:34): All right, fantastic. Well, I'll put those links in the show notes and if you are listening and you enjoyed this episode, please consider heading to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice and leaving the podcast a review. And if you know somebody else, who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love for them to be my next guest. That is it for this week. Thanks so much for joining me Rowan. This was a ton of fun.
Rowan (43:57): Well, my pleasure. Thanks so much, Kathleen.
With search engine algorithms constantly changing and the level of content saturation on the rise, what does it take to create content that will both delight readers and dominate organic search?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, MarketMuse founder and Chief Strategy Officer Jeff Coyle breaks down the factors that search engines consider when determining how to rank organic content, and explains what content marketers can do to solve for search engines and the humans that will be reading your content.
From pillar content, to visitor intent profiles, establishing authority on a topic, building site sections and more, Jeff gets into the nitty gritty technical and organic SEO details that factor into modern search engine rankings.
Check out the full episode to get the details. (Transcript has been edited for clarity.)
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the MarketMuse website
- Email Jeff at jeff@marketmuse.com
- Follow Jeff on Twitter
Transcript Kathleen (00:02): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Jeff Coyle, who is the co-founder and chief strategy officer at MarketMuse. Welcome to the podcast, Jeff.
Jeff (00:31): Thanks so much Kathleen. I'm looking forward to the discussion.
Kathleen (00:35): I'm really looking forward to this because I have a lot of guests that come on who are MarTech vendors. But not always are they from MarTech companies where I use the product and MarketMuse is not just a product that my team uses, but we love it. So, so we'll talk about that a little bit, but we're also going to talk about some really interesting things around organic content strategy and how you can craft a winning strategy, how you can really start to understand what the ROI of that strategy is going to be. So before we get into all of that, let's take a minute, and if you would tell my audience a little bit about yourself and who you are and also what MarketMuse is.
Jeff (01:19): Yeah, sure. So I'm Jeff Coyle like you said, I'm the co-founder and chief strategy officer for MarketMuse and what chief strategy officer means, it's actually a role that I just transitioned to this year and I'm focused on some of our really not even yet released products you know? Real significant data innovations and also kind of horizon scan. So where is the company going? But prior to that, I managed both the product, data science and engineering groups and the marketing group. And now we have a CTO and a Vice President of Marketing. So I've moved on to do even wackier things. But I've been in the search engine optimization, content strategy and lead gen space for gosh, 22 years would be kind of a scary frame of reference. But I was really focused on anything that would lead to, you know, traffic coming to one, the site, and then converting it into something meaningful, whether you're a publisher, whether you're a B2B tech, you know, person or affiliate person, or you're just, you know, building content sites.
Jeff (02:24): And you know, we're now things are so, so, so driven by quality and comprehensiveness. And it goes very well for MarketMuse and our mission, which is, you know, I, sometimes I say, you know, it's ridding the world of bad content. But the actual mission statement for MarketMuse is setting the standard for content quality on the web. And what MarketMuse really does is it gives marketing teams the information that they need so that they know who they are, what they're about, where they have, where they have strengths and they can build actionable plans and cut down on the manual work that people don't want to do. So whether it's the, you know, ideation phase or having to prove why on a pro on a content plan, I know we're going to talk about that today is, is a lot of teams go through their entire content journey with a business and they never have, they never put a why on a content plan, right.
Jeff (03:27): And then all the way down to execution and our most familiar solution is MarketMuse Optimize which is, you know, you can put in a, a page, your page, a draft that's then published. A paragraph, some other URL you want. And it will tell you how well it's written from a standpoint of quality and comprehensiveness. And when I say that, I don't mean, you know, some sort of hack it's, it's really telling you if you were an expert and you were covering a topic comprehensively, how would you do it? And it gives you that juxtaposition instead of just giving you a, you know, make your title eight X D characters, and, you know, update this page tag, which as we know is, you know, only gets you it might get you the half of an invite to the party, but it definitely doesn't get you through the door these days. Yeah.
Kathleen (04:18): The thing I love about MarketMuse well, and so I'll preface this with saying, so the way my team uses it is when we're creating new content for our blog or for creating new pillar content, we run the topic through MarketMuse in the very beginning to understand like some of the things that need to be incorporated in order to really optimize it well, and then also run it through later, just to make sure that we've done that. But what I really like about it is, you know, we've, we were all trained on how to, to do good organic content. We all understand SEO. And in fact, you, you used to be a HubSpot partner, correct?
Jeff (04:57): Yeah, absolutely.
Kathleen (04:59): As was I, and so this is another thing we have in common. But you know, and so we worked with clients for years on this kind of stuff and, and it's, there, there are many best practices out there. There's, and, and I think good marketers know that if you want to rank for something, you got to go out and figure out what's already ranking number one for it are the top three, and you need to make something better. Right. And the better, there are a lot of different ways to define better. I'm doing air quotes, which you can't see if you're listening. But the thing that I like about what you guys have done is it's one thing to look at a piece of content in isolation and say, is this good content it's entirely another to say, is this good content? And, oh, by the way, how does it compare to what's already out there that's ranking? Well, because that's really important. Like you ha you still have to do better than the next best thing if you really want to get found. And I really appreciate that. It gives you essentially a simple, stupid roadmap to creating the best piece of, for that topic on the internet.
Jeff (05:59): Yeah. That's really the progression with our, you know, for, for people using artificial intelligence to accelerate each of the stage of the content creation life cycle. So whether it's the research, whether it's the planning and prioritization content briefs, which, you know, we can talk about more, you know, the actual writing and editing, you know, pre publish, you know, tuning and expansion, and then post publish optimization, tweaking, you know, regardless there's ways that you can make that a smarter process in a less manual process. And what you're speaking about is really that, you know, I want to make sure that I don't have any blind spots. I want to make sure that there, I know how I'm differentiated or how I'm going to be better for the pages that you know, for the topics that I care about and what the specific intense, because it's, it's important to not just copy other people whenever I'm talking about competitive analysis, you know, a lot of people take it in there.
Jeff (06:57): They think it's just, we're, we're, we're doing what everyone else is doing, but it's good to know what those table stakes things are. So the things that you must do to tell the story that you're the expert, you know, I always like to use recipes as examples and say, you know, if you're, if you're making beer and you forget water, it's not really a great recipe. And, and, and so the, you know, a lot of these times you write stuff and you have a, you have a bias or your writer, or maybe they weren't as much of an expert, maybe your brief, wasn't very good that you sent to them. There wasn't a single source of truth that really got into the outline. And they're going to have significant blind spots. And so what we do is we build our recommendations by looking at every article that we can find about a topic, not just 10, 20 of them.
Jeff (07:42): We're looking at sometimes hundreds of thousands of topics. And we're distilling that into an easy, you know, easy map to what it would mean, like what you have to do. And then some things that are maybe ideas that would differentiate. And then when you're building content briefs, which are, you know, outlines effectively for your writer, it's giving them those topics, but it's also giving them a proposed structure for the page. It's giving them questions to answer. It's giving them internal and external linking recommendations. So it kind of tells them the whole story. And the whole point is really that writer is an expert on writing and telling a, building a narrative. I want them to focus on that. I want them to focus on building a beautiful page, high production value. I don't want them worrying about what words they have to include if they, if they take that.
Jeff (08:28): And then they expanded and add another section. Great. You know, if that helps the narrative, but my dream was always that MarketMuse would bridge the gap between an editorial lead, a subject matter expert, and the search engine optimization team who traditionally just throws a word at the writer and the writer's like, girl, you know, I don't want that word in my page. And how can you make that actually make sense? So everybody accelerates and then, you know, you're on that single source of truth with the writer. So when they give you that draft back, you are editing it west. Your trust in them goes up their trust in their collaborative desire to collaborate with you goes up nothing is worse than when you write it. You're a writer and you write a draft and you, it gets marked up by the editorial lead. Then it gets marked up by the SEO team, and then you get it back and you're like, wow, this, now this doesn't even represent my view or my narrative because it's gotten, so it's kind of hacked up so much. So what we're trying to do is really raise all boats by making that less abrasive. And, and what it ends up doing is it makes it, yeah, I was to say, I've seen that.
Kathleen (09:43): Yeah, I've seen that. I mean, I have a full-time writer on my team and, and he would tell you when he hasn't used MarketMuse, like we come back with more edits. And so he's sort of been like, yeah, I just need to do it in the beginning and saved myself a lot of time.
Kathleen (10:01): So, so I want to kind of like peel back some layers of the onion here, because the way I understand this and tell me if I'm wrong, but you've built this tool to effectively mimic what a human being would do if they had a whole lot more time to really do a super thorough best in class content strategy and kind of optimization process. And so, so we can talk about the tool, but like these, I always come at these conversations with the assumption, like not everybody can afford this tool. So let's back up and talk about if the tool is built to mimic that, what does that look like? Like today? Where, where are we are now given everything we know about how search engines work? What are those components of the best in class organic content strategy and optimization process?
Jeff (10:53): It's a great question. Just to talk about it. And if you had to do it manually, because I think it really starts at the, you can start at the page level, right? And then dive all the, you know, go all the way up to the site. I'm doing hand gestures too. I'm originally from New Jersey, but we're on a podcast, so you can't see them. So I went up to the site level, but if you're also a publisher and you work within a publishing networks can be network level. And you also need to understand your landscape. The various workflows though, a lot of like events at the page level, if you're just working kind of in a box, and this is where a lot of outsourcing proposal based or outsourcing brief based workflows breakdown is that the writer has no context. They don't know anything about your site of that much.
Jeff (11:45): There've been given a proposal and they write a page and will that page actually effectively fit into the structure, your site, funnel it up to the section of your site and the structure of your site and will it actually perform. So the workflows that we're liking, we like to do kind of solve all of those potential process issues. But they really start with, if I'm looking at something at a site level, I want to inspire someone to be able to prioritize. And how do you prioritize, like just what you're going to write or what you're going to update.
Kathleen (12:22): Let's, let's pick a topic just to use as an example cause I think that'll help. It's definitely gonna help me to like, make this more concrete. So I'm gonna let you pick the topic. Cause you're the one who's having to explain this. Okay.
Jeff (12:34): I'll give you a great example. And this is one that is a content plan in process for MarketMuse. I mean, we are avid users and so we identify, so we write content briefs, right? Content brief, you go search for content brief in Google. I hope we're number one. Right? But 99.9% sure we are. Right. And what we identified was using MarketMuse, that there were other intent profiles for people who were looking for content briefs, that they were landing on our pillar page for content brief, which is very informational. It's what is a content brief? It gives basic overview of why one would need one. But a lot of the intent profiles that we identified were maybe some more specific intent, like content brief examples were content, brief templates. We also look for different types of briefs right.
Jeff (13:32): So it was marketing content briefs. It was creative briefs. And they were all finding this page. So we identified that we might have those other pages or those topics covered in other pages, but they're not the ones that are performing. So we're both identifying the gaps in that cluster of content. For these intents that we're getting to our page, we may be ranking very well, or we may write maybe ranking on page two or, or somewhere else for these other variants, but there was intent mismatch. So if I looked for content brief examples and I landed on this page, I might look at and go, okay, well this gave me a great overview, but it didn't give me examples. So I referenced that as an intent mismatch. And so one plan dimension that MarketMuse identifies and that you should always be doing as part of your process is do you have pages that people land on and then they're not happy? You know, it's not just reporting bounce rate it's did they make them, were they successful? Right.
Kathleen (14:32): This exact thing happened by the way, I love it. Then we had an article that we wrote called what is influencer fraud. And all of a sudden we had this like 4000% traffic increase in a week on this article. And it was because there was this like related thing that it, it must have happened. The news. And everybody started searching on that and landed on our article. And it really wasn't what our article was optimized for. And so we did see an increase in the bounce rate, but then it was like, so we had to think through like, are these people that, that are good fits for us? In which case do we want to try and keep them? Or is it just sort of like, yeah, go ahead. You can go.
Jeff (15:11): And did you, do you want to, do you want to capture that? Do you want to do something with it? Is it valuable? And so in, in our case, in this example, this intent mismatch it's, we need to go build out templates and examples, even maybe putting a content upgrade into this page that is, you know, download these top N content brief examples and, you know, maybe like ebook or so there's all these different strategic gains you can get by thinking about intent mismatch. That's just one example of ways that you can find situations by looking at a site and understanding where you have strong content. So one thing we use, we have our own metrics for authority. So we're basically telling you where you have authority on a particular topic. And that doesn't mean just, you know, you got a link, you got a bunch of links.
Jeff (16:05): Authority is quite often misused as generic link data. It's not how the search engines calculated authoritativeness, their search engines calculate authoritativeness. I don't, I don't usually get into this much detail, but at the site section topic level combination. So just unpack that for a second. It's if you're familiar with computational power, it's a big O, M times N challenge. The only people who could even think about doing this, it's like this crazy permutation, would be people like Google who have this massive computing power. So they're calculating basically on this site section and this topic combination, is this person, is this entity, have they written great content on this topic? And that's one of the components of authoritativeness. So we do what we feel is the best job of getting you that data point. So, you know how well you've covered this particular topic on this section and then rolled up to this site.
Jeff (17:07): And so we can confidently say effectively, what's your momentum on this concept? And that's your breadth of coverage? How much content you have, how in-depth and how well intertwined or interwoven or linked together is this content that's related to this topic. Do you have any really great standout pages? And then we can cross reference that against the competitors. So by the way, I'm comparing, I'm saying all this, because you have to do this manually, right? You have to know, like, I mean, if you want to go in and say, I've got 10 pages about cookies or what content briefs I've got, you know, I wrote two long form ones. I've got four support structure pages that just answer specific questions. I've got these many pages at this stage of the buyer cycle, right? This is the work of a content strategist.
Jeff (17:54): You need to know where you're at, and then you also need to know your wins. And then we do that for all of your competitors. And we do it for this particular topics, competitive landscape. And we factor in off page factors like links, but that is not the dominant net number. And compare this to some traditional SEO practices that just look at links, they're completely correlative. And they basically say for this keyword, right, what is the link profile of the top end ranking pages? And they say, if you are within this range, you can have a chance. That's not good enough. It's not predicted you might as well roll dice.
Kathleen (18:39): Not only is it not good enough, but I feel like of all the things that we've talked about, it's the thing that is the least within your control, right? Somebody else has to agree to link to you. And I know I'm on the receiving end of those requests all the time and 99% of the time I ignore them and delete them.
Jeff (18:56): Well, not even that, it's just, it. Doesn't nothing about that. Read your content and tells you whether you written this stuff and no matter what, right, you there's the, the, the, imagine the graph is a crazy log logarithmic graph, right? Unless you're super mega powered at the top end, first of all, I'll give, I'll tell you a little anecdote about the top end of the power chart, which y'all, everybody needs to be thinking about this, something you said earlier that like gave me a little bit of a trigger, which I'll get into. But unless you are, you can't go out and write something about grapefruit seltzer today and then kitty cats tomorrow and guitars and guitars the next day you can't. Right. So if you're just looking at links, those links could have come to your site through a different section of the site. They could be about something else completely. It's not giving you any information about whether you can rank for this topic.
Kathleen (19:55): Well, and I feel like at the end of the day, it's solving for machines and if there's one thing I've learned in my marketing career, which is as long, if not longer than yours, by the way, it's that when you focus on solving for machines, you set yourself up for failure because the rules that the machines go by will change. That is inevitable. And if you, instead, if you focus on solving for human beings and their needs, that is the thing that the machines are trying to solve for. So you're really like cutting to the chase and doing yourself a lot of favors by focusing on people and not machines.
Jeff (20:26): Exactly. And longevity. I mean, it was another thing, a lot of the advice and the and the, what you hear about how this stuff works, comes from people who are, they don't really care about the longevity of their sites. A lot of them are affiliate marketers. I love affiliate marketers. We have a ton of marketer clients, right. And, but the thing is they're, they can be a whole lot riskier than you, if you're a B2B brand or a major publication, because if you screw up, you're a B2B brand, you can't just change it overnight and you have to build stuff that's going to have. And you're also thinking about the people part, that's why, like some of the SEO tricks, they, they bug me out because it's like, I actually, I might be able to do this a couple of times and build this operational practice, but wouldn't it be better if I had a team of my four writers and search engine optimization professionals and content strategist, all on the same page so that we actually launched 30 articles that were great, and we all liked, and we still like each other, then we did some crazy trick that was risky.
Jeff (21:34): I mean, it just doesn't even, it doesn't even compute. And when we were talking about the doing things for the machines, the machines get smarter, that's the nature of the gang. So, you know, there's a lot of these, I was like web dot archive is my web.archive.org is my source of truth for the opinions and the the opinions and the thought leaders in the industry go back to their same pages and see how often they update what they say is best practice. Right. And so, yeah, if you have a, if you have a four hour break, go look at all of it and go back through these articles and look how they change over time, because stuff changes the best. So these, these tricks, you know, they don't last forever. And so I much rather build my house on a strong foundation.
Jeff (22:25): And one that also creates harmony inside my organization, and nothing does that better than quality. And, and you, you know, that that's really, and that's where you're gonna end up getting your longevity from anyway. But what I will, the one thing I did want to mention and then we can dive back in is when you were, you said the top performing pages, when some of when, when those pages are in the top elite pool of sites, so are, you know, the dominant publishers in the world, the dominant entities, depending on what industry you're going for, they play a whole different game. They're on a, nothing, not even, they're not even playing a different sport, they're on a different field. They're in a different gravitational level than you are. So if you're copying Amazon, if you're copying you know, three letters, three levered, or three-letter publishers names, if you're copying Wikipedia, you're in for a world of hurt.
Jeff (23:26): For so many different reasons, which could take, you know, a three hour podcast. But I see so many folks dive off the wrong end of the pool because they think that mimicking their idols is going to be the way that they can be successful in organic search. And it, trust me, it just doesn't work. And, and it's you know, when we're talking about predicting outcomes, what I'm trying to do is give advice. That's going to be dramatically more predictive than 50, 50, 50. And is this gonna work or is it's not and that's where the one thing I've seen time and time again, is, is mistakes made from, because a lot of the pundits they'll say look at the top three ranking pages that have in, in, and then do do it, ideally the skyscraper technique. Right. It's great. It's great. If those articles it's great, but there's a list of disclaimers. Like
Kathleen (24:30): If their Alexa rank is, is 80 and yours is 15, it might not work that well.
Jeff (24:37): Well, it's, it's just to say, make sure that they focus on the same intents, make sure that they're within the same cluster structures make a lot of things have to be cohort. They have to be similar in order for that to actually work. And it's it, there's too many gotchas in that in that, in that problem. And then also, you know, Google is getting so great at understanding the intent behind queries. And if you're optimizing for a topic that has what we call intent fracture, it means that a user is diving in and I'm like, oh, I'll give an example. Then there's an esoteric concept. There's meaning ambiguity. So I'll use the word shell, right? If I, I always pick a different one, but if you just type the word shell in to Google yeah. Who the heck knows what you're looking for. Right. Nobody knows there's, there's both meaning disambiguation, you could be looking for an actual thing you'd have on the beach. You could be looking for the company shell. Right. You could be looking for, you could have mistyped...
Kathleen (25:47): Outerwear.
Jeff (25:49): S H E A apostrophe L, you know, possibly it could be the outerwear. Right. and so what Google has to do, if you type in shell is it is saying, okay, fractured intent. I don't know, I'm looking at all the data I have. I'm going to present to this person based on a lot of detailed data points, who they are, where they're at their history, if they're in incognito mode and through a proxy, right? That's when you get them the most ambiguous, they throw out what they call their favorite intense, and they, it might be a blend of them. You know, if you wrote the word back, you know, these are things that it meaning ambiguity, ambiguity, but there's also intent ambiguity and intent fracture. So if I type in CRM software, for example, CRM, softwares, you know what it is, it's CRM software, but I don't know where the person is in their journey.
Jeff (26:44): I could be what they may be looking for a definition. They might be looking for lists of software packages that they could be anywhere. So the way I like to think about it is how much fracture is in my query from the buyer journeys perspective versus ambiguity. And when you're just analyzing search results to look at competitors, some of those pages may be at different stages of the buy cycle. Some of them may be different meanings if you smush all those together and try to copy that, and you're in deep trouble, could you be creating, I've seen the funniest pages in the world, right? Where they, they smushed together two meetings of words. And like, there's a section about some people when they're thinking about bats are thinking about these flying, you know, flying animals, but other ones are talking about baseball bats.
Jeff (27:31): And they actually that, and that's, that's that mentality, right? But it's just as bad if you're writing a content page that is not comprehensively covering the buy cycle, but you weave in concepts that are good for a beginner early stage awareness. And you also were touching on bottom of the funnel. You're creating the logical content. You're creating content. That doesn't make sense for someone to consume all in one place, because buying a, you know, buying a CRM package is not going to happen in 2000 words of reading. So if there's these, these, just these general concepts, and I love this because it dovetails well with our conversations, like how do I build great content? You build great content by understanding the client and speaking to all the possible levels of understanding they may have and covering the whole buyer journey and throwing it, the idea that you should create one page for each keyword out in the window, you create one package, maybe even a site section on this topic, if that's what somebody would need. So that every time anyone has a question about this topic, or they're at any stage of the buy cycle, you have the right page for them.
Kathleen (28:47): Can you just define what you mean by site section?
Jeff (28:51): Sure. so you may need based on where you are, based on your authority you may look at, and we have a metric in our system called personalized difficult. It's the laser beam for organic searches, if the deadly weapon. All right. And it tells you based on your existing authority, based on your momentum on this topic, right. And how hard it is to rank for this topic based on us reading all the articles that we can on this topic. And, you know, what's out there how much content you need to build. So we can actually tell you with the degree of predictability, how much content you need to make on this topic, where related topics in that cluster. So what I'm saying, the site section, I'm looking at this from saying, let's say I have no existing authority on this topic.
Jeff (29:42): And it's a really hard one. I'm not going to be able to get away with just adding pages to my blog on it. It's not going to happen for me with any degree of speed. I'm going to have to devote an entire wing of, of my house to building a foundation on this topic, and then expanding on that. I just, I haven't earned it yet. I haven't earned the ability to just build a cluster. So I'm actually going to have to build out significant foundation on this. And that's a possible situation. One might be in it. It often comes up in a situation where someone wants to start to cover a topic, but hasn't gotten there yet. Is it,
Kathleen (30:26): Is it like, are there structural things you need to do? Meaning is this building out like a sub-directory with that topic name, or is it more about creating, is it that sort of pillar content approach where you need to create the really long form, massive piece first and then build the cluster around it? Like what, how does that play out?
Jeff (30:45): In, in an ideal scenario where so the site, the actual URL or the structure there's different schools of thought on that of whether it works or not. In the end, if you're talking, if all variables were taken out, kind of doesn't matter on that front, I like having topics, topics driven sub-directories in my instructors that I'm building out ideally and as long as they are smartly structured, if everything's bucketed in, you know, one pool of pages, it's still going to be grouped logically by the way that it's linked. And then the inbound links that those pages get, which also inform the search engines on what these pages are about. And cause every link passes, both, it passes a lot of information. It's information about the page that is linking to the other page where, you know, the actual node on both ends, the strength of those have been information.
Jeff (32:02): And so when I'm saying site second, I just mean somewhere in a logical place. Yeah. And, but it's just, it gets to the sense of like what what breadth of coverage is needed with respect to your entire pool of pages. You're not going to get there. Like, let's say you have a thousand page site you're not going to get, and it's a, it's a big lift. You're not going to get there with a couple of pages. It's just, it doesn't mean Rome wasn't built in a day. It doesn't make sense that you're the authority on Gibson guitars on your personal blog. If you've only written three articles about Gibson guitars. And I see this all the time, people are like, oh, I just had to go out and write a cluster. They write a six page cluster about, you know you know, red wine. And I'm like, you are not the authority on red wine. I mean, and even though you wrote this great cluster, I can't break out of page seven.
Kathleen (33:06): Oh, I will say the opposite can be true. Some of my favorite moments in my marketing career had been when I search a topic and I find no exact match results for it. And I'm like, yes, universe, you've handed me this opportunity. All I have to do is write one blog and I can rank, right.
Jeff (33:25): That's the trick. You've absolutely nailed it. So if you go and that's where an intent mismatch is beautiful. That's where a no rank authority. So a no rank authority is where you can assess that a site has authority on a topic, but has no pages represented, has no ranking pages or is ranking very poorly with an unrelated page. Those that's your, those are your dream scenarios. That's what you get out of bed for, right? Because you can go write one page. Sometimes you don't even have to write one page. Sometimes you just have to add a section to an existing page, and those are really dream scenarios. And so those sweet spots, they happen all the time and they require a lot of work to find. And we've built technology that just finds them.
Kathleen (34:15): Well and I think sometimes they require a lot of work, but sometimes they're literally sitting in front of you. But the quote, unquote marketing best practices give you, make you blind to them. And what I mean by that is I ran into this at my last company. We sold a, a product that had a very, very, very niche use case. And in most cases, when you learn about content strategy, like I don't care where you learn it. Usually when you're taught how to do a content strategy, you're told to look for keywords with a certain search volume, right? And yes, if you can do that and succeed, it means you'll get more traffic, a higher volume of traffic. But in our case, when we looked at the, the highest intent keywords for, for the product that we were selling, there was like zero measurable search volume. But, and oh, by the way, there was the only other source that was ranking for those keywords was the National Security Agency.
Kathleen (35:10): Cause this was in cyber. But the thing is, if somebody is actually searching them, there could be 10 people searching a month, but those 10 people are like perfect, amazing fits for us. And you know, it was, we were a business to government sale. And so one contract was worth a lot of money. So it was like doing a whole content strategy around what effectively might be 10 searches a month was totally worth it. And fast forward now a year. And that company is getting a ton of really high quality leads that are leading to actual pipeline and revenue from that. But because we're taught as marketers look for search volume, I feel like people see that they'll do their homework and they'll say, but there's no, there's no search volume for this. And then they say, so I can't do it when, in my opinion, it's like, oh my God, do it cause nobody else is, right.
Jeff (36:00): Preaching to the choir for search volume. And you know, search volume is a point of reference. But it is the most misused data point in content in, in SEO. And I always give a test for folks right on this one. And I, and I can walk through why I love that you've walked through this, by the way I call it the search volume illusion. It is, it is a, it is a blankie. It's a blankie for content strategists. It's a blankie for large enterprises because they say you can't write a topic that's higher, low that isn't over this, right. It's such a mistake.
Kathleen (36:43): And the, the high search volume ones are always the most competitive also.
Jeff (36:47): But it allows, it allows really smart search engine marketers to wreck you. If you can see that a competitor writes against Google AdWords Keyword Planner sort and descend by search volume and has a line, right. You can actually chop their legs out from under them with a good content strategy. It's about chopping down the tree. And so if you see that that's happening and you can watch that strategy occur, it is, it makes you so susceptible to competitive risk. And what, the way I always explain a great example of this is pick your favorite search volume for something you were successful with, right. Let's say it was 10,000 search volume and you got number one and your click-through rate on that page is you know, 10%, I'm just making a fake. So you're supposed to get a thousand entrances. If your prediction, if your, if your math and your guide post was right, you're supposed to get a thousand answers, go look at your analytics for that page.
Jeff (37:50): And let's say that page is now getting 3,800 entrances. Well, you look at, then you're like, yay, that's a win, right? But what it tells you is that the frame of reference for using search volume was worthless because you couldn't come close to a predicted the gap between those 1000 and that 3,800. And that pool is called a term pool multiplier. And that term pool comes from adjacent variance comes from concepts that are one-time searches. It comes from maybe things that are intent mismatch, right? And you couldn't have predicted those. And the same is, goes for the opposite direction. And so when you're, when you're looking at pages and they rank well, they're also ranking for lots of other stuff that is trackable and they're renting for lots of other stuff that isn't trackable. The amount of intent fracture is that term pool multiplier. I have a huge article about this on my blog. I believe it's called keep search volume in the keyword research delusion or something. I love it. I love it. And so you go to check that out. It actually walks through how to do that process manually to prove your point intern. The goal of this piece is to prove your point internally, that search volume should not be your north star.
Kathleen (39:07): Wow. I totally agree with that. You don't have to convince me because every time I tried to go after high search volume keywords, it's just, it's been a lot of work for very little pay off. And the opposite is true for low search volume keywords. So I don't know. That's, that's just been my, you got it. I mean,
Jeff (39:28): You got for me, I just want, I want to set expectations properly. I mean, I, I, I've owned, you know, multi-million search volume tops positions for seven plus years, right? I've also given advice to B2B companies that an entire content strategy for their entire year is on stuff that's below 10 and it's either, you know, it has to be a fit for the, for the company. And the cool thing is knowing how much work you need to do to get that money, you know, to get, to get that money. You know, I mean, we had so, you know, good, another good example. You said you can give a lot of examples, you know, content strategy, right? I believe I'm still number one for content strategy. I hope I still have.
Kathleen (40:17): That's a tough one because there's some really big guns going,
Jeff (40:21): Right. And to gun down, somebody who has that much power, it's a different strategy. You have to do some of those things I was talking about. You have to pick them apart at the intent level, at the question answer level at the zero search volume level, they're giving away some of my tricks to build the foundation. They're not going to build, you have to know their strategy. You have to document what they're likely going to do, and that's painful. And that's really hard, but to win in the big leagues against the big players, you have to actually know exactly what they're going to do, where their gaps are. You need to know, did this writer leave and they were really good at this. So they're not going to update those pages. I mean, getting into that level of detail, which we have to, I mean, to beat off spot, we have to that's HubSpot was the one that was in the back of my mind when I was in there.
Jeff (41:17): I mean, that's what we had and we, we're kind of doing it, the proof points, right. Because you know, how much actionable conversion do I get off of that? I don't know. But it's, it's one of these things where you have to think cutting your money, where your mouth is, and you got to think like them into to really get it done. Yeah. And you know, I was looking at a a customer of mine site yesterday, funnily enough, it brought me and it was a three letter word that is a common networking acronym. I'm not gonna say it out loud, but I said, yeah, a person I was speaking to this, this page has ranked for seven years on this term in the top five. And I said, and he also has another one of the ranking pages in the top five.
Jeff (42:11): And we walked through and said, you know, the only way you will move on this high volume mixed intent keyword is to truly put yourself in the mind of the content teams publishing and you're going to have to do a whole lot of work and is it worth it? And then we walked through the way we're actually gonna make moves there, the way you make moves on head terms, isn't publishing against the yeah. It's publishing against the infrastructure. Yeah. And then the head term moves. It's the rising boat. You know, the rising tide raising all boats scenario and a lot of editorial teams that don't get it. They don't realize that that head term will move along with the mob. The mob is the rest of the, of the mob is the rest of the fleet. Right. So mixed metaphor. I could literally nerd out on this all day with you,
Kathleen (43:07): But we're going to run into a time constraint, right. So so I mean, I think you've really covered the ground on a lot of the basic building blocks for how we should be thinking about content strategy and how to really like the David versus Goliath, if you're trying to do that, how to, how to approach it. Can you share, do you have any, like, just recent examples of having done this and what the results were?
Jeff (43:31): Oh yeah. Have a few, gosh we work with so many teams and it, you know, some of them we can, you know, get into the details. So when we I'll give you a great example and it's going to be an upcoming case study. We worked with, and I'm going to have to be a little abstract with the company. So we worked with this company and they are one of the most prominent brands in this B2B technology space. And just an amazing team led by their, you know, wonderful SEO, wonderful content, wonderful conversion rate optimization team really understands everything, but they had a competitor who is an exact match brand name for the term they were firing for. Right. And, and they weren't. Right. So you know, so let's just say you were, you know you're you're, you were called Halo, right.
Jeff (44:35): And the competitor's name were remote speakers and you were trying to rank for remote speakers. So they had this, then they had a goal and they were trying to outperform for this query and the opposing company's brand within it. And they also internally had a problem where they wouldn't allow their team to publish for, I think it was below 400 search volume. Yeah. And we dug out that route, tossed to the side, built up a huge infrastructure around this concept in bridge out. And now they outperform that exact, like exact match hybrid competitor. Right. Fun fact on that one, because we're anonymized, I can talk a little bit out of school, right. Is when this all happened, everyone got jealous internally. Right. And they want, they wanted some of the other, the juice from this. And it was like, wait, we'll wait.
Jeff (45:36): But not all these pages are set up for you know, it's content upgrades and all this other stuff. And so I just love that because it's like, okay, you've moved on from this one challenge of visibility. And now you've moved on to this next level of maturity where it's like, all pages grow the business. Now you got to figure out, once you got the eyeballs, now you got to figure out how to monetize it. You got to figure out how you look for those intent fracture situations. And we see it. That's a great example of one where, you know, you did the time, it felt hard. But you're trying to get to that next level where, you know, I, you know, what is, is it is, it is a website I used to manage what is.com? And so many early, early stage awareness definitions that just own it.
Jeff (46:27): Right. And a lot of the conversation was how do we get those people into some sort of level of conversion, right? How do you progress them? What I like to say is your content has to answer the next and the questions, not just this question, if it needs to be the source of truth, but it also needs to escort them across the journey. If you're in e-commerce and you're on a category page, that's your chance to present all the content you have. That is part of the buyer journey, not just a picture of the pair of socks. And that's it, that's the other piece of it. If this fits for any type of content, like you want to escort them through all you got and where that, that, that if you're in a pillar page, don't just think you are, you're escorting them across the entire inventory. You got to go back to your old content and update it. You got to do all those things so that when they land there, they truly know who you are and all that you have to offer. So many times I, I talked to the strategist, I land on their page. I can read it. I'm like, whoa, this is really good. That's it?
Jeff (47:38): You know, and so often because they didn't give me their, they put their best foot forward. And that's what you have in a lot of these teams where they're not thinking about the journey and that they are escorts, they're Sherpas. And I don't want someone coming, reading my 3000 word article, and then not knowing that I actually have six other great articles for this. You know, that that's where you know, the user experience is so important and conversion rate is so important. So I love that.
Kathleen (48:08): All right, we're going to switch gears and I'm going to ask you the two questions that I always ask all my guests. The first one being, you know, this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really setting the bar for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days?
Jeff (48:25): Oh gosh. So many. One person I'll call out. I like to call different people out whenever I get asked these types of questions, but one person I'll call out is, his name's John-Henry Sceirk and J H S, J J H S is his first three letters. And you can look it up. John-Henry Scherk Gowth Plays is his agency. If you've never read anything that he's written, you have a whole weekend and you will be 10 times smarter, that's on all topics and he just gets it. And we've been friends for a very long time. But I find so, so many people, like, unless you're in this kind of B2B content growth hacking space, you kind of, you, maybe you didn't hear about him cause he's not writing for a big blog, but I love everything he reads and everything he writes.
Jeff (49:19): And yeah, J H S, he's a superstar and he's doing it. He wrote a lot of stuff about working with Notion lately. And really do, he just, he has his he's always ahead of the game. And I like to think I'm ahead of the game too. But like Dave, sometimes he's ahead of the game. I should interview for this podcast. Yeah, you definitely need to get J H. I'm happy to make that intro. But yeah, go check out his Twitter. It's, it's, it's really hot.
Kathleen (49:49): Awesome. All right. Second question. Most marketers I talk to say that their, one of their biggest challenges is just keeping up with all the changes, whether it's an algorithm change or regulatory changes or best practices or new platforms, are there particular sources that you turn to, to really stay up to date other than JHS?
Jeff (50:08): None other than John Henry? Yeah, there is, I'd say though it's changed for me over time and I rely a lot on the communities that I'm in and my mastermind groups and things. Because I'm like so overwhelmed. I have two small children you know, I run a business and, you know, multiple that says and I also, you know, my job probably is four jobs at MarketMuse too. So I have to rely on, I can't do it. Right. And so I really rely on my peer groups, rely on my team to surface things. I think if you have a Slack or something in your office, like have a learning channel, we do, we have a learning channel where everybody posts the stuff that led to information gain for them. Right. And then you have 10 minutes. You read what the, you know, in my case, the 35 to 40 people that I love so much what they learned from this day, you know, sometimes there's some dumb stuff on there, but it's usually really good, but, but also my other, the other community is the content strategy, collective slack channel, which is a community that we manage.
Jeff (51:18): But also I'm in an entrepreneurs group called Rhodium. The Technical SEO Mastermind led by Pat Stox and a few others. But like whatever your space is, I think get into these groups so that, you know, you get their collective like hive mind impact because, you know, Twitter can be noisy. You could like be really hard working one day and miss a whole bunch of stuff like, and because you didn't do your updates and you follow 3000 people and especially if you're doing a lot of different things I think that that's key don't just rely on a few influencers to filter, like try to get a kind of a hive mind approach. That's the way that I'm able to do it and still keep my sanity. I still miss stuff though. Yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna miss something.
Kathleen (52:08): You are human.
Jeff (52:08): A big, big one for me is like, MarketMuse doesn't really get into a lot of the structural type analysis and of sites, but we don't do a lot of the speed and or core web vitals. And that's the hottest topic right now in organic search, other than, you know, content strategy and natural language generation, you know, which I'm in. Right. And I'm building products in generation. and the other one is core web vitals, but like, we don't do anything on it. So I've had to rely on like my, my crew really like, and get that from Haas MOSIS. And luckily, you know, a couple people that I mentioned, all that notably Patrick stocks, who, if you haven't read his stuff about core web vitals, just type in P a T R I C K S T O X core web vitals. It's the you now will be as smart as, you know, 98% of the SEOs in the world.
Kathleen (53:11): I love it. There's some good resources you're dropping here.
Jeff (53:15): Build your network and and just like find ways to give them, you know, a little bit of your time and you're gonna, you're gonna get to at least sound smart. Yeah. It sounds smart at parties, right. Or not be ignorant. Right, right. That's a good, a good goal to set.
Kathleen (53:35): Well, this has been so amazing. If, if somebody is listening and they want to learn more about MarketMuse, or they want to connect with you online, what's the best way for them to do that.
Jeff (53:43): Go check out MarketMuse. We have on our blog, it's it's an amazing blog. We have a content strategy crash course is kind of, it's like a huge walkthrough. If this is something new to you. We also have hundreds of articles that get into the details. Go check out that keyword volume, keyword search volume one from what we're discussing, but there's also a really cool, really cool ones on there about kind of myth-busting some common practices. Jeffrey underscore Coyle on Twitter. Jeff@MarketMuse.com. And I'm very active on LinkedIn, but please, please shoot me a note. DM. I answer everything. I love this stuff. I'm extremely passionate about it. I even will. If you give me, you know, your site, your page, I typically will dive way too deep into the details. So as long as you don't have thin skin, feel free to shoot me anything you want me to look at. I love it.
Kathleen (54:35): That's an awesome offer. So I will put all those links in the show notes. So head there if you want to get in touch with Jeff. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, please consider heading to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice and leaving the podcast a review. That helps other people find us. And if you know somebody else doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at my crazy Twitter handle, which is @workmommywork and I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me, Jeff.
Jeff (55:05): It was awesome. What a fun discussion. Cheers.
Outside of emails, landing page copy and offers, what are the levers that marketers can pull to get better results from their conversion funnels?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, DropFunnels Founder and CEO Jordan Mederich explains the importance of what he calls "building your house on rock as opposed to building it on sand" — or why it's so critical to nail certain fundamentals on your website in order to drive big results from your conversion optimization and lead generation strategies.
In this episode, Jordan discusses how things like page load speed, social proof, and landing page design can all play big parts in boosting traffic to your site and ensuring that the visitors you attract stay and convert.
Check out the full episode to get the details. (Transcript has been edited for clarity.)
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the DropFunnels website
- Email Jordan at jordan@dropfunnels.com
Transcript Kathleen: Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and this week, my guest is Jordan Mederich, who goes by Jordo, so that's what I'm going to be calling you after this. He is the founder and CEO of DropFunnels. Welcome to the podcast, Jordo.
Jordan: Really glad to be here, I appreciate you having me.
Kathleen: Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you. I love getting into deep technical levels of marketing nerdiness, and I think that's what we're going to do here today. So let's start out by having you just do a brief overview of who you are, what you do, and what DropFunnels is.
Jordan: Yeah, sure. And anyone who's here, hopefully we can give value and new insights, regardless of anyone who's just starting out, or you've been doing it for a really long time. So I've been in the marketing game for, I'd say about a decade, actually I came from the filmmakers' perspective and training, I was in very much the creative space. And I make commercials for a long time and had films produced on Amazon Prime, and we've been seen on all the big networks and whatnot. And I realized that there was this big switch that I kind of had to make from kind of the mass market branding, corporate level of marketing, and realizing that I was blown away and shocked by the amount of waste that occurred specifically in marketing, corporate level businesses. I did work for Sony and Verizon, I was like, "Wow, there's so much money, billions of dollars being spent on advertising with no attributable results from most of those marketing efforts."
Jordan: And so I dove deep into the direct response marketing world, and I was building sites and whatnot on WordPress. So WordPress powers 34% of the internet, it's Google's number one favorite platform to rank. But it's also extremely technical. It's very powerful, in that sense, it can do a lot. But you better have a marketing or development team, a designing team, you better know what you're doing, you better have great servers and all those things. And so I was building new marketing funnels on WordPress, and building new sites in businesses on WordPress. But about six years ago, there's this resurgence, and it kind of started with ClickFunnels, and Kartra, and Kajabi. It's the sales funnel builders, hard coded platforms that made it more simple, I would say, easier to build your business on a platform and they had the psychology of sales.
Jordan: So we know that sales funnels blow away as far as conversion rates are concerned any corporate website and can really help you to get new leads and sales. And so they had this psychology but not the technology. And I look back and I realized as I was making the switch from corporate marketing into more direct response marketing, WordPress really has the technology, but not so much the psychology, it's really difficult to build on. So a couple years ago, I was looking back and I said, "Why don't I just combine these two worlds? Why don't I bring them together and make it easy to have the psychology and the technology at the same time? Make an entirely drag and drop, remove the code and the difficulty," and so we're the first platform ever to combine these two worlds. And to give you unlimited sales funnels, your websites, your blog, all of your courses into a WordPress based infrastructure, so that your sales funnels can rank, you build true domain brand authority, your pages load at around two seconds, which is really powerful for both paid and organic traffic.
Jordan: And it gives you the absolute strongest foundation to be building your marketing on outside of having a massive team of servers and devs and all of that if you're going to go build it on your own, DropFunnels is really the all in one platform to help make that happen. So since we launched in early 2020, we've seen unbelievable tremendous and very rapid growth, and we're breaking things all the time and re-innovating and reinventing what we want to see the marketing world to be like, and we're seeing some amazing growth there. So that's kind of the history of DropFunnels and where we are.
Kathleen: Well, the first thing that stands out to me that you said is that you launched your business in early 2020, what a time? It's a lot to do business, wow. I mean, granted now what you're doing is mostly online thing, but I'm just curious, how were you affected by COVID?
Jordan: So being online was a huge blessing for sure at the time and everyone who was already established in the online space pretty much won, everyone won through with that whole thing. Zoom obviously exploded, all these online companies did, and what I saw was a lot of people who were doing physical business or brick and mortar business wanting to move online and really struggling to learn how to do that, to make that happen. So for us, it made us step up our training and our onboarding processes, because we had to make it not twice as simple, but probably four or five times simpler to help them to get moving, because it's such a foreign game for most people.
Jordan: I think this morning, actually, I had a call with a client who is very brick and mortar, physical business, and just even using the verbiage, the vernacular of sales funnels in direct response marketing is so foreign that it's more of an education play than it is a service or marketing play. It's like we have to help the world understand how to reach people online instead of physical business. But I think it was a wake up call. Kathleen, I think for a lot of people running physical businesses and having no digital presence at all, it's like, "Wow, this kind of stuff can happen like that, and when it does, if you're not prepared, it can sink the ship."
Kathleen: Yeah. It's really interesting the way you describe that, because in my day job, I am head of marketing for a company that sells software into e-commerce. And we saw something really similar where, at least in the retail industry the data that I've read indicates that COVID sped up the shift to e-commerce by something like 10 years within the span of a year. So it was this massive acceleration, and you're right, a lot of people weren't really ready for it, but they were sort of forced to make themselves ready. And so it was an interesting time for sure, just to see the people who would normally not be the early adopters or the technology adoption curves sort of being forced into a place of discomfort and having to do things sooner than they otherwise might.
Jordan: Yeah. And I'm super well clearly thankful for it, but in a universal sense, it's like we needed some kick in the butt. The industry, the marketing world, the business world needed a kick in the butt to say, "Hey, it's not 1992 anymore, you have to adopt these methods or you're no longer competing against the guy down the street from you, you're competing against guys like me who live and die marketing." And so when you move into the space, it's this new world of early adopters, right? It's now a new phase of people who have never done it and never had an incentive to do what they have to do it.
Kathleen: Yeah, it's funny because I was going to say I said early adopter, or innovator, but those are actually the wrong terms, Because those people have already converted to digital. So this is the... I don't remember what the term is, the laggards, the laggards are now being forced to move more quickly than they otherwise might have.
Jordan: Yeah, I'm glad. Yeah, because I think it serves them better, too.
Kathleen: Yeah, agreed. Well, one of the things that I was really excited to talk with you about is just, obviously with all direct response the goal is conversion and there are a lot of ways to get there. And one of the things that you've talked a lot about is getting to better conversions by improving traffic. And I wanted to sort of open that up to you and hear your perspective on that and then maybe we can dig in and get a little bit more nerdy on it.
Jordan: Yeah. So I think there are two audiences to speak to as it relates to conversions in the online space. So for people who are doing really high volume traffic to specific offers, it's really the small hinges that swing big doors and identifying where the key measurements to really make a big move and dial-in processes. So what we see for example, in every single study on the planet that's ever been done, you find that your page load speed is one of the biggest movers as it relates to your conversion. Amazon found that in their own individual test, every 100 milliseconds of latency could cause a 1% decrease in conversion. Obviously, their mass traffic mass, mass appeal, and I think a lot of people realize, "Oh well, maybe one second isn't going to make that big of a difference, because I'm not that big yet."
Jordan: But you have to realize that if you ever have that desire to be big the time to fix it is right now. And as we spoke before in our previous conversations, that it's really the comparison of building your house on the rock instead of on the sand. Building it on the rock means starting from day one on a strong infrastructure where you have the best chance to win versus the house on the sand, which is like, "Hey, I can just get this going, it'll be fine for now, and eventually, we'll go solve this," or "Eventually we'll go make this." And I kind of liken it to, if I were to get married to someone and say, "Well, it's not that great right now but it's going to get better later." We don't know if things and everything will be better, right? It's just not the case and it makes it harder to solve a problem down the line.
Jordan: Whereas building it on a strong, firm foundation, where it's fast from the get go... I always wondered, I asked the question, "How many sales are you willing to sacrifice because of one thing that you could control from day one?" So high volume, page speed is important, social proof is important. And actually, this is something to kind of nerd out on, which is probably good for both high volume, but also people just starting to get into the game, we find that in our marketing, specifically direct response, so direct Facebook ads or YouTube ads directly to the landing page, we find about 30... This is going to blow your mind, about 20 to 30% of our traffic who go to a funnel, we're directing them to a funnel not to a home site, they're leaving the funnel and often on mobile or desktop, they're leaving it and going to the root domain to go get more information.
Jordan: So we're seeing that even if we have an offer, maybe it's a coaching offer, or a course or whatever that is, and we send them to that funnel, they leave and go to the home site and then they'll go back to buy again, or they'll go buy a different product. So we realize that for marketers who are just relying on a sales funnel, or that infrastructure, and you have no home base authority there's nothing there to go back to go learn more to establish some of that trust, you're losing between 20 and 30% of your buyers, potential buyers there, and only about three to 5% obviously, depending on the funnel are ready to buy right now, right? And so we're losing so much of this and I feel like a lot of the general answer to marketing is you need to go spend more on traffic, you need to go spend more, spend more, get more traffic, more traffic.
Jordan: And I say, you're not maximizing the value of the traffic you have right now, you are hemorrhaging traffic, because they're leaving for whatever reason, to get their design, or the offer doesn't really make sense to them on the page so you have to retarget them. And we know it's true, that's why retargeting is so valuable and follow-up sequences is so valuable, because just expecting them to go to a page to buy right away, it's the smallest percentage of the people most problem and solution and product aware audiences who can actually take an action on that right there. So it's all these pieces, I would bet that anyone listening to this year, you could literally double your sales by not increasing your traffic at all but by maximizing the traffic you have available to you right now.
Kathleen: So Alright, I have a ton of questions. First, and we're going to kind of try to break this down. The first thing you talked about was page load speeds. So obviously, everybody's got their websites built on different platforms and we can't control that. I mean, of course, people can change, but assuming everybody is where they are, are there certain low hanging fruit things that you usually see that somebody can do to immediately improve page load speeds?
Jordan: The first thing you want to do... There's lots of tools out there, our favorite is gtmetrix.com, and you can run it directly through there to find out where you're at. And here's the benchmark, if you're over four seconds in total page load time, you're losing conversions, period. It's undeniable, every study on the planet from Harvard to Stanford to Google and Amazon, they've all done the studies, you're losing money, period. So when that happens it's time to take some radical action. Inside of that page load report you'll see a waterfall breakdown, and it'll tell you what's slowing down your speed. If you have some developers who can help you and your more advanced in that way, you can defer some of your scripts to load later, that can help, crushing down images to be a small file size as possible is one of the biggest movers, or eliminating images at all, if you can.
Jordan: Backgrounds, don't have images in backgrounds, embedded videos can slow things down quite a bit as well.
Kathleen: By the way, is there a certain image size that you want to target to be under?
Jordan: Yeah. I don't think that there's a universal answer as it relates to what that would be. If you had one image on the page that could be larger than if you had 20 images and they all need to be under a certain benchmark. But generally pages that are over 123 megabytes in size, they're really going to start to load slowly, especially on mobile. And mobile is what you want to optimize for first. So I always say build with mobile in mind and then move into desktop, where it could be a slower loading experience because desktops can handle that. So images and embeds of videos and those types of things can can really make a big difference. And you'll really want to watch out for any external tool that you're depending on their servers, right? So here's an example.
Jordan: If someone was on DropFunnels right now we're extremely fast, the average is about 800 milliseconds in load time, but everything you add to the page slows it down beyond that. So if you added a hot jar traffic recording tool script on there, that's going to depend on their servers. A Wistia embed is going to do the same thing, a social proof widget pop-up, a chat icon that you can click to chat. Now each one of these things you want to keep in mind can really help you with your tracking and your overall conversions. But again, you want to start as the baseline and say, "Okay, a page with nothing else on it, how fast can we get that to load?" And your goal is under three seconds, for sure. As of today it needs to be under two seconds.
Kathleen: I was going to say, I feel like even three is too long, for sure.
Jordan: It can be, for sure. Especially if there's no other tools on top of it, right? So your base page you want to shoot for under two seconds, and then when you add a tool on top of that what's the impact going to be in that regard.
Kathleen: So say the name of that tool that you mentioned again that's a good way to test.
Jordan: Yep. So gt, the letters G-T, metrix, M-E-T-R-I-X.com. Is a great place, throw in your URL, you can test from different data centers depending on where you are. And to get a complete breakdown... And actually, they've just optimized to be kind of based on the lighthouse code base, so it's more recognized by Google as to how they see page speed.
Kathleen: Got it, that's interesting. Okay, so that was the first thing you mentioned. So definitely run your site through gtmetrix, and dig in and see what's slowing it down and where the biggest issues are, and that's step one it sounds like in squeezing the most juice out of the orange you already have, meaning the traffic that's already coming to your website. The second thing you mentioned, if I remember correctly, was social proof. Is that right?
Jordan: So I think that's one of the easiest things you can do immediately. I think we're in this third era of marketing, where now that consumers are more knowledgeable, they have information at their fingertips that we've never seen before. So it's like the used car dealer type of comparison back in the 80s and 90s, you'd go to a car dealer, and you hope he doesn't swindle you because he's the one with the information. He's like, "Hey, this car does this, and this, and this." Now, you don't even go to a car dealer with not an idea of what you're going to... You know the car, the color, the mileage on it, you've done a Carfax report on, you have all the information and it's the powers in your hands.
Jordan: So when you show to the dealership, they're not trying to get you into a different car, they're saying, "I want you in this car, because I know this is what you want and you've researched." So with that what we find is, you can't over educate someone to buy, it's much more a trust and a relational play. And so we see that testimonials, quotes, any videos or text that you can do actually will have a bigger conversion rate change than adding more copy to the page to try to convince them to buy something.
Kathleen: So a question on this, and I'm 100% with you, I am a strong believer that you've got to have social proof. One of the things that I hear though a lot, and I used to work in cyber from some companies is like, "I work in an industry where my customers don't want anybody knowing that they're using my product," either cyber or I don't know, my husband is VP of a company that makes competitive intelligence software, and so you don't tell your competitors what software you're using to track them, right? So what's your opinion on how to handle that? Is it still valuable to have a testimonial, where it's a little anonymized where you say like, "Head of marketing for this type of company," and you don't name the company or the person or do people just see that as BS?
Jordan: Well, such a great question. It's like the overall question is, is social proof if you don't know who the person is? Is that even social proof?
Kathleen: Yeah.
Jordan: So like a tree falling in-
Kathleen: And sometimes I feel like... I don't know, I wonder can it hurt you if people think you're making it up? I don't really know the answer to that.
Jordan: Yeah. It would be tough for them to know whether or not you are making it up, I hope people are more integrous than that but I know that there are those cases. I would say that if it's not a reputable name, it's tough to have social proof that really carries any weight, so that can be tough. I think asking the right way can generate testimonials to say, instead of saying, "Hey, would you give us a quote about us using your service?" You could say, "Hey, we'd like to feature your company as one of our cases, would you be open to us featuring you?" And it becomes more of a marketing play in that sense.
Jordan: Again, I think for most companies they'd be fine to scratch backs in that way, but in more specific niches where it's kind of guarded and confidential. Yeah, that's a tough one. I haven't thought about some ways to kind of get around that other than just asking whether or not, maybe even just a logo could be fine.
Kathleen: Yeah. I mean, I think there's still definitely people who are going to say no across the board. It's so funny, because I actually saw a conversation about this recently, where somebody said that the best way around it is to give your customers awards. And because everybody to brag that they got an award, and so it was like, if you can figure out a way to make it about an award and not about your product, they'll consent to mentioning it effectively in that's sort of a backdoor way.
Jordan: Yeah, that's a great play. I think, recognizing them or even doing a case study on their business specifically, you'd be like, "Hey, here's how these guys got this x result." And again, it feels like it's more of an ego play then, really.
Kathleen: All right. So that was social proof, we already talked about page load speeds. And the third thing was-
Jordan: Yeah. I think the overall concept is about optimization of the funnel flow. So it doesn't matter what you're selling, I can't tell you how many websites we see that are just... It's a hose with holes all over it, you put in leads and are going to go all over the place. There is no benefit to linking to Facebook from your primary corporate page or your funnel, there is no benefit. No one is sharing it enough to make any quantitative or qualitative impact on your business. So I say for almost all offers, strip away everything that doesn't serve you.
Jordan: And frankly, we only build sites like they were in the '90s in that same way today because it's what's always been done, not because it's-
Kathleen: Right. And I feel like some of those features come out of the box also, and so people are like, "Well, it's there, so it must be a good thing."
Jordan: Yeah, exactly. It's the De Beers Corporation kind of invented wedding rings and we still do that till today, but for the longest part of history that never existed. It's like we do what's been done because it's been done and that's what I should do. So I say just be a little bit adventurous, in the sense that you have permission to not do what everyone else is doing. And if someone goes to DropFunnels.com, for example, there's only one call to action on the entire page, every button really for all intents and purposes, almost every button is called an anchor link and it drags people down the page to more information, instead of moving them to About Us, no one cares About Us. No one cares about me or what we're doing, they care about themselves.
Jordan: So I think they want to know, is this end result going to help them? So we really try to focus all marketing efforts towards a single call to action. So and I think it's important that companies get clear on that strategy. What is the main thing that you want them to do? Is it driving them to a lead magnet or an ecosystem offer? Is it booking a consultation call or strategy call? Is it adding them to a Facebook group, because that can be advantageous as well, but push them into the main ecosystem, push them where you want them to go. And it's easier to optimize around one point, around one metric point instead of 30 and hoping, "Hey, I don't even know where these people are going, they're clicking here and going there." And even in Google Analytics, you can track where people are going, but the more links you have you'll find the more erratic people are, because they don't have a plan, it's your job to point the plan for them and to give them that path.
Jordan: So for us, I think optimizing around clarity and simplicity in all of your digital assets, even like, "Hey, let's kill some sacred cows here." Is the fact that you have a blog is it actually serving you? Linking to your blog and your homepage, does it actually give you any output? I mean, you can track those things. Is having any social share buttons or any links to social or a billion things for people to do, does it actually serve you? And I think those are the tough questions we should have.
Kathleen: So you mentioned something interesting when you were talking about this earlier, which is that, even if you have, say a landing page where you've got your offer, a lot of the time somebody will actually jump from that landing page and go back to your homepage, whether that's to research something or just learn more about you or to find some other information. Knowing that's the case, it's funny to me because the traditional kind of thing that you're taught as a marketer is don't put navigation on your landing pages, right? To your point like, "Let's not distract anybody with links that aren't absolutely necessary."
Kathleen: So they find a way to get back to your homepage despite your best efforts to not lead them there, what does that imply for what you should do to the design of your homepage to make sure that they don't drop out of your funnel? So that they stay engaged and ultimately convert?
Jordan: Yes, and that's exactly what I was just mentioning about being so clear about that call to action, that for us it's very circular and it feeds itself. So if someone goes to a funnel and we're recommending a software or a trial, or whatever that happens to be, if they leave that and go back to our homepage, they're going to end up right back to the funnel, because our homepage will push them back into that way. So I would say that there are a lot of great companies do this well. One of my favorite funnels of all time, it's through this company called Get Sunday, and they're a lawn care company.
Kathleen: Oh, I used them.
Jordan: Yeah. We probably bought through the exact same funnel, it was genius. And hopefully, people are buying things even just on propulsion of seeing an ad and going to buy just to study what they're kind of doing-
Kathleen: That's 100% I was targeted with an ad.
Jordan: Yep. And I met with them for two years, I don't know anything about lawn care, but I was so entranced by their funnel. But it was a perfect example of the experience of going through that funnel is really in synergy with what their homepage is doing. And I'd recommend anyone go to their site to take a look. I think Basecamp does some interesting things, they're very an analytical company, but their page is, I think, very well done. But generally speaking, if you have a landing page, I promise you people are leaving your landing page and your funnels to go check you out on your homepage. If you don't have a home site with that domain and that brand reputation there, you're losing sales, period.
Jordan: And on that, instead, again, eliminate what doesn't serve you and focus everything on to getting them back to that funnel, either with a complimentary or identical offer, so that because when they do that you don't want to lose them when they finally land on your page and suddenly it's some rabbit trail that takes them off somewhere else.
Kathleen: So for those who haven't experienced it, can you just describe a little bit about the Sunday funnel and what you liked about it? Granted, you're going to have to do this from memory, so it won't be exact, but what stands out in your head as what worked so well?
Jordan: Yeah. I have this kind of rule when it comes to marketing and when we're consulting with people as well, the best words that you can think about it's two words, it's for you, for you. So even in sales calls or any of that, it's the best phrase, I think that you can use. Is that people when they have high amounts of information, especially in competitive markets, and there's lots of people to compare to, personalization is absolutely key. My buddy, George Bryant, he actually coined the phrase, "Relationships beat algorithms." And it's not always the best offer gets their wallet, it's whoever gets to their heart gets to their wallet.
Jordan: So what Get Sunday does that I think is so unique and I think a lot of brands are tapping into this as well, is the for you experience, the personalization. So you literally type in, I think it's your address, I did it a year and a half ago, I still remember it. It's your address, and they show you a satellite image of your house. And then you draw these lines or whatever around your lawn about what's... They're, "Okay, based on this, hey we're going to send you this soil kit." And it's just free kit or whatever it was part of it, I don't recall it exactly. They sent out this thing, it came the next day, it scooped out some soil, and actually my kids got into it too, it was kind of a fun science experiment.
Jordan: Gave them that and then they sent back this custom report, "Okay hey, this is the acidity, the phosphorus, all the chemical things, this is the for you experience. Hey, we've also looked at the weather patterns for the past 12 years, here's how much rain you're going to get this year, here's how much sunlight based on the geography of your land," and I was like, "Holy cow, they know more about me than I do, right?" Which is so critical. And through that process, I ended up taking every upsell, everything there is because I felt like it was so personalized. And they said, "Hey, Jordan, for you, this is what is going to be a good fit."
Jordan: And to put a cap on that, one of my favorite phrases is that a prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. Prescription without a diagnosis is malpractice. And so when you get a diagnosis and you're given the prescription to not take that is insanity, right? So they're telling me, they know my lawn better than me, they know the geography, they know the weather, they know the soil better than I do, if I have any desire for the end result, which is they have a beautiful lawn, what else am I going to do? Am I going to go figure that out on my own? No, I'm going to go give them my money and they're going to tell me exactly what to do, and ship it right to my doorstep.
Jordan: And so some of these home kit companies have really tapped into this as well, "Based on your diet, based on your preferences, what is it that you like?" So I think all of us, all these kind of technical aspects are sometimes almost a moot point if you're not delivering to someone some for you experience, some way to make them feel like they're not a number, that they're a person and that they've been diagnosed as a specific prescription to what's going on. If we can tap into that psychology more often, I think, you could have a 12 second loading website and you could have a personalized experience, you'd probably be fine.
Kathleen: Yeah. It's so funny to hear you talk about Get Sunday, because that's the exact same experience I had. And I went through it, and I was like, "Wow, clearly they've tapped into, I don't know, Google Earth, or whatever it is, and they're measuring my lawn and checking my weather and the whole thing," and I was so enamored of it. So I definitely became a customer based on that funnel, I have a feeling they're doing pretty well off of it.
Jordan: And as anyone will experience if they go through it as well, you get a phone number to your person, your consultant, which I mean, it was a heart check for me too like, "Man, what are we missing out on the support aspect?" I think I've utilized it once in two years, so it's not like I'm using it, but knowing that it's there will probably keep me on for a very long time.
Kathleen: Yeah, definitely. They've nailed it. I love that example and how specific it is. Anything else that you want to add beyond? So we started with three things, we started the page load speed, social proof, and then shoring up the leaks in the bucket, if you will. I mean, and the last category really encompasses a lot. So I just wanted to make sure we didn't miss anything before I move on.
Jordan: No, I think that's like drinking through a fire hose probably for most people. So it's-
Kathleen: Yeah no, that's great. So you obviously have worked with a lot of different companies, you've got a lot of different brands using your platform, any examples from the DropFunnels world that you think are notable to share in terms of before and after results from doing some of these things, even if it's just your own marketing?
Jordan: So, this is less technical on maybe slightly more mindset. I would say, for most people, and again, we're a more advanced platform than many, so people are looking for click button done type of thing, it's not really a good fit. It's meant for those who really want to dive in and-
Kathleen: You don't need to be a developer though, do you?
Jordan: No, there's no code at all.
Kathleen: That's what I thought, yeah.
Jordan: But just things are in different locations. It's like you move your house, they say the two most stressful things in life is divorce and moving. So moving your business is no different, sometimes it... Well, we've got migrators that can help people in that regard. But I think the mindset for most people is that, we're all duct taping so many tools together between autoresponders, and CRMs, and call floors, and dialers, and website, and funnels, and courses, and all those things depending on your business model. And for us, I think the biggest thing that people fall in love with is how many tools they can subtract, so getting more by doing less.
Jordan: Here's an example. We have this tool and I actually built it in, we might be one of the first ever to build this, I'm not sure. But I added a feature that allows you to collect a legally binding signature on a checkout form directly through mobile. So when someone's going to go in and purchase your product, there's actually Terms and Conditions box that normally you would check, but I instituted a finger scribble sandbox that generates a PDF that would help you against refunds and chargebacks to ensure that you're collecting those terms specifically. So for some people they'll cancel like DocuSign through that because they can use that as an actual legally binding contract generator.
Jordan: So I think it's an example of that, of having fewer tools, fewer monthly subscriptions. And again, I don't want this to just be in advertising for DropFunnels, more a mindset about get more by doing less and simplify as much as possible so that you have less mental real estate being lost, right?
Kathleen: No, I think tool sprawl is a real problem. And it's not just a problem from a psychological standpoint of like, "Where is my information? Where is my data? How is it all talking to each other?" It's a huge financial problem. I mean, as somebody who owns a marketing budget for a company, by far the biggest line item for me is my tech stack. And so if you can eliminate things that frees up money to do other things in marketing, which can have a big impact, potentially. So I definitely think that's important.
Kathleen: All right, we're going to shift gears because I've got two questions I always ask all my guests before we wrap up, and I want to make sure I know what your answers are. First one is, the biggest pain point I hear all the time from marketers is that it's like drinking from a fire hose trying to keep up with everything. And so are there particular sources you rely on to stay up to date and educated?
Jordan: I'm probably the worst person to ask that, because I kind of live in a cave for most of the time. But I stay connected with a couple people in different industries, so I think masterminding is really important, networking is important. And I listen to a lot of audio books as well, so that's helpful. I just finished actually, for the first time, The Richest Man in Babylon, which was a great short listen, for most people a great mindset book there. And doing a lot of that, I also have this remarkable tablet, I'm holding up for those on the podcast, the-
Kathleen: My husband has one of those and he loves it.
Jordan: Yeah, it's super cool for doing some deep work and writing without any connection to the internet. So I guess my answer is, I tend to feel escape when I get off of the internet and consume a little bit less, because there's so much kind of noise going on there. So I find that my relaxation and escape comes from disconnecting, but I'd say audiobooks are big, I actually really like going on YouTube and listening to some TED Talks, and they're quick bite size-
Kathleen: Any particular favorites?
Jordan: Everyone says it start with why, but there's actually some really... I mean, it's fine. Simon Sinek is great. I like Malcolm Gladwell stuff, and there is actually one on... I don't know the name of the guy, but it's about addiction. And he lays out this thesis for I think it's called The Hidden Truth Behind Sobriety or Addiction or that kind of thing. But he lays out this incredible thesis that, the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection, its like this perfect theorem of why we get addicted to things, and the recourse from that, etc. So I couldn't recommend that more, it's one of the most watched ones on there. So TED talks have been a really good way to stay.
Kathleen: I love that, and I've seen that Ted Talk, it's very good.
Jordan: Yeah, very good.
Kathleen: All right, second question. Of course, this podcast is all about inbound marketing, and is there a particular company or individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park and doing inbound marketing well these days?
Jordan: I think most companies doing really well or really maximizing both and turning... There's a guy named Cole Gordon, who is in the high ticket closing space and is a master at, I think both inbound and outbound. And so he maximizes all of his inbound with additional outbound outreach, and whatnot. And so he's just so masterful at that, so that's Cole Gordon, I think it's Gordon Advertising, people could probably Google him. I also see Gary Vee and some of those influencers, they're doing a lot of like, "Hey, text me, get out this number," and getting people onto your list with a more relational SMS. Which by the way, I'm fairly convinced is the future of marketing is going to be SMS.
Jordan: Email rates are deplorable, Facebook, the algorithm is getting harder all the time, and I think SMS has about a 99% open rate.
Kathleen: It's very generational. I mean, I have kids, when you look at how our kids communicate, it's so different than how we do, it's crazy.
Jordan: Yeah. And I think it's probably going to change as new... Man, it's probably eventually going to be TikTok, and-
Kathleen: Or I was just going to say Discord. I have a 14 year old and they're all on Discord playing their video games and talking to each other. And I think that's already starting to happen, the number of private communities that are cropping up. I just attended, Shopify had its Annual Developers Conference, and all of the chatter around it, all the conversations, they set it up in Discord. And they created a room, I don't even know if that's the right word, because I'm not a big Discord user but I did do it. But yeah, I was like, "This is really interesting." I see my 14 year old on it, I see Shopify having official conversations with its audience on it, I definitely think there's a move in that direction too.
Jordan: Yeah. And actually I'm to the point, we just did it this week, that we're pretty much eliminating our post purchase Facebook support groups and moving even into Slack to do-
Kathleen: Yeah, Slack is huge.
Jordan: Slack is good, and people say Discord's like Slack on steroids, I haven't done much on Discord.
Kathleen: Well, I just used it for the first time, I was a little intimidated, but it is. If you are a Slack user, it will feel very familiar to you.
Jordan: Right on, yeah. But I think the social channels and social media and whatnot, they're going to start to kind of wane. And people are wanting to go into more private servers, and Telegram groups, and eventually, it'll all be on the blockchain and everything will be completely anonymized and encrypted, it seems like that's where the world is going.
Kathleen: Yeah, for sure. All right, well, we've come to the end of our time, and so before we finish, importantly, I need to ask if somebody has a question about any of this or wants to learn more about you or DropFunnels, what is the best way for them to do that?
Jordan: Yeah. I'd be happy to give my personal email, it's jordan@dropfunnels.com. If anyone has any questions, or if I can encourage you in some way, J-O-R-D-A-N, and it's my personal email, so it'll go straight to me and would be happy to respond with any insight that I can. And then dropfunnels.com is the main place if you want to check it out and kind of see even as an example of how we turn standard sites, or how we utilize standard sites into a sales funnel type psychology. But I'd encourage anyone to no matter what platform you're on, or whatever you choose to use, to just remember that those principles are true, a confused mind will do nothing.
Jordan: And so simplifying, make things faster, think about your strategy, what do you want people to really do? And in any infrastructure that you're on right now, push more people into that way and eliminate the things that don't serve you, and I really think that that's a way to grow very quickly.
Kathleen: That's great advice. All right. Well, that is it for this week. If you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, please head to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. And of course, if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me @WorkMommyWork because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week, thank you so much, Jordo.
Jordan: My pleasure, thank you.
Who is YouTube Advertising right for, and how to top brands get big results from it?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Linx Digital founder Shash Singh breaks down his approach to YouTube advertising. Shash and the team at Linx are YouTube ad specialists. It's all they do, and as a result of that specialization, they've been able to get great results for a wide variety of brands across a range of industries.
In this episode, Shash explains how YouTube advertising works and shares the ad formats that he believes deliver the biggest bang for your marketing buck. He also digs into details around how to film your ad, how long it should be, and how to set up audience targeting.
Check out the full episode to get the details. (Transcript has been edited for clarity.)
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the Linx Digital website
- Check out Shash's YouTube channel
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Shash Singh who is the CEO of Linx digital. Welcome to the podcast, Shash.
Shash (00:32): Yeah. Thanks for having me on here. I'm really excited.
Kathleen (00:35): Yeah, there should be a fun conversation because we are going to be talking about YouTube advertising, which is something that I have touched on a little bit in former interviews, but we really haven't dug into to any level of depth. And I do feel like there's so much potential there, but also so much potential to screw it up if you don't know what you're doing. And so I'm really excited to pick your brain, but before we do that, can you just tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and Linx digital and how you came to be doing what you're doing?
Shash (01:06): Yeah, so basically I got started with YouTube ads five or six years ago. But one of my friends, he runs the fitness program and like a fitness coaching business and his his business called you know, body. And he basically wanted me to run YouTube ads. And at that point I'd never run paid ads ever in my life before. So it was an interesting experience, but within two weeks we were profitable and I think within three weeks, we're scaling to $5,000 a day ad spend. So it was pretty impressive in terms of how powerful this platform was. And after that, I kind of fell in love with YouTube advertising, did it for a bunch more clients started an agency about it. And now we do trainings about it. So basically just kind of really enjoyed going in deep into this platform.
Kathleen (01:49): And so does Linx digital really only do YouTube advertising or does it do other things as well?
Shash (01:56): Well we occasionally do some Facebook advertising or some little search advertising, but our core focus is YouTube ads. So that's what people come to us for.
Kathleen (02:04): I love that. I love that you've been brave enough to sort of plant your flag in the sand and say, this is what we're going to do, and we're going to specialize it in it. And we're not afraid to, you know, go really niche. I think that's, you know, these days with digital marketing things change so quickly and the only way to really develop deep expertise is to focus. So that's awesome. All right, so, so let's get into this topic of YouTube advertising. I guess I would start with who is YouTube advertising, right? For, because I have to imagine there, there are certain types of businesses or certain audiences you may be able to be trying to reach that are a better fit for it than others.
Shash (02:44): Yeah. Honestly, at this point, I'd say you do, that's going to work for a lot of different types of businesses. Even you know, B2B, B2C e-commerce courses, anything really lead generation for local. The main thing you have to keep in mind is can you make the numbers work? Right? So for example, if you're selling an e-commerce product, you want to sell something that's a little bit higher price, because if you're selling something that's $20, it's most likely not going to work in a way that's profitable for you. On the other hand, if you're selling an $80 e-commerce product, I usually have a much higher acceptable cost per acquisition, and that kind of makes those numbers work. So that's the key thing there in terms of audiences at this point, pretty much everybody's on YouTube. I believe one of the fastest growing segments on YouTube is actually older demographics, right?
Shash (03:33): So I don't think it's an issue of like, oh, is this person on YouTube? Even if you're in B2B, right? You can actually use some of these advanced audiences that Google has. For example, they have custom audiences where you can plug in a competitor's URL and basically Google will go and try and find people that are similar to that. People who visit that website. So we've even for many B2B companies basically it can work quite well. And we've worked with some SAS companies as well that have done really well with YouTube ads. So really can work for a lot of different businesses. Ultimately just want to make sure that, you know, you have a solid funnel and a backend and the numbers work out for you.
Kathleen (04:12): So, so it sounds like almost any type of business could use it. And then you said something which resonated with me, which is just like, you know, everybody's using YouTube, right. I certainly everyone from my 14 year old son who is on it basically all day long to myself, like I watch things on there as well. So I think it's safe to say that we're all familiar with YouTube as users, but advertising is a very different side of YouTube. So could you just talk a little bit about about that? Like how is YouTube advertising set up? What are the different types of ads we'll start there and then we'll see where that takes us.
Shash (04:55): So you do have a bunch of different ad formats. The one like we like to focus in on are the in-stream ads. So the in-stream ads are basically the ads that show up before you're about to watch a video. So let's say you click on a video and before, you know, you have another ad show up, it's like the five seconds to skip. Basically you have five seconds and then you can skip afterwards and yeah, that's the main format, right? And that's basically the format that gets the best results for us. Now, there are other ad formats, for example, this responsive which kind of shows up in a bunch of different places, but typically most of our budget is spent on those entry mats. And then there's a lot of other formats as well. Right? So we have the basically for the in-stream ads, what we do is we use TrueView for action, which is really focused on getting conversions, but there's also ads like bumper ads and for six second in-stream ads that basically you can't skip, there's non-skippable 15 and 30 second ads as well. So there's different ad formats, depending on what you're trying to do. If you're doing direct response TrueView for action, in-stream ads are what you want to do.
Kathleen (05:57): True view for action. Okay. I have a lot of questions. All right. The first one is why do you focus on in-stream? What is it about in-stream that, that you feel is so valuable?
Shash (06:11): Well, I mean, it gets results now that are just like discovery ads, which are kind of like, you know, you'll, you'll click on it. It shows up in the search results, you click on it and it will take you to a video. However, in-stream just works really, really well. Right? Like it's pretty much in every account. It's like the majority of our budget because it just performs so well. You're basically able to just go in and grab people's attention and be able to compel them to take action. And YouTube has put a lot of, Google and YouTube have put a lot of resources into making that whole in-stream ad format work really well.
Kathleen (06:41): Okay. So, so you mentioned Google, Google, and YouTube, the relationship there, you know, people who are listening, I'm sure have done lots of advertising on different platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook. Many of them have probably done Google pay-per-click, what's different about the YouTube advertising kind of interface and management.
Shash (07:03): So basically the YouTube so like obviously Google owns YouTube and because of that, you're using Google ads as a platform. So if you're running search campaigns, display campaigns, you do campaigns, essentially doing it from the same account, same place. So that makes things a lot easier. And one of the benefits of Google owning YouTube is you get to use Google's massive source of data, which is the world's biggest search engine is Google. And the world's second biggest search engine is YouTube. So the massive scale is something that really is cool with YouTube ads especially because you can go and leverage the data from Google in the sense of somebody can search something on google.com and, you know, they could search for example, the best enterprise software for small electricians, right? And you could target that search term on YouTube. So you could show that person an ad on YouTube. So that's really powerful because a lot of times these search terms on google.com are extremely expensive, extremely cost per click is very high, but then if you reach target, basically if you're able to target them with a video ad, you're going to be able to get significantly cheaper click costs. So these custom intent audiences basically are incredibly, incredibly powerful. And one of the key reasons why I love YouTube ads so much.
Kathleen (08:17): So, so you use the Google ads interface and there, it sounds like there are a lot of different ways that you can set up targeting. You mentioned targeting for keyword search intent. Can you, you know, I'm familiar with a lot of the other ways that Google allows targeting. Can you use those same targeting approaches such as custom audience match lists lookalikes you know, what are the options there?
Shash (08:49): So, so as I mentioned, custom intent, which is basically a type of custom audience where you target people based on what they search on Google. There's custom affinity, which is a custom audience based on a URL or even an app that you can put in. So you could literally put in your competitor's URL and Google will try to find people that are similar to that. So, and the reason they can do that is because they have all this data from Google analytics from basically you know, obviously search engine, et cetera, where they have massive troves of data to make these assumptions and help you with these audiences. And these audiences often are favorites and on other audience types include keywords. So basically based on the metadata of YouTube videos, so the title, the description, and so on, where you're able to target videos that are about a certain topic.
Shash (09:39): You also have placements where you can specify the target channels are videos. So if you have a competitor and they have a YouTube channel, you can show your ad in front of them, which is really, really powerful. If you're basically trying to get your competitor's audience base right into your funnel. And then there's in-market audiences, which is Google's basically audiences of people that are interested in buying something. So there are in market audiences for let's say, automobiles or home and garden for beauty, there's like all kinds of categories, right? So you could dig in and this, I believe there's even like hair, hair extensions for hair lashes. Yeah. So you literally have so many audience types. There's topics, which are videos about certain topics, like broad topics there's affinity, which is basically based on interests. So it's like, oh, these people are interested in X, Y Zed. And then there's also similar audiences, which is kind of Google's version of lookalike audiences. So there are a lot of different options. And a lot of times in certain pumps, some work really well, some work don't work well, but because of you have this vast number of options, there's definitely a lot of different things you can do with that.
Kathleen (10:50): Wow. So you mentioned earlier cost, how does the cost per click compare on YouTube to maybe other forms of Google ads, LinkedIn, Facebook, et cetera.
Shash (11:05): So the cost per click, for example, as compared to Google search, it'll be significantly lower. As compared to let's say display, it's going to be more expensive because it displays usually far less qualified clicks. And as compared to Facebook, it can really depend on niche. Some niches, it can be a little bit lower, some niches, it can be higher but the traffic is very, very qualified. Typically find that YouTube graphic and works well. And usually they're, long-term buyers that people who are usually very interested, especially if you're targeting them with a targeting option that, you know, they're basically, let's say they're watching a video about that top. Right. That's a really good lead.
Kathleen (11:42): Yeah. Interesting. So, I mean, it sounds like it makes sense to consider for almost any business. I think the thing that might seem intimidating to people is like, it's video. Right? I got to, I got to create a video, correct. Like if you're doing an industry mad, you're creating video for your advertising. Right.
Shash (12:01): Absolutely. That's, that's something that scares a lot of people. They, but it's actually not that hard. So for example, if if you're running an ad for, let's say a software company, right. It's not that hard. You could literally take kind of a, you know, basically a selfie video as like a selfie iPhone camera, and then pair that with a lapel mic and be able to shoot simple ads. There are a lot of people who run softwares that have been able to do that. Now, obviously you can go the whole production route, but basically what Grammarly or monday.com have done, but you can just start simple with a selfie video ad. So the key thing to understand is you've got to start somewhere and that video in general is a huge competitive advantage today, if you're not using video, it's basically one of the formats of communication. That's just the most effective and consumers love video, right? There's been so many studies on it, landing pages with video, typically perform better product pages with video, perform better. People kind of want to see and watch basically video of what they're about to buy because you get so much more information than images and touch. So it's absolutely something that's you, you, you should dive into. And basically any business that has a core competency competency than video, typically their marketing efforts just do so much better.
Kathleen (13:18): So you talked about using your cell phone camera and a lapel mic to create video, but I have to admit I'm skeptical because I feel like, yes, it's easy to do those kinds of videos, but I also have to believe that there are certain things that you need to do to create a video that's really going to drive conversions because it's not about just like getting your video out there. It's obviously about, you know, inspiring action. So can you maybe like break down what you found in your experience makes for a high converting video?
Shash (14:54): Absolutely. So you need to follow a structure and you need to basically be able to hit those persuasion triggers. The first piece of that puzzle is the hook, right? Like you've got to grab their attention basically the way you want to think about it, as you need to like basically grabbed them by the throat would be like pay attention. So the way we do that is real often say a controversial statement are we'll call up, call out our iden audio. Our we'll call out our ideal audience with their major pain point. Right? So we'll say something like, Hey, are you let's, let's go with a local electrician example. Right. I don't know why I came up with that idea, but let's say, are you a local, are you an electrician? That's just tired of of your expensive software bills for a program that you don't even know how to use.
Shash (15:43): Right. and then basically that steep and you've grabbed their attention. And it's also something that kind of calls them out and they're like, oh yeah, this, this ad is for me. Maybe he has a, there might be a solution to this pain point I'm having write down. Right? So the key to any YouTube ad is really knowing your customer's pain point and being able to really grab their attention with that pinpoint. Right? So they're, you know, motivated to keep watching. And after that, what you'll want to do is you will want to start building some authority and credibility. You'll want to show them how your product works and why they should even consider basically checking out whatever you're giving them. And you'll want to make sure that it's very strong call to actions. So to give you to continue on with the treadmills as electrician.
Shash (16:29): So let's say, Hey, are you in a local electrician? That's just tired of overly expensive software that you don't know how to use and that's buggy. And it's basically, it's not helping your business in any way. So that's, and then the second part of that I imagine would be something like, so I used to be a local electrician had that, that was a huge pain point for me until I decided to build my own software specifically for us, because, you know, I'm an electrician as well. And so I decided to build this software called whatever. And we basically used we talked to thousands of electricians to figure out how to build a best solution. That's, you know, doesn't have let's say this common issue that they have typically that their software or this issue, and then actually show them the product and perhaps show them that.
Shash (17:24): Yep. Imagine if you could just let's say call up all or imagine if you could send out a quote and just one easy click, right. And imagine if you could let's say be able to get your subcontractors to bill you in one easy system. Right? So now you're actually showing them what that is about. So from there, you'll go into call to action and tell them, Hey, if you want a free trial click, the link or below, or if it's like, for example, what we do a lot is send them to some sort of case study. So one angle you could go with this is if you want to see a free case study on how we use this tool to double the revenue of our business in less than a year and all the tactics and strategies we use, then that's a big to do it.
Shash (18:07): So a lot of this, you know, as you brainstorm it, you come up with it, but you kind of have that base structure, which is cook. You want to call your audience out. You want to show them the products and its benefits. You want to build some party and building, right? Like why is a, you know, for e-commerce products, right? Often I've seen some of them use research or other others have used, you know, personal experience, right? Like I've actually done this or I've, I've been in your position. So that's one way of building a party and credibility. Another way is, Hey, I've helped over 5,000 people with this problem. And then from there, your first call to action, where you tell them, Hey, click the link above or below to go get this free training, free trial, free you know, basically lead magnet, case study, et cetera.
Shash (18:51): Right. And then from there, you might want to show some social proof and show them that, Hey yeah. Maybe show them as basically a sliding wall of testimonials and the videos. So like half, half the video just be testimonials are, you can even clip in videos of happy clients, like quick 10, second clips. It could even be potential, you know, other forms of social proof, like you've featured in Forbes magazine, et cetera. So from there, you can have another call to action because you always want to have at least two call to actions and you wanna tell them, Hey, click the link below to go sign up for this free trial. And the key here that you got to understand is once you actually start running basically YouTube ads, you will get a good feel for it. But also the biggest thing to do is you gotta be, you gotta do preparation for us, right? So number one is use this tool called Vid Tao dot com, vid Tao, T a o.com. And this is a completely free tool. That's what we use to find really great video ads. So we will just use that and be able to just basically enter in a competitor's name final to video ads. And then you can see how many views that ad got. And typically if it's gotten a ton of views, you know, that that ad has done really, really well.
Kathleen (20:08): Oh, that's a good tip. It sounds like timing is really key. So you mentioned in the beginning having a hook and is that because with in-stream ads? I mean, at least my experience has been like, you have a certain number of seconds before the person is given the option to skip the ad.
Shash (20:25): Yeah. So you have five seconds before they're given the option to skip that. So you want to really grab their attention in the first five seconds.
Kathleen (20:31): So you have to have the hook quick, you know, don't bury the lead as they say in journalism. Okay. And then, and then I also would imagine from a timing standpoint, that overall length of the video is pretty important. Like have, do you see people drop off after a certain amount of time? Is there like a standard length that you think performs really well?
Shash (20:54): I would say we've had ads from 45 seconds to three, four minutes long work. Typically what I say the ad is as long as it needs to be. So don't try to artificially make it longer, but if you need to add more length, do cover the key persuasion points or the cover, the key benefits of your product. You may need to add a little bit more to it, right? Because some products are softwares may just need more explanation, right? So our, some might be super simple and might only require a 62nd ad so that ultimately the length is something you can test, but the key is you don't want any fluff in there. If there's fluff, you want to get rid of it.
Kathleen (21:34): And is your call to action always at the end? Or do you ever have anything sort of in the middle
Shash (21:39): Typically two call to actions at the minimum, sometimes even three, but typically one call to action. That's maybe, you know, somewhere in the middle, right? Like at least 30, 45 seconds in, and then you'll have the second and third call to actions be a bit later. They could be different, but usually you'll, if you're, let's say sending them to a case study, right. You, there's probably only like a couple of different ways to say, click the link above or below to go check out this case study. Right. you could do different variations, but it's like in the first one you could focus on like click, click the link above or below to check out this case study where we show you how we doubled our client's revenue with a strategy. And then the second one could be perhaps another benefit point, click the link up or below to see how the reduced amount of time you know, our client works in his business by 50%, right? Like it, if you have perhaps multiple parts of the case study, you can kind of play on that and use different CPAs to basically get clicks from people who are looking for different things.
Kathleen (22:42): Okay. So, so let's say somebody does this, they get their video, all done, they get it set up, they have their audience ready to go. And then they go to launch the ad from a budget standpoint. How much do you think somebody should expect to spend in the beginning in order to have a viable chance of the ad being successful?
Shash (23:02): So with YouTube ads, I would recommend a minimum of a hundred dollars a day as a test budget. That typically gives you some good data fairly fast with, if you're trying to be more aggressive, you can go up 200, 300 a day. Usually you'll want multiple ads. So the one to test the ads, the hubs you can look at and you can edit them in that way, you can get some variations and you can see which hook grabs the most attention. And then but we typically will also recommend that, okay, you want to have a couple different bodies, right? So we might have two different pubs, two different bodies, that's four variations. And that allows you to kind of have a much better idea of what's working and not working. And then based on which ad does the best you can go and modify the landing page to basically be congruent with that messaging.
Shash (23:51): Ultimately it comes down to testing a lot of ads and then tweaking your landing pages to be able to figure out what's working and not working, or sometimes you'll get lucky. And your first kind of ad and landing page combination just works amazing. If you've done a lot of Facebook ads and search ads, it's going to be a lot faster for you because you already know the process of testing kind of creators. You already know how media buying works. If it's your first time doing media buying, it's probably going to take a little bit longer.
Kathleen (24:17): So that was going to be one of my questions. So it's like once you get it all set up and it's running, how much time should you give it before you like make that keeper cut decision?
Shash (24:29): That's a good question. Ultimately what I would say is it depends on a few things, right? The first thing is before you even run ads, you've got to figure out if it's realistic to make YouTube ads work for your offer. What we find is higher ticket offers for well e-commerce offers that a higher price info-product offers at a higher price or SAS products that are either, either you have some way of collecting money up front, or you have, you know, basically you're okay with, you know, spending a couple of months of basically revenue from the recurring to get that right. So if you're selling a software, you know, your lifetime value is like $900 and that's over nine months, let's say it's 99 a month, nine. So nine months or 10 months, that's a $900. And let's say, it's the average cost per acquisition for a hundred dollars a month.
Shash (25:23): Customer is $350. So if you have venture capital, then that's a no-brainer deal because you know, you're going to make $900 and you spent $350, however, it's, you don't have venture capital. Then that makes it really tricky because you don't have three and a half months of cashflow to basically put into it. So what you need to do is figure out a creative solution and usually software companies that have been able to do that, what they do is they'll typically either do a bundle. So you'll have maybe a year upfront or they'll perhaps have a training or some sort of front end offers. So what that, what I've seen softwares like click funnels do is they will literally have a $997 info product that as their front end offer and then click funnels to bundled in the back. And I've seen this with multiple different niches.
Shash (26:05): It's basically you have the training program, but maybe a couple months of the software. And then because you're collecting a thousand dollars upfront, you're profitable on the front end, and then you also have the recurring on the backend, and that's just purely a way of how you structure your offer. Now, on the other hand, if you're trying to just, you know, basically let's say you have a 10 month based customer retention rate, they stay for 10 months and you make $900 from that. But the issue is that you're spending $350 to get them and you don't have the capital for that. Then your YouTube is not going to work for you unless you figure out either a venture capital or you figure out how to structure your in a way where you collect that money upfront. So that's really, really important is just figure that out before you run ads.
Kathleen (26:49): Okay. That makes sense. And then once you're running your ads, what's, what is your kind of routine for how often do you check back in and kind of watch performance so that you're able to tweak and optimize?
Shash (27:03): I'm checking every day. So every single day go in and chat. So basically the way we optimize is on the ad level. So, you know, there's the campaign level does the ad group level and then this the ad level. So we usually just look at all the ads and if an ad starts getting out of KPIs, then we'll just pause it.
Kathleen (27:19): Okay. All right. So let's shift gears for a second and we've talked a lot about how it works and kind of what you should be doing and watching. Let's talk about some examples, cause you've worked with a number of different clients. Can you share like some stories, success, stories, or examples of where you've done YouTube ads and what kind of results you've been able to get with them?
Shash (27:41): Yeah. So for example, B2B, the ran ads for a software company called helium 10, I think they probably spend like a couple of hundred thousand dollars over the lifetime. And it was, it was a pretty good traffic source for them fairly profitable in terms of their long-term customer value in terms of companies that are more in the info-product space. So if you, nobody's a really good example because basically I got in there started running the ads and we're spending a new year's 5,000 a day and making 10 to 15,000 a day back. And it also got him device magazine because the ad was just so so interesting and so controversial that he was kind of talking about it.
Shash (28:28): I see. So it was a nice little bonus as well on top of the profit. So that's a great example of where not only did the generate really great direct response results, but we also ended up getting a lot of branding out of it because a ton of YouTubers started, started making videos about it's add a ton of people on different farms, started talking about him. Everybody just started talking about the ad and, you know, it led to the point where the organic growth from the ad was probably just as powerful as the pay pros from the ad. Other clients we've worked the amazing selling machine, the renter ads for a couple of years. And yeah, YouTube was just a huge, huge basically revenue source for them generated multi-millions from YouTube. And ultimately just came down to there. They had a really good funnel and the ads were really good.
Shash (29:16): So we scripted a lot of these ads and then they will just execute it because they just had a videographer and the founders, Matt and Jason would just jump on the camera and shoot ads. They were really good about it. They've all finished ads. So that's a great example as well. So yeah, basically different niches indestructible shoes, for example, that's an e-commerce brand. So we were able to generate 1.2 million for them with e-commerce YouTube ads. So e-commerce can work as well. E-Commerce is often easier because of the fact that there's less competition. You just got to figure out the video part. So you've got to put more effort into the video for them we found a production agency that we partnered with to create video ads and those video ads just absolutely did so, so well because they were well thought out well-produced you know, kind of just there was effort put into it, right? So if you're doing e-commerce YouTube ads, you do have to put effort into it unlike with Facebook where you can just put an image ad on there.
Kathleen (30:11): Yeah, that makes sense. What do you see as the biggest mistakes that brands make when they start doing YouTube advertising?
Shash (30:19): So usually the biggest mistake I see is they've tried to take their Facebook ads, creative and strategy, and use that for YouTube ads. So Facebook ads, campaign and optimization strategy, audience strategies, and then also the creators where, you know, on Facebook, a lot of times you can run like the super simple video ads, just slide shows, and there's no voiceover, there's just some music on the background and they do well on Facebook, but on YouTube, they don't work because on YouTube number one, people expect the human touch, right? They at the very least expect a human voice, even if there's not a person in the video, even if it's not after they want somebody that's guiding them through this video, right. They don't want it to be kind of just like background music because of the fact that everything on YouTube has basically a voice, you know, even music videos have a voice.
Shash (31:07): There's usually somebody that's a lot of commentary videos that people will share their screen or, you know, show like a video game while they're commenting or they'll do animation with a voiceover or they'll have live action where they're basically in front of the camera, even if it's selfie style or if it's just them pop in front of camera. But this all is that human element. Right. And a big part of that is when you're running a YouTube ad, right? The video ad isn't muted by default, while on Facebook, a lot of times, you know, you'll see a video ad on the, on the newsfeed and they're all automatically muted, right? You have to click the button to listen to sob. So that's something that just makes a huge difference where you need to make sure you have that voice or human element to it.
Kathleen (31:48): Is it important to have captions on your video ads and YouTube
Shash (31:53): It's worth testing? I don't think it's absolutely essential. It does help as a visual aid. It doesn't even necessarily need to be like captions of every single word you say, but it could be literally like key key emphasis moments. So you could emphasize that, but we've definitely used a lot of captions in our video ads and that definitely helped significantly. And in split tests, we've run. However, in certain ads you want to just make sure it doesn't look, you know, if you have a really cinematic app typing captions on the bottom that are like hard coded and it's, it just looks can be distracting. Yeah. That's for sure. Yeah.
Kathleen (32:25): Interesting. All right. We're going to change gears again because I have two questions that I always ask my guests. And I'm curious to hear your take on these first being of course we talk all about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual you think is really setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days, inbound
Shash (32:46): Marketers? Huh? That's a great question. I would definitely say in terms of pure marketing genius, I like Alex Becker. He's, he's got really good marketing skills, some of the best I've seen. Yeah, I think he's just really good at understanding human psychology and being able to hit those triggers and pain points and being, you know, not necessarily being the most sophisticated marketer, but being the most efficient and effective. Like he's very good at that. So I really, really liked his his marketing methods. I also think this marketer it's that whole crew over there, they're doing a great job. I love to just cut out things. Yeah, those, those two are two that come to mind.
Kathleen (33:34): You just, you just cut out when you said your second one, it like totally cut out. So can you start over when you said, I also think and just, just start there.
Shash (33:43): Yeah. Yeah. So I also think that my second pick would be Ryan Deiss and the whole Digital Marketer crew. They just do such an excellent job. They're really, really good.
Kathleen (33:53): Yeah. They're great. I know those guys and they're very sharp and Ryan is a real go-getter. Awesome. All right. Second question. Most of the marketers I speak with their biggest challenge is just keeping up with everything that's changing in the world of digital marketing, staying on top of, you know, the new regulations, the new algorithms, the new tools, the new strategies. How do you personally keep up to date and keep yourself educated?
Shash (34:19): So, I mean, the number one thing is you just gotta be inside the ad concept because that's where you're gonna see stuff first. Number two is obviously I, I would say just having the network of people who do the same thing. So for me I talked to a lot of YouTube marketers. So on top of our own media buyers, the also I talked to guys like Tom breeze and like, they're basically other experts Brian Moncada, for example. And these are guys that I often communicate the then, you know, basically being in that circle, you kind of get that information first because sometimes you might dig into an issue and bring it to attention, or sometimes they'll do it. But typically if you surround yourself with marketers who are doing the same thing, you'll get it a lot faster.
Kathleen (35:13): Great. All right. Well, if somebody is listening and they have a question for you or they want to learn more, what is the best way for them to connect with you online?
Shash (35:26): Yes. So the first resource I would check out is our YouTube channel. If you look up Shash Singh, so S H A S H and S I N G H. So we got a lot of videos there. That's probably the spot to kind of just learn stuff and that other resource I would, if you need to get in contact with me, I will check out our website, which is Linxdigitalagency.com. And I can throw links to that as well.
Kathleen (35:54): Awesome. And I'll put those links in the show notes for anybody who's listening. So had there to get more information. And in the meantime, if you are listening to this episode and you liked what you heard, or you learned something new, I would love it. If you would head to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice to leave a review, that's how other listeners find us. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me Shash, this was really fun.
Shash (36:25): Thank you for having me.
In the hyper-competitive world of e-commerce, how to the top performing brands drive continuous improvements in conversions and revenue?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Dexter Agency CEO Joris Bryon talks about the importance of A/B testing, and why small improvements to your website can drive big increases in revenue.
From the process he uses to identify which website pages need to be optimized, to how he determines what aspects of the page are underperforming and the nitty gritty details of setting up and running tests and user surveys, Joris lays out, step-by-step, a process anyone can use on any type of website to improve conversions and pipeline.
Check out the full episode to get the details. (Transcript has been edited for clarity.)
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the Dexter Agency website
- Connect with Joris on LinkedIn
- Check out Joris's book Kill Your Conversion Killers
Transcript Kathleen: Welcome back to the Inbound Success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. Today, My guest is Joris Byron, who is the founder and CEO of Dexter Agency and the author of Kill Your Conversion Killers. Welcome to the podcast, Joris.
Joris: Thanks, Kathleen. Great to be here, actually. Yeah.
Kathleen: I am so excited to talk to you, but I have to start with a question. Kill Your Conversion Killers, is that kill or be killed, conversion rate optimization style?
Joris: Actually, it came from the baseline we had when we started the agency. So it was Dexter Agency. And Dexter, the serial killer who kills...
Kathleen: Oh, yeah. I didn't even think about that [crosstalk 00:00:55].
Joris: ... serial killers. Yeah. And that's where it came from. And conversion killers is a thing, actually. So we kill conversion killers, and it's a bit of a play on words. And that's where the title came from and the baseline for the company as well. Yeah.
Kathleen: I love it. So speaking of the company, maybe you could just briefly introduce yourself to the listeners and talk a little bit about your background and what Dexter Agency does.
Joris: Sure. So I've been in marketing for 20 years now, and I started my career in traditional advertising agencies and actually did that for about 10 years. But I got fed up with the typical discussions you have with clients, like make this blue, make this red, put this on the left, put this on the right, that kind of stuff based on nothing. Well, I discovered online marketing, and I started learning about SEO, PPC. I went working for an agency as well. I had to stop in between where the company, it had failed. And then I went into digital marketing. But anyway, in that visual marketing agency, I learned a lot about digital marketing. And at one point, I fell in love with conversion optimization. And that's how it all started. And I ventured out on my own. I learned everything I could about conversion optimization. And first, I tried to implement that in the agency where I was working. And it was a great agency, but back at the day, conversion optimization was still pretty new. And there weren't any clients prepared to start doing that, so I had to venture out on my own and started out as a freelance CRO consultant, and that grew into an agency. And yeah, here we are now doing this for six years already.
Kathleen: And I saw in my notes that you have done over 1,500 A/B tests. So you have a ton of data that you bring to this conversation, which I love. Conversion optimization obviously is a broad topic. We're going to focus specifically on e-commerce, which is an area that historically we haven't talked about a ton on the podcast. Although, I've started talking about it more lately because selfishly I'm working in the e-commerce area. And so I'm really interested in learning more, and so I'm excited to dig into this with you. Let's just start with a background on conversion optimization because I don't know that everybody fully really understands what it is, why you should be doing it, how it works. Give me just a really quick summary on that.
Joris: Yeah. I'd say conversion optimization for me is trying to make more from what you already have. You already have visitors; try to make more out of the visitors you already have. They already buy from you, so why don't you try to increase the average order value? And you have them as customers, so why don't you try to sell to them again? For me, that's conversion optimization. It's basically working with what you already have. I know there's definitions out there that focus entirely on conversion rate optimization, but I think that's too narrow. It creates wrong expectations. I don't think conversion rate optimization is a great name for the discipline as such. So if I have to say something about it, I usually say conversion optimization as you do rather than conversion rate optimization because that creates false expectations.
Kathleen: Yeah. I spent a little over a decade as the owner of an agency, and I used to always talk about this and frame it as if you want to double your revenue and you look at a traditional marketing funnel, there's two ways to think about it. You could say, "Well, I have these conversion rates and this number of visitors and this number of leads. If I want to double the number of visitors who ultimately turn into customers, I can double my traffic, and if the conversion rates all stay the same..." And I'm going back to conversion rates right now, so I'm deviating a little from what we just said. But I think it's a helpful rubric. You can either try to double your traffic and just stuff twice as many people in the top of your funnel, hoping that it produces the same outcome, or you can work on converting more of the people that are already coming into your funnel. And in a perfect world, you're probably doing a little bit of both, but the reality is that the fastest path to more revenue is the second thing that you focus on. It's much harder and longer term effort to double your traffic than it is to double the number of leads you're getting that ultimately turned into customers. And I'm sure the same is true of repeat purchasing and things like that.
Kathleen: When you talk about ultimate impact on the business, trying to squeeze more juice out of the orange you already have is always a better approach in the short term, certainly, than trying to grow more oranges.
Joris: No, absolutely. And I think a lot of business owners, they're so focused on traffic that they forget there's other ways to double their revenue. And I get it. In the beginning, the fastest way to grow is adding more traffic, and especially PPC. If you pay for that traffic, it's going to get you quick growth. But at some point, you'll hit a plateau, and it's going to get harder and harder to attract relevant traffic because you can dump the traffic on our site. But if it's not relevant traffic, why bother, and why pay for it? And what I feel is by then, most business owners are so stuck in a traffic mindset that they look for ways to still make it work. Maybe I try something new, some new campaign or some new channel or fire their agency, work with another agency, whereas they miss out on the opportunity of working with what they already have and try to improve that instead. I think one question that helps is, do you want more traffic, or do we want more revenue? And when you put it like that-
Kathleen: That's a pretty easy question to answer I would hope.
Joris: Yeah, yeah. Right. And that's a bit of an eye-opener, but most business owners are so stuck in traffic mindset, whereas there's a lot of potential in increasing the order levers. I think for e-commerce, the formula that I always use is revenue equals your traffic times your conversion rate times your average order value times your purchase frequency. There's only four levers that you can grow your e-commerce. There's nothing else. If we're talking about your own life story, you can start selling on marketplaces. That's a different story. But if we're working on your online store, it's still those four levers. Yet, most companies focus only on traffic, and they miss out on the other three levers, whereas if you look at that formula and you can increase these three other levers by 30% each, which is pretty doable, then you double your revenue. And doubling your traffic sometimes it's going to be very, very hard. For me, it's sometimes a mystery why people get so stuck in a traffic mindset when there's auto levers that you can pull.
Kathleen: Well, and I think everything you just said honestly applies to, really, almost any type of business. And in fact, I just had this conversation last week. I have a weekly marketing meeting with my team, and we had been tracking traffic and conversion rates and all that stuff. But we're also tracking marketing source, pipeline and revenue. And it was really interesting meeting because I've been feeling lately like I'm beating my head against the wall trying to increase traffic. And it isn't working as quickly as I would like it to, but my marketing source revenue is really good. And so I finally said, "You know what? I'm not even going to report on traffic anymore," because, clearly, it's not a good leading indicator for what really matters. And I don't want to keep pouring a lot of time and energy into changing a number that isn't going to get us necessarily where we need to go. It's not that I'm not going to ever work on traffic anymore, but I do feel like as a marketer, I could let it really eat away at me when it doesn't need to. So I think your point is really well taken.
Kathleen: But what I want to start with on this topic is, how do you know if your conversion rates aren't good? How do you know if you're functioning in a way that there's real low-hanging fruit from conversion optimization? Because I think a lot of the marketers I've talked to in principle are fans of it. Everybody says, "Sure. We should all optimize our conversions to the greatest extent possible." But I do feel like there's this feeling out there that, well, I already have a pretty well running system, so why should I invest in that? So how do you look at your existing funnel, your existing business, and identify whether that is the right thing to invest in and when it is the right time to invest?
Joris: Yeah. That's an excellent question. I think, first of all, I've never seen a site that cannot be improved. So we've always made our clients a lot of money. You can always improve. So never assume that you're at the top of your game and you cannot improve anymore. The second thing is always look at, for me, it's Google Analytics. So look at the data and try to figure out where you're losing money. So it's really about finding those areas on your site. Maybe there's a huge drop off in a certain page. Look at bounce rates as well. If you drive a lot of traffic to a certain page with very high bounce rates, start there. So look at those numbers in Google Analytics, and that'll tell you where you have opportunities. And whenever you can, try to also put a number to it in terms of dollar value.
Joris: Let's say you have on a cart page on an e-commerce site. So you have a 50% drop off. So people reach the cart page and 50% drops off. There's always going to be drop off. But what you try to do there is, what if we can get it up to 60% going through to the checkout, so only 40% drop off? What would that represent in terms of annual revenue? Then you can look at, let's say, checkout pages and see what the drop off is there and what would be a more normal level and try to put a number to it or a dollar value to it on a yearly basis. And then you know where you have to start because if one page represents a problem that could, basically, if it's fixed, maybe you can get a $200,000 a year extra. And the other one is $1 million a year extra, you know where to start and start digging further to understand why that is happening. So we always start with where it's happening, and then you try to figure out why that is happening and try to solve that problem, basically.
Kathleen: I like how you frame this. If I look at my Google Analytics and I find a page that has a really high bounce rate, in this case, maybe it's my cart page, I've identified where. And then how do I go about identifying why? What's that process look like?
Joris: So there's different research methods that you can apply here. What I find is one of the most effective ones is user testing. So basically, you give a couple of assignments to regular people who they have to do those assignments. They have to comment out loud what they're doing. And if you're doing that remotely, you'll get a screen recording of it as well. And you see them moving through your site trying to do the assignments that you gave them, and they have to comment out loud. And it's going to give you a lot of insights. It doesn't always have to be that kind of setup. You could just ask someone random, I don't know, in a Starbucks or something and pay them for a coffee and say, "Hey, do you want to take five minutes and go over to my site and say what you think," something like that. Just try to get feedback from people who actually use the site. And that's usually going to be one of the most valuable things.
Joris: Obviously, we look at it ourselves as well. We are conversion experts, so we know what might be issues. But you always have to test it and never assume that you're right because as an expert, we sometimes get it wrong because what works on one site doesn't necessarily work on another site. And I know a lot of people don't grasp that idea. They think, oh, it should work on every site, but that's not the case. So you can look at click maps and scroll maps. You can record visitor recordings so that you see people moving through the site. So there's a bunch of research methods that you can use to get some qualitative feedback. You can also, which is very good one, is on the checkout. So basically, on a thank-you page, you can trigger a survey, ask a couple of open-ended questions so that you get valuable, qualitative feedback because that's the thing. It's not always about percentages and the hard data that you find in analytics. You have to understand the why. So the qualitative feedback is going to get you so much further than trying to look at the hard data. And you really have to try and step into the minds of your consumers. That's where tools like user testing and surveys come in and can give you very valuable insights.
Kathleen: I love those little surveys. And I know there's a lot of tools out there from Hotjar to Lucky Orange and platforms like that that you can use to create them. But I've tried using them before, and I don't get many submissions. And so I'm wondering, what is a typical survey response rate? And are there any ways to increase the odds of getting somebody to actually fill it out?
Joris: So there's two ways to do it. You can set it up before someone checks out, so before they buy. So it's visitors, not consumers, and that's different. Your response rate is going to be lower than when you do it after the checkout, for instance, or you send them an email with a questionnaire. In that case, you're going to get a lot of responses. If you trigger that Hotjar pop-up to any visitors, it's really going to depend on the quality of your traffic as well, the timing of the pop-up because I often see those pop-ups really being [inaudible 00:15:05] after five seconds. And I don't even know what you do yet, And you already asked me what your experience is on the site.
Kathleen: How long do you think it should be? Or should it be on exit?
Joris: Well, it could be an exit, for instance. If you look at the average time on site in Google Analytics, that's when you know it's probably going to be somewhat qualified visitor already. They've spent some time on the site. And I would start there and trigger it there, and then you can start playing around. Another thing that helps-
Kathleen: Wait, I just want to make sure I understand what you just said. Do you look at Google Analytics for that specific page and see how long people spend on that page or the overall session length?
Joris: Yeah, session length. So basically if you see a session length is on average one minute 27 seconds, then you trigger it at one minute 27 seconds to start with. And you'll see what happens. You'll get much better feedback also because people that bounce usually are not interested anyway. It might be a mismatch, so it's not only about the amount of responses that you get but also quality of feedback that you get. So you've got to play around with those things. And there's no one formula for that, but it's just a couple of criteria that you can use and play around with it. Another thing that you can do is ask two questions, and the first one is a yes or no question. And then the second one, you expand on that and have an open-ended question because what happens is people want to be consistent. So if they've clicked on yes or no and then you ask them a follow-up question, you'll get better feedback. More people will fill that out. So that's a good way or another way to test.
Joris: Never make it longer than that if it's one of those pop-ups before someone buys. If it's after the checkout, you can ask more questions. People will be more involved already. So I don't have a hard answer there. It should be this percentage, but you just have to try and improve what you already have. I think that's the main message here because it can vary wildly. Also, if you have a site with a lot of diehard fans and you have a good, interesting brand and a lot of brand fans, you're going to get much more response. Yeah. It's [crosstalk 00:17:19].
Kathleen: No, that's good feedback. I like the idea of looking at session length. That certainly is a little bit more scientific than just randomly picking a number of seconds. So I have a bunch of questions on this topic. So I've been in the situation before where I know I have a page that has issues, and it's that feeling of like, oh my God, where do I start? And you can certainly go to user testing, and there are other things like that. But I also know there's some gold to be mined within Google Analytics. And sometimes the issues you have have to do with devices or browsers. So how do you approach sussing out whether the issue is something that's on the page or whether it's more of a device or browser issue?
Joris: Yeah, that's an excellent question. And I think it's a matter of keep asking the right question. So when you see a number that looks off, then you have to think, oh, okay, is this only on mobile? This is on desktop as well. Is this on a specific browser? So you start checking all those reports. There's no one way to go about it. You start very high level to see if there's some numbers that seem a little bit off, and then you start digging and look at segments and apply other reports and that kind of stuff. And it's a matter of asking the right questions and being curious and really trying to figure it out. And you can spend a lot of time in Google Analytics before you find something that is off and find a reason for it.
Joris: It could be bot traffic for instance as well. If you see very high bounce rates, then you might want to look into, is it a specific browser or even a browser version causing this? Is it only on the homepage? Is all the traffic going to the home page? Do you see 98% bounce rate or 99% bounce rate? It's probably a bot. If that then comes all from one location, it's very likely it is a bot, and you have to exclude that traffic and it's just skewing your data. So you really have to keep asking questions to find the answer. And I start at high level and then dig deeper.
Kathleen: So wait, the bot traffic thing is fascinating to me. What do you do about it? How do you fix that?
Joris: Yeah. You can exclude some of the bot traffic if it's really clear. If, let's say, it's all from one particular location, you could [crosstalk 00:19:46]-
Kathleen: Meaning one IP address?
Joris: ... for instance. Yeah. You could just exclude that. Or it could be, let's say, even on an old Internet Explorer browser version, sometimes you see that it's sending bot traffic. And if you're like, oh, the only traffic that's coming in is from that bot, you could exclude that particular browser version as well. You try to find a unique identifier for that bot, and then you exclude it. Sometimes it's just impossible to do, but at least you give it a try and see if you can find one unique identifier that you can filter out.
Kathleen: And then, I've always been taught with any conversion optimization or any A/B test you only change one thing at a time. So walk me through when you're trying to really optimize a specific page. You pick one thing, and how long do you let that experiment run? Is it a matter of time? Is it a matter of volume of page visits? How do you know when that experiment is up and it's time to move to the next thing? Because I'm assuming these all layer on top of each other. You're testing multiple things sequentially, correct?
Joris: Yeah. So typically, we test on several pages at the same time. So you could have a test running on all product pages. So we don't test on one product page, but on all product pages at the same time, when I'm collections pages or category pages, one on the cart, one on checkout pages. So you could have those running simultaneously. Well, you have to have enough data before you call it. And usually, what we look for is, to make it simple, It's more complex than that, but is at least 300, 400 transactions per variation. So you need quite a bit of traffic to pull it off. And I like to or I prefer to say the number of transactions rather than in traffic because, ultimately, that's the main conversion that you're tracking. So you need at least 300, 400 transactions per variation, and you always have to let it run in increments of seven days. The reason for that is you can see a big difference. On a Thursday night conversion rate, could be totally different than on a Sunday morning. And a variation on a Thursday night could work better because it triggers something in your consumer that is relevant at that point, but it could work not so well on a Sunday morning or the other way around.
Kathleen: Right. The type of person who shops on Thursday night might be completely different behaviorally than the type of person who's shopping Sunday morning.
Joris: Absolutely. Yeah. Especially if, for instance, you're going to buy something you need on Saturday, so you need it to be delivered on Friday. Then you're going to decide a lot quicker than on Sunday morning. So there's different times of the day, different days of the week that have different conversion rates and different behavior from your consumers. So always run a test in increments of seven days. So if you have enough data after five days, sit it out. Wait until you have full seven days. If you have enough data after eight or nine days, too bad, you have to wait 14 days. We had one client where we joked about it because on Friday nights, it was always like, oh, this variation seems to be winning, and on Monday morning, it was totally flipped. So the behavior-
Kathleen: Interesting.
Joris: ... on the weekends was usually completely different there. So it's really something to do to be very strict about. And if you do this for clients and you look over your shoulder and you look in the A/B testing tool, you have to educate them on that because they're going to be like, "Yeah, but we have enough data. This version wins. Let's implement it." No. Just be calm. Let's give it some time because you don't want to implement something that ultimately ends up being a loser because then it's going to cost you money.
Kathleen: Yeah. So this is interesting to me. And I started thinking about this as you were talking because you mentioned doing something on a category page or product page, a cart page. Any given customer, and I'm not telling you anything you don't know, goes through a journey. And when they're on their path to purchase, even in an individual session, they're going to visit a lot of different pages on your site. And so I already mentioned once changing only one thing. So if you're doing an experiment on your cart page, you pick one thing to change and you test it. But how does that reconcile with the fact that a customer has this journey, they're visiting all these different pages on your site, if you have experiments running on your category page, your product page, there is a chance that that person in their single journey to purchase could encounter three different experiments at once on three different pages. It's one thing to say we're testing a change on the cart page, but if there are experiments going on three, how do you know what really led to that purchase? I feel like that's where it starts to get complicated. How many things can you have going at one time on different pages?
Joris: That's a very good question. And it's something that a lot of people struggle with. Just the easy version is as long as you equally divide the traffic for every test, there's no issue because let's say you have two tests running, one on a product page and one on a cart page. Now, 50% of your traffic is going to see the one on the cart page. No, sorry, 25% version A on the cart page. 25% is going to see version A on the product, version B on the cart. And 25% is going to see version B on the product and version A on the cart. And 25% is going to see version B and version B. So it's hard to follow and very hard to explain without a visual, but bottom line is if you divide the traffic equally, there's no issue.
Kathleen: So it basically allows you to create cohorts, and each cohort has one single experiment running for them.
Joris: Yeah. You could also double check all of that in Analytics, for instance, by making a segment. So anyone who's seen version A here, if you suspect some influence from one to the other, then you can basically make those segments in Analytics and see if there's a different behavior and a different outcome. So you could double check that. Apart from that, there's also something like a multi-page experiments. So let's say you want to test something that is on several pages at the same time. A typical one would be the navigation or the footer or a benefits bar with all those USPs you typically see on an e-commerce store. That's something that is across pages. That's not an issue either because it's very consistent across all those pages. So sometimes you want to set up a multi-page experiment as well. If someone does something on the product page and this needs to happen on the cart page, that could be an option as well. But I'm making it a bit complicated. So it really depends on what you're testing, but if it's two separate tests and you split the traffic evenly, there's no issue.
Kathleen: So as I listen to you talk about this, I'm fascinated because this is not my primary area of expertise. But I'm also a little intimidated because it's starting to sound like you, A, could potentially need to be really, really well-trained in this, and B, it sounds like it could be a complex tech stack to support this, having these multiple experiments running with different cohorts going through your site. Can you talk me through really what does it take to pull this off?
Joris: Yeah. So I think in terms of tech, if you have Google Optimize, it works perfectly fine as perfect tool to get started. It's free. We still use it a lot for a lot of our clients. There's other tools out there as well, but don't spend any money if you can do it with Google Optimize. So that's the tech side of things. For the rest, it's a matter of understanding a couple of best practices as well in terms of how to set up a test, like let them run in seven days, let them run long enough, how you need to analyze those tests. I describe all of that step-by-step in my book without making it needlessly complex because what I find myself is the whole CRO community likes to make things complicated and sound very high level and a lot of statistical stuff in there as well to make them look smart.
Kathleen: Yes. And it makes me feel really dumb.
Joris: Absolutely.
Kathleen: [crosstalk 00:28:43].
Joris: No, no. Absolutely. I think that's a mistake from CRO community because we alienate people we do this for because they don't understand it. And it is complex. There's a lot going on when you do a conversion optimization. At the end of the day, you need to know a lot about design, about copywriting, psychology. This takes research, all that kind of stuff. So it is a hard discipline to grasp, and there's a lot of misconceptions about it. And clients don't always understand it. And then on top of that, as a CRO community tend to make it look much harder than it actually is. That was one of the reasons I wanted to write my book, is make it as pragmatic as possible without... My objective was not to make me look smart but really to help people out. And usually, people in CRO community want to look smart. I had a discussion about that the other day on LinkedIn, where someone was attacking me because I didn't share all the statistical stuff behind an A/B test. And it was like, I think that's not always needed. It's about inspiration, about opening their eyes. [inaudible 00:29:55]. Obviously, that's our duty as well. But if we use all that statistical stuff around it, we scare people off. And as you said, they, they feel dumb themselves.
Kathleen: Yeah, and then they check out.
Joris: Yeah, absolutely. And we're marketeers. We say it to our clients. Hey, you have to understand your clients and speak their language, and then we don't do it ourselves. So there's a big gap there, I think, in the CRO community and a big responsibility in the CRO community as well. But most of the CROs, they just want to look smart, and that's a mistake, I think.
Kathleen: Well, I appreciate that, that you are focused on making it accessible, because I will be the first to admit that sometimes I read this stuff, and I think I just must not be smart enough to fully understand it. So I want to do a few rapid fire questions for you on this theme of debunking myths and making it more accessible to people. The first one is, and you alluded to this earlier, why should people be running A/B tests? Why can't they just read a best practice somewhere and do it on their site or look at what their competitor's doing and do it on their site?
Joris: Yeah. We see that all the time. So there's something called best practices. I prefer to call them prototypical principles or common practices because what we see is when you test the best practice on a site, it may fail and cost you money. We've seen that many, many times. So there's just no way of predicting it. Those are great way to start. If you're just starting out, use those best practices by all means. But then at some point, you'll have to start questioning is this actually working for me. And if you have the volume to the test, then you definitely should start testing it. So the word best practices is very misleading.
Joris: The second part of your question, following what anyone else is doing, that's also thinking, first of all, they know what they're doing.
Kathleen: They're right, exactly.
Joris: So you assume that. That's not true. Or you think like, oh, I know they're [inaudible 00:32:00], but then you're assuming that they've already beat us at that, which may not be the case. If it's, let's say, a call to action, maybe they haven't even tested it yet, so it may not be working. It may be a problem for them. And then you're maybe implementing problems on your site. You don't know their data. You don't know anything, and you just assume that they are doing a good job. And you just implement it. And it's very dangerous to just follow what your competitors are doing. The only situation in which you can do it for me is when you see you have a problem and there's an issue and you're looking for inspiration on how do other people solve it or go about that problem and maybe work around it, and then you start testing different solutions. So you can go out there and look for some inspiration, but don't just follow it and implement it.
Kathleen: That makes sense. Use it as the basis to inspire your tests as opposed to assuming that the test has been successful.
Joris: Absolutely.
Kathleen: So if somebody is listening and they're in e-commerce and they're thinking, okay, I'm willing to give this a shot, what are three things that you think they should start out doing A/B tests on?
Joris: Yeah. First of all, start doing the research. You'll know where your problems are. But where we often see a lot of opportunities is anything around value proposition on the homepage. If you don't have that yet, that's usually a good area to start. Then anything else that underlines your USPs, basically, and that gives people a reason to buy from you, and especially if those reasons are unique. We see a lot of value around that as well. And then what I think is usually a good place to start as well, product pages, anywhere in what I call the decision area. So anything near the picture and the button, anything you can improve there is usually also a good place to start. But product page in general usually is a place where you can make a lot of improvements.
Joris: But do the research first, and try to understand where your biggest problems are because I remember one time where working for client, and we were testing on the product pages. We just looked in Google Analytics, and we saw they had a huge drop off in one of the steps in their checkout. So they were losing millions of euros, a Dutch client, of euros a year in that step in a checkout, but didn't even know it. And they were testing a product page, which was acceptable at every product page at the time. So look at the data first. That's the best place to start.
Kathleen: So on that note, look at the data first, and you mentioned Google Analytics. We've all got it. It's the one tool I think all marketers use. At least all marketers that listen to this podcast I'm sure use it. What do you think? If we're going to rely on the data there, we better be looking at it correctly. Are there certain mistakes that you find that marketers make when looking through Google Analytics that somebody should be aware of if they're listening?
Joris: Yeah. I think a lot of people focus on the wrong data. So focus on those data that are actionable and [inaudible 00:35:06] metrics. What I would say as some test if you're looking at the right data, always ask yourself, how can I use this to improve my site or my marketing? How can I use this number to improve it? If it's time on site, for instance, you can use that to trigger a Hotjar pop-up, but that's about it. If time on site increases, it could be that people have a harder time to find what they're looking for. So you can not really use that metric. Yet, some people look at that metric. So ask yourself that question. I think that helps because what I find is that most people don't have a lack of data. There's not a lack of data but lack of insights. And they get overwhelmed by the amount of data and analytics, and they don't really know where to look. And so we always ask the question, how can I use that? And if you don't have an answer, then don't use those data.
Kathleen: Yeah. Your point is so good about session length and time on site. It seems like it would be good to increase it, but it's true. If somebody is frustrated and not finding what they want, they could have a long time on site or, what I find often happens, if they're a job seeker and they're reading all of your content. I'm in B2B SaaS, and the DIYers, the ones who are never going to buy from you, but they're like, I'm going to read all the educational content so that I know how to do this myself, those are the people that spend a lot of time on site, whereas somebody who comes in knowing they want to buy often has a very short time on site because they're high intent, going right to your contact us page and filling it out.
Kathleen: And it's funny because I used to look at this too when I had my agency. We would try to look at patterns of people who bought from you, how many pieces of content did they consume, thinking, gosh, is there some rule where if somebody consumes more than 30 pieces of content, then they're a good lead? And I found actually it was almost like the inverse was true, that the customers that were converting consume very little content on site because they came in ready to buy. So it's really interesting, And I do think you have to question the assumptions that you have as a marketer before you go and try to implement changes. Well, last question on conversion because I am just curious. What is a good conversion rate? And I guess we'll talk about e-commerce because that's where your expertise is.
Joris: Yeah. Absolutely. And it's a question I get a lot. And the only right question is a good conversion rate is one that's better than last month's. Just look at yourself because there's I know there's benchmarks out there, and people always want to look at benchmarks. But that doesn't really help you. Benchmarks usually you mention it's 2%, 2.2%, but it depends on so many variables.
Kathleen: And is that for a visitor to purchase conversion?
Joris: Yeah, yeah.
Kathleen: Okay.
Joris: Yeah. But it doesn't mean anything. If your average order value is $20 and you have a 3% conversion rate, you might think based on a benchmark that you're doing all right. But I would say your site probably sucks because it's only $20 average order value. You could probably get it up to six, eight or maybe even higher. And so you could be complacent about it. Whatever. It's 3%. I'm doing good. Whereas if your average order value is $1,000 and you're a 2%, yes, then you're probably doing pretty good. Or you might be at 1% and thinking, oh, I should be improving a lot. I can easily go to 2%, maybe more. [inaudible 00:38:46] a little bit difficult to get to 2%, but you could probably get it to 1.2%, 1.5%, and it could be a lot of money as well. So there's a whole bunch of factors out there, also the quality of the traffic that you drive to your site. So I would suggest don't pay too much attention to benchmarks. And I get it. People want to have an idea. Am I doing all right or not? But basically, just look at your conversion rate from the past and try to improve that. The only good conversion rate is one that's better than last month's.
Kathleen: That's great advice. All right. We're going to shift gears because I can talk with you about this forever, and I feel like I'm getting a masterclass here. But I have two questions I always ask my guests. And I'm just curious about your viewpoints on this. The first is, of course, this podcast is focused on inbound marketing, and the definition of inbound has evolved quite a bit. And so I really look at it as anything you're doing to attract the right type of customer to your business. So when you think of it that way, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really raising the bar or setting a great standard for what it means to be an inbound marketer today?
Joris: Yeah. I think there's a couple of marketers that I follow and I look at. I tend to follow people more than brands. And you could say they're brands, so all their personal brands. I think when it comes to anything B2B on LinkedIn Marketing, I very much follow Matthew Hunt. He's doing a great job in anything small business marketing and startup marketing related. I really look up to Noah Kagan from AppSumo. Makes great YouTube stuff and great videos, and you just keep binge watching them. And he has a great style but also great advice. And when it comes to e-commerce, there's two people. I tend to follow Ryan Daniel Moran and Ezra Firestone. I think Ezra Firestone, he does a lot of inbound marketing the right way. And he experiments a lot and invests a lot of money in trying new techniques and then sharing those findings with his audience. I think Ryan Daniel Moran is really good in terms of building e-commerce brands and making it less complex because we tend to over-complicate things, and he makes it less complex and helps you focus on what really matters.
Kathleen: Oh, interesting. I'll have to check those out. Those are some new ones for me. All right, second question. The marketers I've talked to consistently say that one of their biggest pain points is just keeping up with everything that's changing in the world of digital marketing. How do you personally stay educated? Are there certain sources of information that you really rely on to stay on top of your game?
Joris: Yeah, it's hard to stay on top of the game. Fortunately, in conversion optimization, it's pretty evergreen. New things emerge, new tools, for instance. And obviously, you want to follow all of that. But if you look at a global digital marketing game, it changes every single day. And there's a lot of marketeers that suffer from shiny object syndrome, I guess. And you see something, you want to try it out, whereas I believe that you got to be consistent and try to find what works and give it a real shot because don't try it just today and then give up tomorrow. Sometimes you have to make a choice and stick with it for a while. So I suffer from that myself, shiny object syndrome. So I try to stay away from too many things that distract me from the real path that I want to walk on.
Joris: I think in terms of getting new trends, LinkedIn is my source of information. If my network shares, it's probably going to be worth reading. So that's where I spend most of my time, is on LinkedIn. And that's where I discover. And then when I see there's a topic that really is important to go deeper, I just buy a course or read a book. So I stay away from too many blog posts because it's so fragmented. You don't know who wrote it. You don't know if they know what they're doing. And when it comes to courses, I think CXL Institute is a really good source of high quality courses. So that's where I look first as really... Yeah, CXL for me is benchmark when it comes to marketing courses.
Kathleen: Well, I am a huge fan of Peep Laja, so I definitely agree with that. He was an early guest on the podcast too, and he's doing great work and, in fact, when it comes to message testing has a really neat new platform called Winter, W-I-N-T-E-R, that if you're listening and you haven't checked it out, you should, for sure.
Joris: Yeah, absolutely. For B2B, it's a great tool.
Kathleen: Yeah. I found it really useful in my experiments. Actually, it's funny. I recently interviewed Chris Walker from Refine Labs, and he talked about how at a certain point in your career, you really can't rely on outside educational materials to stay on top of your game. At some point, it has to be about doing your own experiments and doing the work and testing. And so I feel like as somebody in the field of conversion optimization, you have a leg up because that's literally what you do for a living. So that's great. Well, if somebody is listening and they're interested in connecting with you or learning more, what's the best way for them to find you online?
Joris: Yeah. So on LinkedIn, I'm pretty active there. So just to add me on LinkedIn. And then you can also email me, joris@dexter.agency. And if you want to learn about this yourself, you can download the free PDF version of my... You could buy it on Amazon, but you can download a free PDF version on dexter.agency/free-book. And there, you can get a free PDF version of the book. If you want to get started yourself, just check a few things, like what are best practices about A/B testing, what we talked about. So that's all in there.
Kathleen: That's great. And I will put those links in the show notes. So if you're listening and you're interested in connecting with Joris or getting a copy of the book, just head there, and you can hit the links and get all of that information. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, you learned something new, please consider heading to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice and leaving a review. That's how other folks find us. And, of course, if you know somebody doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @WorkMommyWork because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you for joining me, Joris. This was so interesting.
Joris: Thanks for having me. It was great to be here.
When it comes to multi-location or franchise marketing, the key is balancing centralized brand control with hyper-local marketing.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Wild Coffee Marketing co-founder Amy Anderson explains how her team approaches managing the marketing strategies for some of the countries biggest franchise brands.
From working with Franchise Advisory Councils (FACs) to leveraging technology to deploy consistent marketing messages across geographically distant franchise locations, Amy shares insider tips and insights on how her team helps franchises achieve their growth goals.
Check out the full episode to get the details. (Transcript has been edited for clarity.)
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the Wild Coffee Marketing website
- Connect with Amy on LinkedIn
- Check out Propellant Media and Strategus to learn more about geofencing
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I am your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Amy Anderson, who is the co-founder of Wild Coffee Marketing. Welcome to the podcast, Amy.
Amy (00:24): Thank you so much for having me, Kathleen. I'm super excited to be here.
Kathleen (00:27): This is going to be a ton of fun because we're going to talk about something we have not talked about yet on this podcast, which now that we're almost 200 episodes in is, it's pretty rare. So I always get really excited about these episodes. But before we jump into our discussion topic, tell my audience a little bit about yourself, what Wild Coffee Marketing is and kind of how you ended up doing what you're doing.
Amy (00:50): Well, I can't believe it's been almost 30 years of a marketing career that went by very, very quickly. And I actually started in the media business in New York right after college, I moved there and I worked at 17 Magazine and I loved the pace of it. You know what, 21 year old woman does not want to work at 17 for a bit, but I had a really hard struggle with the accountability and the performance of print bothered me back then. And so I ended up in broadcast actually at Calvin Klein cosmetics, where I was managing $70 million of co-op funds for radio and television. And I love that we at least had Nielsen data, right? So at least we understood audience and then pure play internet media came on. Right? So in the mid nineties and I worked at the New York times digital, I was part of the original group that had launched with my times.com and that was gated content, right?
Amy (01:41): So you had to register, you still do, and now it's paid, right? So that was my first foray into sort of personalized content, registration, data, user data. And I've sort of been obsessed with it ever since. And running marketing departments then and B2B and tech and financial services. So I stayed home for a few years raising my young sons. And when I went back into the market, I would have had to have a really sort of senior job at that point. Cause it had been 20 plus years and I wanted the flexibility to be able to raise my young kids and started consulting. And I joined forces with my former boss who is now my business partner, Solomon Wancier. And we founded Wild Coffee Marketing, knowing that there is a place in this market for sort of this hybrid model, right part consulting firm and part agency. So we're very heavy on sort of strategy and advisory services, but we also implement what we recommend or we can. And it's been a really great three and a half years so far.
Kathleen (02:41): I have a bunch of questions, the first one, and I'm sure you've gotten this many times in the past. How did you come up with the name Wild Coffee?
Amy (02:50): Well, I was living in Miami for 17 years and an area called Coconut Grove where you'd have to like knock back all the weeds and foliage with. I mean, it is jungley and there's a native plant called Wild Coffee that grew all over my property and it was hardy and beautiful and sort of energetic plant that was hard to keep back and it attracts birds and butterflies and bees. And I was sitting in my office one day and I said, you know, if I ever form a company it's going to be called Wild Coffee. And it's been a lot of fun for us because it has a lot of fun brand extensions that we are able to work with.
Kathleen (03:25): Yeah, that's neat. I had to sort of chuckle when you talked about Nielsen ratings being the thing that got you into being like a data-driven marketer, because wasn't it, I feel like in the last two months, Nielsen has come under fire for mismeasuring just recently. And it's just, it just points to like how far this stuff has come in that time period. Like in a short amount of time, the way we measure has gotten so much more sophisticated and we're able to have such a higher degree of accuracy. It's, it's pretty fascinating to me to, to track. Are you still doing a lot in broadcast now or no?
Amy (04:03): They're doing some OTT actually the over the top for one of our actual multi location franchise clients and that, you know, I always preface it when I'm at a cocktail party or at a meeting or speaking to a group and you have to sort of say, I know the creepy factor is there that we're kind of continuing your journey from the internet into broadcast in your home, but there's also no sort of margin for error anymore with tracking right there last, you know, last attribution and things like that, that you can't be wrong. So when Nielsen comes on their fire for things like that, it's just, it's unacceptable at this point. Yeah. We're expected to be accurate all the time. Well,
Kathleen (04:39): And I also feel like, yes, there are a lot of people out there who, who complained vocally about being tracked and all that. But I've had a lot of conversations recently, recently, especially since apple started doing a way with, you know, cookies and things like that, where people are saying, I kind of want to be tracked because I want the ads I see to be relevant. Like I was joking with somebody who said, you know, my advice to all the men out there was get your mother's day presents before apple, deprecates the cookie, because all you have to do is go look in their feed and see everything they like, and that's not going to be there anymore. And so it is interesting that I think there are people who, who it's, we're very divided as a society in terms of what we want.
Amy (05:23): I agree. And you want things to be personalized and relevant, but there's a price that comes with that. You know, some of the geo-fencing that we're doing. I mean, I'll tell when we have multi location, highly localized marketing that I know if you've been in Orange Theory or Publix in a shopping center and it's highly effective for us in some ways, but I understand sort of the creepy factor of it, but at least I'm going to serve you something that makes sense to you.
Kathleen (05:49): So let's actually get into that a little bit because the topic that we're talking about that we haven't talked about before is multi location or franchise marketing, you know, and we've talked about probably every aspect of marketing in some way or the other for single businesses or single locations. But it's very interesting to me when you start talking about franchises because not only are we talking about multi location, but with franchises specifically, we're really talking about multi owner as well. And like, how do you craft marketing programs that, that are manageable with such a broad constituency for them, but then also protect the integrity of the core brand. I'm fascinated by that, because this is the kind of thing that if it's not managed correctly could like really do a lot of damage.
Amy (06:39): We talk about the rogue franchisee, right? So that's a thing. It's interesting for us. It's fascinating because it is a, it's like, it almost is a marketing program that has tension in it, right? So you have the corporate roles, which is, you know, brand, getting new franchisors franchisors on board, multi unit location investors. So you have this sort of corporate aspect and then you have this theory sort of hyper localized and they have different goals, right. So one is brand value, equity, consistency of message. Growth. And then at the local level, it's like, okay, that's all really nice and well in science, baby, give me the leads. Yeah, exactly.
Amy (07:27): Meets the road for sure. Absolutely. And it's two totally different strategies. So how do you bridge that? And I think you have to have two disparate programs. I mean, there has to be a corporate marketing team of corporate marketing focus and plan that may be PR, right? So we have, one of our clients has a hundred plus locations. They recently hired a celebrity, sort of endorsed her, but he bought 20 locations. So what do you do with that and him and PR at a corporate level, but then how do you make that translate into local markets? And one is that we use pretty sophisticated technology and platforms to push whatever we want at a corporate level, to the local level. So we'll say, Hey, you can pick from all this social content in this platform that we use, but we're also going to push some things and you have to be okay with that because there are certain messages that have to trickle down, but otherwise we're going to give you evergreen and promotional content that you can pull.
Kathleen (08:19): And I assume that that's all baked into the franchise agreements so that the framework is there from the start.
Amy (08:27): Yes. And we actually have another client that has a hundred corporate owned locations, right? So that's a little easier because they're corporate owned, you have more flexibility. Franchises usually will even have a council, right. They call it the FAC and those people are representing interests of the individual franchises. So you've got this local strategy, delivering leads, putting together that sort of program. And then they come to you as a group with, okay, this is what we need to have you do to improve this. So it's just a lot of sort of moving parts, a lot of dynamics and you have to be super flexible and focused on performance and focus on overall growth at the same time of the actual brand.
Kathleen (09:06): And it's interesting because prior to my life in marketing, I actually worked in what I would call stakeholder consensus building for, for large public sector reform projects. And it was about building up grassroots support at the ground level so that these projects could like could, could go through their life cycle without getting derailed essentially by opposition. And I feel like what you just described is exactly also that, because like, if you, from what I'm hearing, if you go into this and you haven't got the, not just the buy-in of corporate, who I'm assuming is your customer, but then you don't take the time to really socialize what you're, what you're going to do with the franchisees, or at least this CA this council of representatives, then that's going to cause a lot of problems down the road. Is that accurate?
Amy (09:52): That's absolutely accurate. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's representing lots of different interests showing performance results, you know? Yes. The corporate, the corporate group and the C-suite is our client, but we also care very deeply about these people who in many cases have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars. They're small business owners, right? So maybe 41 of our clients, all the locations are owned by 48 people out of 110. So some have multiple, but we really care about what happens. And I think you've probably seen this over the years in B2B marketing and in marketing, if you don't love and care about your salespeople and their experience and their needs, you will never be successful. And that's sort of the case here that I see that they have they're with customers in store, they have their own set of challenges, especially in COVID. Right. So I just think that sort of empathetic approach to those people and delivering their needs is a foundation for a lot of our strategy.
Kathleen (10:53): So now, in terms of how you work with these companies, you said often corporate is your client, is that right? Yes. And are you doing the corporate marketing and, and some of the PR as well as the actual local marketing, or are they bringing you in to take on the local piece?
Amy (11:10): That is a really good question. It depends, in some cases we will actually manage the localized digital agency. That's doing lead generation for a fee per location. So they'll be doing sort of local paid digital. And then we handle it, the corporate level SEO overall all of the PR and then social media usually, although, you know, that's sort of the agreement that you have is okay, please, because really sort of genuine engagement at the local level is super important. So go ahead and create your own social, but we are going to provide you a library to supplement that. And then we're also going to push things to your page sometimes, cause that's really important too. So it's sort of creating this hybrid model of that and we love managing the localized agencies cause they're typically very good at what they do. Franchises usually get a choice of three to four to work with.
Kathleen (12:06): Interesting. So when you come into a new client, walk me through how you break it down because this feels like, like eating an elephant. I hate that analogy, but I'm going to use it anyway. Like you've got to do it one bite at a time. And so there, cause there is a lot that could be done here. So, so how do you, do you have like a mental model for how you tackle this?
Amy (12:28): Absolutely. I mean, any engagement that we start with always has a positioning, right? So we all use April Dunford and work with her. You know, we love all, I love her too. So we all sort of have that foundational work that we do with the brand, right? So you have to identify who all your personas are, what matters to them. And once you mobilize all of that in the positioning, we usually start with corporate, understand the growth targets, understand what's worked, what hasn't, where they're trying to go. We have a client now that's trying to go from one 20 to 240 locations. They are a stretching gym and they have had zero problems after COVID, which is incredible. I think people are ready to be out and wellness is very important to all of us. So really sort of working at the corporate level and then going in and looking at their funnel, right? So what's the awareness phase, what's consideration and conversion, and then starting to deploy local strategies on top of that, for example, we know 97% of consumers engage in local search when working, looking for a local business, right? So what do those Google My Business pages look like? What is happening with all their directories? And imagine all the directories times a hundred locations, the scalability is tremendous. So you have to have a centralized sort of command center to start doing that.
Kathleen (13:49): And are there any particular tools that you find really helpful? I mean, I know I've used like some rushes, local SEO bolt-on there's Yext there's there used to be Moz local. I don't even know if it's still exists anymore. Like, are there certain platforms that you've found to be really scalable for that?
Amy (14:06): Absolutely. We use Yext for some of our bigger sort of enterprise clients for that we're actually using a platform called Soci. So I don't know if you've heard of them. They're meant for multi location marketing, they offer the localized local pages, directory pages, social. So when I talk about creating those folders, pushing social app chat, we use them for, and really what's been super helpful recently is reviews. So right. So up to maybe 30 to 40 locations of a business, you can do a lot of things manually. You get to 50 plus, and that's where the scalability sort of shifts at a hundred. Plus you, you have to, so to look at reviews across a hundred locations has been super interesting. You get an sort of scale of sentiment, right? So you can see how's my, how, how am I? How's the health of all my locations?
Amy (14:58): That visibility is really important. And then what we've seen, we actually have a formal ware client with a hundred locations rolling up in a single brand and that starting to happen. I'm in the middle quarter of the US. And you know, there's a lot with prom emerging. We're coming out of COVID massive mandates lifted. All of a sudden problems are happening. My son has a mock prom this weekend. It's sort of a fake one, but they're all going. And we're starting to see individual sort of tuxedo, formal wear specialists who are like rock stars in the market. So even helps you see visibility down to who likes whom and what stores and how can we surface that into social media content with like Tufts tips with Terry and things like that. That really give you three content ideas when you're actually looking at reviews and things on those pages. So tell
Kathleen (15:48): Me, you said Soci. Tell me how that's spelled.
Amy (15:51): S O C I.
Kathleen (15:53): Okay. Interesting.
Amy (15:54): Soci.com to look that up, but we work with them on, on several different deployments and it's just been really effective in helping us scale.
Kathleen (16:03): It makes sense because it does sound like you would need a specialized program, rather platform for this. You talk about pushing updates out to different accounts and you know, I, I owned an agency for 11 years and, and boy, I remember the, when you first start working with brands, how, how terrified they are to give you you know, control over social, especially. And so what does that look like? Is it, is it complete control where you're able to come up with the creative and send it out? And as I imagine, then there's a process to get there with the trust or is it you're coming up with the creative, sending it to corporate, having it vetted and then pushing it into the system? Like what, how do you, how do you handle that?
Amy (16:48): It's sort of a hybrid model. I think with that, you know, the local stores or local locations or studios, you know, whatever you're working with, really, they should be doing their own social media. We don't want know, say a restaurant chain came to us and wanted to do social. I mean, imagine us trying to take, you know, it just doesn't work as well. That'd be boring, it'd be stale. It feels corporate, right? So there's a lot of, a lot of, sort of in-store in boutique things that have to happen. We did launch associated with one of our clients and we did have an approval place process in place because there were some rogue Zs as we call them. And there were a lot of sort of off-brand graphics being used, maybe language and copy that wasn't quite on brand. And so we had it going through an approval process.
Amy (17:37): We were, we were looking at posts, approving or giving feedback or suggestions. And then once that trust started to build, and once we started to push content out, then sort of that trust loop was closed. We stopped approving. That's great. Okay. You guys can fly on your own. And then we give them good content with good folders promotions, and it's all organized. And so she said they can pull down and then super important sort of corporate wide announcements, then they're like, okay. Yeah, that's interesting. You can go ahead and push it. So it's really trusting each other. And then everybody gets more comfortable.
Kathleen (18:11): It's so important because I mean, having done this for several years and worked with different types of clients, like the, to me, the biggest problem with, with really succeeding on social very often is speed. Like you have to be able to capitalize on something's happening in the world and you, you comment on it or a trend pops up, you know, like I think back to the Bernie Sanders meme with him in the chair and the mittens and like the worst thing was when people were posting that a month later as though it was news and it's like, no,
Amy (18:40): Three days, even three days later it was sort of done. Right? I feel like it peaked with the one of him on Melania's dress. There were so many good ones. Oh my gosh. But yeah.
Kathleen (18:52): I mean, if you, because I worked with a lot of financial services firms and everything had to go through compliance and there came a point where it was like, why bother? You know, like if you can't move fast, it's not worth doing right.
Amy (19:04): Well Matthew McConaughey was on Jimmy Kimmel talking about Al's former lawyer and we had a post in 45 minutes. So, I mean, that's how timely, I mean, even big days it makes you irrelevant sometimes. And you're absolutely right. That the speed is important. We are on it like that. And something came up recently about one of our clients was like, well, should I have one social media person in-house, you know, and named a very low salary level. And I said, that's so interesting that CEOs think that interns do social when it is your most visible right. Potentially vulnerable and most on-brand things you have to do. So, you know, we do have an in-house director of brand strategy who does social, she's a brilliant writer, PR crisis management background. You can't just throw that at, at a, you know, an entry-level person on your team and expect that it's going to really fly.
Kathleen (20:03): Absolutely. And I think a lot of people confuse young with inexperienced. Cause there are, there are definitely a lot of young people who like, naturally get social really well. But there's a difference between young and understand social, but has no good judgment and young and understand social and how to use it for business, like, and the young and understand social and how to use it for business as the one who like gets paid the big bucks.
Amy (20:29): And they're hard to find. They're a little Unicorny and this market we're always on the lookout for them. Because it's hard to scale that part of the business. Being in the agency world, you know this.
Kathleen (20:41): And throw in sense of humor. And they're like the unicorn of unicorns.
Amy (20:44): Well now we have short form video content, but if you get wrong, get really, really wrong, you know, and it's an area that we're ramping up more than more. I mean, I'm, I'm advanced in my career. You say Tik Tok to me and I start to sweat, you know, I look at my teenagers and I'm like, don't worry. Mom's not going back.
Kathleen (21:01): I know I'm like, I've, I've, I've given it up on Tik TOK. And honestly I have to be on a Snapchat too. Like I just can't, I don't have the, I don't have the energy, but I also don't have to because I market B2B software. So luckily it doesn't hurt my career. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, so let's talk a little bit about the hyper-local marketing because this thing it gets really interesting. And what I find fascinating about this is I think that franchise companies do do this really well because they're like able to do it at a micro level, but at scale. And so they have that experience to bring to bear, but everything they do is so applicable to other hyperlocal businesses that maybe just don't have the same experience and resources. And so I, I love this topic because I feel like if you own a local business and you really want to kill it, you can, if you're willing to put some effort into this area. And so I'm hoping that like, we're going to cover this and yes, there might be some, some things that like are out of reach for somebody who's local, but I also think there's going to be a lot of really good takeaways.
Amy (22:04): Let's absolutely, I mean, the areas that we look at right first Google My Business. What does your local listing look like? I mean, that is your, the cornerstone of your digital footprint in search.
Kathleen (22:15): Are you keeping it updated because especially during COVID, this became really obvious to me that there were people who maybe had taken the time to set up really good listings, but then didn't update them with their new COVID hours or protocols or what have you. And that there's nothing more annoying than going someplace to patronize whether that's a restaurant or another type of a business and showing up and they're closed.
Amy (22:39): Absolutely. And in images in your Google My Business listing people sort of overlook that it's good to change them. Right. And we recently did a big, a hundred locations push of directory listing content. And we did not override the photos on the local level because again, it needs to have, even if the storefront is not the most beautiful glossy sort of aligned with corporate brand that you would want, it's still the base of the store and that's what people are looking for and it's theirs. So that's that balance. We talk about Mary with that. What we also I think is really important is what is your review program of a local business? Are you asking for them, are you responding to them? And that's another aspect that Soci gives us. We can look across a hundred locations, how long it's taking someone to respond to a review.
Kathleen (23:28): So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what you've seen work well, as far as asking for them, because I think that that is where a lot of businesses stumble is they either they're not asking or the way they're asking is sort of doomed to failure. So, so what's successful in this area?
Amy (23:45): I definitely think a follow up email if you have that customer data, right? Texts will work also if you have a platform installed. But I think asking in a subtle way that really leaves it up to them. You know, if you liked what you got from us in this location, we'd love for you to let us know. And then there are platforms grade us we've used grade.us where it enables you to ask for them, you have your own sort of landing page for them. But I, I think multiple asks is probably not the way you want to go. Right. Ask ones, leave it up to them. And then, and then go from there.
Kathleen (24:22): Is there a point in time or place when it's most impactful? And what I would equate this to is, you know, like you're in the grocery store, you're going to check out and if they, whatever food they seem to put in the checkout aisle is what flies off the shelves because you're stuck standing there and it's like, you're about to hand over your cash. Right. It wouldn't hurt to just take that pack of gum. So is, are there points in time or place with local businesses, whether that is, I mean, you mentioned email and I'm assuming that's immediate post-purchase, but if it's more of a physical interaction, is it like slipping something in their bag if it's retail or, you know, putting it on the receipt? I know, I know lots of places do that. Like what, what works well now?
Amy (25:03): I think in store, it's definitely having that conversation there. I think that's okay to say it was really nice to meet you. And I'm so glad you were here putting a personal note on a receipt. Absolutely. Sometimes. I was on an a flight recently and I flew to Seattle and actually the flight attendant gave me a card with his name on it and said, and you can review him too as well. And that's the first time I've had something like that where I've had a flight attendant. Yeah. Solicit that. So I think it's more immediate and it's conversational when, when they're in store for sure. Email wise. Yeah. I like the 24 hours sort of the same as the abandoned cart cadence that we love, which is 24, 48 72 that we put typically will email with an abandoned cart.
Kathleen (25:48): So, and then you mentioned responding, which I hope everybody, I think everybody out there listening, because I do tend to have a fairly sophisticated audience, knows that like you gotta respond. You gotta are you
Amy (26:00): Surprised? Well, cause they're also in store, right? In many cases right now there's a lot happening, right. We're transitioning out of this period in time of business and they're busy and they're making sales, but this is a really important part. So that's almost like a corporate process and culture and educating them on the importance of it. We're doing a lot of just sort of screen-sharing videos for them because they're using associates, well, training them, communicating the importance and the impact of their business, how it helps them in a positive way. And maybe there's a little bit of that. Oh wow. Now I hate to say corporate right. Or home office or, but the reality is, that's what it is. They can actually see what we're doing a little bit more easily. Right. So I wonder if that creates a little bit more of a sense of urgency and I don't think that's a bad thing. It's not an over monitoring. It's Hey, we're here to support you and help you create a better customer experience.
Kathleen (26:54): Well, and it's all about also taking the high road when you respond. Because I mean, I've had restaurant clients in the past and I've seen firsthand just how heinous people can be in reviews. And sometimes it's because they had a bad experience and sometimes it's because like their friend used to wait tables there and didn't like getting fired for stealing something. You know, it can be anything, but I, you know, I think you have to, there's an art to responding to these things and not like going on the attack back at somebody.
Amy (27:24): Absolutely. We actually can put responses like that in the platform for them so they can see like five issues. We can have canned responses and groups of five, right. So we give them so much content to sort of help them along the way there too, which has been really helpful to them.
Kathleen (27:40): That's good. All right. So let's talk about geo-fencing because you mentioned that and I'm fascinated by it and that technology has changed so much. So how do you tell
Amy (27:50): We actually we'll use a couple of third-party platforms, which I am not as familiar with them as my team is. But I know when we first started about two years ago, the response rates with click-through and leads were really low and I'm seeing a big change in that. So recently we launched a campaign that had a 2% conversion rate on geo-fencing and we're actually fencing the area around the stretch gym locations. And it's super fun. Cause you can offer them an offer. You can give an offer. We usually tie a sense of urgency to it. It's in app with things that they're using. And so I think it's sort of come a long way with that in that way. And we're having a lot of success with it at the super local level. We've also done some trade shows too in the B2B world. I don't know if you've done any geo-fencing that way where you'll fence the convention center.
Kathleen (28:42): I have not. So talk to me more, what platforms are you using also? Cause this is super interesting.
Amy (28:51): I do not know which one they're using right now. And they're, I know there are two, so it's, I I'd have to ask them.
Kathleen (28:58): I'll tell you what, if you follow up with me afterwards, I will put it in the show notes.
Amy (29:03): Thank you. And they'll probably, they're all, they'll probably be listening like oh great. But she doesn't remember and it's put through.
Kathleen (29:09): Well, we can't be expected to know everything that the teams are doing.
Amy (29:11): So did you know that I had a conversation recently about how wide we're expected to go and how deep now is, you know, just the number of platforms alone we use are probably over 15, but we, yeah, we had a medical device client at a dental show and we were sending people to the booth by fencing the convention center. And then we're also doing it sort of at a hyper-local with competitive fitness centers, trying to get people interested in wellness to do a free stretch. So that's where we've seen some really good lead forms. And it just really, as, as marketers and we just talked about how data has to be accurate performance is critical for us as outsource marketing teams. And so you have to be bold to try different things and be really sort of creative, courageous about it. And I think that the geo-fencing is one area that we're going to start going down a lot more.
Kathleen (30:05): How does the cost per acquisition for geo-fencing compared to traditional pay-per-click? Is it more? Less?
Amy (30:11): It's around the same.
Kathleen (30:12): Okay. Oh, that's great. Because I do feel like traditional pay-per-click is getting harder, you know, with cookie deprecation.
Amy (30:20): Well we just went through an election cycle. Right. So now we've gotten much more astute at really sort of looking at budgets around major life sort of events times of the year, managing expectations with that. And cost sometimes are going up five times at certain parts of the year.
Kathleen (30:37): Yeah. During the election cycle, during the holiday season, when it gets more competitive. Absolutely. Everyone's like, well it's like half the year now, like Amazon prime day, I feel like it's like four months before Christmas. I don't know what happened, but it starts in August or even sometimes July.
Amy (30:55): It's like 4th of July is going right into Halloween now.
Kathleen (31:00): So depressing, like don't start releasing things that are flavored like pumpkin until after the summer is over.
Amy (31:04): Although I do, I love my pumpkin spice memes that come around in the fall.
Kathleen (31:08): Yes. so I there's so many different aspects to this. Maybe you could just share, and I don't know if you can talk about specific clients or not. It doesn't really matter if you name names, but can you just give us a sense of like what kinds of results you've you've seen and, and what, what has driven those?
Amy (31:24): Sure, sure. What, what has been most remarkable is the increase in social traffic and that's something we didn't anticipate. Right. So before COVID to after COVID, so we have these two sort of worlds, we don't even look at things versus 19 versus 20 quarter over quarter with this client is sort of pre COVID post COVID, right.
Kathleen (31:43): BC and AC, right?
Amy (31:46): Right. We actually saw a 36% increase in social referral traffic. And what I think has happened is I know that these locations, as much as they want that autonomy of posting, they're also starving for content. So in many cases it was probably infrequent, not optimized. You can set when we're going to post right. And optimize in that way. But now we're just seeing engagement rates go up and actually referral traffic has really increased a lot, which has been great. And I mentioned before with our formal where client really surfacing content ideas and creating like mini rock stars of people out in the field has been super effective and just bringing to life the brand.
Kathleen (32:32): Do you see a trend across the content that you push out where anything that's user-generated seems to perform better?
Amy (32:40): Well, because we're in bridal.
Kathleen (32:42): I'm sure it depends too though. Like there's that user-generated content.
Amy (32:47): But do you know, just the time that it takes to review UGC is, is pretty significant, right? So our social team, I mean, I'm sure they time block UGC time. Right. And so it takes a lot of time, but it performs really well. It's authentic. Right. Which when we talk about sort of brand voice and trends in 2021 and what's happening, I think people, I don't, I don't want to say that they're cynical, but they're going to see through sort of glossy corporate materials. And I think to be genuine is really important and you could see sort of it connects with them better. They can identify with it a lot better.
Kathleen (33:24): You can see yourself in the advertising much more than you can with stock photos or really slickly produced things.
Amy (33:30): Yeah. Stock photos, right. The necessary evil that we all sort of try to run from and find different ways. And, and I was recently in a meeting with a commercial, actually they do residential, mostly mortgage lender. And I looked at the CEO, they just did a $10 million round and they're taking off and, and struggling with scalability because I said, you know, it was really, I empathized with them. It's really hard to be a financial services CEO and have to be a publisher. And just for them to be able to keep up with the volume and the engaging nature of it. So when you're in a market that has a lot of user generated content, you're really lucky. Bridal is fantastic.
Kathleen (34:14): Oh, I was going to say, I mean, it's, like I said, I'm in B2B software and I used to be in cybersecurity, which is the worst industry for UGC because nobody wants to even say like what solution they're using. So you can't even get testimonials and case studies there. So I'm very jealous.
Amy (34:33): Well, especially with brides, right. And all looking to be the most original, I mean, it's sort of the Instagram bride, right? It's not even in Pinterest anymore. These brides are all on Instagram and they're very generous in the industry with tagging each other. And they're so they're so much of it that it's as, as a formal wear supplier or a bridal designer, we have a bride designer client in New York. It's just, it's so helpful to us in social for sure.
Kathleen (34:57): Oh, I love that. Well, I feel like I could talk to you for hours about this. But we're going to switch gears because I want to make sure I squeeze in the two questions that I always ask my guests. So the first one is, is that this podcast of course is about inbound marketing. And so like naturally attracting the right buyers to you. Is there a particular company or individual out there that you think is really setting the standard for what it means to do that well right now?
Amy (35:19): Well one of our values is always learning and as marketers, we have to be all the time. So I really follow a lot of our software providers that we work with. Because even yesterday we were talking about AI and how we're deploying it, how we're using it to optimize of our digital campaigns. And I have to say, I love Unbounce. They have just a lot of sort of reminder content. I consider it that's a little bit more surface and then they get really in depth. And then if you're a landing page company, I want to see what your landing pages look like all the time. You know, they really do. And there are standard for us and I really love to see always what Uber and Lyft are doing. I think they have, hyper-personalized sort of content it's very specific to your location. How they've ate, been able to sort of do that at a hyper-local level. Has been really interesting example for me to follow and watch for sure.
Kathleen (36:16): I love that. Well fun fact, Oli Gardner, who is the CEO of Unbounce or at least he was at the time I interviewed him was one of my first, probably 30 guests on the podcast. Great guy.
Amy (36:29): He's great. They're so smart.
Kathleen (36:32): Yeah. all right. Second question. And I really can't wait to hear this answer because you said you, one of your values is always learning. And the biggest pain point I hear from marketers is that it's so hard to keep up with the changing world of digital marketing. So what are your personal like go-to sources that you use to stay on top of what's happening?
Amy (36:52): Absolutely. So I find that LinkedIn is, has become my New York Times. Right. I love the New York Times. I have subscribed since the mid nineties, when I worked there, I did get a free paper every day when we worked on New York Times digital. So LinkedIn is sort of my news source. So my new my, where I go for all of my news, I love Reforge, I've got a lot of great stuff there and we actually for business management, we use a system called EOS. I don't know if you know, entrepreneurial operating system.
Kathleen (37:25): I ran my agency on EOS. Fun fact, hold on while we're sitting here. Yeah. I have a Gino Wickman book right behind me. Traction. Yeah, yeah, no, this was, this was my Bible. And in two years, it was towards the end of when I had my business. And then the two years I used it we, we only have joked that we got more done in two years than we did in the prior 10. And it's, it's really not, oh my God, amazingly, amazingly. And I still use a lot of aspects of it.
Amy (37:54): What did you love most about it?
Kathleen (37:55): I loved the IDS process. And when it's, which is identify, discuss, solve for those who are listening and when we would have our team, I also, I liked the, the very consistent meeting cadence. And when we would do our team meetings, we made everybody who worked for us, read the book and educate themselves on how it worked and what IDs was. And we would come up with these lists of challenges and just, we were able to so methodically work through it. And I remember the day when we had been doing it for like nine months and somebody on my team said, it kind of feels like the issues that we're working through now are really small. And I was like, isn't that awesome? Like, we've tackled all the big, awful, hairy ones that had been on our plate for years, like it's working, but it was just a funny, it was a funny inflection point. So how about you, what is your favorite part?
Amy (38:42): Well have to say that we run a hyper accountability sort of culture, you know, and the fact that there's one task per person, right. One to do, and one accountability per person. So it's just very clear how we're hiring. Right. I already know the next four positions we're filling and it's not just scaling one role it's rains that are sort of outside the function of our company now. So we know what we want to add. And just always having that in mind is, is really incredible. And then I love the aspect of one person is doing one thing and it may sound really simple. But, but it really is sort of transformative. And then everything's, date-based, you know, and those issues that get you in a, in a small company like ours, we have 16 employees and, but we've always sort of run it like a big company because we're always anticipating growth and scalability and onboarding new clients and onboarding new employees, which you and I talked about how, you know, that is the sort of the, the challenge of our business to have a system that sort of helps you get through the things that are difficult to talk about that you wouldn't normally identify in a public setting.
Amy (39:48): It has just been really, really helpful to us and help us grow. So I do look at a lot of EOS content and because I'm always looking for ways other companies are implementing it and other ideas that they have, and then I can't, I can't quit AdAge. I love it. Every morning I get the wake up call. I like to see what big brands I like to see agency movement. I like to see where people are going and why what campaigns are working. They tie in some timely political news, but that too, and sort of world news. And then I do use Twitter quite a bit. And that's more of my, sort of my news news. So we do take clarity breaks. So I don't know if you've ever scheduled time for learning.
Kathleen (40:33): Not as much as I should.
Amy (40:34): That's for sure. Yeah. So we, we reinforce that idea of clarity breaks and it could just be, go take a walk. It could be a power nap if you need that. Right. We're all working from home. So it's not as though we have people lying in pods or on the floor, but you know, we have people working at home. We do think that that sort of, that break of just clearing your mind. And then if you want to listen to a podcast, you know, go and do that on your walk, but it's really important to sort of clear your mind and then also be always learning and Superman.
Kathleen (41:04): That's great. And it's funny enough, this is why you and I get along so well. So one of the five core values I had at my agency was also, we call it continuous learning, but same idea. And as learning and continuous teaching were like two that kind of went together.
Amy (41:22): I liked that. We have energy is everything, which is sort of not a typical one, but I find that things are moving so fast and you need to be able to pivot. You need to able to sort of be ahead one step ahead of our clients. I mean, we're in the C suite, so we're going to weekly executive meetings with our clients. We are highly embedded with them. And as consultants, you always have to be proving your value, right? So, you know, that sort of energy is really important. We do have laid back people on our team, not everyone is, but they put the energy into their work. So it's not your disposition, but really kind of putting that. And, and it's, it's worked really well for us.
Kathleen (42:01): That's great. And it sounds like you're getting some fantastic results. Well that brings us to the top of our hour. So before we go, if somebody is interested in connecting with you online or learning more about Wild Coffee Marketing, what is the best way for them to do that?
Amy (42:16): Well, the best way is just to go to Wildcoffeemarketing.com. And there, you can see some examples of our work and sort of the areas and capabilities that we work in and see a little bit about the team.
Kathleen (42:27): All right. I love it. So head there, if you want to learn more, I'll put that link in the show notes, and if you're listening and you enjoy this episode, or you learn something new, I would love it. If you would head to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. And if you know somebody else, who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork. Yes, that is my Twitter handle. And leave me a review or leave, not leave me a review, send me a tweet and let me know who I should interview. This is what happens when you do interviews at four o'clock on a Friday, on a Friday. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Amy. This was a ton of fun.
Amy (43:04): Thank you so much for having me, Kathleen.
What would happen if marketers forgot about leads and demo requests, and focused solely on pipeline and revenue?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Refine Labs founder and CEO Chris Walker breaks down his unorthodox approach to B2B marketing and explains why he believes most marketers are doing it wrong.
Refine Labs hasn't been around long (it was founded in early 2019), but in the few short years since Chris launched the company, it has experienced what most would term hypergrowth and now boasts more than 30 high growth SaaS brands as clients.
At the same time, Chris has become somewhat of a household name in marketing circles due to his consistent content creation on LinkedIn and his often contrarian, but always thought provoking, takes on B2B marketing best practices.
In this episode, Chris breaks down his approach to marketing and shares insights on why B2B companies should rethink how they approach lead gen. Check out the full episode to get the details.
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the Refine Labs website
- Connect with Chris on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth and my guest today is Chris Walker who's the CEO of Refine Labs. Welcome to the podcast, Chris.
Chris (00:32)Great to be on here. It feels like just recently you were on our podcast and looking forward to diving into some topics today.
Kathleen (00:39)I love, I love the podcast guest swap. No, I'm, I'm really excited to talk to you because your name comes up a lot. LinkedIn is my favorite platform these days. It's the one I'm the most active on. I really enjoy it. And I hear your name all the time and I'm so glad we're finally getting a chance to get to know each other. So before we jump into deeply to our topic, for those who may be, haven't heard of you, or don't know you, can you just give a brief synopsis of who you are, what you do and how you came to be doing what you're doing today,
Chris (01:19)For sure. Yeah. Hey everyone. My name is Chris Walker. I've been in B2B marketing for almost decade now and have done almost all types of marketing for product marketing, field marketing, demand gen and brand. And I use them all together in a lot of different venture funded companies, both as an employee and now as a, a consultant or business owner. At the moment I run a company called Refine Labs. We've been growing rather quickly and we currently work with about 30 enterprise SaaS organizations throughout the US, EMEA and APAC to transform their demand generation programs with the core understanding or belief that the marketing game has changed dramatically, or the go to market game has changed dramatically from lead gen, high volume lead generation to feed sales with people that don't want to buy right now to marketing, executing demand generation, to generate high intent leads that want to buy for sales at a lower volume.
Chris (02:12)And that is the core thesis about how we operate, which requires a lot of different changes inside of companies, changing your metrics, changing tactically what you're doing, changing what success looks like at a campaign level, from leads or conversions to something that matters a little bit more deeply like qualified pipeline or revenue. And so that is what we do. I've been operating in this sort of like demand gen framework for the past five years, both as an employee and now as a business owner with a lot of different companies and just find that, objectively, the way we work works way better.
Kathleen (02:46)Love it. And what I think is really interesting about your journey is, so my background is I used to own a marketing agency for 11 years, and marketing marketing agencies is challenging, right? Because you're, you're trying to stand out in a very crowded field of all people who are good at marketing. Right. And it is, it's an interesting challenge. And that is why I think when we talk about the inbound success podcast and my profiling people who are doing inbound really well, you really stand out to me because, you know, you're, when did you start Refine Labs?
Chris (03:24)April of 2019.
Kathleen (03:26)Oh, okay. So this is not, you know, a company that's been around for 10 years. This is a relatively new company that came out of nowhere. And in just a very few short years, it has a ton of buzz. As you said, you've got 30 clients.
Kathleen (03:39)Your name is getting talked about a lot throughout the industry. So I feel like if you can, in two years managed to do what you've done and stand out in arguably one of the most competitive industries in which to try and stand out against, you know, a playing field of people who know by and large, what they're doing. If you can do this, then there are massive lessons to be learned for anybody. So I want to talk about how you've done it. And then at some point dive into what you do with your clients, which I suspect is...
Chris (04:13)Sorry to interrupt you, but I actually don't find it to be competitive, which I think is the challenge. Like, I don't think that marketing agencies are very good at marketing themselves. And a lot of one's not very good in operating for their clients because they execute a service that is, gets measured on top of funnel metrics that don't matter to a business, which is why the agency doesn't do it for themselves to grow their company. And so I think it's pretty easy when you start scoring on pipeline and revenue and looking at it that way and then reversing back to the activities that are required. One, it creates a massive product development pipeline for our company. And two, we know very clearly it's driving the business because we can measure it in our own revenue. And so it's weird. Like a lot of people say that it's competitive, but I think that from, for the most part, marketing agencies are actually quite poor at marketing themselves.
Kathleen (05:04)So let's break this down. You say that the problem has been a focus on top of funnel metrics. And so I'm assuming you're referring to, you know, website, visitor traffic, and then just leads like in a broad category. Is that accurate?
Chris (05:19)Yeah. Marketers tend to not spend time in the CRM where actual business data gets generated and tracked. And so anything pre CRM is what I'm talking about.
Kathleen (05:30)So, so what does that look like? You're, you're focused on the CRM. You're focused on pipeline opportunities, revenue. What does that look like in terms of how you then market differently?
Chris (05:42)So by focusing on pipeline and revenue in the CRM, it actually frees marketers from optimizing for top of funnel metrics. You can get scored later funnel, which gives you a lot more flexibility on what to do. If you're a marketer and you come into a company and they say, we need 3000 MQLs. So this month, and here's your budget and it we're projecting, it's going to cost $30 per lead. Then you actually have no money to do anything else, no money, no time, no mindshare to actually go and figure out how to do a podcast or figure out how to do LinkedIn by scoring on a metric that actually matters to a business. You give your marketers a lot more flexibility to do things that could actually work better from an experimentation standpoint. I think you also free marketers from channel attribution performance marketing, which is really I think hurt marketers over the past decade to a level where it's highly transactional and easy to track.
Chris (06:32)And therefore they love doing it because they can track it. But if they actually looked at the stuff that they're tracking, they would realize that they shouldn't be doing it that way. I do that with enough companies and analyze the data of performance marketing lead gen campaigns and how bad it is at a customer acquisition cost payback standpoint period. And like, like, I, I don't, people love to do those things because they can say we got a bunch of leads from LinkedIn, but they never look at how much that customer costs that we got from LinkedIn with all those leads. And that's what I'm suggesting that people do. And so once you get over that that path and you're measuring on qualified pipeline, for instance, one, the numbers get smaller, right? So I don't need to go out and generate 3000 leads. I actually just need to generate 10 leads that convert to a two qualified pipeline. And so it changed once you change the volume metric, you can actually change the tactical level things to having a high intent buyers that convert to qualified opposite 80% versus low intent leads that convert at 1%. And that's what I'm suggesting people do.
Kathleen (07:33)So when you come in and I'm assuming you've done this with your own business as well, but like when you look at at a company and you take this approach, you I'm, I'm guessing you start by looking at the deals. They have one to try to look at what has driven those, is that, is that where it starts?
Chris (07:54)Yeah. So most of the companies that are operating today from a SaaS standpoint because they get measured on top of funnel and they are obsessed with attribution, everything is tracked. And so it's very, very simple to go into the CRM and track all the different lead sources, all the way to revenue and then calculate things like sales cycle length, lead to win rate, average deal, size, different things like that. That gives you a sense about what is the efficiency of that lead source. Should we even start, keep doing that? You could, if you're doing advertising, you could do direct customer acquisition costs on those things. And what we find is that almost everything that a company is doing from a paid standpoint or a lead gen standpoint is not generating a customer acquisition cost that's anywhere near acceptable. And so once we present that data, it allows executives to help change away from this lead gen mindset.
Chris (08:41)And when you look at where the actual revenue came from, which from a marketing source revenue, or however you want to say it, inbound revenue, it's very clear the way that people come in to you to buy stuff, it's they come there on their own to your website. And they ask for a demo or ask to talk to a sales rep, or they have to get pricing. If you don't publish your pricing. And I would say almost any company could do that analysis and at least 70% of their revenue comes through that way. And so it's, how do you use all of the wasted money in advertising? That's happening over here to collect leads and change how that's being used to influence more people to come through your website and ask for a demo or to talk to a sales rep and is ready to qualify and ready to buy. And that's what we're focused on.
Kathleen (09:22)And I believe if I'm not mistaken that you call this the revenue growth optimization framework.
Chris (09:28)We call that part of the process, split the funnel. So what I find is that companies build their you know, demand waterfall from serious decisions in 2009 and put together one spreadsheet and say, we have to get 30,000 leeds and have blanket conversion rates across the whole funnel. Not respecting that different conversion sources have dramatically different intent levels from buyers and therefore converted significantly different rates. And so by splitting it out by lead source, it helps you identify what are the actual winners here.
Kathleen (09:55)So what has worked really well for, for your, how you market your business because you're drinking your own champagne. I don't like to say Kool-Aid, it's sort of a dark metaphor. What's working for you guys?
Chris (10:11)Podcasts, LinkedIn events, influencers, organic social.
Kathleen (10:16)So dig into that a little bit for me. Let's start with podcast.
Chris (10:20)There's a couple of things that work for us here. And I think that what people miss is I just laid out tactics. And I think that people miss on the strategy side, like we are a, we have air quotes for the listeners here of "marketing agency" with a highly differentiated product, sold to a very specific niche that I know needs it that's strategy, right? And so if you don't have a differentiated product and you don't identify your ICP and you start doing these tactics, they may not work as well for you. Strategy first right? And so we have that strategy walked in on who we're selling to, why they need us, why we're uniquely differentiated amongst their alternatives and different things like that. And then we think about it, just content marketing with effective distribution across the channels where people pay attention.
Chris (11:08)It's like basically what it comes down to. And so while other agencies continue to write blogs for SEO and spend a hundred dollars a click on marketing agency pricing and all the tactics that people have been doing for 10 years that are mature, expensive and flooded. We continue to do marketing on LinkedIn and still, I don't see any marketing agencies executing well on it. Linkedin and podcasts has been a gold mine for us over the past two years and will continue to be because companies are very slow to react to new opportunities and they have the wrong mindset when it comes to content marketing, which creates a huge opportunity for people that do like our content marketing. I'm not, I'm not measuring on how many leads that I got. I'm not measuring it on transactional. And so just the mindset about how we approach content marketing is the, is the secret advantage for us.
Kathleen (12:01)There are a lot of marketing agencies with podcasts. What makes yours different?
Chris (12:07)It actually makes an impact for the people that listen to it. I think it's, it's way more actionable, distributed at a much higher frequency from people that actually do progressive stuff. And I think that's why people tune into it. And we get plenty of notes. I would say probably at this point 20 a week from people said, Hey, I listened to your podcast at the beginning. I thought you were full of. And then six months later, I started doing those things and we stopped running ebook downloads on LinkedIn. And we started doing it more like the way that you said, and our pipeline went up by 300% this quarter, the first quarter of this year. And that's what people say. And so I know that it's making an impact. I'm not sure that you get that on other podcasts. So,
Kathleen (12:49)So for those who haven't heard of it the name of the podcast, state of demand gen, and it's published how often three times a week, and it is available it's video and audio video
Chris (13:03)On YouTube micro video on LinkedIn and long form audio on apple, Spotify, and all those other different channels. A key thing for people to think about there. And I've been talking about, we consult for a lot of people that are doing a podcast, and I hear this thing a lot. We need to make it short because people's attention spans are slowing down or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we want to do the seven minute podcasts. We, our average podcast length of somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes. Yeah. And so it has nothing to do with the length it has all to do with, is your content good enough to justify someone listening to it for that long? And I want people to think about that if they're getting ready to start a podcast as well.
Kathleen (13:42)You're preaching to the choir on that one, cause I, mine are usually 45 to 60 minutes and I always tell people it's going to be as long as it needs to be. Yeah. It's, it's the boring guests that, that would be a really short interview. Try to avoid getting those lines.
Chris (13:59)Okay. We'll try and get the 60 minutes that are misaligned. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Kathleen (14:04)So, okay, so that's the podcast. Now I want to talk about LinkedIn because that is such a core part of your strategy. That's where I, at least to me, I feel like you've been very visible and very successful. So can you kind of break down how you think about LinkedIn and how you advise others to think about LinkedIn?
Chris (14:22)So when it comes to LinkedIn, I consider it a a highly effective content distribution, medium, and by acknowledging and understanding how dynamics of social platforms work, it can give you an advantage on how to use them. And so I'll give you a couple of examples about, and people think that if you like execute on LinkedIn, that you might miss on something else, but what they, what they don't understand that you build skills that you take with you to new platforms, right? And so in 2014, I spent time on Instagram. One of the most important things was trying to build an audience on Instagram. I figured out how to do that. And in 2019, when I saw LinkedIn working, I knew how to take the learnings of how to build an audience and move that over there, which is not just wait for people to follow you.
Chris (15:10)It's having a proactive strategy to get more people into your community audience. And so one of the things that we started doing probably in may of maybe for the past two years, is 30 people a day and connect with, with people that are active on the platform have posted in the last 30 days like content. That is like the stuff that we pump, we publish that's one, one consideration. The next consideration that we see across a lot of different channels is that I try and do all of the work in the feed, meaning that I'm not looking for someone to click on a link. I'm not looking for someone to comment. They're like, blah, blah, blah, like some algorithm hack to make a comment so that you can send them an email with a PDF. I'm trying to get to places where people consume and anyone that's listening to this you'll know that you're much more likely to consume something that's in the feed versus a link that moves off the platform.
Chris (15:59)And it's also better for LinkedIn. And so inside of the feed and the last one is 100% selfless, just con giving away the best stuff that we do. I publish stuff that people pay us a lot of money for. And I publish it on the internet because I know that it creates a huge inbound interest for us because we are considered the best, the smartest, the most forward-thinking because of the content that we produce. And so we publish that. I also know that a majority of people will never use it. And so those are a couple of key pillars in how we operate LinkedIn. And then the last one is just pure consistency. Like I don't think that marketers really understand. I think maybe they get, they get bored of doing the same thing. I've been posting videos on LinkedIn almost every day for 18 to 24 months.
Chris (16:46)And I'm not, I'm not bored of it at all. It's pure marketing is about finding something that works and then being incredibly consistent at delivering it while also innovating on a micro level. So you've known, you'll notice that we've changed up how we actually do the videos and how we film them and what quality it's in and how we cut them in different things like that. But we're still leaning into video mainly because a lot of people don't do it. And so I think it's just a huge, huge white space as a marketer on LinkedIn, it might feel like a lot of people are using LinkedIn and publishing content. They're good, but go look at other channels, go look at how competitive it is an SEO. Go look at how competitive it is and Google search ads for a trade show booth. Like all the places where you spend money are way more competitive from a cost of maturity standpoint than places like LinkedIn or a podcast.
Kathleen (17:33)So I'm interested to know how you work with clients on this, because I think as marketers, in many cases, we are naturally more comfortable putting ourselves forward on a platform like LinkedIn. But I do hear from a of executives, a lot of subject matter experts, this reluctance, and sometimes it's driven by, I think, fear that they don't have enough to say, you know, I think, you know, somebody can be an expert in something, but still have that almost imposter syndrome of like, well, am I do I know enough to really, to really put it out there? And then sometimes it's also driven by I can't come up with something every day. How do you do that? So like, how do you, how do you counsel somebody who, who doesn't come from a marketing background to develop this muscle memory, to be able to do this regularly?
Chris (18:24)Yeah. So I know how to do this because I've done it before at a company, as an employee in 2017, we were selling into hospitals and we had our subject matter expert VP of medical education. That was a practicing physician. That was our subject matter expert that people in the community found credible that had was an evangelist that had used the technology as a physician for more than 10 years. And so we had, and then became an employee of our company afterwards. And so we had that person. And the way that you figure this out is instead of trying to have forced that person to create information everyday, where they have to think about it, it's a marketer shop to put them in situations where they're going to demonstrate expertise anyway, create a fireside chat, do a round table, have them present on a webinar, on a new clinical trial, whatever those things are.
Chris (19:11)And then you record that event. And so I liked that also from the subject matter experts side, those people prefer that than recording a podcast in a, in a zoom on their own. They want to be out in engaging with people and talking with people. We had some of the most success, cause I, I heard people say, Hey, like this isn't worth my time to write this blog. But then when you say, Hey, we actually got you a spot to talk about the same thing that, you know, I didn't say this, but the same thing that we were going to write the blog about, but we're actually going to do it in Tulsa, Oklahoma with 12, you know, the best physicians in Oklahoma. And you're going to be speaking at that dinner and then we're going to record it. And it's a completely different story. And so people need to, I think, change the way that they set up their subject matter expert to allow it to work.
Kathleen (20:00)That's interesting. And then are you, are you publishing those recordings through that person's profile?
Chris (20:09)It was mostly through the brand in 2017. I think dynamics have changed quite a bit since then. But we could go just straight brand on Facebook, organic and a crushed back then. And like, it's just not, it's just not like that anymore. And so the distribution mechanisms over the past almost five years now have changed a lot. And I would at this point switch to some combination of brand and personal, depending on the platform. Yeah.
Kathleen (20:33)I mean, I really feel like today the power, the real potential is in marketing through personal brands. I mean, you can just from my company, you know, we publish a lot of stuff through our company, LinkedIn page, but I find it gets just dramatically less traction than anything put out by our CEO or head of product. The, you know, and so one thing is how do you get the content out of them, what you just addressed. But then the interesting challenge that, that introduces if you are going through the personal brand is how do you, how do you then make sure there's engagement on the backend, right? Because a great post with really good content is going to get engagement. It's going to get responses and questions. And so it's one thing if you, as the marketer are going in through the company page and engaging with comments, but then when it's on, you know, your CEO's personal profile, are you training that CEO to engage? Are you somehow gaining access to their account so that you can engage on their behalf? How, how do you, how do you think that should work?
Chris (21:34)So I'll talk about the ideal way and then maybe like a different, the ideal way is that whoever it is, it could be the CEO. It could be another person in your company recognizes how important this is and does all of it, right? Like I've never had someone else leave a comment for me or answer a message or anything. That's all me, the reason is because I recognize how valuable it is. I recognize that at the moment I can have, you know, a thousand touch points with different potential buyers in the market on my own by myself, and have 50 conversations this morning through comments on a LinkedIn post that I made versus what other CEOs might do, which is like go to a dinner once every couple of weeks to meet with one person. And it just get way more scalability of interaction this way.
Chris (22:20)I wish people would understand that. And so presenting that to people because I did this as an employee in 2007, around the same timeframe as I would run Facebook ads of the content of that this person was creating. And then I would engage in the comments and I recognize, Hey, I'm having a hundred conversations a day with buyers. Our sales, our sales team gets three connections when they go outbound in a day, like what what's going on here? Why doesn't the company recognize that this is a way better way to do what we're business development. What we're trying to do is connect with buyers in a way that they want. And so yeah. Yeah. I
Kathleen (22:57)Mean, I think it's really interesting to me because I don't think you can underestimate the importance of engaging. What I always say is like, you might get comments you could have a great post and you might get comments, but people aren't going to continue coming back to comment and engage with you. If you don't respond to them, you know, it's like a one-way conversation at that point.
Chris (23:18)Yeah, because people think that social media is about pushing out, not, you know, being social.
Kathleen (23:26)Yeah. so we've talked about the podcast, we've talked about LinkedIn, I'm curious to know how you approach written content on your website. You know, what are your thoughts around the classic kind of written blog? Are you doing much of that or is most of it like repurposed podcasts content?
Chris (23:50)We don't, we don't even repurpose podcast content on the website. It's just like, I believe that the the idea of what a website is for, for companies should change and we're trying to pave the way on it. And I'm also interested cause I'm very interested. It'll probably be within the next, you know, it'll be soon where we can say that we hit 10 million ARR and we didn't spend a second on SEO and companies can understand that there's a different way than writing long form blogs and different stuff like that. I'm interested in proving some points there. And so, no, we haven't done almost anything from a written blog content standpoint. Because I just feel like the way that people discover and research products has changed and they're doing it in specific places that are different than Google in 2009. And so our website and what I think companies should consider for their website is buyer enablement and a path to a high intent conversion. And that's it. And so if those, if we're serving those two things on our website, publishing pricing, case studies messaging about what we do, how we work and a way to get in touch with us to start a scale sales conversation and everything else that we're doing is in places where people actually are.
Kathleen (25:00)So you talked about how the way people buy has changed. What, how would you describe the modern customer journey?
Chris (25:08)I think the key that people I think the key that people need to understand in, in the difference in change is the access to trusted peers that B2B professionals have, that they didn't have five to seven years ago. And so I can interact with 30 marketers and understand what tool they use and what tactics they're doing in different things like that on LinkedIn and on Twitter in revenue collective through a text message through a private slack message through call through a zoom, all those different things that were much more difficult to do in 2014 as a B2B professional, you know, that you didn't interact with your peers in the way that you do today in 2014. And because you didn't have access to trusted peers, you trusted a couple of sources. You trusted analyst firms, you trusted conferences and you trusted Google search because you didn't have access to people. And that's the major change that's going on here is that now people get their information through their peers that they trust. And so leaning into that as the core shift is what I'm talking about, which I think would be very heavy on customer success and very heavy on effective content marketing and what I would consider the dark funnel, AKA social and other places that are difficult to track in attribution. So
Kathleen (26:27)Where do you review sites fit into all this? Because that is sort of a, a way people get peer feedback, but it's not the same as your connections on LinkedIn or the people in the slack channel. I know there's a lot of companies, especially in the software space that spend a lot of money on peer review sites. I'm curious what your take is. B2B
Chris (26:46)Companies love every channel that is lower funnel filled with intent. So because they can easily track it, the person's in buy mode and they can run performance marketing against it, which is why review sites, Google paid search. I don't even think contents indication fits into there because there's no intent, but review sites and Google paid search are lowest funnel, high intent. And that's where people are going to going to do things. What I think is actually more impactful is getting to the people before they have intent. And then they're not looking for a review site. They're just going to Google and searching your brand. And that's what I think people need to think about people. People fight companies fight over the small amount of buyers that are actively buying that have no preferred brand. So you're just competing with three vendors for somebody that doesn't care, it's going to be shopping on price. Doesn't have certain features, you're going to win some of them, but you're gonna lose a lot of them to, as opposed to figuring out what you need to do at the top of the funnel so that people don't even compare other vendors. And that's what we do.
Kathleen (27:44)Yeah. You gave me the perfect segue into my next question. Cause you talked about people going on to Google and searching for your brand for refined labs. What percentage of your traffic is direct?
Chris (27:56)I don't, I don't know. And I don't care.
Kathleen (27:59)I mean, I have a theory. I'm so curious to know if it's, if it's true. And that's something that I've seen. It's really interesting, even just with the company I'm at that, that the, the percentage of direct traffic as, as a part of the overall mix is, is growing. And I would think that yours would be a very large percentage direct
Chris (28:18)Or direct organic search. Yeah. I'm not sure how Google chucks it up. I honestly like what I'm looking at is something that's way further down the funnel than where it's being sourced from. Cause I it's weird as a marketer, when you get to this level, it's just you, I don't need data. Like I can, you can just feel what's going on at qualitative insights. What's happening in the CRM, inbound volume qualified pipeline where our conversations starting, we have conversations started in LinkedIn, DM through our website revenue collective through a text message through inbound emails from buyers. And so like, you can just feel where this stuff coming from, why what's going on. And I love being in that spot. Of course we use data. But nowhere near to the level that marketers obsess about it today.
Kathleen (29:04)Yeah. I feel like we spend a lot of time and waste a lot of time just on tracking and reporting. And a lot of times we're tracking and reporting on metrics that even by traditional marketing logic are a waste of time. So that's really interesting. You talked earlier about having started out on Instagram and then moved to LinkedIn and I sort of put a mental pin in that and I wanted to come back because I do feel like marketers by and large suffer from shiny penny syndrome where like a new channel is hot. Like in the last year it's tick talk and it's clubhouse and this and that. And all of a sudden everybody's like we have to be there, right. Because everybody's talking about it. I have really strong opinions on that, but I'm really curious to know what your take is.
Chris (29:56)So I think what people obsess about is they look at a channel or tactical level, not looking deeply at whether their content strategy was working. If you're, if you can't produce content that people like on LinkedIn, you have no business trying to go to Tik TOK right now, at least for B2B marketing. And so I think people should think about those different things. When I mentioned being an Instagram, it was Instagram in 2014, selling a $60 product, organic yeah. Influencer marketing posting every day, building an audience, engaging with the community and watching sales grow. And so I just had a clear understanding of what that dynamic was in that channel. And LinkedIn's no different, right? And so once you understand the dynamics of one platform, you can move them to another one, which leads me to a place like if Tik Tok does become a place where it's important for B2B to go, we have a content strategy, we have the operational infrastructure and capabilities to support it. And we know how social networks work and we're going to be able to win there. And so that's the way that I look at it. But I think the companies look at it too at a channel level and not holistically at like their organizational capabilities.
Kathleen (31:03)Yeah. Amen. I mean, that's my whole thing. Somebody asked me when clubhouse first came out, you know, what my thoughts on it were. And, and I, I, my thing was like, it's not for me. Right. It could be for somebody else, but I am. I'm all in on LinkedIn. I know I don't have the bandwidth to do two channels really well. Like you gotta, I, I think you gotta kind of pick your, pick your channels and it doesn't have to just be one for other people. It could be more, but you have to understand your bandwidth and your ability to really dominate and master the channels that you've chosen before you start to spread yourself.
Chris (31:37)Yeah. And it was just clear, like I'll find, I'll find the clip. I think it was late 2020 where I said this, where it was very obvious that some but that other platforms would copy the clubhouse feature because that's the same thing that happened with Snapchat, right. Instagram and Facebook, and all of the other platforms now have stories and clubhouses audio thing is now getting rolled already rolled out in Twitter and it's coming out on LinkedIn. And it was very obvious that that was going to happen from that standpoint and other people that don't understand those dynamics, stop doing everything else. And when all pot committed on clubhouse and now you watch your user growth fall to the floor because it's available and put channels that are far more popular. And that's what I think that people need to think about. I think that the scariest part is that companies stopped doing things that are working in order to chase something else.
Kathleen (32:31)There seems to be this like weird feeling that you have to be in the early adopter crowd. Of all things. I don't know if you, if you know
Chris (32:41)That it's gonna work. Then being an early adopter is when I would consider myself an early adopter on LinkedIn, at least from a high activity standpoint. And it certainly benefited me, the algorithm reaches nowhere near what it was two years ago. And so if you know that it's going to work, then, then I think it's a good move to be early. But I don't think that I think a lot of marketers just read a report or some, see some ad or see some content about a new platform without knowing whether or not it's going to work or how it's going to work for them and then just try and do stuff. And that's, I think that the difference is having the experience to really know how it's going to work. Yeah. And you
Kathleen (33:18)Talked about that when, when we spoke on your podcast about you test things on yourself and on your own marketing, kind of you use, you use yourself as, as a Guinea pig, if you will, before we roll things out to clients, can you talk a little bit about that?
Chris (33:34)So at the moment we have a system where we can experiment more with a lot of things underneath the Refine Labs brand. Test, measure, characterize. Show companies what good looks like. And basically it becomes an R&D arm for our company to roll in new quote unquote products for our customers, which bleeds into our idea of just continuous innovation, which is not something that marketing agencies do. Marketing agencies get married to one channel and then try and make it as profitable as possible, which is why you see SEO agencies that still don't do anything else. And so ours is, we are trying to constantly disrupt ourselves when there's a day where Facebook ads don't work anymore, then I'm going to be pumped to have six more things that we can roll into the mix, other companies aren't. So they're going to keep telling their clients to run Facebook ads along the lines of why there's a lot of agencies that still tell their customers to run display ads.
Chris (34:26)And so we have tested a lot of different things from the beginning. The reason that we, that I know is because people told me that they weren't going to work. So podcasts, LinkedIn, the way that we execute events, the way that our top level content strategy with a subject matter expert works, influencer marketing, both for other, with other people, with us and myself, with other brands direct mail account based marketing in a thoughtful way, not like, you know, the way basically it's sales driven way. The companies execute it today. There's a million different things that we're incubating and testing here, and then we'll eventually productize.
Kathleen (35:05)So let's talk about a couple of those. You talked about events, the way you run them. So what makes it different?
Chris (35:13)It's driven on ex in-person experiential combined with digital amplification to create, reach and awareness of a content strategy versus collecting leads to try and sell people. And so B2B companies run events to co to have people register so that they can do sales to those people versus having people register to create an experience for them so that they can participate in content creation so that you're creating content that other people want so that you can amplify it on the internet and the more people see it. And that's the core difference about the way that we look at events. And I would say that a lot of companies don't even execute events at all. They're too busy building trade shows at least events in the way that I've stated them. And so just completely have been doing that since 2017 as well, just looking at our trade show booth expenditures and saying, how else can we spend this money to get a dramatically better return?
Chris (36:08)And I think the key is creating real life experiences that then get amplified digitally. And then once they get amplified digitally, it can feed the future in person experiences.
Kathleen (36:20)Give me an example of what that looks like.
Chris (36:24)Back in the day in like February to February, 2020, we were, we were heavy on these. We're going to do one a month, the whole year of 2020. Obviously we couldn't do that, but we did one in January and February. At that point, like Justin Welsh was operating as CRO at a high growth SaaS company, him and I got together and I invited him to do a fireside chat. We handled the event, you know, 40, 50 CEO, CRO, CMOs were there. We presented in person. Yeah. How to scale out your revenue team to 50 million. Like what Justin did.
Chris (36:59)We talked through different things between sales and marketing, and what's changed since he started there in 2015 to 2020. And if he could change things, what he would do, we went to Q and A for 30 minutes. We had high production, film and audio there. We created a nice video with B roll. We created the whole long form interview. It became a podcast. We had people come inbound to us five months later that were attending that event, but we didn't try and sell them right there. And doing that at a specific cadence to feed your top level content strategy, I think is a really smart idea.
Kathleen (37:34)Does that only work if you are, well let me rephrase that. So you're, you're in Boston, correct?
Chris (37:43)Yeah.
Kathleen (37:44)Did you hold the event in Boston?
Chris (37:46)No.
Kathleen (37:47)Okay. Okay. So the, where I'm going with this as, like, if you're somebody who's in some small market where, you know, 50 of your ICPs are not within 50 miles, do you, I'm assuming you need to hold these events in a, in a location where it's pretty easy to get folks, because generally they're not traveling for this. I would assume.
Chris (38:08)I would say that generally people aren't traveling for them, but you should travel to them. You're, you're traveling to a trade show booth and spending $150,000 to build a structure that gets torn down three days later. And so what's a flight to LA to put on an event. And so that's, that's what I'm thinking is you go to the places where you think that there's a high, a high density of potential people and the, you mentioned 50, I think these can be properly executed 12. I think that people get caught up in numbers a lot as well. Yeah.
Kathleen (38:39)That makes sense. A couple other things you mentioned. So you've talked a few times about influencers and I think a lot of times when marketers hear the phrase influencer marketing, they have a very rigid, traditional definition for that, right? They think about, well, a lot of people think Kardashians. But they think about traditional paid influencer partnerships, which I think is only one subset. How do you look at influencer as part of your mix?
Chris (39:06)I want every B2B company to listen to this real quick, to understand that they all do influencer marketing right now. And the way that B2B companies do it right now is analyst relations. And an analyst firm is an influencer. They just had a lot more influence 10 years ago than they do right now. And so what I'm suggesting is if you were going to have a, what I would consider a brand collaboration or a sponsorship with somebody else that wasn't an analyst firm that you actually consider structuring it, like you do with an analyst firm where they, you know, have, you know, make a video and content about how to use your product, they review it, they interact with people. They maybe take a couple of calls with people that are interested in purchasing it. Like that's an interesting thing to do with 20 people that influence buying decisions in your market.
Chris (39:57)The people look at it and say, it's influencer marketing and blah, blah, blah, blah. And we haven't even gotten to the measurement point, which is another reason why companies don't do it, but I would challenge them to try and quantify the impact of their relationship with Gartner. Yeah. And so I'd never said that clearly before, but a lot of companies just look at it in the, I think in the wrong way. And so from an influencer standpoint, yes, there is like the strict, like paid, you know, paid promotion, post type of thing, which I don't think is the way that this is going to play out. I think there's this like analyst firm relationship with people that are smart, that can, that I just laid out that I think is a very open area, collaborating on content, whether that be an in-person like physical event, digital content on a podcast, you know, whatever, from that standpoint, there's an interesting one with evangelists that I think companies consider, which is like basically making a, like a VIP customer list with people that are influential.
Chris (40:52)Some people call it a customer advisory board, whatever you want to do, where these people get more stuff. Maybe they get flown out to a specific event that's hosted by your company, that they, that they get a lot of different stuff. They already love your products. Why don't you just do surprise and delight so that they're more likely to tell people how great your stuff is. And so those are some of the potential open opportunities that I see there. And again, like when it comes to measurement companies won't do this because they can't track attributable ROI. They want to have affiliate marketing, not influencer marketing. And that's the part.
Kathleen (41:31)You talked about direct mail and piqued my interest. Tell me your thoughts about direct mail. What's the way to do it right?
Chris (41:41)I think that companies and people listening to this should consider the differences between direct mail and gifting. I think that most companies that are executing what they think is direct mail are actually doing gifting, which is just sending a gift to someone either to say, thank you, but most likely just to bribe them into having a meeting. And I think there's a different way to run direct mail where it's more experiential and actual marketing that can still be driven toward conversion. That's more easily measurable. And that's what I would, I would consider what would be an example of that. So let's see here, let me try and figure out one that we're not actively running. So you, you're a company that sells to massive banks. And at the moment you have bank of America and chase, and you're trying to get whoever the other six top banks are.
Chris (42:38)And so you put together a, a package that has, you know, a thing, maybe a nice bottle of wine, a QR code on that thing, somebody who receives it scans the QR code, there's a video of how Bank of America implemented your product and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they have an opportunity to book a meeting there. And I think that there's some micro then companies go for such scale and not thoughtfulness that they wouldn't do something that can only send a six people, even though those accounts are million-dollar accountants. And so I think that that's an interesting one. I think that you also could go for scale as a different conversion mechanism than outbound sales that might work better too.
Kathleen (43:15)So are you suggesting then that gifting is the, the way to look at it?
Chris (43:22)No, I'm suggesting that companies consider a different way of running direct mail, which I would say is more marketing than gifting.
Kathleen (43:30)Okay. Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned the smaller scale because, and this was one of the reasons I wanted to ask you about direct mail. When I had my agency one half of what we did had to do with promotional products, which I hate calling it that because it sounds super cheap, but my husband became really, really good at what you're describing. We called it dimensional mail, but I'm sending to small lists, like really curated packages with, and like tying what was in the package and with the messaging. And it was amazing how he was able to get meetings for people with that approach. And I think part of it is like, nobody likes, nobody likes to throw away a box, right? If you get a box, even if you have a gatekeeper, like a secretary, generally you're opening in that box to see what's inside.
Chris (44:15)And I think from a direct mail standpoint, what companies need to look at is not the conversion to a meeting, but the conversion after that, I think it's pretty, pretty easy to get a, to get a meeting. I think it's really hard to get a meeting with somebody that wants to buy an actually bought. And I think specifically on direct mail companies will optimize to the meeting by giving people a a hundred dollars gift card to sit on it or to do all the other dumb stuff that they asked to do. And all those people move immediately to close loss and it does the business. No good. And so I think companies should just think about when I'm mean when we're doing our tests with direct mail over the next three to six months, it's not about the meeting conversion rate. It's about the, it's the met the meeting to proposal, we're meeting the closed won rate that I care about.
Kathleen (44:58)Right. you just said a word that I'm really interested to probe a little bit more on, which is gift cards.
Kathleen (45:08)This is another one that I have a lot of strong feelings about, but I want to hear what you have to say. Cause there's, there seems to be this like movement that has happened, especially during COVID, it's gotten much more widespread, like get a gift card for sitting through a demo of something. What do you think about that?
Chris (45:23)It's just, it's companies optimizing for a metric that doesn't matter and, and building it into their customer acquisition costs and considering it, and probably not looking at it afterwards and just measuring it on demos. And what I've always been interested in from for a very long time is instead of having to bribe someone with a gift card to sit on a demo, how do we do great marketing so that they want that demo? And that that's the difference between giving away a gift card and doing marketing. I don't consider giving away a gift card doing marketing. I consider it a way to do sales, buying a lead or doing sales.
Kathleen (46:04)Yeah. I feel like there's also a perverse incentive there where like, you, you, people are doing your demo because they want the gift card.
Chris (46:10)I know I've audited enough Salesforce instances to do this. All of them go to closed lost after the demo, your sales team hates it. I don't know why. I don't know why people still do this, but in the only place that I've seen, I've seen it or heard about it work is in MarTech and that's great. But when you're selling to it or finance or HR or any of the other functions that are not revenue generating, I think that you're going to struggle in the data that I've seen shows that.
Kathleen (46:38)Yeah, I would, I would agree. I always feel like it attracts the wrong kind of buyer. And it sort of cheapens what you're doing. It is, it is very like transparently pay to play.
Chris (46:54)No, but, and again, I, I think that when a lot of companies move on dumb stuff like this, it creates a massive opportunity. I just don't think that people consider the opportunity of going in a different direction. Whereas I want, I'm going to earn my demos. When people sit on those demos, I'm going to earn them. And so in the future, I'm not going to need to give away gift cards and more people are going to do that. And so companies don't look at that. They look at the hack to get to the next round versus building something that's sustainable with IP and talent and operational infrastructure to actually execute on that longterm and continue to build on it. And that's the way I think companies should look at it.
Kathleen (47:31)All right. We are rapidly coming up on our 60 minute mark. So we're going to go rapid fire for the next few questions. And on time the first one is you talked about getting companies to shift the way they think about marketing and to focus on, you know, pipeline generation or you know, revenue generation really is better put it. I would assume in the short term, then that there's, while that shift is happening how can I put this? It might make a lot of people very uncomfortable because many of their leading indicators, if they're changing the way they're doing marketing and they're doing some of the things you suggest like many of what they think of as leading indicators to pipeline are going to start to dry up. And so how do you handle that panic that I have to believe sets in initially and convince people to stick it out, to see the results?
Chris (48:23)First showing the company that what they're doing right now and what they're measuring, doesn't align to what they're trying to accomplish. So getting aligned that I get that you're hitting your MQL target. I've had these conversations 50 times marketing continues to hit their MQL target. We continue to miss our qualified pipeline and revenue targets on the sales side. And just by surfacing that information and then knowing why that's happening. I think the key is that a lot of people keep doing that because they don't know why, or they don't know what to change. And so by first showing them that what they're doing right now, isn't working. And second centering on sales, qualified opportunities, because when you center on sales qualified opportunities at a stage that matters not you advance with an SDR and book the meeting, but the AEA had the meeting, there's still an amount attached to it and that's qualified. And so in that case, and you sent her on that, that number should never go down. When you change your marketing model, when you shut off your performance marketing, it will have no impact on that number. And that's why if you center on sales qualified opportunities, there's nothing to be afraid of.
Kathleen (49:22)Yeah, that, that's interesting that you said that because my next question was going to be, and I assume one of the people that panics the most is the sales leader, because they want to keep their sales team busy. But if you're focused on SQLs that..
Chris (49:33)Right? The wrong sales leader, the sales leader with the 2011 mindset would panic that way. The smart sales leaders that I interact with are pumped that their SDRs don't have to follow up with 3000 leads a month that don't close and they can do strategic outbound using intent data or a million other higher productivity activities than following up with content downloads that don't want to talk to you. And so smart sales leaders should, should appreciate this. Should enjoy it. It's like a path to building a better company. Yeah.
Kathleen (50:00)All right. Shifting gears. I always ask my guests two questions at the end of the interview. So I want to hear what you have to say. This podcast is all about inbound marketing, which I define kind of loosely. It's not the traditional, you know, put an ebook up and wait for leads to come in. It's basically pretty much what you're talking about, which is doing your marketing in a way that your ideal customer seeks you out and comes to you. When you think about inbound marketing defined in that way, other than Refine Labs or yourself, who is doing it really well right now? It can be a company or it can be an individual person.
Chris (50:47)I'm trying to think. Hmm. I don't really have a lot and on, and honestly, I don't want to shout someone out as like a, as endorsement of someone that I don't think is doing an awesome job. And so I'm going to pass on this one.
Chris (51:04)Yeah. I could shout out a customer.
Kathleen (51:08)You're the first person I've interviewed who hasn't given me a name. I don't know how I feel about that.
Chris (51:15)I definitely don't follow the grain, so I get it.
Kathleen (51:19)Alright. Second question. I hear marketers say all the time that one of the biggest challenges they have is just staying up to date on everything that's changing with the world of digital marketing. How do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated by doing it?
Chris (51:39)And so by by consistently pushing boundaries in places where I don't need a report to tell me what to do that I went and did it. And then I would be the one that publishes the report on what to do. That's where I think marketers should strive for. I think that a lot of marketers just get information and copy tactics from people. Like I imagine that there's plenty of people that take B2B enterprise, SaaS marketing and copy what's happening with ClickFunnels to sell a $60, $99 course and then try and sell that, do that, to sell a 100K ACV SaaS and fail. And so I think the company people should really like look deeply at what they're doing. And the reason that I know something's working, something's noticed because I've tried them. And then I understand the dynamics from the buyer standpoint. And I know, and so, and it builds experience to know in the future, if you're thinking about something, whether or not something's going to work based on past experiences. And so I would encourage people to listen to customers and then start executing and testing new things for themselves. All right. So learn by doing yeah.
Kathleen (52:45)Well this has been great. I can't believe 60 minutes has passed so quickly. I feel like we could have definitely gone longer, but I have another five minutes that we're going to wrap up. So if somebody is listening to this and they want to learn more about you or connect with you or ask you a question, what's the best way for them to do that?
Chris (53:04)So you can you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Chris Walker, and then questions feel free to shoot them in the LinkedIn DM. And we will cover them on a future episode, or I'll just answer you there
Kathleen (53:15)And definitely check out the podcast as well for lots of really interesting conversations. And if you're listening to this episode and you liked what you heard or you're learning something new and I hope you did, cause I sure did. Please take a moment and head to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review so other folks can find us. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, which is my Twitter handle, as bizarre as that is. And I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thanks for joining me, Chris.
Chris (53:50)Nice. Thank you, Kathleen. This was a blast.
When COVID hit, many businesses were forced to pivot. How did Equinox Group quickly revamp its entire content production process to support the move to virtual classes?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Airtable CMO Archana Agrawal explains how Equinox Group used Airtable to build an entirely new content collaboration system as part of its shift from in person to virtual fitness during COVID.
By improving how the Equinox team organized, accessed and shared information about content and the content production process, and by layering in automation, the team was able to increase the speed of content production by up to 400%. The new process didn't just improve the team's efficiency—it also had a dramatic impact on how customers used the Equinox app.
Equinox's experience holds important lessons for any team looking to improve how it collaborates on content production.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to hear more about the Equinox story, along with Archana's insights on how a tool like Airtable can streamline workflows and improve collaboration.
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the Airtable website
- Connect with Archana on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And today my guest is Archana Agrawal, who is the CMO of Airtable. Welcome to the podcast Archana.
Archana (00:22): Thank you so much for having me here today. Kathleen,
Kathleen (00:26): I'm excited to talk to you. You have such an interesting background, especially as a marketing leader and the stuff we're going to talk about, the topic today is also really interesting. So before we jump into that, can you take a moment and maybe share with my listeners a little bit about yourself and how you came to be in the role of COO of Airtable and then also what Airtable is?
Archana (00:48): Yes. Love to, so let's see. Now I've been here at Airtable for a little over a year. And before this, I was at a company called Atlassian, also a builder of collaboration software. I think a pattern you'll find here is I just somehow seem to follow a product I absolutely love and that I have used or have seen used out there in the wild and that just make it so obvious that they have such a transformational impact, you know, on the way people work. And that took me to it last year. Gosh now maybe eight years ago and brought me to Airtable. Quick, quick introduction on Airtable itself. Really the way I think about Airtable is just really this platform that allows people to build the kind of tools and solutions that they want. We provide almost like the Lego blocks, you know, the building blocks that you can pull from as a non-technical user and create solutions that match exactly the need you have. And I'm sure we'll talk more about that.
Kathleen (01:51): Yeah. And I can say I've, so it's funny, I've been a user of Atlassian products, JIRA and Trello specifically, and, but I've also been a user of Airtable products. Yeah. And, and all in marketing capacities. And so that's one reason I'm very excited to talk with you. And I also, one of the things I found fascinating about you particularly is that you, your undergraduate degree was in computer science and I have met one other marketer who did her undergraduate in computer science and she is actually the best marketer. I know. So I have this theory that like having a computer science background really is like a hidden superpower for marketers, especially in today's world when marketing has actually become quite technical. And if you understand how to make tools and software work for you, like it's, it's very powerful. So, so I'm really interesting, interested to dig into that a little further today.
Archana (02:46): Yeah, absolutely. I'll I'll actually at least tell you two things about that. The first being you're, you're completely right in marketing just as a, as a craft has changed, right. When you think about it, it now feels like it's equal part creative messaging, you know, telling the story of your brand, but also creating data-driven customer touch points to be able to really take them along that journey. And so I do think some of that background where, you know, you can come back with, from hypothesis around the initiatives you have, or even taken a data driven approach to everything ranging from messaging to campaign certainly helps. It also helps quite frankly, having the technical background to understand sort of the diversity of talent that is needed today to actually make marketing work, right. Because it's, it's, you then know that, ah, this is all creativity that also really needs to be pulled into all of these channels.
Archana (03:38): And this is engagement levers that we need to use to pull into the channel. So certainly helps to realize that, gosh, this is really a medley of many, many different skills. And then the other thing I was going to say is being a developer and now working at Airtable almost feels like I've come full circle because the idea behind like, you know, originally went and started my, my degree in computer science and wanting to go that route was effectively because the power that software developers had, the creativity and the innovation that's possible is just inspiring. Right. and now at Airtable, I mean, we get a chance to maybe unlock that power for even the non-technical user for allowing them to create solutions that they want. And so it's almost like the bringing together all the way back, the origins for making my career choices. But, but really in a very different context.
Kathleen (04:38): Yeah, it's fascinating to me because, you know, I was just talking to somebody about the fact that there's a lot of data out there that points to in many cases, marketers have bigger, it budgets than the it departments within the company. You know, our tech stacks are really large these days. And, and so much of what we do in marketing can be made more easy via technology. But you know, and, and for many years you really did have to have a degree of, of developer knowledge in order to really make a lot of these tools sing and work properly and, and work together. But now we're, we're living in this funny time where it's now coming a little bit full circle because there are so many great low and no code tools. I think Airtable would be kind of in that category, certainly that, that it is beginning to make it more accessible to the rest of us who did not learn how to code in school.
Kathleen (05:29): So that's a great thing. Airtable. I, so my experience with Airtable was when I first, when I worked at an agency and we needed a way to basically organize information across multiple teams and, you know, a simple Google sheet or Excel spreadsheet was not going to do it for us. And also it lacked, I think some of the visual elements that we needed in order to really make our information. And so we, we used Airtable and I was blown away by how much more organized we were able to become as a result of it. And without a lot of time invested upfront in getting there, which that was the really impactful thing for me. And now today I experienced Airtable also as a user because I'm a member of an organization called revenue collective and they have their entire membership database built on Airtable. And it's so wonderful because we're able, as members we're able to go in and, you know, so quickly and easily find information, I can sort by my local chapter by title, by location and everything's right there. So just a big shout out to Airtable for making that so easy to deliver that kind of information.
Archana (06:43): It is so wonderful to hear stories like that. And, and I mean, honestly just, Kathleen, I mean stories that like, that just brought me into Airtable as well, right? Because that's, when you realize that you can bring people together, you can bring things, make things much quicker, the flexibility of the solution. You talked about it in marketing, but then you also talked about it in membership management. And when I, when I really try to simplify it at the end of the day, a lot of the power of Airtable comes from the fact that it's actually built on a relational database. And it has made that relational database available to folks that don't really otherwise have easy access to be able to program the way they want to program the data models and in a database. And then to add to that, it's like effectively made it so easy for folks like you and me to go in and put in business logic, which means that if someone's new to the if there's a new member that comes in a particular location, notify someone about it, you know, or kick off an onboarding process, it's just simple.
Archana (07:44): That's what we would want to do. But without the actual tools available to stitch that journey together, sometimes it tends to be very fragmented and it doesn't really give you that seamless experience that you want to provide your, your membership base as an example,
Kathleen (07:59): You know, you made me think of an interesting question that I want to ask you before we get into the, the specific story we're going to talk about today, which is that that is so powerful. And, and you've pointed to like how there are so many different use cases for what is in effect at its heart or relational database. But as a marketer, the first thing that made me think is that's so great for the user, but what a challenge as head of marketing, because when you have a product that can be used in so many ways, almost infinite ways. Like I related to the, what I like to call the cheesecake factory dilemma, which is when you go to lunch at the cheesecake factory and they present you with a menu that is 40 pages long, and you're like, this is terrible because I will never be able to decide, you know, and, and I don't think there's anybody out there who knows what all the options are. And so as a head of marketing, how do you tackle marketing a product that has almost limitless use cases?
Archana (08:58): That's a great question. And I want to, I won't pretend to know all the answers just yet, but I will tell you it's exactly the way you and I began this conversation, which is sharing our stories about what actually drew us to the product and, and actually candidly being most more than just open to our customers. Because at this point in time, we learn so much from them, right. Which is, there's so many use cases of the product, actually being able to understand and see how it's being used out there just really enriches it even more. So for the, for the next set of people that are going to use the product. And so to answer that question, it's really focusing on customers and sharing their stories, giving them the avenues to share their stories as well. Because it is truly a product that you feel it when you see it in action and and experience it in that way and being able to then you know, have not only customers talk about it and showcase their stories, but also learning from them and productionizing for the next set of customers that will come really sitting at our front seats.
Archana (10:08): What, what do we see making people successful? How do we see people engaging quickly with the, but one of the things you said it happened so fast, it was easy to get started with, and the way we've been able to productionize that is just by learning how other customers are actually able to engage with and use the products. What really makes it quick for them.
Kathleen (10:28): Yeah. And I imagine there's probably people doing things with it that even the team at Airtable never imagined.
Archana (10:34): Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's why I say we learn everyday from how we feel the product being used.
Kathleen (10:41): That's so fascinating to me because I feel like most marketers are, our job is to teach people how to use the product. And it's, in some ways, it's, I imagine the reverse for you. So, but on the bright side, the best marketing is always about making the customer the hero of the story. So this is a perfect marriage of things within this. So let's talk about one of your customers, because I think this is a fascinating story to me, and this is the perfect example of how this works, right? Like you have a customer who was facing a real challenge and it has to do with the pandemic and how you pivot your business model. And I think this is a great example of exactly what we've touched on, which is that, you know, necessity is the mother of invention and they found a way to make Airtable work for them. But that is, it was, was very kind of customized to their situation, but really unleashed a lot of capabilities. So the company is the Equinox group, correct? Yes. And just do a little table setting for folks who are listening about how did this all begin because they were already a customer of yours, correct. When COVID hit,
Archana (11:45): Correct. They were, they were definitely a customer and using the product. Right. But when COVID hit there's so much change and so many different businesses you know, I was reading a study the other day where McKinsey searches the number of digital customer interactions that businesses had most from somewhere in the mid thirties to almost 60% in the matter of the first six months that we had that. Right. So I think the idea was currently think about it, Equinox, really their business was built around their customers going into the gym and being able to actually experience their programming and the gyms. And now when COVID hit and they had to actually overhaul how they engage with their customers, they ended up having to really deliver a lot of their programming via content. And that's a very, very large pivot. When you think about it company that having to change how it really delivers the product, the end product to the customer.
Archana (12:46): And so Equinox media media, which is a subsidiary of Equinox group was really a large part of making that happen. And they did that, what they call their Equinox plus platform, which includes both their mobile app, which is how they were able to deliver some of that content to, and the soul cycle at home bike. And, and really at the time of COVID, even though they were customers, it gives them that moment to actually take a step back and really get everyone onboarded and to re, to look for the new, new workflows that they had and be able to deliver in this new model that they had to
Kathleen (13:25): It's. It's amazing. So how were they using Airtable before COVID
Archana (13:30): Their marketing teams were using Airtable, but it was more in this format where it was just a part of the process, right. And now suddenly content became the most important part of the process. Like how do you start from collaborating with folks, external vendors and others who can actually provide help with the programming to all the way, how do you actually deliver the content into the app? And if you think about the number of teams that get touched along the way, then you realize, well, you've got to keep all of these people in lock step, and it's a new process and it's a remote customer base and presumably a remote team as well at this point in time. So in terms of the visibility of the information, that's required, both from a planning and an execution perspective, a lot of that comes right before, right.
Archana (14:24): And then it's, once you actually deliver the content, it's also about bringing sort of that video back into the system, to the marketing teams. Then as an example, can come in and they can create the assets that they need, and they can create everything that they need to actually promote and the schedules for it. And so when you think about how it was used before versus later, you can think about a completely different workflow that then got engaged in order to do that. They also by the websites ensuring that they had their publication system on Airtable also improved to be able to work with their own APIs. And so that helped reduce the time to publish, which is, which is very important. That's amazing situation, right?
Kathleen (15:13): Yeah. So as I'm listening to you talk, I'm kind of like categorizing all the different things they did with it. So it sounds like prior to COVID, it was like a internal team collaboration tool, and then COVID hit and it went from them selling experiences in the real world to selling basically digital media content products. And, and then it sounds like they, it's almost like they used Airtable to combine what otherwise would have been four or five different platforms. So what I'm hearing is collaboration and workflow management digital asset or marketing asset management. And then, and then this whole element of the publishing and the APIs, I don't even know how to classify that because that's, that's very interesting, and I think bespoke.
Archana (16:05): And in this case, you know, you can actually almost think about, and the way I think about it, I, I, I'm not even sure if that's the way Equinox would frame it, but really that there's ultimately at the end of the day, a single ID of that piece of content that's actually used in all different locations and where it turns around to be in that way is effectively or single source of truth of what's happening around multiple different teams. Right. And so every little detail that you need to find out about the asset, its shareability, when can it be sort of published, what's the next step there, all of that. And all of the maintenance that actually happens with the asset later on in the process as well, comes an idea we'll see, right? It's not only sort of workflow and collaboration, but then actually even improving it to be able to take advantage of it, publishing it. API is, it becomes the way you distribute things, the way you market things. It becomes a core part of all of that.
Kathleen (17:04): My mind is kind of blowing right now because this, you just said something and it was, it was four words that were super important, which was a single source of truth. As you know, I run a marketing team and, and my company is nowhere near as large as the Equinox group. Hopefully someday we will be. But I, the, one of the big challenges we have is sales enablement materials, right? Like the, who has the most up-to-date and authoritative version of the sales deck or the case study, or, you know, the, the one sheet or the sell the sell sheet that is a constant an ongoing battle and having a, to define the single source of truth, but also keep it updated because I think you talked about that. Like, it's not a static thing. This content is always being updated and refreshed and being able to like point all, we have a way to always point people in a direction that they know they're going to find the latest and greatest is really empowering youth cross-team collaboration.
Archana (18:10): Yes. And, and if you would add one more sort of layer to that, then we recently did a survey, but it wouldn't be new information to most marketers, which is like 80% of the marketing teams that we reached out to said that they actually had felt a sharp increase in their workloads. This is not, not surprising, right.
Kathleen (18:34): I, 100% in the beginning of the pandemic, I heard people talking about things like, like learning new languages and taking up hobbies. And I don't want to sound insensitive. I mean, there are definitely people who lost their jobs, who, you know, made lemonaid out of lemons and did that. But like, if you were working everyone I know who was working just started working more and more and more in the beginning.
Archana (18:55): Yeah. And that is the way customers were engaging with the business. It's just changing. And if marketing's job is to drive growth, then marketing is going to have to change that customer. Right. So it seems like, yeah, it makes sense. Now the good news, in some ways, when I think about it as marketers, we're kind of ready for, for, for change, right? Because we've seen this all the time. Anytime there's a new platform, anytime there's a new media, there's new competition, there's a new product, there's a new region introduced and the teams rally together and sort of change and, and, and a large way. Right. So I think when we were talking about, yes, all of this is very important to have a single source of truth, but then the volume of work and the quantity of work, people were doing the amount of change that they're going through is also rapidly increasing. And, and when you combine those two, it becomes so critical that if you really want to be productive, and if you really want to have more real time and image, it moves in the market, operational excellence is absolutely got to be second nature to a marketing team. Agility is absolutely got to be second nature to marketing team.
Kathleen (20:07): Yeah, that's very true. And I think there's another aspect to this that is really interesting, which is it's not just that Equinox or, or really any company at the beginning of the pandemic had to completely change the way they did their work. But all of that was happening at a time when, in many cases in person teams were forced to move and go remote. And so being able to collaborate and be on the same page, but also move fast when you're not physically together is hard. I mean, it's hard even for teams that have done it for years, there are many that still struggle with that. And so can you talk a little bit about how using Airtable helped Equinox with that? Yeah.
Archana (20:48): I think that's the aspect around things around both real time visibility, you know, and, and I'll, I'll tell you in the context of Equinox, but even like, I'll, I'll live and actually talk to you about Airtable. I don't have really status meetings with my team anymore because I can go into now table base and I can understand the status of where things reside right now, but whether we were in the office, that would be true, or whether we are remote. That is also true. Right. So now going back to the Equinox story, yes, they're not only talking about remote teams, but also remote customer base at this point in time. And to be able to then move your sort of workflows in real time to take advantage, to sort of take advantage of what you have at this point in time, take advantage of the content, the best way you can, the folks that you have at, at that point, the realtime nature and the nature of what I actually think about as easy business logic, that's huge, right?
Archana (21:54): Because Oh, a piece of content is ready for approval, have an automation get going to the person, give them the notification, let them know that we're waiting on them. It gets done, goes to the next stage of the cycle, right? Just that simple idea of otherwise what used to be a lot of manual intervention? Oh, I need to take this from here to, there tends to be I'll go back also to the other survey that we did, it came through there, that marketing leaders said that they spent on average 13 hours a week with operationally manual tasks. Right. And I can imagine that you just talked about the rich MarTech landscape that we have right now, the proliferation of tools, how cross-functional marketing is you're not dealing only with marketing tools, honestly, you're dealing with many different other functions in your company. And so again, going back to sort of that team of operational excellence, to be able to do that in a remote environment requires, you know, knowing that you can go in someplace in real time, that you can depend on things like being notified when things are time sensitive or, or the ball's in your court.
Archana (23:10): And being able to build a solution that works for the way our team works very hard in this remote environment to get an entire team to change its working style, to match the way another tool might want to work. But if you can program that yourself and you can get the, the, the, the sort of solution to work the way our team works, there's huge. Just huge leverage in that.
Kathleen (23:34): So I have two follow on questions to what you just said. Cause there were some interesting things in there. Number, number one is less of a question actually in more of a comment, which is when you talked about meetings, I perked up because that is always been my biggest challenge as a marketing leader is I call it death by meetings. Like I'm in meetings all the time. And then, and you come up with these lists of things to do when you're in the meeting, but then you realize you have no time to do them because you're going to more meetings. It's terrible. So if there's, if this product can reduce the number of meetings that alone as a value proposition is amazing. But no, the thing I was going to ask you is you talked about automation and and I don't, I don't know if I realize, so does, does Airtable have automation built into it also? Absolutely. Yes. I did not know that
Archana (24:23): More about that. You cannot, you can, as things change into your system, new information comes in. You have a whole, you have an entire system there where you can go and program. As I said, just trying to abstract the way as a programmer. If you were trying to build a solution, you would need to be able to build business logic. And that's what we've tried to put in the hands of marketers or only sort of frontline workers, right? So if you need someone to actually be alerted or you need to post something to Facebook, or you need to schedule a notification to go out, right, it's all of those things that you need to know that they're going to get done. I don't need to go in and actually make sure it happens. That itself is sort of like an incredible, I think I'll, I'll tell you my own introduction to Airtable was when I was actually supposed to be a speaker at a conference and the speaker intake form came through Airtable.
Archana (25:19): And the minute I filled my information, I got a DocuSign with the speaker liability forms. Right. And similarly, when I, when I sort of put in information about dietary preferences, et cetera, I saw the, my as an, as an outside person, not knowing anything about the tool, my own experience was so much more enhanced because I just saw how things were orchestrated. Like, how do you actually manage the speaker experience was all orchestrated. And I thought, Oh my God, I run event teams as a marketer. I should be doing that. And I mentioned, I, I look at, I follow the products I love. And that was my aha moment as, as sort of a marketer, which is, this is how, how we need to do it. Not actually have, you know, I don't know previously like the spreadsheet and all, we've got more registrations and these are the actions now that we will take with those registrations and get it all done, that it orchestrate to the system, you know, what you need to do, you know, what, how you want to build a great experience, go ahead and do it and let it all happen.
Kathleen (26:24): That's amazing. I had no idea that that was built into the product. So now I have a little action item for myself to go to the website and dig deeper because now I'm really interested in all the different ways I can use it. I want to go back to Equinox though. And, you know, the, the, the premise of this podcast is always about results and leaving people with actionable things they can do to get better results. And so we've talked about the, about how Equinox used Airtable, and we've covered the actionable side, but we haven't talked about the results and they had some pretty interesting results from this. So can you maybe speak to, I know time to publish improved and there were some other metrics like actual outcomes in terms of adoption of customers using things. So tell me a little bit more about what came out of that.
Archana (27:12): Absolutely. It should be ongoing, you know, putting the production tracking system, as we talked about an Airtable they went and they built it out to support their publishing APIs, right. They could publish much faster than this, improve their time to publish by 400%.
Kathleen (27:25): Wow. That's huge.
Archana (27:29): But I think as a, as a customer centric business, as they are, what was really cool, which is that when they really looked at the, since they launched the Equinox plus platform in March, and they looked at it through the end of 2020, and then the members that used the app working out nearly 20% more per month, compared to what they had done in 2019, that's a pretty phenomenal customer outcome. If you ask me and I, it sort of resonated more with me, just, you know, given that time when I know how important sort of like exercising, both physical and mental wellness had recommend all of our lives, the fact that they were able to move that outcome for their customers and get their customers moving and exercising was huge.
Kathleen (28:16): Yeah, that's amazing. Both of those stats are amazing and it really speaks to great outcomes. All right. We're going to shift gears for a minute. And I have two questions I always love asking my guests. And I'm really curious to hear what you have to say on these things. The first being, you know, we talk all about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or an individual that you could point to right now that you think is really setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer today?
Archana (28:47): I think it's a, it's, it's a pretty large large range in group, right. I personally am always gravitating just even by nature. And I think a lot of inbound marketing does too, with the idea of simply allowing or scaling it in a way where your customers are able to participate in the process. Right? So we talked a little bit about customer stories, but places where you have strong communities, where people can get together and authentically speak to each other about their experiences or places where you can actually engage with enjoying conversations about your product. I've, I've often, like when, when folks ask me, you know, what, what is sort of the, the biggest marketing myth I'm like, that we love to believe that we can control the message, but really our job is to join the conversations and the conversations and the experiences with our brands will help really the outcome of that.
Archana (29:48): And so when you think about really, and they're just so many dimensions, when we think about all of these customer centric brands that try to do that and be there at the right time, at the right place, but with the, with the messaging, I hope I hope one of these days, but someone is going to answer with Airtable as their answer to you, but that's certainly what we're hoping helping to do, which is actually be able to meet prospects and customers in their journey. You know, give them the right information at the right time to scan the, you mentioned a note I took in my head, as we were talking is Kathleen said that she she uses Airtable, but she didn't know about automations. And so that's something, you know,, that I need to go and, and, and think through how that happened as well. And so that is yeah, th that's sort of my, my, my thing is about, you know, thinking about in the company. So think about that experience in the product led growth world, it's called a funnel, but think about that as your product, think about that engine as your product, as well as a product and manage it just like you would any, any product you manage, which is go in and fix the bugs and go in, enhance the features in it to be able to have measurable outcomes for the customer.
Kathleen (31:08): And you met, you talked about community, which it's funny that you said that because as the whole time we've been talking, that's kind of been in my head that, you know, for a company that has, you know, is really trying to elevate user stories. And where so much of the product innovation is coming out of the customer community community obviously is, is a key part of, of that strategy. Is there any company out there that you think is doing community really well, that, that you look to as a great example?
Archana (31:36): Yeah, I've I mean I've always looked up as an example to Salesforce as a brand that does community management very well. I'd like to think you know, the role that Atlassian plays in helping engage the communities is a very strong one as well. But, but I wouldn't want to be limited to those two brands because I do feel, I do realize that there's so many more marketers like us are coming for to, to, to understand what's the best way to give customers a platform, to understand it with the brand, but also with each other. And, and that's becoming a very strong sort of part of every market still, I believe, as we move ahead.
Kathleen (32:18): Yeah. I think that's one of the good things that's come out of this pandemic is it's been a forcing function to speed up this movement towards community building. You know, I, I've always been an avid fan of like joining, joining different online groups, but the number of like really high quality, for example, you know, private Slack channels that have cropped up in the last year has been just amazing to me and the conversations that are happening in those walled gardens have been, have really added a lot of value to my life as a marketer. So I think that's going to be a great thing in the years to come that I hope, hope we keep up with,
Archana (32:52): Yeah, th there's such rich conversations, right? Because we're all, we're all humans, we're all inspired by people who take actions and, and, and sort of enrich themselves. And we want to learn from them. And at the same time when we find that things have helped us, we like to share those stories, whether those are shared at events or in community forums or socially, or even in a conversation like this, I think it's a core part of how we all operate.
Kathleen (33:20): Definitely. All right. Second question is the, one of the pain points I hear from a lot of marketers that I speak to, is that trying to keep up with all the changing things in the world of digital marketing is a little bit like drinking from a fire hose, whether it's changing technology or, you know, privacy regulations, or what have you how do you personally keep up with at all and, and, and continue to educate yourself? Do you have certain sources of information that you really rely on?
Archana (33:48): Actually podcasts like this, which have become much more easier fortunately to access in our current current world where I feel like it brings forum for folks to learn from each other. So it's an easy way to say it. I wouldn't say I have any specific go-to ones there, but I certainly for a lot of companies in sort of the same area and that I follow them, product led growth companies or other enterprise B2B companies, where the leaders are speaking at it. I really like to go and listen to what's working for them. What inspires them? What are they looking forward to as changes that are coming? So that's certainly a, a big part of that.
Kathleen (34:32): That's great. Well, I've really enjoyed speaking with you. Archana if somebody is listening and they want to learn more about Airtable, or they want to reach out and connect with you online, what's the best way for them to do that?
Archana (34:44): So I'm at Airtable, of course, the website. But we also, you'll also find us on all social channels and I'd love to engage with anyone who would want to connect. Also find me on LinkedIn at the best, and that's the best way to reach out.
Kathleen (34:57): Great. Well, I will include those links in the show notes. So head there if you're listening and you want to learn more about Airtable or connect with Archana, and in the meantime, if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, or you learned something new, I would love it if you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. That's how other people find us. And finally, if you know someone else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork and let me know about it. Cause they could be my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you, Archana. This was a lot of fun.
Archana (35:29): Thank you so much Kathleen. Same here.
Getting new leads is just the start. Once that happens, how do you nurture leads in a way that increases their propensity to buy?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, glassCanopy Marketing President Rich Quarles breaks down the topic of lead nurturing and shares his thoughts on how to structure a lead nurturing campaign that will drive higher conversions.
From how many emails to send and how often to send them, to how to use display ads to increase brand awareness and stimulate higher email conversions, Rich gets into detail and shares actionable advice to improve your lead nurturing programs.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to hear Rich's insights.
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the glassCanopy Marketing website
- Connect with Rich on LinkedIn
- Follow Rich on Twitter
- Email rich at rich@glasscanopy.com
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I am your host Kathleen Booth. This week. My guest is Rich Quarles, who is the President of glassCanopy Marketing. Welcome to the podcast Rich.
Rich (00:21): Thanks. Excited to be here.
Kathleen (00:23): Yeah, I love, I love your company name. What is the story behind that?
Rich (00:28): So when we first started the agency 20 years ago you know, I was coming off of my previous experience working at one of the early web services firms here in the Bay area. And what really struck me was how limited the services a lot of the company has provided and how sort of they used to do a lot of shell game around, like who was working for them, who were freelancers and, and a lot of companies, you know you would take somebody who wasn't necessarily the most qualified to do a job because they were taking up desk space and salary. And and so glassCanopy was originally conceived as providing overarching services. So, you know, full spectrum of communication services with totally transparent you know, how we got it done, how we did the work.
Rich (01:32): So, you know, we eschewed a lot of the marketing bullshit. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that. So there was a lot of bullshit, right? Like about what we chose this color blue for, you know, explicit reasons. And we were much more results oriented. So it was just really more the openness about what we were doing, how we did it and that that's the, the glass, the clear part. And then the canopy was the overarching you know, services that we provided. Ironically, we're now like one of the most niche agencies out there. We're still transparent about how we get it done, but we really focus on really lead generation content generation and lead nurturing. And that's all we do. And we do it for a very limited number of companies.
Kathleen (02:23): Great. Well, you just answered what was going to be my next question, which is to tell me about the company. So we're good on that, but I love that you guys focus so narrowly on, you know, lead gen and content and lead nurturing. And I think lead nurturing is actually what we were going to talk about today because I, and this is something that I've always been really interested in because I feel like there are a lot of marketers that are actually pretty good at lead gen. I don't know. I mean, lots of people do need help with that, but there's a lot of marketers that have figured out how to generate leads, but there's a lot of marketers for whom those just sit there and don't ever turn into anything. And so lead nurturing is one of those things that lots of people talk about, but I feel like few have really mastered and you guys have gotten some great results with lead nurturing and it is your bread and butter. So I guess let's start by having you talk to me about how you think about lead nurturing in general.
Rich (03:21): Yeah, so I think, I think first of all you know, we went through a very similar journey as an agency to what you just referred to in that, you know, we, we really changed our focus from being a full services agency to really focus on content marketing and lead generation. And about seven years ago, six or seven years ago I came back from marketing profs in Boston and was just like, I see the light, we are going to change what we do. We are going to do less, much less. And and we got really good at bringing in top of funnel leads. And, and I think, you know, for us, what was a little different is that we, we never focused on just, you know, leads, but the right leads. So all of our clients are B2B clients with really complex, very expensive solutions.
Rich (04:16): So typically six, seven, eight figure deals. And so of course, there's, you know, six to eight people in every deal and 99.99, nine, 9% of the population can't buy their products or services or influence it in any meaningful way. And so, you know, we started out with this really strong focus on getting the right kinds of leads. So, you know, we would call a marketing qualified lead irrespective of the scoring system that a particular client was using essentially the right title at the right firmographic type of company. And that really felt like a big accomplishment when we first started doing it, because typically when we came in, clients, a lot of times they were still focused on, you know, metrics like number of clicks or impressions or things like that.
Kathleen (05:07): Following their Facebook page is one of my favorites.
Rich (05:13): And then they were, they were only, you know, just kind of starting to really count the number of leads that were going into Salesforce. But, you know, there was a complete disconnect between marketing and sales. And so, you know, every time we came in there was that conversation with marketing saying we delivered 5,000 leads and sales saying, and they all sucked. And, you know, for most of our clients, it's a fairly defined universe of whom they can talk to. And so, you know, that first step was okay, we're only going to count a lead if it's that the right, the right lead. And then that started to open a conversation with sales, where they were like, Oh and we would kind of go through LinkedIn profiles of the leads that we brought in and that who are interacting with marketing and, and saying to sales things like, well, what about this person?
Rich (06:11): Do you think you could sell, you know, your $7 million widget to this person? And they're like, Oh yes. I'm like, well, but start down that process. But what we found was that there was a huge disconnect between those top of funnel leads that we were bringing in and the revenue numbers, because again, you know, we were dealing with a relatively few number of deals. And so we had the luxury of starting at the bottom and looking at all the deals that sales had closed in a given quarter. And then, you know, desperately trying to find a connection to anything marketing had done. And you know, and very often you know, that became an attribution issue is we, as B2B, marketers are always facing, right? So Susie downloads, the asset, passes it to Tom who sits on it and then shows up and sales was like, look, we got this deal. He just called us. It was inbound or came out of my Rolodex. And, and you're like, well kind of, but there was additional touches beforehand by other folks in the organization.
Kathleen (07:20): I literally just got off of that phone call. I am not kidding you. For the last hour. So yes, 100% that happens all the time.
Rich (07:33): I remember sitting in a client's conference room six or seven years ago, and I was just like, we're going to right now, we're doing this manually, but we are, we're totally going to automate this probably in the next six months. I'm talking to some other outside consultants and some, some data scientists on this where we'll have this nut cracked, and I hate to say it, but we still go through and manually double checks. You know, some of it, we can automate some of it we can see, but the asset getting passed from person to person sometimes in the same organization, sometimes not, that's, that's much harder to track. But I think having the luxury of being able to actually manually attack that, which most even B2B marketers can't can't do, it gave us a lot of insights in terms of who and how, and why did people end up having a conversation with sales and making that transition from an MQL to an SQL and a sales opportunity. And so, you know, we started applying that as, as often as possible. And I, you know, it's not rocket science, like much of marketing, it's really more an execution play. But what I feel like is it, it really comes down to how many times and how many different can you, you know, follow up with that initial lead from the client and do it in a consistent, non bothering way to really increase that flow down the, down the funnel.
Kathleen (09:11): I that's true, but I also think it's really easy to screw it up because if like, I can just think about my own situation. You know, you've got a ton of new contacts coming into your database and they're getting different emails for different reasons, whether those are marketing emails, whether those are lead nurturing, you know, then there's also different sales stages. Like when they first convert, there's a, there's like a certain need that they have at that first stage. Like they need to get to know your company. And then there's later when they've been in your database for awhile. And so, like, I feel like it's really easy to mess it up by sending too much, too soon, by not slow rolling in the beginning and not like properly introducing them to your company and almost like a welcoming or an onboarding sequence. And, you know, it, it also depends on their behavior. Like if they download five things in a day, are they getting enrolled in five different nurturing sequences? Or do you have a way to like reconcile what they hear from from you next? I like, I don't know. It's, it can be very messy if you don't approach it properly.
Rich (10:16): No, absolutely. And I think that, that's one of the things that that, that we all struggle with to a degree, but that you can tackle by having sort of a unified approach in how you're following up with a given lead. Right. So that they're only in one bucket or classification at a time. I think when I think of the, the amount of times you can touch a prospect, it's not in a single channel. Right. So I think that we sort of default to email but email is appallingly inefficient in terms of getting a prospect's attention, right. So, you know, if you've got a lead nurture stream, that's getting clicked on at two or 3%, you know, that, that feels pretty good. Sometimes depending on what the call to action is, right? So if you've got a content call to action, then that would be terrible.
Rich (11:15): But if it's, you know, get a demo for a $7 million project, you'd be probably pretty good with that. And so, you know, I think that what's helpful is to have a unified campaign within your nurture sequence. So you're addressing, you know, your best gas, are they trying to find out more about the solution category and, and they haven't gotten to like narrowing down vendors in which case, the more objective information that you can provide that allows them to start getting down that process, the more trust you build and the more likely you are to be in that final list or are they at the point where they've already got their short list of three prospects and three vendors that they want to talk to, and you're really trying to push through that. Or is it a different stage? Like, you know, I think one of the most frustrating things about plotting this out is that no one follows, you know, the lead process that we have in mind.
Rich (12:17): You know, I mean, the folks here, linear funnel, yeah. The linear buyer's journey is I, I, you know, and people have suggested all kinds of different metaphors for it. And I don't know that one works better than another, but, you know, we all know the linear customer journey almost never happens. And when you look at any given customer, it looks more like a drunken stagger then running in circles, chasing tails is but I think the, really the more the more ways that you can reach out to the customer, so more platforms, right? So just emailing, somebody will just get you, them trained to ignore your emails or unsubscribe, or you end up in, you know, spam or near spam folders. But if you add layer on say, you know, retargeting ads across a bunch of different platforms, you know, almost nobody clicks on a retargeting ad, but we see that, you know, increase our email lift by almost 50%.
Rich (13:31): And then how so, well, we've just won a number, different experiments. So if you're, you've got your email nurture stream going, and it's just email, it's just coming out of HubSpot or Pardot or Marketo or Eloqua. And then you add a synced banner campaign, not necessarily the same offer, but aimed at the same stage. Right? So, you know, if they're still figuring things out, maybe you're offering a webinar by email, but your, your banner ad campaign is, you know, offering a Gartner report or something like that, or a deep dive into how that solution works. You're not going to get a lot of people clicking on those banner ads and filling out the form and, and downloading your offer. But you will see an increase in responsiveness to your email campaign and you'll see an increase in the SDR BDRs success rate when they're reaching out. Right. You know, if branding didn't work we'd all be out of a job. And so that's very helpful. That's interesting. So, so at what point do
Kathleen (14:52): You start to nurture, are you, is everybody getting nurtured in some way, or is it only the people that have converted on something, or like you mentioned SDR and BDR, like, do you have your database of outbound outreach that you're doing and they're enrolled in nurturing sequences? What is it that like triggers them to be enrolled in nurturing?
Rich (15:16): So we, as an agency, don't do any outbound. Obviously a lot of our clients do. I'm not a big fan of the cold call, whether that comes via email LinkedIn or the phone. I think that, you know, inbound is really the way to create engagement and, you know, whenever we have measured that we see it very consistently. I mean, people just don't buy extremely complex business solutions based on a cold call. They develop a need, they have an interest they investigate and they, they move forward from that perspective. So, and I've lost track of the question,
Kathleen (16:00): How do you determine what's the trigger that determines who gets enrolled in nurturing?
Rich (16:04): So, so for all of our campaigns, you know, we need a prospect to raise their hand to say, I am interested. And, and very often that is downloading a content asset first. So, you know, a lot of times our lead asset might be a very in-depth, but non salesy objective way discussion, maybe 20 pages or so of how to solve a given problem. Now we don't expect people to read them but they're very scannable. You know, if you flip through it in a minute, you get the gist of it, but it, it actually feels and is substantial. And so a surprisingly large number of people will download it or print it out. However, they kind of shuffle their digital assets. And when we follow up you know is shockingly large number of times, they will brandish it and they'll be like, I've been meaning to get to this.
Rich (17:01): And so, you know, there's gotta be some sort of meaningful engagement on behalf of the prospect, or you're just hammering at a closed door. And so, you know, based on what it is that that initial engagement is that really determines on where they're going to go into the nurturing prospect, right? And so, you know, we're also really big believers and you only ask for as much information as you need. And I have this argument with, with sales and customer teams all the time, but the only piece of information you need as a business email, everything else is a little bit of work from a yeah, from a data augmentation point of view. There's a little bit of work, but you want to know their address, their phone number, their job, title, everything you can get all of with their email address. And so, you know, taking that that allows you to build a profile based on you know, who they are. And then you've got a good starter point based on what was that first interaction, what was the subject matter of that?
Kathleen (18:06): So when somebody does first interact and raises their hands, you know, it could be on any, any given thing. It could be on an ebook on a webinar. It could be that they subscribe to your blog. It could be that a meeting with a sales rep, people are coming in and all different ways. Do you generally have some sort of like singular welcome experience or are you contextualizes how you begin nurturing them based on what it is they converted on or raise their hand for?
Rich (18:34): Yeah, that's a great question. It's always contextualized based on how they came in with, with one exception which is the newsletter. And, you know, I think this is actually how you and I reconnected a couple of years ago. We both simultaneously, but little posts on how nobody wants to read your, your news, your company newsletter. And so, you know, the newsletter is never about the company. It's never about their product. It's about the customer and their profile and, and the business challenges that they face that are included in, or adjacent to, you know, where the solution that we're representing plays. And, you know, for the most part in as much as I can convince my clients it's, it's third party articles, because that's what customers find most useful. We've already got their business email. We already know where they live.
Rich (19:29): We don't need them to register for more stuff. We don't need them to click on stuff. We're just there to provide value and interest. So if there's a McKinsey article out there that kind of goes in depth or a Harvard business review article, that really talks at a theoretical level about how to solve some aspect of their job, it's really valuable for us to kind of serve that up. And, you know, we'll, we may have multiple newsletters for different personas. So, you know, oftentimes we'll call them the sayers or the doers. Like, you know, the folks that are in there using the software, using the hardware on a daily basis versus their bosses who did use that kind of hardware 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. And they've got different, you know, business issues that, that were progressing, but everybody kind of gets that once or twice a month newsletter that kind of helps them stay up to date on, on problems that we're presuming there, they're interested in based on their interest in our solution.
Kathleen (20:31): Right. So you kick off nurturing based on what they converted on. You have your email nurture. It sounds like you're doing ads as well. And then you might have like, newsletter, are there other channels that you're using for nurturing beyond ads, email, and, yeah,
Rich (20:48): So we encourage our clients to connect on LinkedIn with folks that have come in again, it's not like a, Hey let's connect, right? Because everybody ignores those, but offering an additional piece of value, often an ebook or something along those lines, you know, saw you saw this, here's an ebook that solves what we think probably you're looking at or talks about in depth. Would you like to connect and I'll email you a copy and, you know, we see about a 15%, 10 to 15% action rate based on those kinds of emails versus, you know, maybe a 2% or 3% connection rate, if you don't have an offer, but you sort of customize it and then a Bismal numbers, if you're just spamming people.
Kathleen (21:40): Hm. That's interesting that the connection rate is so low without like, without an offer, because I don't know. I feel like I spend a lot of LinkedIn connections and, and as long as I customize the message and it's like, here's, here's why I'm reaching out to you. And it's, as long as it's not a pitch, I feel like I have a really high acceptance rate.
Rich (21:58): Well, but how often is your "I'm reaching out to you because I want to feature you on my podcast"?
Kathleen (22:03): No, no, no, never, never, never. I don't. I actually, it's funny cause I'm at the point now and I'm really lucky. I realized, but four years into this podcast, almost everybody that comes on, I either get pitched or it's an introduction from a past guest. So, or it's like somebody I've been friends with for years. I don't, I, I only maybe once or twice if I done cold outreach and funny enough when I do it, it's usually on Twitter. So no, it's usually like, Hey, you know, I saw that you're, you are like a big expert in this. And I'm really interested in that. And I would love to add you to my network. And it's just funny, like I've found maybe it's that people are so jaded by just getting the one where nobody customizes it and they press the button, which is like, I'd like to add you to my network and there's no personal information at all. So maybe the bar is so low that as long as I put some tiny amount of personalization and people accept it, I don't know. It's really interesting.
Rich (22:58): That is interesting. I mean, I, I think that what we're finding is it the, the, the, generally the people that are doing the connection requests are SDRs or BDRs. And so it's sort of obvious that they're.
Kathleen (23:16): So maybe it's because they're in a sales role and people are like, I don't want you to sell to me.
Rich (23:21): With other, you know, like CTOs and other folks with different titles. But because, you know, your LinkedIn account is, you know, personal to you. If people, if you're doing that at scale, it becomes actually quite hard to manage that, that inbound flow, if that's not what you consider to be your job when, once people reply, you know, you have to kind of deal with that manually. And then to hand that off becomes a little awkward. And again, you know, I think we're not trying to, we're not trying to bother anybody, right? Like, that's not the way to get that sale either. It's, it's a way to, you know, come to make yourself available at different times in different places so that, you know, the customer is, you know, feels in control because ultimately they are in control. Yeah. You know, I, I think for me, you know, the, that moment where I was like, Oh, content marketing, that's, that's where we have to go, because ultimately you're just not going to be able to reach people unless they want to be reached. And, you know, one of our, one of our niches is reaching physicians. And, you know, they're sort of the ultimate.
Kathleen (24:42): They're hard to reach. Yeah. They don't give out their emails anywhere.
Rich (24:45): They don't, and they've got a whole phalynx of, of folks that are lined up, you know, to guard them from interactions that they don't want to have with people trying to sell them stuff. Yeah. And you know, one of the interesting things that, that we've seen from the pandemic is, you know, prior to the pandemic, maybe half of the physicians in the U S would let you know, reps of various types into their office. And, you know, obviously with the pandemic that went to zero, and what we're hearing loud and clear from the physician community is you're never coming back.
Kathleen (25:23): We like it this way.
Rich (25:24): Digital has worked out just fine. We don't need you to send reps to buy our, our folks lunch or anything like that. We'll contact you if you, if we want to hear from you. And, and I think the whole world is, is, is moving that way. We all have increasing control over who gets to contact us which I think is a direct reaction to marketers ruining everything. Right.
Kathleen (25:51): So speaking of ruining things, let me ask you a question. I want to dig a little deeper on the email side, just with her, just talking about email nurturing what are your thoughts around how often and how many times?
Rich (26:05): So I have dug through and seen so much conflicting data on this that I will, I will fess up and say, I feel like this is basically a personal preference.
Kathleen (26:19): That's why I said, what is your feelings? Yes. I don't buy any of the data because it's also different by industry. It's different by role, but like, I always like to hear people's personal takes on what is the right approach.
Rich (26:30): Yeah. So personally, I feel like you need a followup directly after the contact you know, where they're asking for an asset and that's not like an instant auto response. It's something a day later after that, typically we go either 13 day intervals or 15 day intervals. And we very deliberately didn't want to go on two week intervals because we want to hit on different days of the week, because everybody who you know talks about, well, on average Wednesday at 10:00 AM is the best time to send well, yes, that may be when the majority of people are, are the largest number of people are, are most likely to be available, but there's somebody who always has an opening at Tuesday at 10:00 AM, somebody else who only goes through their emails on Saturday morning. And so if you want to get everyone or give everyone a chance, you know, you want to kind of space it out. And so, you know, we, we do 13 to 15 times, I feel like twice a month is, is enough plus with the newsletter. And if there's a BDR outreach on top of that,
Kathleen (27:39): So twice a month for six months is about what you're doing.
Rich (27:44): Well. So we will typically do a cycle of about five emails on a specific topic. And then if graduate that prospect to a new cycle and again, that's, that's pretty customized based on who they are or what vertical they're in or what product or solution they've shown some interest in. So we, we do try to, to change that up. And there, there's typically a pause of an additional two weeks or three weeks or so as we transition. And it's not just the email that changes, you know, the banner ads that they're sent to, if we've got a parallel conversation going on, LinkedIn will change that as well. And after six months we'll rest, and then we've got the rescue emails, right? Like you're never going to stop getting marketing emails until you say, please stop.
Kathleen (28:42): Yeah. so do you, and then, so you don't, you don't stop for disengagement. Like if somebody is not responding, there's not, you don't have a threshold beyond what you, you sort of do a list hygiene purge and say, I'm taking you off my rolls. Okay.
Rich (28:59): For the most part we do not. And that's based on our data when we've got someone who, you know, ignored our emails for six years and then clicked on, I want a quote and the deal closes in, you know, record breaking time. And we we've seen that in a lot of different long-term engagements where, you know, we've got that tracking data and, and, and folks come back. There are, you know, it's a little different by industry and that, like, you know, for instance, cybersecurity after six years, they're probably not there it's going to a bot. So you, you know, there are no absolutes, but for a lot of a lot of our audiences, you know, no news is just no news.
Kathleen (29:56): So talk to me a little bit about some real world examples. And you can, if you can't name names, that's totally fine. We can be anonymous, but like, I, I'm interested to know how, you know, you're getting great results. Like, how are you measuring the results and what kinds of results have you seen?
Rich (30:15): So I can talk a little bit about a enterprise software company that we were working with. And the, when we first started working with them, they were sending out cadenced emails out of Marketo and getting almost no response. Right. And so when we dug into the, the, the list data, and I always believe when you're getting bad results, it's not, it's never because of the creative, right. It's always the list. And so, you know, we, we really started digging in and seeing that, you know, a lot of the list was from conferences that people had attended another sort of pseudo opt in. And so, you know, we started a new and I don't remember the exact number, but I want to say the engagement rate was like 0.2% 0.3%. And so we started a new content campaign with some high-level ebook solutions that were promoting and contents indication and targeted advertising campaigns and the engagement rate for those campaigns.
Rich (31:41): And there was a threshold to, to be qualified as an MQL and the scoring system varied, but essentially you had to take at least a couple actions after that initial action to get to MQL. And we were bringing 35% of the incoming leads to MQL status within a quarter.
Kathleen (32:02): Wow. That's great.
Rich (32:03): And, and that, that went from, you know, essentially no engagement at all. And, and we saw, you know, distinct levels as we increase what we were doing in the marketplace with those. So, you know, that's one of the places that I saw, and it's pretty consistent that when we add those banner ads that are, are synced, it doesn't seem to help if it's just random branding banners. But if they're synced to the campaign that you're, you're hitting those particular prospects with, you see like a 50% lift in terms of engagement. Even though like, I mean, the engagement rates with banner ads are honestly vanishingly low.
Kathleen (32:43): Yeah. And it's only going to get worse, I think as cookies start to go away and, or third-party cookies at least start to go away. So yeah.
Rich (32:51): Yeah. The tracking issue, cause that's a whole nother podcast that I look forward to. Yeah.
Kathleen (32:55): Yeah. Seriously. Well, I just, earlier this week, I just published an interview with somebody about the Apple iOS 14.5 update and what that would mean. And soon we're going to have all the Google stuff coming down and it's just constant fun, getting harder and harder every day. Right. well, I want to shift gears because I feel like we could talk about this all day. But I always have two questions I like to ask my guests. And I'm really curious about what you have to say about these. The first is we, you know, we talk a lot about inbound marketing here. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park when it comes to inbound marketing these days?
Rich (33:34): Yeah. So I'm going to go a little outside of B2B here. There's a fellow by the name of Cameron Hughes who had his own winery label that was mainly distributed at Costco for many years. And he, his model was essentially buying wine from first rate wineries that was going to go unsold, putting a private label on it and signing, you know, 19,000 NDAs, if he wouldn't disclose where the wine came from and selling it at a discount through Costco. And so for various reasons that that business didn't quite work out, he ended up selling it. But about a year ago, sort of the beginning of the pandemic, he started a winery or winery distribution, I guess, called de Negoce. So I'm not sure totally on how it's pronounced, but essentially it means a wine negotiate.
Rich (34:36): And same business model only he was, he's selling it as futures. So he signs the contract with the winery. I'm going to buy 500 cases of your best wine and that you sell for a hundred dollars a bottle and I'm going to sell it for 12. And then he pre-sales, it collects the money, gets the wine, bottles it, and then ships it to you and the catch is, because it's just been put in the bottle. It's not really drinkable for like between three and 12 months. So, you know, there's that, that pain involved of having to store the wine, which for this particular audience, I think it makes it all the more appealing
Kathleen (35:22): I was going to say. I bet there's people who are like, I can't wait. I'm tapping into it now.
Rich (35:28): And, and so I can hear you thinking, like, what does this have to do with inbound marketing and where it comes is there are bulletin boards devoted to people guessing where these wines come from. People splitting bottles and the, the founder will show up every once in a while dropping little nuggets of hints or, you know, discussion around what happens. And, you know, they don't have any kind of formal ambassadorship program, but I know I have introduced, I think, six or seven people or time to the, the concept because it's such an interesting business model. And he sends out these emails and texts. I actually subscribed to a text telling me about the new wines that I could buy. And I love them. It's the first thing that, like my phone pings and I'll sit there and read through, and the descriptions are amazing.
Rich (36:32): And you don't think that you can read that many wine descriptions. I feel compelled because there's only so much wine a reasonable person can drink.
Kathleen (36:42): I feel like you'd need to have an affiliate code because everybody listening to this podcast is probably like, I got to go check this out now.
Rich (36:50): Well, you would think so, but I, this is what I really love about it because I feel like he has captured that sense of authenticity that is so critical to everybody's marketing efforts. And, and I think that, you know, in B2B marketing, we, we sometimes play this line that, that feels difficult where we want to be salesy, but we know that actually our, our prospects don't really respond well to that. And so, you know, I think that one of the reasons that this, this wine company is so successful is that they are treading that line perfectly and not having an affiliate program, I think makes that ambassadorship and that you see it's kind of rampant that much more authentic. Right. And so it's sort of like, you know, when you think about, Oh, I want to send something to this prospect. I want to add that to my lead nurture stream.
Rich (37:53): Right. I want to give them a physical thing. I want to do a direct mail at dimensional direct mail piece. And it's always like, but you don't want it to look like a bribe or feel like a bribe, right? You want it for them to have a joy, but essentially the worthless, because you could be breaking company laws or company rules, you could be breaking laws if it has a value of more than a hundred dollars say or $50 even. And no one ever wants to admit that they were influenced by, you know, something along those lines. And yet, you know, you want to give something of value. And so that sort of lack of salesmanship makes for really effective sales.
Kathleen (38:44): Yeah. Oh, that sounds like a great one to check out. All right. How do you spell it so that I know how to find it?
Rich (38:50): D E N E G O C E.
Kathleen (38:56): Okay, cool. I'll put the link in the show notes for anybody who wants to check that out. I'm sure we have lots of wine enthusiasts out there who would love to check it out.
Rich (39:02): That's great wine. I have to say like the value is amazing.
Kathleen (39:08): Awesome. All right. Second question is the pain point I hear most from marketers is that they find it very hard to keep up with all the things that are constantly changing in the world of digital marketing. How do you personally like to stay educated and up-to-date on all that?
Rich (39:22): So I belong to a round table of agency owners called the Agency Management Institute. And it's, it's a larger organization, but the, the round table that I belong to is 12 different advertising agencies that are located across the United States. And we get together physically get together when there's not a pandemic going on every six months for two or three days. And, you know, we, we, we both talk about our, our, our businesses, but also, you know, industry challenges and how we're tackling them. And, you know, typically we'll have a speaker or something like that. And so I find that to be a really useful step back from the day to day of operations. And, you know, everyone brings a big idea. We offer a a hundred dollars, crisp a hundred dollar bill. So there's 1200 bucks on the line and everyone brings their, their best idea. And, and any time I travel outside my bubble and turn off my phone for a couple of days, I always feel like, you know, I'm able to reflect and think of something that is useful. And I always come back from those meetings with something that, you know, is of use to many or most of my clients.
Kathleen (40:41): Great. I love those private networks. And I feel like a lot of them have really kind of grown considerably since the pandemic started, because it's, whereas a lot of us used to do so much meeting in person that has disappeared. And so having these peer groups, having these Slack groups, these communities, whatever form they take has become tremendously valuable.
Rich (41:01): Absolutely. And I think, you know, as, as marketing professionals, we, we lean on each other. And you know, I think that that's why the state of the art has advanced so quickly over the past 20 years after really being stagnant for 30 or 40 years.
Kathleen (41:18): Yeah. That's very, very true. All right, well, we've reached the top of our hour. So what I would love to know is if somebody is listening and they have a question or they want to learn more about what you're doing, or what talked about here, what is the best way for them to connect with you online?
Rich (41:37): Just shoot me an email at rich, rich@glasscanopy.com. Or you can go to our website at glasscanopy.com and fill out a form or chat with us. We try to make ourselves available.
Kathleen (41:49): All right, fantastic. And I'll put those links in the show notes as well. And if you're listening and you liked this episode, head to Apple podcasts and leave a review. And of course, if you know somebody else doing amazing inbound marketing work, send me a tweet at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me Rich.
Rich (42:09): Thanks so much for having me, Kathleen.
What are the top three low hanging fruit opportunities that ecommerce brands can take advantage of to drive more conversions, and what lessons do they hold for B2B marketers?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, The Retail Academy founder Salena Knight talks about three marketing tactics that ecommerce brands can implement quickly to drive massive results, and how those tactics can also be used by B2B, B2C, or really any kind of marketer to increase conversions.
Salena says it's all about focusing first on what you don't do well, understanding the customer journey, and where along that journey they are most likely to say "yes," along with the importance of segmenting your database so you can give the right offers to the right people at the right time.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to hear more about Salena's top three tips.
Resources from this episode:
- Check out Salena's website
- Connect with Salena on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Salena Knight who is the CEO of The Retail Strategist and founder of The Retail Academy. Welcome to the podcast, Salena.
Salena (00:23): Hi Kathleen. I am so excited to be on here because I totally love geeking out about all things marketing.
Kathleen (00:29): Oh my gosh. I'm the biggest marketing nerd. And so we're going to do just fine. Right? Great. Yes. and I, I love, I'm really excited to talk to you because you know, the podcast is all about inbound marketing and for whatever reason, historically, I've tended to have a lot of B2B marketers on my show, but obviously inbound marketing can be used in all different sectors. And, you know, in my day job, I do a lot of work with e-commerce brands. And so I was really interested that you specialize in retail because I think that there are a lot of ways to use inbound marketing strategies there as well. And I think a lot of brands are not tapping into them, at least from what I've seen. So we're going to dig into that a little bit, but before we do, can you just share a little bit about your background and what The Retail Strategist and The Retail Academy are?
Salena (01:19): I would love to, and I think before we jump in, that is so insightful of you saying that you can take away e-commerce strategies because it's so often is the case. When I chat to people who aren't in retail or e-commerce, and I say some of the strategies that we're using, and they say, why are we not doing that? And the biggest one is, is something simple as capturing, like doing a customer database Facebook ad strategy or an ad strategy to get, to build the customer database, rather than just going direct to lead or direct to sale. But we'll talk about, let's see, we already geeking out.
Kathleen (01:54): I know! We're getting ahead of ourselves.
Salena (01:58): So my name is Salena. I own The Retail Strategist, which is a boutique marketing agency for retail and e-commerce brands, but I'm also firstly, the founder of The Retail Academy, which is an online training hub that gives the knowledge and the confidence to retail and e-commerce store owners to build their brands. So I'm a retail growth strategist. My focus is on scaling brands. I don't work with startups and I, I focus on independent brands. And the reason I do is because I had this instinct need for gratification. And when you work with independent brands and I'm not talking to still even small brands, some of these brands are high seven figure turnovers, but they're very agile. And they're always excited to put strategies into place. There's not 27 levels of hierarchy. And by the time they implement it, that thing's been in gone the internet and e-commerce and everything that we do, that's technology based these days is moving so quickly that you don't implement fast. Then you could be lost forever, and you can definitely lose out to competitors because in a lot of cases, it is first to market. Even if it's a little bit messy, even if it's not necessarily the prettiest, but the first to market is the person who gets, who wins the prize and gets that market share.
Kathleen (03:19): I just have to say, I love what you said about independent brands, because I owned a marketing agency for 11 years before going in house as a marketer. And I used to talk about this all the time. Like I never wanted to work with really big companies because I always wanted my client to be the one who could give me the yes. And it was really a yes. Right? Like not run it up the chain. Yes. Not decision by committee. I want to, I want to go to the source and get a yes. And then just act on it. And so I totally relate to what you just said.
Salena (03:49): Yeah. And look, that's me. Other people love working with big brands with, with, you know, endless pockets of money, but I like to see results. And I think that's one of the reasons why my, my philosophy in who we attract as a business is very different to everybody else. So we have a philosophy that is, if you focus on what you're crap at for 90 days, you will see exponential growth. And too often we're told, you know, all the lots of gurus and pace, people like Gary Vaynerchuk, it's like hustle, hustle, hustle, be known for one thing, like just Excel at one thing. But the problem with that is, and I was actually having this conversation. I was at a retailer awards dinner last week and I was talking to a very high eight figure business. They're a marketplace. And we were just chatting, chatting, chatting, chatting.
Salena (04:36): And, and then the question came up, what do you do? And, and I told him, and I told him, I, I, I'm a little bit, I'm a bit contrary. Like I'm a little bit challenging. I kind of go the opposite of what everybody else is doing it. And this is my philosophy. If you do what you're crap at for 90 days, I didn't use the word crap. If you do what you're crap at for 90 days, you'll see exponential growth. And he looked at me and he just said, Oh my God, that is brilliant. And I said, I know. I made it up. No, no, no, no. Now that you've just said that I know the thing that we're crap at, and it was customer service delivery. And he said, I've, it's been playing on my mind for a really long time that it's something we need to focus on.
Salena (05:21): And he said, just wait here. And he went and got the CEO of the company and he came back and he said, you have to listen to what she has to say. And I said, it's not that exciting. It's like for 90 days and you'll see exponential growth. And he said, and he smacked the guy on the back of the back of the back. And he goes, we are crap at customer service delivery. And he said, yeah, we know. And I said, but if you knew it, why, why have you not done anything about it? And he said, well, you know, we're always focused on acquisitions or we're always focused on the sale, or we're always focused on our marketplace experience. And I said, right. So if we tweak those got a growth that you're going to get. And he said, Oh, it's less than, you know, if we can get 1%, it's great.
Salena (06:06): If we got 3%, everybody would be out of the park. And I said, well, I've worked with brands who, when we did this, they got a 30% increase in growth. And he said, yeah, I could see how that could work if we could it's customer service delivery. Let's be honest. If you can fix that, you're probably going to get more repeat customers. Yeah. Yeah. And he said, I could see, we could get 30% growth if we fix this thing. Okay. And it was like a light bulb went off for him. And he said, why, why have we not done? We've known for so long that this is the problem. Why have we not tackled it? And they didn't have an answer between the CEO and the chief growth officer. They didn't actually have the answer. I can tell you the answer. It is safe to work on things that you are good at.
Salena (06:49): It's comfortable. It doesn't push you out of your comfort zone. You've got metrics there. You know, like you said, if they got 1% growth, they were super excited. So your team has a metric that they can work towards. It's, it's no fear of the unknown. And we do this in business. If you're a smaller business, you quite often revert back to busy tasks because they're easy for you to do. You can cross them off the to do list. Like I said, I work with a lot of seven figure businesses. And you think by the time you've got to $7 million in turnover, you've got your crap in a pile, but I can just, they don't necessarily. And even when you're at that high eight figure business, there is always going to be something that you need to focus on for whatever reason. But it's the thing you are going to focus on.
Salena (07:35): There's generally going to be that safe, easy thing. So I'm happy to give you a whole bunch of tips on how we can leverage email marketing, the caveat that only steps into place. If marketing is the thing that you need to focus on, if you know that you need to increase conversion rates, if that is the thing that right now is holding your business back by all means, go ahead, implement this stuff. If not save this episode, come back. When you know that this is something, listen to it, absorb the information, but don't go and implement it as another shiny thing, because we can do that. Especially as business owners, we love hearing all these new tactics and we just want to rush it. Yeah. And implement all the things. And I can tell you is a very horrible feeling to have, but I've made my team cry by doing this and not cry because they were upset, but cry because they will maximum bandwidth with all the other amazing ideas that I have wanted to implement, that they just didn't have any mental space or any hours left in the week to do it.
Salena (08:39): And when you make someone cry because they can't fulfill you, the feeling that you get is just horrendous. Yeah. And so I vowed never to do that again. Like I'm never going to make somebody cry because they couldn't fulfill my dream because they didn't have enough, like anything left in the tank. And so that's kind of where this whole strategy. I mean, when I, when that happened, I didn't have this strategy and it kind of took a few years to work out. But when we did that and we started on focusing on the thing that we were bad at quite often, we had to bring somebody else in to do it because the reason you're not doing it is because you either don't have the skills or you don't have the resources or you don't have the time. And so it actually ended up freeing up a lot of my team because they weren't wasting time trying to work out how to do these things.
Salena (09:26): We just said, all right, this is the thing we're going to focus on. Let's just get somebody to do it for us. And then we can go back and do the things that we're good at. Yeah. And so that's whether you're a CMO or whether you're the CEO who's listening, that's your job is to be the leader and to identify the areas of your business, that your team, or you need to focus on. It doesn't mean that you have to go and do these things yourself. If your job, as the leader is just to identify them.
Kathleen (09:52): I also just, I have to say it resonates with me so much when you said like making somebody cry because they couldn't fulfill your expectations. Because I, I mean, I've definitely found myself in that position as well when I own my own business. And, and, and I'm somebody who's guilty of having a lot of ideas, you know, people listening probably. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I think a lot of really good ones, but I'm also guilty of trying to do them all. And if there's one real weakness, I have, I think that that's it it's, and, and that's something that I've had to really work on as I've grown in my career is saying no to things, you know? And that's so hard to do because like, if you're enthusiastic and you love what you do, you want to be able to do it all. You want to try it all. You want to see what works you want to test. Right. But knowing what to walk away from and having the discipline to focus on the things that have the highest chance of getting results is, is a real talent. And it's something that gets naturally
Salena (10:51): No, and look, it tends to be that more visionary role that has all the ideas. We think everybody else thinks like us, but they don't. A lot of people think quite linear. They quite, they need the detail. We're great at coming up with the ideas. We need people to put the detail in place because we just move on to the next shiny thing. But I can't tell you how many marketing campaigns I started. And we actually have a little flow chart that we give to either our clients or our, our students. And it walks you through the steps for putting a promotion in place. Now this could be it's a product promotion, but it doesn't matter what kind of promotion it is. I think there are 102 things on that checklist to do, to, to create a high converting campaign. I can guarantee you most people do about 10.
Salena (11:36): And the thing is, if you actually put the time in, and this is why we say you can't run a really good promotion in two weeks, because it takes two weeks of preparation to actually at least two weeks where the preparation to get all those things on that checklist into place. But when you do it, when you actually say, you know what, we're going to do this, and we're not going to half-ass it. We're just going to put the effort in and give it a try 100% all in and see if it works. You do get huge results because you've put all of your energy and you haven't gone. Oh, but actually let's not do that bit instead. We'll go over here and do this thing as well. Oh, I just listened to this podcast with Kathleen. I want to do that. I want to put this welcome sequence thing in place. That focus is really difficult for people who have lots of ideas, which is why we say 90 days. I mean, someone way smarter than me worked out that 90 days was a great sort of chunk that we can work in. Well, I've worked at, and I had this conversation yesterday with a recruitment agent because we're trying to hire some more team members. They said, what's your five-year plan. And I went, I don't have a five-year plan.
Kathleen (12:38): Who has a five year plan anymore?
Salena (12:40): I know what I want to have achieved within five years, but I can tell you that if we work on the things that we're crap at, I can't even map out 12 months because the things that look like a problem now, aren't going to be a problem in 90 days. We'll have different problems.
Kathleen (12:55): I only can work on quarterly plans, too much changes. And it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous to think. You'll know what you can do throughout a whole year when so much of what you should be working on, especially in marketing is dictated by the results you're getting. And so as you get those results, if you're not tearing your plan up and rewriting it, then you're doing something wrong.
Salena (13:16): I, I, I agree too. And as I said again, technology, and obviously the environment right now move so quickly, your five-year plan that you did for the last year gone, like everything changed. And so you have to, and this is again why I like working with independent businesses. That being nimble being agile. And we have seen enterprise companies do this through COVID, but the wheels of change are much slower. I can pull out so many examples of independent businesses who just went, let's try it tomorrow. Let's just focused on it. Okay, great. That's our next 90 day thing. Let's do it. And, and seen huge amounts of growth, but also huge, a huge amounts of engagement and customer loyalty because independent brands are happy to kind of put their heart on their sleeve and say, this is why we do what we do. And customers resonate with that.
Salena (14:07): And if customers have a choice and we saw this everywhere around the world through COVID, if you have a choice of buying a snack, Nike sneakers from the bricks and mortar store up the road, or from the Nike website in those kinds of challenging times, people opted to go to your local store because they wanted to support local. And so building all of this into your marketing campaign means that, like you said, if you're not tearing it up at the end of 90 days, you have to have a really clear idea of what you want and where you want, you know, what you want to achieve, but how you're going to get there. It's going to change every single, every single 90 days, because the market is going to dictate what you do. You're your clients. If you're a marketing agency are going to dictate what you do and the economy is going to how you react to that. Yeah,
Kathleen (14:52): Absolutely. All right. Well, let's nerd out on email now, because we're going to go into this one topic where there's, it was funny when I spoke to you, you know, for anybody listening. When I first spoke to Salena, there were so many different directions. We could go with this conversation because we're both total marketing nerd, but I was like, we got to pick something to focus on. And, and I thought, what was really interesting was your thoughts around specifically a couple of email strategies that are really like, I would classify them as missed opportunities. Things that we as marketers kind of take for granted. And it's like, it's like undeveloped real estate. Right? Totally. So let's, let's dive in.
Salena (15:30): I can't believe how many people you say these. I was telling you these things. These are not maybe the third one, but the first two are definitely like slap yourself in the forehead, put a big L on your face and go, why the heck am I not doing this? And, and brands aren't doing it. So the first one is going to be your welcome email now, hilariously. And I'm sure this is not the people listening to you, but hilariously 66% of people don't have an immediate welcome email that goes out. When someone signs up to your email list, customers expect that to be immediate. They expect that if they signed up, they'll go to their inbox and that thing will be there. Now your welcome email is the second highest email that gets opened. So your second highest open rate, but the order rate on a welcome email is actually the highest, but how many people actually sell on that welcome email?
Kathleen (16:28): So, so the welcome email is the thing that somebody gets when they first give you their email address, correct? Yes. Yes. And we're talking about e-commerce, but like, honestly, this is a great example of one of those things where like, there's no reason we should even classify it as just an e-commerce strategy, because any business where you're getting somebody's email for the first time, it's about like, it's about what does that onboarding experience look like?
Salena (16:52): Yes. And most people will because I'm quite lucky, I guess, because I get to straddle both lines because we've worked with e-commerce brands, but we are B2B. So how we implement this strategy is how you guys could implement that strategy in e-commerce and retail nine times out of 10, that email is going to be the, Hey here's your 10% off coupon. None of the brands that I work with have 10% off coupons. Just to just a fun fact, an extra fun fact, the tipping point for making somebody buy versus they're just taking the profit out of your pocket is 30, 30 to 35%. So to get somebody over the fence that was thinking, should I buy this? Or shouldn't I buy this? Like, do I really need it? The discount is 30%. Anything less than that, they were already going to buy. If they go ahead and buy it, they were already going to buy.
Salena (17:44): So you are literally just losing profit. Interesting that we're already going to so 30 to 35%, but on that welcome email, two things tend to happen. You either send them an email, telling a little bit about yourself and say, shop now, or you deliver the thing that you said, whether it's the coupon code, whether it's the ebook, whether it's a lead page and you probably some that say something like that, book a call if you're a B2B company. Yeah. But they have already taken that step. And this is a, this is a psychological thing as well. If they've already taken that step to give you their email, it's kind of like handing over money. They know that there's, they know they're getting something in return. It's a very low risk transaction. So why not then give them the next low risk transaction. Maybe this is where you put your trip wire in.
Salena (18:31): It's your $7 product, you $19 product, your $27 product. Smart people do this in their email funnels like smart marketers will do this and have at least two upsells on the post. But like, you'd get the download. And then there'll be, Hey, get our 17 email templates here for $17. So if you're not doing that kind of funnel on the opt-in pages, why aren't you doing it in the email sequence? Because somebody is just giving you their email. They were excited about the thing that you said you were going to give them. So they're in their inbox waiting for that email to come. They get it. What is the next step? Now? Booker call has no instant gratification. People are not doing that. Most people are not doing that. So why not get them ingrained into your business? Why not get them, give them the taste of what it's like to work with you by giving them the next step.
Salena (19:22): Now that next step has to be relevant. If you've said download our ebook and that ebook is three email things that you're not leveraging, go and give them some templates. Let them buy the templates for a really low risk price. Because then you're kind of putting your money where your mouth is. You're saying, you know what? This is the kind of stuff we deliver for $17. Imagine what we're going to deliver. If we buy a $30,000 package from us for a year, like if we're giving this for you for $17 and we're blowing your socks off, imagine what it's going to be like working with us. But I really think, I think that if you give people that, that taste of what it's like to hang out with you and that tastes okay, you've already bought right in inverted commerce. When you gave me your email address, here is the next step.
Salena (20:09): It's already pushing them up the conversion path. Like once somebody spent $17, they're highly motivated to spend more. They're highly lot more likely to book a call with you after they've spent $17. And so putting something to buy on that welcome email is my second least leveraged place in the email funnel. It's not the first it's the second, but the stats show that people buy the highest buy rate is on the email, on the welcome email. So if you're not selling on there, clearly your competitors are, some of your competitors are, and they're their interest away from you.
Kathleen (20:49): All right. So welcome emails. And it works for e-commerce, whether you're presenting products that somebody could sell and it, or it works for B2B where you might have some low, you know, low entry point into your business, whether that's a course or a paid event, or what have you a membership.
Salena (21:09): Yep. Yep. Okay. And you can keep selling to them further down the line. But the whole point is to see if you can get somebody to press, I was gonna say, get out their wallet, get out their credit card from their wallet. But these days, no one does that. We just press like Google pay or Apple pay and do it on the screen. You can get somebody to make that click with the payment details. The chances are that they'll buy something higher from you skyrockets from there. So
Kathleen (21:32): I would say in B2B, even if you don't have something small to sell, like if you, if you only sell things that are very expensive, I do think that like having an offer, even if it's not a paid offer, like a next step offer in that welcome email is really important because it's about getting somebody to say yes, another time it's the same price, right?
Salena (21:51): Yeah. It is the reason I like it to be a paid offer. And it doesn't, I don't give it a dollar is because it is training people to purchase from you. So most, most of our things are more than $1,500, but we have some workbooks that are part of a course. And so we'll sell a workbook for $35 in our welcome, in our welcome sequence. Every person who's ever bought that welcome book has gone on to buy something else. So it's just that low value. So, so my question was, what could you develop? Like what could you speak if you spent one, if one person in your business spent one day developing and you could just reuse something, if it's an email template, go to a client that you've built an awesome email template, take it out, take out any incriminating words, swap them out and it's ready to go.
Kathleen (22:43): Yeah. Templates are great for that because I feel like even some of the templates that you use yourself, we often undervalue how useful they are to other people.
Salena (22:51): Yes. Yeah. Swipe copy is great. Even examples. I've purchased Facebook ad examples in the past to be able to give to clients and my team and say, look, here's an example of what works and what doesn't. So just repurpose what you're already doing. What are you already good at? Package it up into something small, but that will knock their socks off and just put a low value price on it. Yep.
Kathleen (23:17): Agreed. All right. So there's tip number one.
Salena (23:20): Tip number two is my, is my highest converting, but it's not my favorite. It's my second favorite. Ah, it's in the middle. Okay. So I'll get you the stats on this one, the email that has the second highest open rate. I'm sorry. The email that has the highest open rate because the welcome email was the second highest is can you guess, Kathleen, what do you think is the email every person opens for e-commerce?
Kathleen (23:46): I mean, I would think it was your purchase confirmation.
Salena (23:52): It's your purchase confirmation email. Yep. How many people sell on that email?
Kathleen (23:59): I'm guessing not very many. I'm guessing
Salena (24:01): Less than 1%. So order confirmation email has your highest open rate. It has your highest click through rate, which is actually quite astounding because you already know what you want. I tested this out on myself. I bought some stuff from a, a woman's fashion online store and I waited for the order confirmation email. And I knew I was coming on the podcast and I knew I had this stat. And I was like, what is my knowing this as a marketer? What is my behavior when that email comes in? And it was an email that had a picture of all of the things that I had bought and sure enough, I've re clicked on one of those pictures. I was like, but you just bought it. You literally just went through the cart, you know exactly what you bought. Why did you click it?
Salena (24:50): It's clearly a human nature thing. So it is the highest open rate. And it is the highest click-through rate, but nobody leverages it less than 1% of people leverage it. Wow, it's weird. Right. And in this day and age, we have technology that allows us to get people to add back to cart within a certain time period, without having to re enter their credit card details. It's generally about 15 minutes. So there's a couple of things that we can do. The first one is sell on that email. Like honestly, there's studies that show that your endorphins are at their highest seconds after you've clicked buy now and got that order confirmation on the screen. You're excited. Why don't people leverage it now in e-commerce some people will leverage it with what we call post-purchase upsells. So you get all the way through the cart and then it will say, Hey did you want to also add this? The take up rate on those is between 10 and 30%, which is huge. In my opinion, imagine being able to get extra money, the average order value sits between 30 and $50. So imagine if 10% more of your customers added an extra $30. Yeah.
Kathleen (26:07): Because like the average website conversion rate, just even like visit, I think it's it's like one to 3%. I want to say one to 3%. It's super low. And so if you have a chance to have like a 10 to 30% conversion, that's enormous. That's basically 10 times. 10Xing your results.
Salena (26:26): Why wouldn't you do it? There's a few other ways you can leverage this as well. So if you don't want to put that in place for whatever reason, using the order confirmation email, whether you sell back on there and it could be something as simple as, Hey, did you forget something? And you could put the stuff that was in their wishlist, or, Hey, have you got buyer's remorse? Did you really want to add that thing? If you go back in the next 15 minutes, put a countdown timer in, then you can grab that with a simple click. The other option is getting them to go back to the website in whatever way, shape or form, and having a pop-up that comes up that says, Hey, you were just here. Did you know if you add to cart in the next 12 minutes, you can just do it with one click.
Salena (27:07): But the stats show that 10 to 30% of people are going to add more stuff. And it is the highest click, highest opened and highest click through rate of all the emails. So why don't we leverage it? Why are less than 1% of people leveraging it? Like it seems to me that this is just the missed opportunity. It's the one that's kind of the, the one I geek out on because you can get such great results. And even this is sort of another way where we've just that example. We were just talking about where, when somebody, if it's B2B, when somebody takes your opt in that you're able to, or whatever, with your welcome email we can put the offer the offer in there. But imagine if you did this twice, imagine if you worked out your customer journey and you had that offer on the order confirmation, and that goes first, because you can time all this stuff.
Salena (28:02): And then you have another offer on the welcome now, or you do it vice versa. However you want to do it. But again, now we have two more opportunities for you to say to your clients, you know, what, what for you? Awesome. And here's some really good free stuff, but actually the really, really good stuff is what you need to pay for. So you're training your customers to buy the good stuff and that everything is not free because you don't want this giant list of free pool. That's what we call them. You don't want people who just are in there for all the free stuff. I mean, you have a podcast. If they want free stuff, go and listen to them.
Kathleen (28:38): Right. I always call them the DIYers, you know, like there's going to be a lot of them. And yeah. And that's why it was funny. I just posted something earlier today to LinkedIn talking about why I feel like companies should ungate their content, because I'm like, if you ungate it, then you don't clutter your database with all the DIY wires. But the really good people, the good leads will read your content and then they will still want to convert. And so it's, it's funny, like there's, there is that whole phenomenon of people who are never gonna become good customers for you who take up real estate in your marketing.
Salena (29:12): Yeah. And you'd have to pay for them at the end of the day, you're paying for them in your email subscriptions, but you're also paying for them because if they're not opening the emails where you sell, you get reduced deliverability. If they're not opening, you get your overall, they're going to reduce your click through rate. And of course you can segment them out in all different ways and shapes and forms. But do you really want to be servicing customers who will never buy from you? Like really? Is it worth your time and energy? Why not just reduce it by a third, reduce it by half and actually have the people who really love what you're selling and what you're saying and just service them because the other people would be like, yeah. You know? Yeah. Oh, that was good. That was good. But with no skin in the game, they quite often don't get the results.
Kathleen (29:58): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I love that. And it also reminds me a little bit, if we go outside of email again, back to like non e-commerce examples, thank you, pages. Right? Somebody converts on an offer and then they go to a thank you page. And usually people are just like, thanks for asking for this. Here's your link to download it. But very few people then go that next step to like, have another offer on the thank you page. So you've gotten yes. Once. How can you get another? Yes. How can you get somebody to buy from you? And I'd love your point about training them to purchase.
Salena (30:26): Yep. And just book a call. I know it's the easy call to action, but realistically, the person hasn't even downloaded the thing that you've sent out.
Kathleen (30:38): That's right. It going straight from meeting somebody to asking them to marry you.
Salena (30:42): Yeah. Yeah. They have no idea what it's like to work with you. So, I mean, if you're getting a high click-through, if you're getting a high booking rate of something like that, I expect that they would be very low value customers because they have no idea who you are at that point. They literally haven't even opened the thing that you've sent them. So why would they book a call? Like, it just doesn't make sense. It's like asking somebody to review a product before they've even seen a picture of it.
Kathleen (31:10): Yep. Agreed. All right. Now I know you've saved your favorite for last. Hmm.
Salena (31:15): This came about from a client who was a premium brand and didn't want to put anything on sale. They didn't want to sale section on their website because they didn't want to lower the value of the brand. So we were looking at different ways that we could get rid of excess product because in retail, you have to get rid of excess product. You know, it shouldn't be on your, it shouldn't be in your store for more than 90 days. So we had to work out a way to do it. And one of the things we came up with was segmenting out a section of the database who always bought the lowest valued products. And then we created a secret sale section on the website. So the average person, it wasn't in the navigation. You had to have the link to get to it.
Salena (31:57): And we sent out an email saying it was a surprise sale and they were a VIP and they would get access to it. And then I think we sold 70% of the stock in a weekend. Now, the reason for that is one. If you know that you always buy the lowest value products and someone tells you that you're a VIP and you talk to your friend and they didn't get the email, you feel pretty special. And I think a lot of this has to work. You have to work a lot of this on the copy as well, and really work to those. We call them the currency of the customer. So they're very aspirational. Those customers, you should never, ever overlook sale customers. And it's really easy to do that because we have, we call them customer loyalty, your top 4%, they're going to give you a lot of money.
Salena (32:43): But the people who shop in the sale section are highly aspirational. They love what you sell. And they're looking for any excuse to buy it. But cost is a factor to them. And so one of the, well, one of the, one of the first after the first few, the obvious emails, the next segment that we always create in our customer's databases, when we, when we set up all their segments for them is the sale section. So people who have shopped in the sale section, we do it more than two times. You can work it out yourself and then they go into their own segment and they get sneak, peeks into the sales section. So they might be notified the day before stuff drops, or they might be notified of extra things because your VIP customers, there's someone who's spending $1,500 on a jacket. Doesn't want to know that that jacket is now 700. Yeah.
Kathleen (33:35): Yeah. That's so true. That purchase regret. Buyer's remorse. I think whatever it's.
Salena (33:43): Not only that, they're not interested in the sale section. You're people who generally buy from the new end collection, the ones who want to be, you know, they want to have it first. They want to be able to be the ones who seen with the latest thing. They don't care about what was in fashion six months ago. And so they don't even want to see that you are literally just cluttering up their inbox by showing them stuff. That's in the sale section. So having this segment, and this is not an one email, it's a segment having this segment of people who regularly purchase in the sale section allows you to move stock really, really quickly. It allows you to nurture those customers because quite often, those customers do go on to be better customers as, as their income goes up. But it also creates what we call boomerangs and drum beaters. So boomerangs are those customers that come back again and again and again, and drum beaters are the people who will tell everyone about you now, drumbeat, beta customers. Aren't always your best customers. In fact, quite often than not your best customers. They're those highly aspirational customers who, who love hanging out with you. And they will tell everybody how fantastic you are. They won't tell you necessarily that they got this thing in the sale section, that they would say how much they love your product. And they love you. Yeah.
Kathleen (34:53): I would venture to guess they will make efforts to hide the fact that they shop in the sale section. I think sometimes, sometimes you have to, I'm one of those people who are, yes, there are people who are like, I just got the best bargain, but I think there are also a lot of people who want to be perceived as though they've paid full price.
Salena (35:10): Yes. So why not let them, I mean, moving sales stock is such a, like, it's such an important part of your inventory management and constantly having other sales section in your store or sales section on your website. I mean, it has to be there, although we've proved you don't have to have it there. You can just stick it in a sneaky place, but having that place for those customers who love what you sell, and we'll tell everyone about you and, and you're able to fulfill their need on that level. And I mean, some luxury brands will do this by having like a department store brand like an offshoot. That's a department store brand. They have their luxury brand and then they'll have their department store sister brand, but not everybody is in a position to do that. So I'm just trying to think, how could we do this as B2B marketers rather than e-commerce
Kathleen (36:00): I was thinking about this. And I think, I think the fundamental takeaway is about segmenting your database based on how much customers are spending from you and with you rather, and understanding like how to market differently to them based on how you want your brand to perceive, to be perceived. And so I don't know that there's like an exact parallel to like sending them to the sales section. But I do think it's about like, not marketing everything to everybody and, and totally in some things it's, it can be counterintuitive. Cause like on one hand you might think I should let my best customers know about my sale as a reward, but I really like your point that like, they don't necessarily want to have a sale and, and, and alerting them to a sale actually could do more harm than good in some way.
Salena (36:49): Yeah. And I think that's totally about you understanding your customer journey and, and taking the time to, I mean, we do this in our own email database, we will pick a, pick a person and go, what have they clicked on? What did they read? Especially once somebody buys from us, we love to know what the part, like, how long did it take from when they hit that email database. And we'll just randomly pick, you know, once a month we might pick two or three people and go, what was their customer journey? What's that interaction like? And so just spending an hour a month, picking out 10 customers at random and saying, what did they, what did they click on? What is this person interested in? And then what did the next person, Oh, actually these, both these people clicked on this piece of content or both of these people clicked on it.
Salena (37:33): Maybe that's something we need to look at is that a segment of Emma, how many more people clicked on that. And so understanding that customer journey, it doesn't matter what business you're in and then personalizing the messages. So we say the right offer to the right person at the right time. So the offer that you give someone on the order confirmation page, or once they've done, the thank you on the download has to be entirely different to the offer that you give to someone who's just spent $20,000 to put you on an email marketing retainer, right? They don't need the same thing. They already know who you are. They already think you're wonderful. So we, my suggestion in, in e-commerce is you send out at least three emails a week, but those three emails, not everybody gets it all comes down to segmentation. So you might have this week, you're sending an email to your VIP list to your sale list and then a general newsletter next week, it might be to people who've purchased a certain type of product. And so really shelling out that maximum engagement. But in this day and age, people expect the content that they're getting in their email to be personalized. Like if you have different services and I've shown no interest whatsoever in one of them, don't keep sending me 27 emails about it. Like I clearly do not want that thing that you have. So the more you send me the stuff I don't want, the more likely I am to unsubscribe or to just get quite annoyed and just not even open your emails. Okay.
Kathleen (38:55): So you could get marked as spam. They could unsubscribe all of it's going to hurt your deliverability big time.
Salena (38:59): Yeah. Yeah. And so having that, taking that time to personalize the journey and to map out the customer journey, but also taking the time in house. And that's why I said, my caveat came with, don't do this unless you got to do it properly. If you know that you haven't mapped out that customer journey, or you're just sending one email to all your clients, I would rather you spend the time to look at the journey, segment those people out and then come back and implement this stuff rather than just saying, Oh, that sounded like a great thing. Let's add an offer to the welcome email, because do what, what does that offer need to be? How does it, you have to take the time to look at where you want the customer to go after that offer?
Kathleen (39:40): Absolutely so many good tips. And I love how we kind of like drew that connection to non e-commerce because I think these lessons are very universal. You know, and it could be B2C, B2B, B2G. Like there's so many different ways to, to like apply these across sectors. So we're going to shift gears now because we've covered our three email strategies. And now I want to go into the two questions that I always ask my guests. And I'm curious what you have to say. Okay. So the first one is, of course this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you would point to who you think is really setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer?
Salena (40:24): HubSpot? Words, words can't even describe. I can give you a gazillion e-commerce examples, but every time I download a HubSpot thing, or every time I go to a search and it's HubSpot, I know I'm not going to walk away disappointed either. There's going to be, I mean, you talk about engaging content. I'm pretty sure they've, ungated everything like, sometimes you have to put your download in to get the worksheet or spreadsheet or whatever, but they give away so much amazing content that I know. If I ever click on that link, I will not walk away unhappy.
Kathleen (41:02): That's. I mean, they are, they're the ones who pretty much invented it. So that makes sense. All right. I'm going to challenge you though. I want you to give me one example for me, in ecommerce.
Salena (41:10): Oh, one example from ecom. So many I love. Adore Beauty. There are a company here in Australia and they, everything is on point. Everything they test and measure. I'm going to, can I give you two? Yes. Okay. So I love the fact that they test and measure everything. So whatever you see today could be completely different to next week. And they, they even got, did. They do beauty products and they have a standard. So they're a reseller. They don't sell their own products and they're a reseller, but they worked out that this is the kind of testing and measuring. They did that, even though a lot of their main demographic is women over 40. When they started using models in the picture of women over 40, their sales went down, were all aspirational. No one was. No 40 year old lady wants to look a.
Salena (41:58): Apparently no 40 year old lady wants to look at a 40 year old lady. Depressing. It is very depressing. And, but they were trying to, you know, women's empowerment, all the thing. They were trying to meet the market where they thought the market was at. But the fact was when it came down to dollars, the market wasn't there. So adore beauty would be we use those in, in our test, examples everywhere, but, and you're probably gonna laugh at this next one. The one, the next one that I would talk about would be Vista Print.
Salena (42:29): If anyone has been to Vista Print, you're like, Oh my God, how could she say that? I can, I can say that because they spend more than $40 million a year on research and development of marketing. I can say that because putting that horrifying upsell in place, turned them from a company that was losing money to a company that made money over literally overnight, the next morning they had made money. They, when they put the upsell in place, I clearly, I love upsells when I go, I'm terrible. When I go to shops and I get sold, I'm like, I don't need that thing, but kudos to whoever trained you like that, that was good. When they put that in place, they were hoping for a 2% uptake and they ended, and they had a bet. They had like a piece of paper on the staffroom wall and people had to put how many, what the percentage was.
Salena (43:21): And it was 23%, took the upsell. Wow. I mean, I love making people money, but that's my prime goal is pretty much making people money and, and growing their businesses. And so when you can do that overnight and then go on to now, they're the, they're the biggest printing company in the world. And they spend more than 40 million or 40, $40 million a year in research and development. So I love just, this is, this is how much we are marketing nerds. I go through people's shopping carts just to see what happens. I'm so sorry to all those people where I go through your shopping carts and I don't buy anything, but I will go through their shopping cart just yeah. On random. When I feel like procrastinating to see what they're doing, because they work in six week, roll-outs everything has to be in development. So they're like the exception to that enterprise rule.
Salena (44:12): We were talking about everything runs in six week rollouts. So they have an implement, you know, design, brainstorm, phase design, phase implementation, phase testing phase. And then at the end of that six weeks, it either stays or it goes, and it moves on to the next thing. I know. How awesome would it, I mean, I was like, if I was still doing implementation, how exciting would it be to be part of that team? Like six weeks, six weeks. So I always say, look to someone who is bigger than you. It doesn't matter how much bigger always look at what they're doing and work out what you love as a customer, and then what you do. Yeah.
Kathleen (44:46): Love as a customer. Yeah. It is about like experiencing it as taking your marketing hat off and being a human being.
Salena (44:54): Yeah. And then just leveraging the leveraging, both leverage and not copying at all. I don't think you should have a copy, but going, Oh, we, we've never tried that. How could we implement that in our business? Or that was really disappointing. So why don't we make sure we add that in to our customer experience? So that's my big, so I gave you two there, but my big tip is, is going through it with your marketers hat on, but then also going through with your customer hat out and going, what can we leverage? What can we take away? Because people who are bigger than you are spending way more money to see if this stuff works.
Kathleen (45:26): Yeah. That makes sense. All right. I love those tips. My next question is the thing I hear most about as a challenge from marketers that I speak to is just keeping pace with all the change that's happening in the world of digital marketing. So how do you stay up to date and keep yourself educated?
Salena (45:42): I love going to conferences. I, I just love the energy and I know that that's been really, really difficult. I went to my first conference just before Easter and it was supposed to be a three-day conference. I was actually speaking on day three and we got shut down due to COVID on day two. But being around those people reminded me of how much energy I get from being around other nerds. And it was hilarious because my husband messaged me and just said, you know, how was the, how was the day? And I was at the after party. And he goes, how's the after-party going? I said, Oh my God, it is amazing. We are drinking margaritas. And I'm on this team of people who have to pitch this made up product, which was French fry, smelling room spray. And so he said to me, I've no idea what you're talking about.
Salena (46:31): Seems like you're having fun. Enjoy that's how much marketing it in the after party where marketing like that's how much it is we are, but it was just lovely to hang out with those people. So staying, I always think that it is my job in my business. It is that's. My job is staying abreast with what is happening in the market. What's happening in the industry, what's happening with technology. And then I filter it out and say to people, this is what you should be implementing. And the only way that you can do that, I love hanging out on LinkedIn because obviously you see lots of information there, but it's just people. Yeah. Like, hello, like this is, this is even more hilarious. My daughter's friend's parents invited us over for dinner the other night. And he works in the tech industry and he said, Oh, I hope I'm allowed to say this.
Salena (47:18): They're working on this product where it integrates with the banks, I guess. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Anyway, you know, when you buy something from from a, and you're like, it says X, Y, Z proprietary limited, and you don't know, you can do a charge back cause you have no idea with their app, with their code software, whatever it is, it will actually show you the individual products that you bought. It will be like an order confirmation. How amazing is that? The chances of me ever knowing anything about that. So having a glass of wine over dinner, and I was like, I had people I could introduce you to. So people, 100%, it is just hanging out with people preferably in real life, but
Kathleen (48:06): It's been a tough year for that.
Salena (48:09): It really has, and I've really felt it, but there are so many online virtual summits that we and networking and all that kind of stuff. We have. There's a Shopify meetup that went online and I was thinking, Oh, I won't go to that. But actually I was like, maybe I do need to go to that for that exact reason. It's like, I haven't hung out with real people. So what's the one thing that you can do that. I mean, you need to choose how you get your information. Not everybody likes hanging out with people, but if that is the way you do it, don't keep fobbing off all these virtual events. If you can't see people in real life, just say, all right, I'm going to go for an hour. Like, I'm going to jump into that thing, the networking thing for an hour, or I'm going to jump into that discussion for an hour. So I could just feel like I'm keeping up with the industry. Yeah.
Kathleen (48:53): That's great. That's great advice. And I found a lot of value out of groups like that similarly in the past year. Yeah. So, all right, well, we are, we're at the top of our hour. And so my last question for you is how can people find you online? I'm sure people are going to have questions about this, or want to see some of your other tips. What's the best way for them to do that.
Salena (49:11): Okay. If you want to hang out with me and talk about marketing nerd stuff, head over to the bringing business to retail podcast, it is retail and e-commerce related. But like we said, I listened to lots of podcasts that aren't in my industry and I always walk away with something. Generally in social media, hanging out on LinkedIn, I kind of got a bit of social media, Instagram, Facebook burnout. So I tend to hang out on LinkedIn.
Kathleen (49:33): Right there with you, by the way, right there with you. Yes.
Salena (49:36): If you go to my Instagram page, you'll maybe see something once, twice a week. Yeah. You know? But on LinkedIn, I feel like that's where my people are hanging in. I can, I can read stuff that I find interesting. And then if you just want to read about me or look at what we do as a marketing agency, we're over at SalenaKnight.com.
Kathleen (49:52): All right. Well, you heard it there. I will put those links in the show notes. If you want to find Salena online, head over there, and you'll be able to connect with her on LinkedIn and find her websites. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave us a review, that's how other folks find us. And finally, if you know someone else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, please tweet me at @workmommywork. Yup. That's my Twitter handle. That's all another story. And let me know about them because they could be our next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Salena. This was a ton of fun.
Salena (50:27): Thank you for geeking out with me at what is 7:00 AM at my time, right? Way to start the day.
Kathleen (50:33): Yes. All right. Have a great week.
What's the formula that Content Guppy founder Greg Digneo has used to massively increase organic website traffic for companies like Time Doctor?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Content Guppy founder Greg Digneo explains how he went from creating blogs that saw short term traffic increases but no meaningful long term impact, to seeing significant and sustained increases in organic traffic.
His big results were the product of a content creation formula based on 8 specific blog post frameworks. In this interview, he breaks down each of the 8 frameworks in a way that is immediately actionable.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to learn how you can apply Greg's frameworks to your own content strategy.
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the Content Guppy website
- Connect with Greg on LinkedIn
- Follow Greg on Twitter
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth today. My guest is Greg Digneo, who is the founder of Content Guppy. Welcome to the podcast.
Greg (00:20): So glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Kathleen (00:23): Yeah. We're going to talk about content creation today, but before we do that, can you tell my listeners a little bit about yourself, your story and what Content Guppy is?
Greg (00:33): Sure. So content, well, I'll start with my story. This is actually my third company. First one, when I started in college, it was a solar panel company. Second one was a failed marketing agency, which is a story all unto itself. And then finally after a few year hiatus of entrepreneurship, I am I've launched Content Guppy, which is a SEO content agency where our goal is to help people and companies turn their content marketing or their blog into their biggest lead gen channel.
Kathleen (01:11): I love it. And who does not want that? And that's pretty much what we're going to talk about today, which is how you create content that drives, you know, massive increases in traffic and lead gen, et cetera. So one of the things I thought was interesting, cause we talk about content a lot on this podcast. And so whenever I talk to prospective guests, I'm always like, we can't just talk about content, you know, in general, right. It has to right. People who listen to this tend to be pretty savvy, especially about that topic. And so you have a specific framework you use for content creation. And that really intrigued me because I think we all know we should be creating content. But it's more intimidating than it might seem on the surface, at least in my opinion, you know, like do people go to sit down and write and it's like, what should I talk about? What should I write about how should I structure it? And so I would love to talk about this. Can you share, share how you think about content creation and your
Greg (02:10): Okay, so I actually don't think about content, first of all, I don't think about content creation in terms of how much traffic this is going to drive. I think about it in terms of how much, how many leads or sales or whatever your metric is. Excuse me, I'm so sorry.
Kathleen (02:30): Yeah.
Greg (02:31): I, I have bad allergies. So so I think about content in terms of how many leads or email subscribers or signups, whatever your, your key metric is to move somebody down the funnel and to to become a, an eventual customer. So, and I'll give you a quick, for instance, like just on my very own personal blog, I have a a thing called blog names. It's like something like 10 ways to a creative blog name or something like that. And, and then I have another, and then that gets about 2,500 searches per month. So it has the potential to drive like five to 10,000 visitors a month. I also have another site another post on there, like called B2B content marketing agencies, right. That gets 200 searches a month. Maybe the, the, the 200 searches a month, way more valuable to me as a person who's running a B2B content marketing agency or a content marketing agency than the blog view that's going to get five to 10,000 visitors a month. So think about the way I think about traffic is how valuable is it going to be for me? I'd rather have less traffic that's actually relevant than more traffic than has no relevance at all. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So I will write posts that get a hundred visitors a month, all day long, one, they're usually easier to rank and two, they are especially if they're relevant traffic, man. It's just, you're just going to convert every day, all day, every day. So definitely.
Kathleen (04:05): Interesting. You say that because I'll share an experience I've had you know, I've, I've been head of marketing at a couple of different companies and I, and I always call myself like a content first marketer. I really believe in content. Yeah. And so that's one of the first things I always do when I go anywhere, which is like, what's the content we're going to create and how can we do a lot of it? Right. Right. So the last company that I was at was in cybersecurity and they made a very like niche product. And it was interesting because when most people teach you how to do a content strategy, they talk about finding keywords that have certain search volume. Right? Yep. And that aren't super competitive. Hopefully like that's the Holy grail high search volume, low competitive. Well, when we looked at our product, we realized that we, that qualified leads are searching this very, very, very, very specific term.
Kathleen (04:59): And when you go to do your research on it, there's basically like no traffic that shows up in Google. I mean, people are searching for it, but not enough that Google even picks up on the numbers. And we decided to go after it because we were like, nobody's targeting this. Right. The in fact, I think the only, the only result for it was like Wikipedia. And so we optimized for this particular search phrase. We were, we did a pillar content topic, cluster strategy, which people listening, probably know what that is. We immediately owned all of the search results for it. I think we even beat Wikipedia. We beat that one of the U S government results for it. And it was because nobody else was going after it. Right. But literally every single person who searches that term is an amazing lead for that company. And it's funny because it did like really produce business for them, but it flew in the face of the logic that everybody teaches you and they teach you how to do content strategy. So I love that you talked about like a hundred is better than a thousand all day long if it's the right topic.
Greg (06:04): So there's actually, so most people teach two two key ingredients to that. The two things you were talking about, keyword difficulty and search volume, right. More searches, less flow. But the one that we actually found that we, when we score content in terms of our prioritization, we actually factor in a third term and we call it business relevance. So how relevant is this to your business? And then on a, you know, on a scale of like one to 10 and 10 being the highest score, obviously. And so that if you actually factor in that third ingredient and you're gonna, you're gonna see just such a change in the prioritization where you're going to downplay the difficulty and the search volume and see, okay. Like, okay, this, this is really important for us. We should go after it.
Kathleen (06:52): And so is business relevance, essentially a proxy for search intent, meaning like this shows hot or purchase intent rather, I would say like high possibility for purchase intent.
Greg (07:05): Not necessarily. So because there are some instances where you're gonna like, so some people are like, the buyer intent is, is usually a a metric that people get from like how much are people spending on this? And sometimes that's not always a good indicator of, of is this relevant to my business. And I'll give you another example. I'm sorry. At a, at a company that I worked with, it's called Time Doctor. And we built one of the features inside of the app was time sheet, time sheets software. Okay. So what we did was we said, we're going to create a, a, a a blog post with a template called free time sheets free time sheet templates. It gets a lot of traffic, but if you were to look at free time sheet templates at the time that we were doing it, I don't know what it is now.
Greg (08:00): The cost per click for that was very low, because nobody wants a free, like, people are selling free time sheet templates, right. Nobody wants to buy that traffic. But what happens is, is when people go to that page they get the free time sheet template, and then they say, I don't want to do this manually anymore. Let me try, let me buy the software. Right. So that business relevance was very high, even though the cost per click, which would have been the buyer intent that which is kind of what's synonymous with buyer intent was pretty low. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. So it's not always, it's, it is a good indicator at a lot of instances, but it, you know, you have to look at like, it's more internal to you than external to what Google is saying. So is there a direct relationship between this post and then leading somebody down your funnel versus, you know, just that traffic makes sense.
Kathleen (08:57): All right. So let's talk about your frameworks.
Greg (09:00): Okay. So we can talk about all of them or a couple of them. It doesn't matter. So we'll see what we can talk about.
Kathleen (09:06): All of them.
Greg (09:09): Let's do it.
Kathleen (09:10): Let's not leave anything off the list.
Greg (09:12): Yeah, absolutely. Then let's do that. So first one I have is a tools posts, and I'm going to explain why I like each of these frameworks when I go through them. So a tools post is literally a list of tools that you are that you are, that your customers use that your ideal customer uses. So the thing I love about this framework is there's three things, actually, one there it's really easy to promote. Two, it actually gets to your ideal buyer to your site. And three, it generally drives leads, right? And so what do I mean by your ideal buyer? Let me just it's people who have money and need your product and service. So for instance, if you're like an if you're in the content marketing, if our content marketing agency like myself, you know, even though I don't sell a tool, like, you know, I want to do blogging tools or content, marketing tools, SEO tools, things like that, right.
Greg (10:11): Because those are people who need my service, right? If you're in, let's say productivity software, then you could do things like best online collaboration tools, right? Best tools for productivity, obviously things along those lines and get people to your to your site. Now, the beauty of this kind of a post is that if you have a huge list of tools like this, you have a huge list of people who within incentive to promote it for you. So what you could do is literally go and find the social media manager or the, or the email marketer, whoever of each of those tools, shoot them an email and say, Hey, I've written about your tool here, or even better. Hey, would you like to add your tool here to this huge list that I have? And then if they say, yes, they're going to promote it for you. Right. So you can get an instant surge of traffic, you know, straight away.
Kathleen (11:09): I like that. And so, and it sounds like that type of post it's equally as important, how you write the post as how you then like, do outreach and promotion for it.
Greg (11:21): Correct. So you want to, so you're going to structure it in a list post and as a list, but it's not going to be like you know, let's say we're doing like email marketing software, right. I'm not going to just say, you know, MailChimp and then get response and so on and so forth, but it's going to be, you know, a couple hundred words per you want to list the features, the benefits, why somebody is going to want to use that tool, you know, who it's made for that kind of thing. Even throw in some pricing in there as well. And then what I always love to do is put in some customer testimonials and things like that from the from the the website or something like that, throw them in there as well. And each post in each little blurb is probably about 300 or so words long, and it makes people want to share it. And that's kinda like the idea, right? Like why would somebody want to share this? It's because you're talking, you're, you're making a really great post about them. And you're kind of really talking to them up
Kathleen (12:26): A question for you. So you're obviously highlighting other tools in these posts, which makes complete sense. How do you build in a way to, to drive people down funnel towards your product? So is it placing CTAs in the post?
Greg (12:43): CTAs. And we could get more into that in a couple other posts as well, but yeah, you're going to put a CTA. We'll have pop-ups and things like that throughout the, throughout the the blog and stuff. And, you know, so we will do that. Depending on your strategy, are you driving people to a guide or are you driving them straight to a trial or are you driving them to a phone call? You know, you're going to want to put a, some sort of inline popup or a sorry, line, a CTA or a pop-up or something along those lines. Yeah.
Kathleen (13:12): All right. That's framework number one, let's go to framework number two.
Greg (13:16): So best product like category type of post. Nobody writes this. So what happens is, is your, your homepage is usually optimized for your for, for your product category or your service category, right? So your homepage, a lot of times companies will be like, whatever it is, you know, world's best productivity software or something on like that content marketing agency whatever it is. But if you write a blog post around your product category, so something like 21 best productivity apps or 21 best employee monitoring apps, whatever it is you're going to be, it's easier to rank those posts than it is to rank your homepage in a, in Google, especially if you're just getting started. And you're not like the big player in the space. So what you would do here is you would literally list you and your competitors.
Greg (14:18): And don't worry about this because you're going to put yours first, and nobody's going to read past the first two. Anyway, we've put all kinds of like apps on to monitor how far people read down, nobody reads past the first two or three, and if they do, then God bless those people, but you put yours first put, make yours like really comprehensive, like your, you know, sell your, sell your app, your business, your whatever it is. And that as your first thing, you know, put a call in inline, call to action, try us out or whatever you want to do. And you could rank for, and you could create a ton of these types of posts around because most people are fit in the multiple categories. So you can create a ton of these types of posts, right? So, so you know, if you're an accounting software, best small business, accounting software, best P&L software, you know what I mean? All these kinds of best enterprise accounting software find all of these keywords around the accounting software, because everybody fits in the multiple categories and you can start build literally building tens of pages around these types of category posts of like really low hanging fruit content.
Kathleen (15:31): Now I've seen the same thing that, that, that those best keywords really get a lot of search volume, but I will say I am very skeptical of one thing you said, and I want to, I want to debate that a little bit, which is that, which is that you should rank yourself first, because I feel like people reading that will see right through it, because they see it on your site. They see you listing yourself first, and then they like don't trust it. So the way I've always, I've always approached it is you have like an opening call. It set of paragraphs where you say, as a leading provider of like call it small business accounting software, you know we get approached a lot by people asking who are the other players in the space or something. And like, so then you list maybe the top 10, you're not in the list, but you're starting out by kind of establishing yourself as a leader. That's how I've always approached it. I'm curious. I'm curious though, like how you've seen it work because I, we, I don't usually swear on this podcast, but I'm going to say, I think a lot of people would call if you list yourself first,
Greg (16:34): I'm sure they do, but I have no doubt that they do. But I also think that while I also know that a lot of people that, that post converts a lot of people. So no doubt that a lot of people are like. Like, yeah, of course this has manipulated. This has manipulated, but, but I think, but I think people are, I think people in general are coming around to the fact that yes, there is this multi-trillion dollar industry of people like me manipulating Google to get there.
Kathleen (17:04): Well, and I think it's interesting because so like one of the people who evangelizes the approach I talked about is Marcus Sheridan. And he's always like, you don't list yourself. Now, the only thing I will say, which I'm going to counter my own argument on this is because I love playing devil's advocate against myself apparently is that since he espoused that approach, Google has introduced featured snippets and the danger that I could see in not listing yourself in the list is if you get picked up as a featured snippet and the snippets will just list usually like the title and then they'll list your, your, your header tags. And so if your header tags are the names of your top category providers, and you're not in that, then all of a sudden, if somebody is doing a no click search and they see the list in the featured snippet and they don't see you on it, I could see where that would really hurt you. And so I guess I'm intrigued, and maybe I'll have to test this now that I'm thinking about it, because
Greg (18:06): I was going to say two things. One is absolutely test. And second don't like, when we write these posts, it's not like, Oh, we're the greatest. And everybody else's crap. Right? Like everybody gets a really good review in our, like, if you read every, you know, every, all the, the, the, the the, the, the entire list, everybody gets a glowing review. It's not like we're, we're trashing anybody and whatever.
Kathleen (18:33): It's supposed to be easy to write, because the information is usually all out there and like, Oh my gosh,
Greg (18:37): That's why I love them. You can write, you could write 10 to 20 of them, and you could outsource almost all of them and not have to worry about, like, you know, somebody could do the research and everything like that for you. And then you kind of come back edited and all that good stuff. Yeah.
Kathleen (18:52): So that's interesting. You're now causing me to rethink, now that I thought about this featured snippet angle, I'm rethinking my own advice. I'm not sure where I land yet, but I will have to test it.
Greg (19:02): It's a pretty easy test.
Kathleen (19:04): Yeah, for sure.
Greg (19:06): But you're right. People will say and this yep, absolutely.
Kathleen (19:10): Okay. Framework next up.
Greg (19:13): Alternatives post. The thing I love about alternatives posts is if you have like a gorilla, like an 800 pound gorilla in your space, you could use that momentum to your advantage. So if you're an email marketing software, like 21 best MailChimp alternatives or something like that and every single product or service category has an 800 pound gorilla in their space with a very recognizable brand with people looking for their competitors. So two things are gonna happen here. You're going to get two types of people to this post. One is people who are using that product or service and are looking for somebody else or the other per the other type of person is I'm I know a very little bit about the product category, and I know that this is the big player in it, but I want to see who else is in there. Yeah. So you're going to get very great, a lot of buyer intent.
Kathleen (20:11): I like that. And I assume that works kind of like the, the prior framework where you're doing your writing relatively unbiased summaries of all of the different players.
Greg (20:23): Yes, absolutely. Always, always unbiased. And if you don't think you can be unbiased, like if you don't think you can be unbiased about it. Honestly, even if you can be unbiased, can be unbiased, just hire somebody to write it for you. And then they will give you an honest, it'll be an honest to goodness post. Right?
Kathleen (20:40): Well, the, one of the tricks I always find that's helpful for those kinds of posts is go, if there is a software review site that has information about who you're writing about, you just like literally pull quotes from the reviews.
Greg (20:51): Yep. Absolutely love it. Yeah, we do that all the time. The other thing that you could do is in your post again, if you want to be like re and we do this too, if you like to be like, totally upfront, just to tell people, this is who my content is, this is who my business is for. This is who my app is for. Like, we service small businesses doing 1 million to 5 billion in revenue have 2010 plus remote employees, whatever it is. Right. Like just be super specific. And you know, you're going to be, you're going to have a filter right there and just get people to do that.
Kathleen (21:29): That makes sense. All right. So that's the first, how many did we do? Three.
Greg (21:34): Three. Yeah. I'm trying to check these off now. So you have the tools posts. We had the category, post alternatives alternatives. All right. So next one is one that is meant to wow people. And it's a 101 list post. You're going to put, they're going to make a huge list of, of a type of thing. So it could be any one of these things like email marketing software could be tips. It could be whatever it is, but you're going to put 101 items in the list. Why 101 I've tested a hundred and they don't work quite as well as 101, that's the only thing I could tell you, Hey, whatever works, right? Yes. That's the only, I don't know. I don't know if that's an empirical test. I don't know if that was like, there was nothing. I wrote like three posts. Two of them were one Oh one, one was a hundred and the two that were 101 words.
Kathleen (22:34): There is actually data. That odd number listicles work better, even. So even if it's like a lower number, 13 is better than 12. Nine is better than eight. It's like the most bizarre thing. I don't know why it's must be something psychological, everywhere.
Greg (22:51): Okay. So but each, so each one just write like maybe, you know, 20 to 50 words like this is, this post is a bear to write. I will give you that, like, like these things could take weeks to write. So if you could hire a researcher to do this, this research for you, put everything together, an Excel spreadsheet and a spreadsheet, whatever it is. But you know, because you're going to write 101 times let's say 50 words is, you know, 5,000 words right there, plus an intro and outro and, and all that good stuff. So, okay.
Kathleen (23:25): I suppose you could also crowdsource that, like, I've seen people send out Google forms to, you know, everybody they know and be like, share your top tip with me. And then they just basically like copy and paste what other people have said and plop it in. And then it's less work, I suppose.
Greg (23:39): I, you know what, that's actually, I like that a lot better because then again, they have a built in excuse to share for you. Like, not that the other folks don't, but if you've already got them engaged on the, on the creation, they're either, they're much more likely to share it on the promotion side versus just listing people. But again, it's one of those things where after you have, now you have 101 accounts to reach out to, and just, was it after hitting publish? Yeah, exactly. So we have 101 accounts to say, Hey, so-and-so, I I've mentioned you here in my big post. What do you think about it? And you know, that 10% of the people are going to share it.
Kathleen (24:19): Yeah. So, all right. Yeah. That's another good one. Yep.
Greg (24:23): All right. So the next one is what I call a tips post.
Greg (24:29): And basically these are going to be 17 to 22 tips. And when I say tips, we're talking step by step by step tips. So each quote-unquote tip is going to be five to 700 words. There are many blog posts in between each each tip. So let's say it's going to be I don't know, 17, 17 ways to build high quality links. So tip one is going to be resource page link building say right then under resource, page link building, and it's going to be step one, find resource pages. Here's how to find resource pages. Right? Step two. Here's reach out to these people. Here's here's the email templates or reach out to them. Step three, negotiating the link. Here's how to negotiate the link. Right? So each one of these is, is a mini blog posts. It would it like each one of these, think about this.
Greg (25:24): If you were around in like 2006 to 2008, each one of these would have been a blog post back in 2006 to 2008 when people were writing, you know, 600 word posts.
Kathleen (25:35): Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. So next one.
Greg (25:40): All right. So next one is like, we kind of touched on it and it's like the jobs to be done type of framework. So what is something that you do that can be done manually that your business automates for the person? So for instance, we did time sheet templates, free time sheet templates got a lot of people to that post. And then people were like, I don't want to do this manually anymore. Yeah. Another good one is there's a PR outreach tool. Oh gosh, I forgot the name of it. Outreach Ninja. I believe it's called, they'll kind of run the scene to me, but what they did was like they said how to get pressed through, Hey RO help a reporter out.com. And then they went through this super manual way to go and get pressed through through help a reporter out.com. And then at the end, like throughout the, the blog post, they have like several calls to action that are basically like, you know, do you want to automate your PR your outreach? You know what I mean? So just hire, just use our service or our tool or whatever it was. So whatever.
Kathleen (26:48): It's not so much, because there are like, there are a ton of people out there that are going to search that stuff, but very few people are going to want to take the time to do it themselves. And the ones who truly are going to do it themselves are not your, usually your ideal customer in my experience, like usually those are the people who are not, not to be crass, but they're cheap. They don't want to spend the money. And so like sometimes I think people are like, I don't want to tell people how to do it manually because I'm gonna lose customers. You're not going to lose customers. You're going to lose poor fit prospects. And you're going to save yourself time because they then will not call you because you've told them how to go out and DIY it. And they're not going to waste your time asking you for pricing information when they can't afford you.
Greg (27:30): Exactly. So it's kind of like one of those things where 90% of the people who come to your site and search that kind of term are going to be looking for something for free. Right. Right. So they, they're not going to buy, they're not going to want to hire you anyway. So you're going to get, it's kind of like the thing with like a lot of traffic, a little buyers. So you're going to get a lot of traffic to these posts and not a lot of buyers. Got it. But the ones who do, like you said, super qualified. Yeah.
Kathleen (27:59): Okay. What else you got?
Greg (28:01): All right. Ultimate guide. This is kind of like a there's there's like the, how to post, like the tips or like the, how tos, like the mini, how tos the ultimate guide is to take something super specific and right. You know, it's going to be like a 5,000 word. Here's everything that you, sorry, I hit the table. Everything that you need to do to accomplish this task.
Kathleen (28:29): Okay. So sometimes like we might call that pillar content, like the most authoritative source of information on this topic, on the internet.
Greg (28:38): Exactly. I want to leave absolutely nothing out. And then even from there, you're going to link out to your own pages and all that good stuff. So a lot of people are even going to, you know, create beautiful designs or infographics things around those things like that to make this, like, like you said, that single most authoritative thing on the web,
Kathleen (29:00): Now, these consume really intimidating for people. Like, I feel like a lot of people know they should do them, but they're like, Oh God, it's like writing a term paper or a thesis, or what have you. It is. So how do you break it down and make it less intimidating?
Greg (29:13): Okay. So here's what you do. You create a very detailed outline. I mean, super detailed. So it's going to be, you know, A, B, C, D all the way down through, right. And then what you do. And so that's going to automatically break it up. You fill in your headlines, your sub-headlines, your H3 tags or whatever, and that's just going to break it up into much, much, much smaller pieces. And then what I do is I'll write, you know, one each, you know, one or two pieces each day or whatever it is, you know, until it's done. And again, this is, this is one of those that is going to take, like, you're not going to probably finish this in a day or two, right. Like this is going to take, you know, two weeks to kind of, especially if you're doing it by yourself two weeks to put together, because you want to get all the images and stuff like that together. But yeah, it's it, it is, it is a little bit of a bear to write. So, you know, I recommend five to 700 words a day on it and then put it down for tomorrow. And just, if you kind of get into that habit, eventually you're going to get it done.
Kathleen (30:18): Yeah. All right. So we've got our massive guides and then, how many do we have left? Two?
Greg (30:25): One. So we're going to do two because I have a bonus one. The first one is going to be a case study. And again, I don't mean like, you know, the little thing on like, the little blurb case studies. I mean, like, you know, you're going to want to tell a full-on story of, of, you know, beginning, middle end hero, problem, problem solved what it looked like when the problem was that has ended. Right. So, and how they accomplished it as well. This is very similar to a guide or the most authoritative piece kind of thing, but it's a little bit more powerful again, in that you're telling a story, you're not just saying how to do this. Like you're saying, you know, Kathleen started here and then she did this and this, and this used our tool or our business to do this, this and this.
Greg (31:15): And, you know, now she has a, a full working solution to the problem. That makes sense. So, yeah, again, it's, it's going to be another 3000 word kind of piece, very in depth. Okay. And then the bonus that works really, really well. And they're, they're kind of hard to pull off. So I've only written like three of them or four of them in my entire career. And that is a pattern interrupt case study. So what, I'm going to give you a very specific example, if you Google something like if you Google, like how to use an employee monitoring software, right. You're going to get all of these case studies into like, you know, here's all these articles like how to use employee monitoring software and, you know, step by step by step. Just like we talked about, I know how to find how, how to find like people who aren't working and things like that.
Greg (32:15): I don't want to get into the morality of an employee monitoring software, but just go with me for a second. I'm sorry. So what we did was we've wrote why employee monitoring software doesn't work, which is a very big pattern interrupt. When you're looking in Google, like, wait a minute, I was looking for an employee monitoring software. What do you mean it doesn't work? And then what we did was we started and we listed all the flaws of an employee monitoring software and how we, as an employee as, as also an employee monitoring software solved all those flaws. So one of the, so one of them, so one of them might've been like, you know, automated mouse movements, like most employee monitoring software can't detect automated mouse movements, but ours could that kind of thing.
Kathleen (32:59): That's interesting because I, so I it reminds me of like two other formats that I've used. Sometimes one's called the problems post, which is like, here are the problems with the thing that you're searching for. Right. Calling it out and being super honest about it. But it also reminds me of like the concepts behind the challenger sale, which is basically like you ever, when somebody is looking to buy something, everybody's going to try to say, yes, I have that thing you want to buy. And so therefore, everyone selling, it sounds the same because they're all using that same narrative of, I have the best of those things. Whereas if you come to the table and you say, you don't really want that thing, because there's all kinds of problems with that thing, but here's what you want instead. Like that's, I'm way oversimplifying it. But when I think of the challenger sale, that's what I think of. And, and it is I like that you called it a pattern interrupter, because that's exactly why it works. If you're one of five competitors trying to get somebody's business and all the other four saying, yes, I know you want that. And I have the best one. And you're the only one who says there are a lot of problems with that. That is a pattern interrupter. And that makes you stand out.
Greg (34:06): Absolutely. Absolutely. It's like, kind of, and I'll kind of get back into a little bit more into that in a second, but it's kind of like, you go to the grocery store and you see milk, milk, milk, milk, silk, and you're like, huh, what is this? Right. Especially when people weren't, didn't understand what soy milk was. Right. So it was kind of one of those things that, you know, it was not that soy milk, I don't even think needs to be refrigerated, but it was in the refrigerated section of my supermarket because it was the pattern interrupt. Right. But going back to the problem thing now, if you actually put a face to the name of that, of the of that pattern interrupt case study, or a face to the problem of that pattern interrupt case study, and you're saying, you know Kathleen used a timesheet software.
Greg (34:51): That's actually software a, an employee monitoring software to try at, because she had a bad feeling that this person wasn't working or whatever, and, you know, but the mouse was still moving. And then she tried our pro our, our employee monitoring software and realized that, you know, that we were able to detect somebody was using an autumn, a movement software, that kind of thing. Like now all of a sudden you're like, Oh, wow, this is a real, this is a real person with a real problem that I have. And, you know, so, so yes, you don't want a regular time. You don't want an irregular software. You want, you know, this specialist.
Kathleen (35:25): Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. So we have now nine frameworks, not just eight by cause we got a bonus and I want to talk for a minute about conversion. So you've mentioned CTAs. Obviously you're going to create all this content and if you do it well, and if you play your cards, right, you're going to get traffic and some of it's going to be qualified traffic. So how do you approach turning that traffic into leads?
Greg (35:54): So there's a couple ways. One is if you, if you create the structure of the content, right, it's just going to naturally convert people into leads. So, you know, any one of these tools, alternatives, whatever it is, like, you're getting pretty qualified buyers to your site. And you're going to be talking about your product or service within the context of the, of the content anyway. So that's one way to do it, right? Like just so structure the content that features your business. Atrust is so good at this. I don't know if you've atrust.com/blog. Check out any one of their articles. They are amazing at it. Second one is, the second way is you, you create lead magnets or like popups to lead magnets, things like that. And we, I am not one who likes to gate a whole lot of content.
Greg (36:46): So what I do is I will, I personally just create a very long case study to give to people when they sign up. And again, the case study, once they sign up for my quote unquote lead magnet is designed to sell using basically one of these frameworks that the case study framework. So those are the ways that I like to do it again. I'm not really one to create like white paper guides. And like, I ungate as much content as I possibly can. I'd rather get the traffic, the qualified traffic via search or SEO or referral versus gated content. And, you know, have people kind of opt into there.
Kathleen (37:30): I'm the same way. And I found that that honestly, if you give the content away and then you say, Hey, do you want a PDF version that you could print? Like, and you just say, all you have to do is say, give me your email address and I'll send it to you. A lot of people convert because yeah, because what it does is allows them to see that the content is good and therefore they are more willing to give you their email address than they might otherwise be
Greg (37:53): Like me in that I've become a super jaded. Like, I, I am so judicious with who I give my email address. So like, it's free, but it's like, yes, but I don't want to go into your sales funnel. Right.
Kathleen (38:11): I'll be honest. I have a throwaway email that I use for this purpose. It's like, that's what drives me nuts about gating is you're going to get so much crap because there's so many people who don't want to talk to you, but if you just give the content away people that are like, that's actually really good content. And so I don't mind giving them my email address because they're going to send me more, really good content. That's exactly right. Yeah.
Greg (38:40): Yeah. So lesson. Gate as little content as you possibly can.
Kathleen (38:48): When people get their case studies.
Greg (38:51): I guess. Yeah. I don't get a fit either.
Kathleen (38:55): Practice ever for a marketer because case studies basically are what people want when they're trying to decide whether to buy from you, they've already realized they want to buy something and they're like, should I buy it from them? Or that other company,
Kathleen (39:09): You get your case study and you're making it harder for them to pick you. Like why?
Greg (39:13): I don't get that either. I don't get like, like my, I do get my one case study, but it's literally, but I will, you don't actually have to go. But like, but that case study is published everywhere else on my blog. So you don't have to like, actually sign up to my email address if you go there. Like you're going to read that story a hundred times on my site. But yeah, I don't get it either. I just don't understand the marketers.
Kathleen (39:36): We, I always say when we put on our marketing hat, we lose our people brain.
Greg (39:41): Right.
Kathleen (39:44): Anyway, I could go on and on about that. So, so give it, ungate everything. How do you use CTAs? Like, do you people have different theories on where CTA should appear in blogs?
Greg (39:56): So I do inline CTAs. I don't know how many paragraphs down. I usually just kind of guess it's usually like five, six paragraphs down. Let me just note though, my paragraphs are typically one to two sentences long, so I have a lot of white space okay.
Kathleen (40:14): Tested and it's like, it totally flies in the face of what you're taught in English class growing up, but I've tested it. And the short paragraphs always perform better. Yeah.
Greg (40:23): I never have a paragraph. My paragraphs aren't so much as like breaks in thought process as they are breaks in text, blocks of texts.
Kathleen (40:33): Yeah, because content, when you're content marketing, writing. Yup. Completely different and expository writing.
Greg (40:40): Yep. Absolutely. So five, so five or six paragraphs down. So basically five or six sentences down. I put an in-line call to action, just like, you know, a little blue, you know, my brand is blue. So a little blue box that says, you know, sign up here. And then I also do an exit intent pop up and that's it. That's all I do. So my eat, my like blog is like most of I always again, because I want to focus on creating content that converts, like I'm not going to have multiple columns with multiple CTAs on a side column or anything like that. My, my blog is always one column. It's just, there's nothing on the sides. It's white background, black text, that kind of thing. Very simple. So yeah.
Kathleen (41:29): So let's switch gears now and talk about results because you've used this a variety of times. What have you seen in terms of results? And you said you measured results based on leads or by revenue. So talk to me.
Greg (41:42): So I measure results based on trials and I could get into a couple specifics trials basically are pre, like, lemme, let me define trial in the context I'm talking about is basically no credit card added trial. Okay. so you don't need it. You could just sign up and give her your email address and give it a shot and set it up and all that stuff. So if you write a tool, an alternatives post, like, so we, so if you're one of the, one of the posts that we wrote is toggle alternatives. And again, it's one of those posts where it gets so little search. I think it gets maybe 10 to 10 to 50 kind of things, you know, in your keyword research tool, but it brings in like four to 500 visitors a month kind of deal, but that that'll convert 2% of the people into trials.
Greg (42:35): So that's you know, the, the cool part about these is, like we said before, super easy to write really easy to rank. So you could do you know, you can write 10 to 20 of these and they're all going to get anywhere between 50 diff you know, up to the higher end 500 searches, 500 visitors a month. And they're all going to convert in that one to 2% range. So yes, it doesn't sound like, you know, those four or five customers per month, that you're a four or five trials per month that you're adding sounds like a lot. But then when you multiply that by 10 to 20 start, start to pile up the trials.
Kathleen (43:11): I mean, honestly, like when you consider the fact that it's a one and done, you write it once and then it's like a dividend, it just keeps paying you.
Greg (43:19): Absolutely. Think about thinking about your content in a term. I don't want to say exactly the same as, as an ad because in an ad it's like, literally today you're going to put in a dollar and today you're also going to get $3. But think about it like this, let's say it costs you, I dunno, $500 to write the article and then $500 to promote it. We'll make it easy math. So it's a thousand dollars to create and promote a piece of content. The question you have to ask yourself is, and I like to ask this. When in six to nine months, however long, I think it's going to take the rank. Will I get 3X the, will I get 3X the ARR per month? So what is the lifetime value of a customer? Will I 3X that every month? So at a thousand dollars, I need, I want to try to get $3,000 in additional ARR every single month. And that's how I think about it.
Kathleen (44:16): Why 3X?
Greg (44:16): I don't know. It just seemed like a good number at the time and I've just stuck with it and it works for me. So, yeah.
Kathleen (44:24): All right, cool. So, so I love this. It's a super easy framework to follow. And you know, as you said, you can either use your in-house team to write this stuff, or you can outsource it if you feel like it's too overwhelming. I'm going to shift gears now because I have a couple of questions I want to ask you that I ask all my guests. First one is, you know, you've worked with a lot of different companies and you're, you're squarely in the field of inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or a particular individual that you think is really setting the bar for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days?
Greg (45:04): Yeah, there's a couple of them. I'm going to go with, I'm going to actually go with so-so for, from what I see too. So company, I'm going to say trust. I absolutely outside of Time Doctor, cause I, I know we talked about them, the inner workings of what they do, but Ahrefs is a keyword research, is a SEO tool, SEO suite of tools. And I love what they do from an inbound marketing standpoint. They are able to combine their their, they have three things that I really love. One is their content converts. It's very heavily focused within like these frameworks and I'm biased to these frameworks. Second, they have a really cool YouTube channel. That drives a lot of SEOs. It's almost my squash in the SEO industry. And then the third thing that I really love and I think is so underrated, they have a personalized face to the brand.
Greg (46:00): When you think of Ahrefs and in the SEO space, if you're not familiar, you think of a guy named Tim Soulo or however you pronounce his name. And yeah. And I think having that pur that, that face, that brand is super important a lot, you know, because they're, that's, that's what I think like inbound is it's about connecting to a person. I actually don't even know who the founder of Ahrefs is, but that's unimportant. It's I know who Tim is. I've talked with Tim, you know, Twitter, email, whatever, and he's just out there all the time. And I think that's, that's really critical.
Kathleen (46:34): I feel like that's how Rand Fishkin was at Moz when he was.
Greg (46:37): Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. You want to, like, there's, there's a guy there, you knew you weren't just buying from a company. You were buying from a PR, a set of people who, you know, you believed in their work. And I think that's a paramount to the success. The other, the other guy is a guy named Noah Kagan. And this guy, he's, he, he's the founder of a company called AppSumo and they in and of themselves are okay. Inbound, like, but they built a big company. What I love about Noah is, again, he's just creating so much content, the videos that he, that he creates, if you're an entrepreneur, you're just getting started. There, that's a much watch video series. So I, I really, and again, he's super personable. He's just always out there, you know, who he is, you like, you're friends with him. And so I really like what he's doing with with, with inbound in that sense.
Kathleen (47:36): All right. Those are two good ones. And I'll link off to those in the show notes. Before we wrap up, I'm sure there are going to be people who listen to this and have questions or want to connect with you online. What's the best way for them to do that.
Greg (47:51): Twitter @gregdigneo is the best way. And then if you want the frameworks kind of just give you a link to this. Yeah, of course. Content Guppy.com/frameworks. Awesome. And you could, they're not going to be gated. So as we've discussed yeah. Not gated. And yeah. So that's where you could grab those and yeah, that's, that's basically it.
Kathleen (48:19): All right. Well, head to the show notes, I'll put those links in there. If you want to get the frameworks or connect directly with Greg, thank you so much for sharing all this with us today. This was great. You made it really simple and actionable, which is what I always love.
Greg (48:32): Oh. So much. I hope, I hope everybody gets some value out of it.
Kathleen (48:35): Yeah. I'm already planning my first pattern interrupter posts. So I'm excited about that. I'll I'll let you know how it goes.
Greg (48:41): Absolutely. That sounds great.
Kathleen (48:44): All right. Well, if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, please head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice. And I would love it if you would leave the podcast a review. That's how we find new listeners. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork. Yes, that is my Twitter handle. That's a whole nother story and we can make them our next guest. Thanks so much for joining me this week, Greg.
Greg (49:09): This was great. Thank you. Take care.
A poorly designed chatbot can create major friction for website visitors. But get it right, and the impact on the user experience and conversions can be massive.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Yiz Segall gets into the nitty gritty details of how to build chatbots. From what his best-performing opening line is, to who should man the chat and how to use chat logs to optimize your landing pages, he provides step-by-step instructions for creating effective chatbots.
Yiz knows what he's talking about, having designed hundreds of bots for clients. And he has the results to show for it, with data showing that website visitor-to-lead conversions increase between 6 and 15% once his chatbots are implemented.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to hear Yiz's advice for designing human-centered chatbots.
Resources from this episode:
- Connect with Yiz on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth and today I'm joined by Yiz Segall who is the senior marketing manager at Group 8A. Welcome to the podcast Yiz.
Yiz (00:26): Thanks for having me.
Kathleen (00:27): Yeah, you're coming from, from far away. You're based in Israel, correct?
Yiz (00:31): Yeah, I'm based in Israel.
Kathleen (00:34): It's 7:30 AM my time. What time is it where you are?
Yiz (00:39): 3:30 PM.
Kathleen (00:40): Nice. All right. Well, I love, I love that we're going global and I'm particularly excited about our topic today, which is about creating human centered chatbots. Before we jump into that though, maybe you could tell my audience a little bit about yourself and your background and what you're doing today at Group 8A.
Yiz (00:59): So my background is kind of split into a number of different things. I started off in, mostly in my paid acquisition. I started sort of direct figuring things out myself. I was just going along and then I realized that marketing automation had a lot of like power to it. That there's a lot we could do with that, it to make it more efficient. So I started working with that and as I grew that I realized that I needed to develop more content in order to make it work. So I got more into content strategy as well, and I've sort of been keeping my horizons, always open, sort of looking at new things that can not just not so problems per se, but allow me to do the things that I want to do better. And that's sort of also how I got into chatbots as well. And I only really use the technologies that I know that can actually help me at Group 8A, mostly run paid acquisition, but I also do help the sales team with sales automations and with chatbots. And and I help a little bit also with content.
Kathleen (02:09): So I have a question and we didn't talk about this before we got on, but I'm going to spring it on you anyway. Do you see there being a connection between paid acquisition and chatbots and explain to me if the answer is yes. Like how you see those two working together?
Yiz (02:26): So yeah, I think there is a little bit of a connection between them. And in any case, anytime that you are, that you bring traffic to a website, especially if it's like intent based. So if you're using Google, less so with Facebook, more so with LinkedIn, that's easier to gauge about the intent of the person coming in. And so you can, once you can measure that intent, if that page isn't, isn't really satisfying the intent completely, that's when chatbots can come in and support that. So if they need more information or then that page can provide, or if it's not, or, or if it doesn't really answer their questions, as much as they want it to that, they're covering for a little bit more, a chatbot could definitely come in and really like supplement that and the additional touch to it. And it seems like more conversational is a lot more easier if it's done correctly, it's it feels a lot more like it feels smooth and it feels like a little bit more natural than just reading through a page does. And so it can really help with acquisition as well.
Kathleen (03:36): Yeah, it's interesting because I've observed we, so we, in my company you know, I came on as the first head of marketing about six months ago and we started doing paid acquisition campaigns a couple of months back. And I noticed that when we turned them on our bounce rate went up, which didn't surprise me because all of a sudden we're bringing in a completely different type of traffic. You know, and so, and I had a theory that if I turned on a chatbot and, and made it more about helping people quickly find the content they were looking for, that we could decrease that. And I'm still sort of in the middle of that experiment. So I'm wondering if you've ever like, tracked that, do you know, like, can it help with bounce rates? Have you ever tested that?
Yiz (04:23): Yeah, actually one of the cases that I ran, one of the experiments I ran recently was just for a campaign for actually, for a YouTube campaign that we were running, it sent about, in a bit of like two weeks, it sent, it sent around 67,000 people to the website and all of that segment, about 30% of those ended up using the chatbot, which is, which, which in my experience is really hard. Usually it's between depending on what they want. It can be between like five to 15% like chat, right? Like chat initiation rate. But this was a particularly high engagement rate. And like out of that, we had like 16% ended up closing.
Kathleen (05:08): That's awesome. That's a really high conversion rates.
Yiz (05:11): Yeah. So it, it was because it was because I knew exactly. I, I started off very simple with my chatbots. And then as I saw things move along as I saw more people ask different questions. I didn't, I didn't make it like you see in a lot of bots where you have like specific answers they can click on. And I wanted to do a little bit more exploration. So I allowed a little bit more free writing. And with that, I was able to build up and then use, based on those questions, built out multiple chatbots, a little bit more branches and that's, and then ask different questions, as well as my like trigger message, allow me to build up like a much higher engagement by engagement. And that also did get brought down bounce rate quite a bit. So let's
Kathleen (05:58): Back up for a minute because I think when, if people are listening, I'm sure they've heard of chatbots. Some of them might have chatbots, they might have experience with it, but there's definitely different flavors of chatbot, you know, I think of it like, there's the, there's the fully automated ones, like you said, with the answers already kind of like filled in there's chatbots that are slightly automated and have a lot of human intervention, like do some table setting for me. I would love to hear your perspective on, when do you think a brand should have a chatbot? Like, is it something every website should have, are there certain conditions that you need to have in place to put a chatbot there? And then how do you know what type of chatbot is right for you?
Yiz (06:43): Okay. So my starting point is, and I think I've audited something like 50 to 60 different companies that use chatbots. And one of the main mistakes that I see and is that companies see chatbots and like they focus on either having a chatbot and the type of chatbot rather than what a chatbot actually provides. A chatbot is just a tool that is used, but what a chatbot actually is, it's marketing automation in real time. And if you think of it, it just happens to have that high context and that real-time context of being on the website, but it is marketing automation real time. And if you think about it like that, and you say, okay, somebody is on my website now, how, how do I get them from point A to point B or let's say, I have a landing page, and I want them to fill out a form, but in this case, it's not the form.
Yiz (07:39): It's how do I initiate that chatbot and what I want them to do with that? Or what could I get them? What could I possibly get them to do with this chatbot? Well, and I think of it in terms of, as if it was marketing automation, then the actual type of chatbot doesn't really make a difference. It's just, what would I do in a situation of marketing automation, but sped up a lot. So, so different things, different types of chatbots require different situations. So for example, if it is processing or for something more sensitive, or if something's a bit more complicated than you do want to get a person you don't want to get a person online, also support questions. Chatbots do tend to have, probably around a quarter of them, tend to be a bit more support based questions as well.
Yiz (08:30): My actual first foray into chatbots was to use it primarily as a support tool. And we only branched out afterwards when we saw it, when I saw that was actually quite a powerful sales tool as well. And then and then moving forward to show that I used it to sort of accelerate people's like actual research research journey as they were going through it. And it sort of went in those stages. So it depends of on the type of page that you're on. So if you're on a pricing page and the pricing page is complicated. So then, well, first of all, you have a problem with your pricing page the second, but while you're still fixing that up, having somebody to explain it in human terms and understand like, sort of more of the nuances of what they're really confused about is a lot more appropriate than if you're on like a lead form page and they still, and they still have a question about something, or they're not on the homepage or of their own, a piece of content.
Kathleen (09:28): So do you typically have a different chatbot for every page? Or how do you think about like tailoring that experience based on where somebody is on the site?
Yiz (09:38): Okay. So I started off, I developed my chatbots in three different sprints and it really depends. It really depends on manageability, like, like the size of the website, the structure of the website and and sort of what you really want to be dealing with. Like, I guess that's part of manageability, so you don't want to be managing like 50,000 different chatbots. So I always start off with three to five different chatbots. I create a catch-all across the entire site, and then I create specific ones on important pages. Then I start moving onto channel specific chatbots where I basically say, okay, we have different channels. I can kind of understand what they, the, why they're coming in and what they coming in, why they come to this page and I'll have something specific that I'll also split between people I know, who are already in the system and people who aren't already in the system. And then I'll move to much more content specific context, content specific chatbots, which is more about like either the category.
Yiz (10:51): And this is where it becomes a little bit more advanced and complicated when you develop content. Oh, I guess when, when I did, this should be when somebody should develop content. They, it should fit into a certain place in the funnel or into at least it should fit into an understanding of what your, like your target persona about them and it, where they should, what, what they, what is trying to, what's it trying to answer. And you should know from that piece of content, a what they could possibly be confused about and where they should go, where they could go next. So if you want to, once you get, once you've passed the basic stages, you can create either on a content by content piece or on a sort of like group of content piece. And that's generally where as complicated as I think is necessary, where you move on and you and you have like a grouping of content where, you know, answer specific questions, and then you use that bot to accelerate the process to say, okay, either ask a question about that content or move into the next point.
Kathleen (12:00): Yeah, we did something like this, and we have a very simple chatbot, cause we've only just sort of started this process, but you know, we follow the pillar content, topic cluster approach for SEO. And then we have what I would, we kind of internally jokingly refer to as Uber pillars, which is like category research resource pages on our website, essentially. So we, once we have a piece of pillar content created, then we have a lot of articles in the cluster. We might have some case studies that are related. We'll build a page that literally links off to all of it in one place. So like if somebody comes to our website, for example, and they're interested in e-commerce all of our best content on e-commerce is in one place. And it's not really like a classic resource center. It's more like it's more like the definitive, the definitive page for everything on that topic, if you will. And I found that to be a really handy thing to have when building chatbots, because especially if you have a site where, where you deal with different topics that are very, that are very distinct from each other, it's helpful to be able to say, what are you interested in? And then point somebody immediately in the direction of like a one-stop shop for that thing that they're interested in. So I'm curious, like what kind of content in your experience is important to have developed in order to be able to build a robust chatbot?
Yiz (13:27): I mean, it's a good question. So your chatbot works around your normal content strategy. So, so long as you have so long as you're working in an intentional framework where you built the content with a purpose to answer a question, and they could go in different directions from that point. So then a chatbot is relevant in the case of your new case of your pillar. So you could send, so that's a really long page. So the pillar content pieces, they're massive, especially if the, if the actual page, if the actual topic is complex. And so you could use the chatbot to sort of say, okay, go to this point, but you could also use the chatbot at the same time to, not to point into a point on that page, but to send them to like a segment that you've developed into a separate blog post.
Yiz (14:23): So it actually seems like to your actual audience that they're now progressing to a different point. And it also makes it seem like that it's a new topic, so it's not like they've skimmed through and they didn't see it. It, it, it seems like, okay, I didn't know this before it wasn't on that page. It also helps simplify it by focusing the actual content piece where they're actually looking at. But I've also found that the difference between it, from what I, of successful chatbots and non-successful chatbots, basically comes down to three different things. The first one is your actual opening message. So if your opening message is "hi, how can I help you?" So, so if they need, it's not an engaging message and it's very easily ignoring something. So you want really, you want increase your, your engagement rates a lot, because, because only if they have a problem, but they're not on your page to solve it.
Yiz (15:30): Like they, they haven't read through the content yet. And they don't know if they have any further questions. So, so they don't know if they, if they actually need help, because they're not actually in a, in a, like a crisis mode yet. The second point is, I guess it lends to the first one, is timing. I see a lot of chatbots that as soon as they, the, the webpage opens, they have that opening message. And the problem with that is especially if the messages and engaging is that it becomes now something you ignore. So you sort of, you sort of acknowledge it in the corner of your eye, but it comes one of those elements that you just ignore from the page. And so even if a chatbot could be good for that situation, it won't be because I've ignored that feature of your website they've know that, that message that either closed it and they've gotten frustrated like they would, if there was a popup or they let it be, and they've ignored it.
Yiz (16:23): And I found that that timing is everything. The timing on the actual message is everything with how you actually, when you actually implemented the chatbot itself, when you pop up that message. I found it depends on the page. So I found that the length of the page, it's usually between three to seven seconds or scroll certain specific scroll depth, scroll depth, depending on what platform you use and it's sort of capabilities. I have found generally if you give it enough time, and then you have a really engaging message. The one that I usually, the one that I usually go with, I actually took from Drift. They have some great examples. And then it's just, "can I ask you a quick question?"
Kathleen (17:07): I like that. That's, it's interesting that you bring this up because I have definitely noticed that what you open with is key. And it's not just what you say. It's like how short you keep it, right? Because a lot of these chatbots like, one of the biggest mistakes that I see rookie people make when they first build chatbots is they try to pack too much into one little message and chatbots. It's like, it's like the people who are perfect chatbot, creators and operators are really young because they've grown up communicating by text and they know like you shouldn't write a paragraph for a text. It should be like a snippet of a thought because you want the person you're communicating with. Doesn't want to wait and look at the three dots while you're typing. Right. They want to see your message. And so several years back when I was running a marketing team and, and we built the first chatbot at the company I was at, at the time, our first chatbot operator didn't do that.
Kathleen (18:06): She was writing like paragraph answers and it was terrible. And then we had somebody new come in who was a little younger, who was sort of from a generation that texting is their first kind of, their first choice of a way to communicate. And she just instinctively knew to chunk it out and like break it up into little tiny bits. And so there are so many nuances like that, that I think are easy to miss. And your opening statement or question is, I would totally agree. It's like, it's like the equivalent of the email subject line, right? Like you could have a great email, but if nobody opens your email, it really doesn't matter. Like it's all about the subject line. And it's the same thought. That first message that somebody sees before they click on it and open it up. That's the most important thing, because if nobody's going to click on it, it doesn't matter what, what comes after.
Yiz (18:53): I, I, I would even go further and say that that opening message is like your creative or, or copy on a programmatic ad because then like because then when you're on an email, you're looking for an email to open when you're on somebody else's website, you're not looking for that. You have to be distracted by the quality of that ad creative and copy in order to then not only pay attention to it, but then actually click and engage with it. And you're doing the same thing with your chatbot on your own website. And then, so then you have like, then you have like a third thing, which I think is where also a lot of companies miss. So you actually mentioned something that is part of it, is that sort of the way that you structure, like it has to be short sentences.
Yiz (19:45): And one of the, one of the things that I actually found is that I guess kind of like a myth is that you only can ask the limited amount of questions and the truth is that it doesn't make a difference so long as your questions are relevant to them. And it's not just gathering information. One of the actual things that I found is when I put, when I put like asking name or email, like even like, sort of like, just in case, like we get cut off, like, what's like, what's your email, try to like, make it more natural and introduction to like, for I'm, whatever. This is my name. I'm like, I'm YizBot. And like, what's your name and stuff like that. When I put that earlier on, I had zero follow through. People didn't want to go through. But when I established that later, like five or six questions, I tend to get people answering those questions a lot more, which led to going from about capturing like five emails to catching about 600 emails in the span of like two weeks.
Yiz (20:48): So it all depends on, you don't have to have, doesn't have to be such a short, sort of a short, like small chat. It can be as long as so long as it's engaging so long as you ask like, questions. And that's where sort of like the human side gets to it a lot is because what I did with the chatbot is that I knew why they would come to that website. So I showed empathy straight away. So for example, on, for an example this is a B2C example. It was, it was a medical product and I said, are you, I said, all right, can I ask you a quick question? I asked the question, are you suffering from you? Are you suffering from this? And usually they say yes. And then I also try to add in like a humorous answer as well, to the options that I gave.
Yiz (21:40): And then I was like, has it really, has it really stopped you from living your life properly? Like what had, and then what has stopped you from doing right? So I try to sort of like empathize with the empathize with the fact that I knew what that problem was, but also that it's impacted their lives before I went further. And actually sort of, are you looking for a way to be able to do that again? Are you looking for a solution? What have you tried? And some of that I cut out. I tried different things throughout the process. When I asked for like, have you tried for this particular one? Have you tried surgery? I realized that was a wasted question and I didn't actually need it. And I actually got much better engagement when I, when I cut it out, but I had like seven or eight different steps in my process.
Yiz (22:26): And the length didn't make a difference because it wasn't just gathering information. Or from that perspective, I was empathizing with them while I was presenting a solution at the same time. So when I actually presented that solution, when I, which that solution doesn't have to be a sale, that's the way she just needs to be getting to then next desired outcome. And when I was doing that, I ended up not only getting more leads, but I ended up also getting higher intent sales. Like I said, out of, out of the 600 people I got emails from, I got around about 400 of those were high intent, right? And over that period of two weeks, we closed around 30 to 40 sales. And we closed another 6% later on. So, so it wasn't about the length. It's about like, understanding that problem and understanding why they're there. And that's when having multiple chatbots and understanding, let's say going back to paid acquisition if you know, why there's ads, you know, why they're on that page and why they came to that page, then you can build out a really human chatbot. That is, that is time correctly has a really great opening message. And you have short questions that show that you care, and then you can answer that, then you can provide your solution or that next step
Kathleen (23:53): You mentioned the, the topic of a human centered chatbot. And that's obviously the the, the topic of, of what we're discussing. And I hear people complain about this a lot where they're like, people go on rants on LinkedIn and on Twitter saying, chatbots are the worst. Why do I want to interact with a robot? And this and that. Beyond kind of showing empathy and really understanding somebody's problem, are there other aspects to this that can make a chatbot more human centered, less annoying, less robotic.
Yiz (24:27): So those complaints come down to a few different things. First of all, if the chatbot is really rigid and is, has no branches, if it doesn't have the ability to understand what that person is saying. So if they write something in and it's still very inflexible, then they don't like it. I have chatbots are sort of pretending to be a human and it's really a chatbot then that's really annoying. And the other thing is when it is so certain situations call for human intervention. So if you're somebody who's really confused about, let's say your pricing for your product, you, what you should always have, especially during trade hours, you should always have an option to allow us human, to intervene and to actually join the chat if need be, and you should give them the option to request that or to, or to book a time on somebody's calendar.
Yiz (25:25): If it is, if it is if it is something that's confusing, confusing, or complex, and that's where people also get where they also ranted, one of the reasons why they also rant against chatbots, but ultimately, so as long as it's done, right you have a little bit, your mail, you make it seem conversational. It's not like sort of to, it's not promotional in the sense it's not like way too salesy or even really that tells you at all. It's supposed to feel like a conversation. You acknowledge the fact that you are a chatbot. Like I will have, for example, if somebody puts in a, a message and, and I have no idea, and the chatbot doesn't understand what's going on. So a lot of times I'll implement a chatbot on HubSpot's free, on the service. So service free or whatever it's called, right?
Yiz (26:19): So they're a free chatbot and they can't do any branches. And I have no idea what's going on, but I'll say if I find email or whatever it is, they put something in. And I, and it's not what I'm looking for. I'll say, look, I'm a simple chatbot, icon, understand anything? I don't know what you're saying. I, I, and I can only look at, I can only read things in a certain format. And so you acknowledge that. You use a little humor, a little bit of empathy, and you know, you're not trying to be salesy, and you'll be fine.
Kathleen (26:50): I want to talk about chatbot operators, because you mentioned like, in a perfect world, you'd be somebody who would be able to have a handoff to a real person, right. During the chatbot experience. If they have a complex question or the bot can't answer it. I have a lot of opinions on this, but I'm not gonna say them. I'm curious to know what you think in terms of, what do you look for in the person who's going to man, your chatbot? What, what sort of skills experience, et cetera, do you need?
Yiz (27:25): Are you talking about the, now the person that, that is now handed off to live chat? I've seen different companies do different things. Hubspot has a sort of like hybrid sales support kind of idea. I think, I think somewhere in between you need, like, it should probably be like, you can have like a branch that sort of splits and say, like, use what, they're, what they're actually looking for to decide if it should go to sales or to support, or you have some, or if you can't do that, get somebody in support who's also trained in sales.
Kathleen (28:16): Yeah. That makes sense. And I've always thought again people who are, who really are comfortable, like, like I said earlier, with texting as a format who understand, like, keep your answers short, be quick, send little snippets. And then, and then people who just have incredibly sunny dispositions, bright outlooks, who are, who are, because some of the stuff that comes in through chatbots is not nice. Let's be honest. People come a lot of times they're there because they've encountered an issue with the product or they're frustrated with something. And so having somebody who is able to like roll with the punches is a really, really good thing.
Yiz (28:55): So that's where support comes in. That's why they're the ideal person to run the chat over sales for a number of reasons. Number one, they are, they do have to deal with like the, the worst part of client client's humanity. Quite often, they have to deal with the punches and they have to know it, that they have to take the punch. A lot of the time, they also know the product cold and they're also not motivated to make everything a sale. They're motivated to help. So while they should have some sales training, they, it should, they are, they have like more of a human element to them than like a sales person, which makes them like then the ideal person for it.
Kathleen (29:48): That makes sense. So, any other particular tricks that you've found work really well with chatbots? Like you talked about your opening line that that's worked really well. Do you have anything else along those lines that, that you've discovered through trial and error works well?
Yiz (30:04): So my, what I generally do is that I started, like I said, I work in three sprints, right. I keep it basic and then I get complicated going on, but that's also in terms of the chat itself, I allow for a lot more free writing in the beginning, especially in the beginning to get more so, and then I go through the chat. I go through like the chat statistics in terms of like progression, see where the choke points are, the breaking points are. And then I get rid of them or change them. But I also run through a lot where I run through like, I basically go through every single chat. And one case, it was talking about going through like 2000 different chats within like a very small period. And I go through them and I looked through what exactly they were writing about, what they asking.
Yiz (30:57): And then I will then take that information and I will create new chatbots based off it. I will create new branches. So I wouldn't start by making five or six different branches in any sort of chat. It makes it too complicated. You don't need all of that in the beginning. Just create a few simple ones. Allow more free writing. And then and then adapt. And the other thing is, put energy as much energy, as you can into what you're writing. So unless it's like support, like somebody who's like angry is crazy, but you have to convey passion for what you're doing. And, and add more human elements, like humor as well. And if it, if it's done properly, they'll feel that as well. And then they get excited to progress further. It's like, think of it as like a normal human conversation, right?
Yiz (31:55): Let's say you're talking to somebody else. I'm coming up. I want to talk to you about a given topic. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I want to talk to you about your experience in inbound marketing, but you're having a chat with somebody else, or you're reading a book. I come up to you, my opening line has to be genuine and it has to get your attention. So you stop what you're doing and you start talking to me, but then I have to keep your interest throughout that time, weigh the questions, understanding on the topic that I brought. I understand where you're coming from. And I understand what I'm talking about as well in a way that I can help you while I'm still learning from you what exactly I want to learn from it as well. But I have to also put energy into that. If it's like a dull conversation that's in monotone, then you lose interest and that conversation ends.
Kathleen (32:42): So, okay. That's interesting. And I agree with you, but I think that's one of those things that like, unless you see examples of it, it can be really hard to understand. So I'm wondering, and I'm gonna put you on the spot here. Are there any companies that you think do this really well, any chat, particular chatbot experiences that you've seen that that are great examples of this?
Yiz (33:08): So there are a few, there are a few that, so there's one that has like some sarcasm in it. It sort of disarms, they put it in their opening message, which I don't like. And I don't know the statistics of it if they put that in later, but basically it's a marketing agency and the marketing agency says, it starts off by saying, "I guess you're here to solve a marketing problem, but if you're just here to browse, we don't judge." That's Marketing Envy.
Kathleen (33:41): I'm going to Google them right now as we're, as we're talking.
Yiz (33:42): So I, I actually really enjoyed that because it it's very, I found it very funny that they sort of had a bit of sarcasm. They weren't afraid to sort of say something a little bit, like.
Kathleen (33:58): It says, "Okay, unless you're hobby is checking out random marketing agencies, weird, but no judgment. I'm betting you have a marketing problem you're looking to solve."
Yiz (34:06): Yeah. So I don't really like that as an opening message. It's way too long. But it's sort of perfect in the way that it sort of feels human. That it has like an energy. It feels like a normal person would say that or write that.
Kathleen (34:25): Well, and I suppose that, and I'm going through their bot right now as we're talking. I suppose that it also naturally attracts sort of the right culture fit client, because if somebody was annoyed by that, it's probably not going to be the right fit for the agency. If that, if that chatbot is really representative of that agency's personality, it is one way to sort of screen out non good fits. Now I will agree with you though, like their next, so I clicked something in their bot and then their next thing that popped up, it's like, it's like five different sentences. So I would say, I don't want to do like a chatbot tear down on them so much, but like, it's interesting when you start to look at these things in the wild, you begin to realize like they had so much in their next thing, that it wasn't all available in one, like without scrolling in the chatbot, which I would say is not great.
Yiz (35:17): So, yeah.
Kathleen (35:19): Yeah. Interesting. So I'm curious then all of this is, is so spot on, but at the end of the day, I'm sure what everybody's wondering is like, so what, right. Like, does it lead to any results? So you've worked on a ton of different chatbots. What kinds of have you seen them produce?
Yiz (35:41): So I've worked, like I said, about like about 50 to 60 companies with chatbots and that could span, like each company could have like between 20 to 30 at least like different chatbots. And it depends on the funnel, but I've seen like what the, if it's on a content piece, if it's a pricing page by page, or if it's I've also seen in used chatbots to weed, to like weed out spam, like there's annoying there's annoying sort of contact like emails. You get, somebody submitted a form, but they want to guest post, or they want to, they had not had an SEO agency or something like that. So I've used chatbots. So you have a lot more, a lot less spam in your email. You can also use it to for demo requests to basically just book a meeting straight away. And so I've seen higher conversion rates on that as well. We got a lot more meetings based off that what I tend to see, in general is that the not, I've never seen a conversion rate go less than 10% of people that use chatbots. Your main problem is engagement. So usually your, your rate will be about six to 15, between 6% to about 15% you're doing.
Kathleen (37:08): Six to 15% of the people who come to your website?
Yiz (37:11): Yeah.
Kathleen (37:11): That's actually really good because in my experience, the benchmark for like visitor to lead conversion on a typical website is like one to 2%. And if you're getting six to 15% of people engaging with a chatbot, that's pretty massive.
Yiz (37:27): Yeah. It's because you're essentially in it. It might seem a little bit too good to be true. But if you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense because you're getting the person while they're in that, like I said, it's real time marketing automation. So you're getting somebody while they're in the zone looking for something right now, and you're accelerating that process. You're giving them exactly what they need to know now and what they need to know next. Right. So while they're in that mode, then not what let's say, 20, 30 minutes. So however long they're spending on your website, they have the ability to get everything they need to know in one session or two or three sessions, how are doing so you're accelerating the entire process. So you do see, you do see a lot shorter sales times as well. So right from first contact to actual to a lead being generated or to an actual, depending on your actual like sales funnel itself.
Yiz (38:22): But you do see shorter time like sales times and, and you do, and it also qualifies them so that if you do it right, so you're getting them, you're getting them not only informed that you're also getting them passionate. They're conversing with you right now in a non salesy way about something that they're interested right now, not something that they spoke about two days ago or a day ago, even like six hours ago before they get their first marketing automation, email the sequence. So you get them while they're fully energized for that research. And so you accelerate it and you get higher intent.
Kathleen (38:58): I think one of the, my favorite things that you've said is about what you can learn from the chatbot, because I was really just interested to hear your approach that early on you let people do more free typing and, and there's so much rich information in there about what they're really interested in. Cause I think that's, I feel like what a lot of people struggle with when they build a chatbot it's you kind of have to assume, you know, what somebody wants, right. If you're going to try to supply all the answers and build all the branches and not allow any free typing, there's a lot of assumptions that go into that. But if you're able to do the free typing thing, then it seems like an amazing source for audience research.
Yiz (39:36): Yeah. It's incredible what you can understand and how you can then use that information to, to also tailor your landing pages, because they're asking you, they're telling you exactly what they're looking for. So you get enough qualitative data without actually having to really survey them in a way that feels like surveying them. They're giving you that information and then you can go back and also tailor your landing pages. So your chatbot process can actually help your entire content strategy and your landing page strategy.
Kathleen (40:07): That's a great point. So you've mentioned two different platforms for chatbots. You mentioned Drift. You mentioned HubSpot. Do you have any favorite platforms or are there certain favorites for certain use cases?
Yiz (40:24): So I haven't had extensive use of Drift, but it is my favorite nonetheless. First of all, it integrates nicely with HubSpot itself. So you get that in there, but also they have an an AI add-on that allows you to get like really good like interpretations from like the semantics of what people are writing. So you can actually, even as you develop, you can allow a lot more free writing and still being able to create a lot of sophisticated branches based off that. And then they also have like Drift video and they have like their system tied into that. You can end up sending them back like an actual personalized video afterwards as well. So I do enjoy them a lot more. They are in terms of just shot that definitely. Definitely my favorite. I like HubSpot just because it's one, it's like one interface that I have to deal with. I don't like using multiple programs when I can use one.
Kathleen (41:30): A free tool HubSpot is pretty good. Yeah.
Yiz (41:34): Even the free Drift doesn't give you like a chatbot, like, but HubSpot does. So it is very good for free chat. And it's just that if you want to get, like, I think you need Service Hub or Professional.
Kathleen (41:53): I think Marketing Free has it too.
Yiz (41:53): All of the Free's have it. I think you need, to get the branches, you need either Professional or Enterprise. And it comes out to be more expensive than you would get for paying for Drift, but you do also get a lot more.
Kathleen (42:07): Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I guess it depends. I always say to people like what marketing automation are you using? Because if you already have HubSpot professional, start out with it. So with that chatbot, you know, get your feet wet, see, you know, and play around with it. And then when you feel like you're comfortable, when you start to bump up into limitations, then look at Drift because it definitely does have more functionality. But yeah, there's, there's so many tools now available.
Yiz (42:35): Yeah. The one thing that I do like about Drift, which I also saw on Intercom. I, I've never really used, I've only been like I've only been on the chatting end of Intercom, but is that from the user side, you can see your past chats and you can continue them to that extent on HubSpot and Intercom, which means that if you do get cut off, you can just restart where you're up to. And then whoever takes over from that chat, they can just read the chat, going back instead of having to restart your conversation over and over again for support requests, for sure. Even for, even for other requests, like if I'm on HubSpot and then I need to get off the computer for awhile. And so I leave and I come back in an hour, I have to then re-explain to another, to another rep, what I'm looking for, what my question is and and go through the entire process again. Whereas with Drift, I can just click that conversation that I left off with and just basically restart saying, I want to continue this again or ask another question to restart, ask the person to just read the previous chat, to get, to get context. And then you continue from where you left off. And that's an incredible user expense.
Kathleen (43:55): That's a very good point. Well, I think we can talk about this forever, but we do not have forever. So I'm gonna shift gears and ask you the two questions. I always ask my guests. The first one being, we talk a lot about inbound marketing and this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park when it comes to how they're doing inbound marketing?
Yiz (44:15): So I have a few people that I think so that, that are doing inbound really well. They're actually on LinkedIn. I don't know if they do other things outside of LinkedIn, but the main company is thinking one of them is a guy named Alex Sheridan. So what I like about what he does is that he solves your problems while showcasing exactly what he offers. So he, his whole offering is based around the creativity that he can give you and your business on LinkedIn or in video in general. And what he does is that he has different formulas for a lot of the different videos. So you can see that he's not repeating the same formula. So what he does, he actually educate you about how to use the platform. And he also educates you with his content on video different, different things that you shouldn't shouldn't be doing.
Yiz (45:15): So he uses that, but he also does it in a way that's really creative. So you not just get the information that you need, but you also then see while he's doing that exactly that he can actually fulfill his promise, which is being creative in video in an incredibly intense fashion. He, when you watch his videos, there is an emotion behind the doc. I always use, I, I leave every single one of his videos, thoroughly entertained and really informed. And so, and I, so I, he does also, I'm also subscribed to his email and that was because I really enjoyed his he's actual his, his videos. And I get a lot of information from that as well. So I don't, I don't know what his success is, but I think he has basically put his entire solution throughout his process. So all his, what he offers is throughout his entire, like, is that from the beginning stage, from track, all the way to close, you can see in an action as you're researching what you're looking for. And it also has a bit of demand generation there as well, because he's also talking to people who aren't necessarily looking for his product right now. And you can sort of when you watch his video or a few of his videos, you get this belief that he can do the same thing for you.
Kathleen (46:38): Yeah, that's cool. All right. I'll have to check him out. And you mentioned you might have a few others as well.
Yiz (46:44): So another one is that I really like is a content writer by the name of James Lorraine. I don't know how to pronounce it. So what he does as well is that he rewrites, he has a whole section on LinkedIn called LinkedIn ad rewrites. And what he does is that he takes a piece of copy. That's predominantly boring, and he writes it in a way that's engaging. And again, it's very entertaining. You see his craft, he explains what he's doing, and you can see his craft in action. And you can know, like while you're looking at what he's doing, you know, he can do the same thing for you if you gave him the chance. That sounds great. I love it. So I liked that sort of combination of showcase, not just informing people, but entertaining and inspiring them, and also seeing it as much as an action in time throughout the entire process, which means that connect to what he's doing even while you're in the earliest stages. Yeah.
Kathleen (47:49): That makes a ton of sense. So one of the other questions I'd like to ask is, you know, the world of digital marketing changes really quickly, and it can be very hard to keep up. So how do you personally stay educated? And on top of all of the many changes that are happening
Yiz (48:05): That is a really good question. So I wish I could say I listened to tons of podcasts. I do not. I don't have so much time in my day for that. A lot of it is I read I, I follow like Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Marketing. So I read a lot of that. I listen, I follow a few key influences as well. And I tend to like look at some of my industry industry sort of like articles, like I said, like just search engine marketing, stuff like that. I listened to some podcasts. I like the ones with interviews a lot more because they tend to sort of have multiple different opinions and you can see where they agree that it's where they agree on a single point. You can see that, that it actually, that it's not just one person's opinion. You can see that it's actually spreading a little bit more. So I get a lot of benefit from that and I experiment with different things.
Kathleen (49:06): Yeah. Learning by doing that's the best way to do it, I think, but not everybody learns that way. We all learn differently. So that's great. Well, this has been super interesting. If somebody wants to ask you a question, reach out, learn more, what's the best way for them to connect with you online?
Yiz (49:24): Just message me on LinkedIn is really the best way. I'm there every day. I spend a few hours on it and I'm always happy to answer questions.
Kathleen (49:32): Great. And I'll put the, the link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So head there if you want to check that out. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, you learned something new, I would love it if you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. And in the meantime, if you know somebody else doing amazing inbound marketing work, send me a tweet at @workmommywork, and I would love to make that person my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me Yiz. This was a lot of fun.
Yiz (50:04): Thanks for having me. It was a blast.
You've invested the time and money to create great marketing content. How can you use it to directly influence customer experience and drive pipeline growth?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, PathFactory COO shares her perspective on how brands can create content experiences that improve the customer journey, shorten sales cycles, and close more deals, faster.
With so many brands now investing heavily in content and inbound marketing, there's a massive opportunity to do more with our content. That's exactly what PathFactory is solving for.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to hear what Helen has to say.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the PathFactory website
- Follow Helen on Twitter
- Connect with Helen on LinkedIn
- Email helen at helen [@] pathfactory.com
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth and today I am excited to share that my guest is Helen Baptist, who is the COO of Path Factory. Welcome to the podcast, Helen.
Helen (00:26): Thanks Kathleen. I've long admired you and your, your journey. So I'm thrilled to actually spend some time with you.
Kathleen (00:32): I feel like this is incredibly overdue because I have known you for a really long time and you are doing just amazing work as a marketer. Path Factory is growing like gangbusters, and this is a classic case of, of, I, for some reason it has felt like I must've already interviewed you, but I didn't. And so when I finally thought about it, I was like, how have I not had her on this podcast? So it's about time. It's about time we did this.
Helen (01:00): Yeah. And likewise, I've followed you for a while and I, you know, you're, you're a mighty woman in terms of the things that you do. And I admire you across the board as a single contributor, you know, first person in on a company I'm doing all the marketing that you're doing and coordinating everything and then, you know, standing up podcasts and keeping that running and, you know, your posts on LinkedIn are prolific and I aspire to be like you one day, but I just don't have that kind of, and with an energy is what I would say. You're probably a lot younger than me.
Kathleen (01:30): I actually, I don't think so. I think I'm, I think I'm just crazy. I bite off more than I can chew all the time and whatever I, then I have to figure out how to swallow it whole yeah. You muscle through. But but you're so sweet to say those kinds of things. And I am really, really excited for our topic today because I feel like my audience has a lot of people in it who are pretty experienced with marketing. And I always tell my prospective guests, like the basic topics don't do well with these people. They know what they're doing. Like they, for example, content marketing, this is an inbound marketing podcast. They know a content marketing is they are producing content. And so I always love when I get to talk to people who enable me to dive in a level deeper and, and really think about kind of, so you've mastered the basics then what, right.
Kathleen (02:18): And that is totally what this is about because you guys do some interesting things at Path Factory. The product is interesting. So I'm going to ask you to just start out, first of all, by sharing your story, because you're a unique guest in the sense that you're not just a head of marketing, you're a chief operating officer who, who is also a head of marketing. So if you could talk a little bit about yourself and your journey and how you wound up doing what you're doing, but then also tell us a little bit more about what Path Factory is.
Helen (02:44): Yeah. And I, I think it's an interesting perspective because I actually started as a secretary at an advertising agency.
Kathleen (02:50): Oh my God, it's working girl, the movie. Yeah.
Helen (02:53): You know, I'm not going to start singing, but you know, I think the the, the, the rise to where I am has been a long journey and there've been a lot of people who've lifted me up and helped me get there. The, the, you know, the first position after being a secretary, I helped with RFPs, believe it or not at the agency, we won Ikea at the time, back in late early nineties. And th you know, this idea of one-to-one marketing or direct marketing as it was called back then in the true sense of, you know, it wasn't male, right. Primarily really fascinated me because it was below the line in terms of it wasn't all TV advertising. It wasn't meant it was measurable. Right. And so my career has really been around things that are measurable and outcomes that you can actually point your finger to, and be proud of.
Helen (03:45): Like, yes, it's great that you have a TV commercial, but what, what did it actually do for the business? And so that was my passion coming into this arena when I first joined. And that's exactly what I do now. Right. I think that the difference now is that I see the entire customer life cycle from marketing through to, you know, customer success and churn, which is like acquisition to out of the back door and stopping the leaky bucket. And how does that infinity of going back and forth really play together so that you can scale your organization so that you can become these growth machines that the, you know, the, the, the private equity and the VC firms are looking for. I'm not in the legend status of some of our colleagues in the, you know, the CMO coffee talks, but I have a pretty good track record for the investors.
Helen (04:33): This is my third ride with the same CEO. The same PE firm has jettisoned us in and you know, really helped break down silos that really exist between marketing and sales and CX so that we can be much more fluid and grow the business organically with the ones that we already have customers we already have, but then acquire new logos based on the successes of what we, what stories we have. So that's kind of the view that I have and rev ops reports to me, BDRs report to me like, Oh, the whole revenue bag I carry as a burden for the organization, but, but, you know, I'm proud of the team. We've, we've had record busting quarters, four quarters in a row. Our retention rate is through the roof both on gross and net and, and, you know, that's a Testament to the team that's behind me and working with me and it's a team effort. It's not just an individual sport kind of thing.
Kathleen (05:31): I was going to say, how do you handle all of that? Because I know it can be challenging enough just being the head of marketing at a company where growth expectations are really high, but you're heading up marketing sales and customer success or customer experience. So how, I mean, did you, did you do stints in each of those areas? Like how did you get to the point where you were able to effectively oversee all of that? Yeah, I think it goes back to
Helen (05:58): Agency land, right? I did marketing for customers. In my earlier days, I ran loyalty programs for British airways as, as their vendor, if you will. And some other major companies I've been out on the client side, I worked as a consultant for AARP, and I was an employee there for awhile, large organization for people over 50, because I was going to be 51 day and thought I could change the world. And anyway, that's come and gone 50, by the way,
Kathleen (06:26): Let's say it's 50 felt like it was really, really, really far away until it wasn't exactly.
Helen (06:33): And then hit 55 and it's even more further away. The, the other side of it is, is, you know, on the CX side, you learn that from managing relationships when you're on a bet, you know, when you're a vendor or a partner the, the one thing that is really interesting is tying the sales motions with the CX motions and really understanding the interplay and the levers that you can pull to really drive organic growth. You know, customer advocacy, customer marketing, I think is probably one of the most underrated marketing functions, and probably the least respected in terms of, you know, everybody's looking for DG people or, you know, ABM people or whatever that, that's what the market is hot for. But I think this idea of really leveraging your customer base to tell the story for you versus you shouting that we're the best is the way that we've grown a lot of our business.
Kathleen (07:29): That's so great. So, so tell me a little bit about what Path Factory does.
Helen (07:33): Yeah. So Path Factory is currently known as a content experience platform. You know, we serve up frictionless content experiences that, you know, people can consume as much content as they want. We know people are doing research to buy things. Our customers are B2B marketers, and they're trying to provide an, an, an experience that allows me or you to explore as much as we want to, as frequently as we want to, and then know where you are in the sales cycle. So there's these, there's these intent databases that we can buy, right? That are, what did you look at across the web? That's a source of intent, but I think this idea of what topics and you know, taxonomies are you really looking at really tell you where you might be in the buying cycle? I, you know, one of our big customers or our big customers are Cisco, Adobe, Oracle, these guys are selling multiple products and how do they know what sales motion should play?
Helen (08:28): Right. they, they manage their partner relationships through us. So they they're really, you know, serving up the right content at the right time and the right stage of the buying cycle or the customer life cycle or the partners life cycle, or even the employee life cycle with people using us for HR engagement as well. And so I think this idea of, you know, making sure that your omni-channel and understanding your content and what's how it's performing and how it's driving revenue really is like the ultimate. We can put all the outbound messaging we ever want, but people have to consume something. Right. and rather than stopping at a dead end or a form, let's, let's do some testing around how far do we let people read a white paper, a Gartner report? Yeah. I said Gartner you know, how, how far do you let people read before you engage them with a form, if you want to use forms. Right. so this idea of really testing and learning where people are and how much information you can collect in the life cycle, that their content journey with you is what Path Factory helps.
Kathleen (09:37): So, as I listened to you talk about this, what comes to my mind is that, and you tell me if this is accurate, it sounds like you guys are like the Netflix or the Spotify for content in the sense that, like, I go to Netflix and Spotify and it's watching what I'm doing. And it's then using its artificial intelligence engine to like dynamically serve up something that makes sense as a next step. And it sort of, it, it like incentivizes me to binge to like go down that rabbit hole and follow it wherever it's going to go. And is that, is that fairly accurate or,
Helen (10:15): Yeah, I think that that's the one side of the coin that we offer, and that has been our primary emphasis. This idea of an intelligent content platform is where we're moving towards and this idea of really understanding the construct of your content, the attributes of your content. So if you go and buy, you know, a can of Coca-Cola, you know, all the attributes of that can of Coca-Cola, there's called what's called the, you know, the, the nutrition panel is on there. And so you really do understand the construct of that can of Coca-Cola in terms of what's in it, most marketers don't know what's inside their content. And so this idea of really understanding the attributes of your content, the effectiveness of those attributes, are you compliant? Are you SEO for accessibility, for example, are you optimized for SEO for your keywords that you're picking?
Helen (11:03): Does your content reflect that? And so this idea of really understanding your content much more holistically first, or even retroactively, because most marketers walk in and they've got hundreds of thousands of web pages and they've got thousands, right. And most marketers life cycle is what, 18 to 24 months. They better pretty ha have a pretty big impact pretty quickly. So this idea of you really don't know what's working and what it's made up of and why it's not working is where we're moving towards. I think serious decision, you know, and released a report recently that said 14% of CMOs understand what content they have, which is pretty scary, the amount of money that is spent on content, right? Whether it's a video, whether it's a syndication or whether it's syndicated content, or even your own people, writing content copywriters, as they were known back in the day now, fancy name of content writers you know, they, nobody really has this good handle on what is content and what is good content. And how long should it be sitting out there in public? What's the decay factor of your content is really the insights that we're starting to deliver for our customers. I'm pretty jazzed about it. We've stolen some plays from the CPG industry and applied those back into B2B markets.
Kathleen (12:17): I think it's so cool because I have long felt, and I've been guilty of this that, you know, when you think about the Pareto principle, the 80 20 you know, I've, I have long believed that 20% of your effort should go into creating the content and then 80% should go into promoting it and, you know, going back and historically optimizing it and just like all the things you do with it once it's written. But unfortunately, I think for most marketers, it's probably the exact reverse. We, we pour a ton of time and attention into creating it. And I mean, guilty as charged, I'm doing that right now, but that's also because I'm kind of early on at a company and we have to sort of now it's about building the foundation, but, but there, you know, a couple, a couple of companies ago, I was working at impact, which is where I first met you. And there is a place that has tons and tons of content. And I, you know, I'll give credit where credit is due to Bob. Who's the CEO there, he's always had a big emphasis on things like historical optimization, but even still, it's very hard, even when you have a strategy to do those things, it's very hard to keep track of it all. And it inevitably becomes an insanely manual process. And so having a tool like this that can kind of figure it out for you is huge.
Helen (13:27): Yeah. And think, think about it like a content audit, right? Like baseline your, do you have alt text on your OG images? Do you have actual titles on your OG images? Like, do you have OG images on your, your assets that you're trying to use for digital and and so this idea of kind of really baseline understanding of what you actually have and is it optimized for step? Is it too hard to read? What's the readability score? And then the topics of taxonomy that are below that and what, how much content do you have in a word cloud in one topic, are you overloaded versus where you want to go? And so this idea of really optimizing logically you know, the content that you have is something that we're working towards. I think the, you know, I think we were on a coffee talk one time, and one person said, well, we have 240,000 pieces of assets, assets of content.
Helen (14:17): And there was a 2005 price list on there. That's not really relevant for my sales team so, so like, how do you make sure that you are decaying, what you should decay? And you are understand when the lifeline is what the lifeline is. A lifespan of that piece of content is I was talking to my product manager the other day. And he said, you know, I, when I was at, you know, the company before this, I was the marketing manager and I'd paid lots of money to syndicate a white paper. And it was $80,000. And I got two leads out of it. The decay on that was two days I should have just stopped paying for it. Instead we went and renewed it again. And so had I had that insight, I would have stopped and saved myself $80,000 and applied that somewhere else. So did he buy it properly in the first place? Probably not. Cause he didn't look at it in relation to what other things were working for him. So I think, you know, content is kind of a, it's not something that people talk about a lot. We talk a lot about the motions, right? DG, ABM, but what is actually behind that is structured content data.
Kathleen (15:25): Yeah, and you pour your heart and soul and your money and your time into creating it. And then if you don't take advantage of it, shame on you. Right. it, I'm curious to hear you talk about like, as somebody who oversees also customer experience and sales, you know, better than anyone, you know, from a marketing standpoint that all of this content creation is in service to those two things, right? Like it's about the customer journey and it's about driving pipeline. So I would love to hear a little bit about how you in your marketing have, and I'm sure you're using some of your own tools, how you have handle that and what your approach is. And side note, if it sounds really crazy while we're recording it's because all of a sudden in April, there is a, like a tiny hail storm happening. So there's like a lot of noise outside my window. So if you're listening and you hear this thunderous sound, that's, that's what it is.
Helen (16:21): You can't hear it. So maybe it's not being picked up, but I'm sure that you'll be safe with a, with a hailstorm in April. Is that an April fool's joke? It's April 1st as we're recording.
Kathleen (16:30): Well, that's a whole nother topic. Crazy, crazy weather.
Helen (16:33): So I think the, you know, the first thing that I do when I typically go into an organization and cause I look at the customer experience from the outside in what is the customer journey that we are delivering. Once somebody raises their hand through to the time that they expire with us and expire is capital E not that they've passed away, but the contract is gone, right. I used to work at ARP and we'd talk about it anyway. The, you know, the, the, the really understanding the touch points and the impacts that you really want to have. So the first thing we do when somebody signs a contract with us is within 15 minutes an email from the CMO goes, Oh, sorry, the CEO goes to the stock, the contract signers on the, you know, the right contact roles inside Salesforce.
Helen (17:20): That was a challenge in its own, right? Cleaning up data in the database so that you can do effective marketing. But I think this idea of not just customer marketing or, you know, dummy branded demand, let's put it up at the front there, whether it's ABM demand gen or traditional ways of doing things. But this idea of, you know, tying the two together for this contiguous sales motion, right. That somebody feels good at any given stage that we're in the sales motion with them. So part of our, our, our, our sale motion is we do a mutual action plan with the customer, and it's not to the end of the contract it's to the end of their first compelling event, whatever that is first campaign, they want to get out in the marketplace, but also for that individual, what do they want to get?
Helen (18:05): Do they want to be on stage? So they want to speak so that we can leverage that for advocacy to fill our pipeline with stories from customers, right? So it's a sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The, the, you know, I can't do an AB test with, or without Path Factory at Path Factory. But I was a customer of Path Factory before I joined here at my last company at item master, which got acquired. And we've done some really cool work with some customers where we're actually tying CRM data to you know, be with Path Factory without Path Factory, to really understand the revenue impact for content engagement. When, when people do traditional marketing without Path Factory, we see a slower, slower closed, no loss closed, lost faster close, yes. When they use Path Factory faster, close, no, because, so then the rep can move on to their next sales motion set and sales attack, whatever they want to do.
Helen (19:10): And we're seeing, you know, people really become creative around, you know, does it work for a specific segment, like my SMB, where it's it's product led growth. And I don't want to high touch with lots of sales reps versus an enterprise play, which is much more, you know, journal journalistic in terms of the journey that you're on with them. We, we understand completely which area of the funnel drives, which segment for us. So for example, for example, our customers who buy from us in the enterprise segment typically engage with at least two to three pieces of top of funnel content in over a period of two sessions versus you know, the SMB team is typically middle to bottom of funnel, creative content which, which is really interesting. It helps me make sure that we are building the right pipeline efforts to, to, to create demand and leads and contacts and that kind of thing for the two segments that I oversee. And that's, those insights are pretty profound when, you know, what kind of content people want and what makes them buy.
Kathleen (20:26): So are you using the intelligence that you're getting out of it to develop your editorial calendar then?
Helen (20:29): Yeah. And that, and I think that's the other part is what, what topics, what taxonomy is really resonating with a specific vertical or a specific type of customer or a segment, right. And, and those are the insights and Intel that, that content audit really can help us with and really is helping build kind of this more true marketing campaign, marketing calendar kind of thing.
Kathleen (20:53): And do you, are you able to look at the data that you're extracting from the product in terms of actual content consumption habits? And, and I know you can like retroactively look and say, like, you just had like two pieces of content for enterprise, top of funnel. That's a good lead, but do you, is there any sort of almost predictive element to it where you're like, I'm seeing that this prospect is enterprise and has like started going down that top of funnel path. And so, Hey, that should kick off like some outreach from the sales team.
Helen (21:26): It hasn't gotten to that stage, but that's the desired end goal. Right. I think the, you know, this idea of Netflix is, is that you have a destination that you go to and you, you get served up the right recommendations for you. So, you know, I don't do horrors. I do, you know, Downton Abbey. Downton Abbey and, and Reign, and, all those British dramas.
Kathleen (21:47): Okay, so then recommendation, we're going to digress for one second. You should watch Home Fires. If you're into the masterpiece theater, Downton Abbey kind of stuff, Home Fires, great show.
Helen (21:57): I'm writing it down.
Kathleen (21:58): I'm giving TV show recommendations right now, but this is what we do in the pandemic, right. It's all Netflix and chill.
Helen (22:03): Yeah. Well, not in the true sense, but anyway the, the, the idea that a sales rep can actually see what that person has consumed. Absolutely. That is one of our key differentiators. We have, you know, the ability to send alerts from our marketing automation platforms. And we do when somebody is a fast moving buyer where they've consumed the content criteria, scoring that we've set in Path Factory, as well as met the required that, you know, the lead scoring inside of marketing automation. But this idea of serving up the next best content is based on, you have to go to a destination at the moment, right? And so our website website tools functionality allows for that to happen in more, more and more real time. And I think we have like seven or eight different types of recommendation services based on the account you're coming from, based on people like you, meaning you're coming with firmographic data not necessarily account, right?
Helen (23:02): So people who are in, you know, $50 million companies or even industries. So this idea of serving up content based on your history, based on what you've viewed in the past, there's lots of different ways. Those recommends can work, how you serve them, how you manifest them can be done. Two ways with us. One is out of the box. We have to, you know what I would call PR web promoters, one's called guide. One's called concierge more like a resource center page. Th the other is the, we have an API. So for large enterprise customers, we know that they're not going to buy those out of the box visualizations. They have their own CSS. So we are going to serve them up an API that they can then create, we'll get the engagement data back. We'll tell them what kind of contents working for them.
Kathleen (23:47): So I love the idea of this, and I can totally see the use case. The one question I have is like, when you first put it in place, I'm like, I'm going to put my hat on as though I were still back at impact where we had tons and tons and tons of content. Like if we decide we're going to put Path Factory in place, we want to do sort of more of a content driven customer journey. How hard is it to set up? Because it, like, I am, I can see on the one hand, it could be amazingly difficult where you're like, we have to classify all this content and, and tag it to different buyers or stages of the buyer's journey. Or is it like all automatic magic, press the button, does it for you.
Helen (24:24): Well there's two there's two ways, right?
Helen (24:26): Obviously data ingestion, content ingestion is, is our core competency, right? We've been around for 14, almost 14 years, I think. So understanding content is really one of our core competencies to set up is, I mean, it depends how far you want to go. We do crawl walk runs, right? Depending on the severity and the, and the maturity of the marketer depending on whether they want to integrate with their marketing automation platform, depending on whether they want to integrate with their CRM, there's all these other considerations, but to get going, it's pretty darn easy, especially if it's your website, it's a tracking script. And you know, that's, that's a JavaScript copy paste out of our, our platform and put it on your pages and away we go, we can scrape your data and understand that we can also understand how your, your visitors known or unknown are tracking against that combine the two together. And it becomes very powerful, but this idea of really understanding your content is the first step. And, and a lot of customers don't know that because it's relatively new concept. So we're, we're, we're testing it out right now. And I'm pretty psyched about the possibilities of that stuff.
Kathleen (25:32): I mean, why I get so excited about this in part, because I'm just a big marketing nerd, but also in part, because I, I do talk a lot publicly about how I believe that marketers need to think more like media companies and like your con, you need to treat your content like a product. And, you know, it's funny because like the media world is struggling. Journalists, journalism is struggling, but I think it's for the opposite reason, like they have great content, but they just don't have like the marketing mindset that, that we do. And I feel like if we could all meet in the middle, we would have the perfect organization. But you know, and when I was at impact, I was working on just that building a media company around a company that was selling B2B products. And what's interesting to me about this is at the time I really struggled as head of marketing because like, I got the need to think like a media company, but there were not software tools available to me to support my ability to do that.
Kathleen (26:39): So I had marketing automation in place, and that was great. But one example, like it didn't let me generate reports of content performance by author, which like blew my mind. I just, that was such a, it's such a small detail, but I was like that, that is odd that they don't do that. And it would be insanely useful. Cause I had a lot of writers working with me and I was like, I just want to be able to report to them how their content is doing. So that was like, that was the thing that initially kind of caused me to go out, searching for another solution. And then as I started doing research into all these different platforms, I realized how much more there was that I was missing out on in terms of reporting on what my content was doing for me. You know a lot of what you mentioned, like really, how is it contributing to pipeline?
Kathleen (27:25): What is this? This also blew my mind because I've been a HubSpot user forever and, and HubSpot has all the data to basically tell you if, if it wanted to, what a closed won customer's content journey was, right? Like, you should be able to clearly see that. And you can, if you, if you like manually go into each customer's timeline, but who's going to do that, especially when you're operating at scale. And so this is one of the reasons I love talking about this because the need has to me, at least so clearly been there for so long. And it's fascinating that nobody has come in to fill the gap, but it sounds like that's what you guys are doing.
Helen (28:03): Yeah. And I think the key is, is that there's these early adopters, you know, the Jeffrey Moore book Crossing the Chasm. Right. And I think of you as in that early adopter and really, you know, leaning in forward edge thinking woman, I, I think people have taken content for granted. It feels kind of like the ugly stepchild that nobody pays attention to, but it's kind of the sexiest thing that people put out. Right. and, and it really is definitive of your brand and the personas that you are talking to and, and who you want to be as a brand as well. And yet people don't know what's effective or working. And it drives me crazy that, you know, I've got people creating content for the sake of creating content because we need to build pipeline. Well, what content should we build? And I think this is this idea of sitting between kind of the CDPs. The CMS is right. The content management systems, the DAMs, even sitting between those and the activation layers, whatever you want to call that, whether you want to call that marketing automation platforms, ABM platforms, even us to some degree, we're an activation layer, but this middle piece in between what is my content finished artifacts and what do they look like and how good are they and how do they perform is not really owned by anybody at the moment. And that's what we're working towards.
Kathleen (29:29): Well, and I think I'm just guessing, but I would be willing to bet that there are probably a lot of marketers that actually don't want to answer that question because they're not going to like what they see. Like when you talked about content kind of not getting the attention it deserves. I totally agree with you. And I would liken it to like, the approach we've taken with content is somebody once told us we should do it. Right. And so as an industry, I it's like a game of darts. We were like, somebody said, you should play darts. And so we went and we got to the dark board and we picked up a handful of really pretty crummy, cheap darts that don't work well. And we took the handful and we threw it, all of them at the board at once. It's like, okay, check.
Kathleen (30:10): We've created content. I'm done. Now make it rain. Right. yeah, I would venture to guess it's sort of the same conversation that happens around when you talk to marketers about, do you want to be judged on the revenue or in the pipeline you drive, or do you want to be judged on leads? A lot of marketers are like, don't open that can of worms. That's going to start a whole conversation. I don't want to get into. And and, but it, but it reinforced not talking about it reinforces the status quo, which is, there's a lot of really content out there.
Helen (30:45): Yeah. And I, you know, this idea of revenue marketing as opposed to, you know, to demand generation and then customer marketing as two separate entities. My purview is it's revenue marketing. It doesn't matter. It's sales and marketing together to the end of revenue. And I put sales, you know, CS does, has CS customer success has responsibilities for bags too. Right. in terms of carrying a bag on that, you know, the, the, the retained revenue, if you will particularly in a SAS model. And, and so this, to your point, my, my, my hypothesis is that there is a FUD out there that CMOs won't admit to, which is, I don't know if I really want to open that can totally, what is my content, right? But I think if you can do it in a safe and prescriptive way that they can then make informed decisions on, around building their revising, revitalizing, optimizing their content strategy, sunsetting things that are not working quietly, without everybody knowing that they're sunsetting them paying smarter for contents indication, they become a more efficient.
Helen (31:52): And I think that the impact is both top line and bottom line. They're spending how much money with writers, creating content to what end, you know, I was talking to a customer at an enterprise account the other day. And he said, I have spent more than $5 million already this year on content creation. Wow. And that kind of blew my mind. Cause you know, I work with small that's company just on content. Right. And, and, and I was like, so how do you know what's if he says, if you could tell me what was efficient and effective, I would love you forever because I could slash and burn and put, do outbound activation stuff. So there's this, this two-sided coin of driving top-line and saving on the bottom line. Right. Cost efficiencies in this play that we've got.
Kathleen (32:41): I was going to say, I like, I know it works and I know it's worth investing in because I have, I mean, heck I've interviewed a ton of marketers for this podcast. I've heard a lot of stories, but then I've also done some experimenting on my own. And I've seen countless examples of people who have like done away with 70% of their blog content because they know it's not serving them and it's not performing and they sunset it, as you said, and then what's left actually performs so much better because it's all high quality, it's all directly into the pain points and the challenges of other, other audience. And so like what a, what a low hanging fruit way to get better results. It's like, it's like Marie Kondo saying your, your content.
Helen (33:26): I, I, I think, I think it's, it's twofold. It's making sure that what you do have is discoverable first and foremost, is it hidden so far down in back channels of the, the, you know, the dirt dirty dark alley of blogs or is it a discoverable in its own? Right. And is it valuable? And if it is valuable, then bring it up in discoverability. Right. And, and SEO optimized based on the keywords and the taxonomy that are in there. So I think people, you know, have really what effect story I'll, I'll expose some dirty laundry. When I first walked in, I was like, what content do we have? And it took somebody like, like two months to do an, a content audit. And now if I could run this scraper through your CD, your, your CDP or your CMS, I can give you an answer tomorrow which is kind of, and it's all in dashboards and it's, it's, it's a proof of concept for us and it, but it's pretty darn exciting. I saw some stuff the other day on, on, on our website and it's profound that, you know, the number one word in the cloud in the, in the, you know, the word cloud is landing page. That's not relevant right. For the buyers. So how do we make sure that we have the right words that are, you know, the most prominent ones across things that we're putting out there is awesome. I'm pretty, pretty excited.
Kathleen (34:47): I just love it. I love it. I love, I love stuff like this that like makes it easier to do your job while also like it's like helping you squeeze more juice out of the orange that you already have.
Helen (35:01): Yeah. And I think it's too full. Like for me, there's like three steps in this lifecycle of content, right. First is really understanding what you have the content audit. So, you know, what's the, what's the nutrition label, look of your product. What's the discoverability, what's the SEO optimization path for that content that you have? Is it accessible? Do you have the right alt text on, do your, do your, you know, do you have old texts? The second part is, you know, this idea of content performance in its own, right? So content performance is which content is working in which content is resonating with whom demographically from a graphically, et cetera, et cetera, right. Known and unknown. How big is your buying committee? We can see who's consuming what by account. And then the third is your content revenue performance. What content is driving your revenue for you? So tying that to CRM data really allows us to then start to be laser-focused in terms of what to put into the content hopper, what to remove and when to remove it in the licensing.
Kathleen (36:06): Cool. This is so exciting. I have a feeling, a lot of people listening are like their ears have perked up, and they're thinking about all the past possibilities of using something like this. And so the question I'm sure everybody has been asking is like, who is this right for? You know, and is it, is it a, an enterprise tool? Is it something that smaller businesses should use like an end or is it, is your applicability as a customer determined by the volume of content you have? Or how do you determine that?
Helen (36:37): I think it's all of the above. I think, you know, we have, we have a ton of SMB customers who are using us today, who aren't doing this content audit piece yet. Like I said, proof of concept, it's coming, stay tuned. But this, but we have a lot of people on our platform who are running content, who are either manually curating based on their best intuition or they're using our AI technology recommending a Netflix. And I think the other part of it is our activation side has three levels of activation, right? We have this website tools that I talked about, which is always on recommendation, serve up your content the way you want to understand the journey, et cetera. We have our legacy platform called module called campaign tools, which is campaign centric. So send out an email, you social bounce people back to Path Factory pages, and you have the list of content that's applicable, either curated or manually or curated by a human or curated by the machine.
Helen (37:34): Does it, the other part of it is when we, we had this ask from customers that want it to see this unified vision of my customer in my content journey. So we were asked to build a virtual event platform at the beginning of the pandemic, and that's not our wheelhouse, and there are a lot bigger companies in there. But I think the difference is is that people who are doing campaigns can now see whether somebody is coming for an event. They can see whether they're consuming the same content in two places, two experiences to, you know, to messages. And they can then see if they're seeing it on the website as well. This idea of a unified vision of your customer across all marketing channels.
Kathleen (38:10): Yeah. It's a holistic customer journey. Not like, not like just the part of the customer journey that I care about. Yeah.
Helen (38:18): And it's, and it's a complete comprehensive content journey too. So if you're serving up recommendations on one page or you serving up the same recommendation when they're doing a campaign, the answer should be no, they should be the next best or the most related to whatever that interest was or whether it was their history or their firmographic data. So this idea of, you know, serving up relevant content becomes much more pure in the way that you and I would think about serving it up as opposed to, you know, one-to-one in the 19, 1990s and two thousands with Don, Don peppers and Rogers, you know, peppers and Rogers. I worked with them, they were the, the grandfather and grandmother of one-to-one, but I think this vision is now really coming to life.
Kathleen (38:56): That's really cool. The possibilities are kind of amazing when you think about it. I'm going to shift gears because we're gonna run out of time and I could talk about this forever. So I always ask my guests two questions, and I'm really curious to hear what you have to say first is that, of course we talk, this is the inbound success podcast. We talk all about inbound marketing, and I'm always interested to hear if there's a particular individual or a company that you think is really like setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days.
Helen (39:27): Yeah. And I, I tried to look at it from two lenses. One was, what do I get? Right. But I've worked in MarTech. And so I'm a bit more cynical about what's coming into me. And then I, you know, the, the, I tried to look at it from a customer perspective, cause I'm always customer centric is the way that I look at the world. I don't look at inbound, you know, inside out I look outside in. And so I think, you know, a couple of our customers are doing some really great work and I'm going to shout them out. So Druva is a company that I really respect in terms of the work they're doing. They're doing some really nice things on their website. Druva.Com. Pragmatic and Pragmatic Institute. And a lot of people who are in product management probably know that company, they are the people that you can get your product management certification through.
Helen (40:14): They've been doing some really cool things. They've obviously had to pivot from in-person training to online training and and change their business model. And I think that they've really adapted nicely to that and they still are growing which is a great sign on the, on the marketing technology side or as a, as a purchaser of software, I think there's a couple one would be gong. I think gong does a really nice job of, and, and Panda doc is another one for signatures and we don't use them. So I'll give them a shout out. They, they do a nice job of really making it human. And I think sometimes we get wrapped around the axles in our own terminologies and, you know, it's the, you know, you're creating a new category, you're creating a new topic or you're creating and we need to have the best terminology, but nobody knows what the hell you're talking about.
Helen (41:07): Right? These two, these two companies do a really nice job of putting the human language, basic language that, you know, not Washington post or not the financial times, but it's kind of in between USA today and the Washington Post that the average reader can understand what they're trying to achieve. And I think this idea of, you know, really strong readability scores on content is where I'm laser focused is making sure people understand what we are talking about. I think people need to really sit back and say, is this language that, you know, my fifth grader or my, my five-year-old could understand if I explained it to them while we're pushing them on a swing or something like that,
Kathleen (41:46): Examples, those are great. I'm definitely gonna check them out. And there's a few new ones in there that I was not aware of. So I'll put those links in the show notes. And then the second question is that so many marketers I talk to are insanely busy, overwhelmed, and they, a lot of them say that one of the hardest things is just honestly keeping pace with how quickly digital marketing changes, you know, just when you think you've figured out, for example, Facebook, you know, the algorithm changed, but what have you, so how do you personally keep yourself educated, stay up to date and stay current?
Helen (42:19): Yeah, like I, I think I'm curious by nature. So I Google a lot. Probably the algorithm for Google is really messed up with me, but I think, you know, I have people who are on my board of directors, my personal board of directors, who I refer to who are not in the same industry at all. I think that that's important. So I have a friend, a very good friend who is the head of CRM and loyalty for Red Lobster. She's B2C. She's not in software. She buys from vendors. So I talked to her a lot. So she's doing some really fun things, obviously with Red Lobster going through the pandemic. And you know, I think there are different communities that I belong to as well. Obviously the CMO Coffee Talk and Last Sip Clubs are of interest to me.
Helen (43:07): I belong to probably five other Slack groups that are not my core ballywick, so I belong to MOPS, right. I belong to Customer Success channel. Those are really insightful ways for me to crowdsource intel. But then obviously, you know, there are other books and blogs and things like that that you read. And, you know, you, you've probably heard the list, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time, but I, you know, at the end of the day core principles of operating are the things that keep it grounded for me. So we operate by two credos at Path Factory. Intelligent speed, which means you need to be 80% confident that the decisions that you're making are the right decisions for the company and for the customer and for you that there's no risk to any of those three parties.
Helen (44:01): So 80% nobody's ever going to be perfect. So 80% competent that it's the right decision. So that means that gives us grace when there are changes to algos, to new new things, it allows us to test. Right. and the other one is level five leadership, which is Jim Collins' Good to Great philosophy, which is lead with humility. There are no egos at the door to check them. And I don't, and don't read my emails with Tom. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm straight to the point. It's about moving at intelligent speed. If I write. Yes, it means yes. If I write, no, it means no. But I think those two have served us well. They broken down the silos a lot. And, and the other one is not, everybody's invited to every meeting. Like those are the three big ones for us. In terms of you'll be invited when it's right for you to be invited, you'll be filled in and contextualized and, and we'll move from there.
Kathleen (45:01): Love don't read my emails with tone. So much gets misread in written form.
Helen (45:06): Yeah, I don't write them with tone. Sometimes I do, but then I don't send them.
Helen (45:11): I let them sit for 24 hours and then I go back and clean up the tone. But don't read my emails with tone. Don't read my Slack messages with tone.
Kathleen (45:19): So good. I'm going to use that. Well, I'm sure there are people listening who are really now want to learn more about Path Factory, or have a question and would love to connect with you. What is the best way for them to find you online?
Helen (45:33): A couple of ways, Helen, Helen, at Path Factory. I'll put my email address out there, helen@pathfactory.com. I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Twitter. I'm on Facebook. Facebook is personal, not professional. Twitter is opinions are my own, take them.
Helen (45:52): I do post some business stuff on there, but I have an opinion or two about politics as a relatively new American. And yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm happy to connect. We've got a great community of people who would love to talk to you about us. We've got advocates up the wazoo. NPS is through the roof. And so we're happy to talk to anybody who wants to learn more.
Kathleen (46:16): I love it. Well, I'll all of those links to all of those profiles will go in the show notes. So if your listening, head there and you can connect with Helen, you can learn more about Path Factory, and you can check out some of the companies that she mentioned earlier that are good examples of inbound marketing. And if you are listening and you liked this episode as always, I would love it if you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. That is how other listeners find us. And finally, if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Helen. This was a ton of fun.
Helen (46:55): Thanks Kathleen, for having me. I really appreciate your time and as always much respect for you and what you do.
Kathleen (47:00): Oh, right back at ya.
Helen (47:02): Cheers.
How has productivity app Doist acquired 25 million customers without tracking KPIs or using paid ads?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Doist Head of Marketing Brenna Loury shares the company's unusual growth story. An all remote company from its start, Doist has experienced steady growth as a result of a clear vision and mission, a product-led approach, and deep empathy for the customer.
Today, the company is experiencing 100% year over year organic growth, has more than 50,000 email subscribers, and more than 25 million customers. Incredibly, it wasn't until the past year that they began measuring and tracking KPIs, looking at Google Analytics, or using paid ads.
In this episode, Brenna breaks down the three things that are the secrets to Doist's growth.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to hear what Brenna has to say.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Doist website
- Follow Brenna on Twitter
- Connect with Brenna on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Brenna Loury, who is the head of marketing at Doist. Welcome to the podcast Brenna.
Brenna (00:24): Thank you so much for having me, Kathleen. I'm so excited. Honestly, I have been listening to your podcast all week in preparation and I can't wait to be here. It's such an honor. Thank you.
Kathleen (00:35): I'm really excited to talk to you because I am a big fan in general of not always playing by the rules. And so quick preview. What we're going to talk about today is how you can not play by all the rules of marketing and still get great results. But before we do that Brenna, can you tell my audience a little bit about yourself and about Doist?
Brenna (01:00): Sure, definitely. So I have been with Doist since pretty much the very beginning of the company. My background. I studied communication and business in college and for one reason or another ended up graduating and then going to live in Chile for a while. And I was working for the Chilean ministry of economy and a program called startup Chile as the head of communications and PR. And that's actually where I ended up meeting Amir who is the founder of Doist. He was participating in the program at the time. And then I left the ministry of economy to go start my own sort of boutique PR firm for tech startups in the Latin American scene. And Amir was one of my first clients with ToDoist. It was about 2012. And he was getting getting ready to launch the first versions of Todoist for iOS and Android. And I was helping on the PR side of things. So that's how I got involved with Doist and have worn a lot of different hats ever since. And yeah, I just, I started taking on more and more responsibilities and eventually became a full-time employee of Doist in 2014 and have been growing the marketing team ever since.
Kathleen (02:32): And tell me more about what Doist is.
Brenna (02:34): Yeah. So Doist well, we're, we're a fully remote productivity software company. We've been fully remote since day one. Today we're about a hundred people in, I think, I think over 35 countries at this point. And so we create tools that help people live more productive and healthier lives. And so our main as I mentioned before is called Todoist. It's a personal productivity app that has been on the market since about 2007. We have about 25 million users of Todoist these days. And in 2017 we launched Twist, which is a team communication app that we created out of our needs to communicate remotely. So yeah, those are our two products then we've been remote since the very beginning. So it's been kind of an interesting ride in the last year with COVID to see, you know, the whole world switching to remote and yeah, it's, it's been very interesting so far.
Kathleen (03:40): Yeah. You guys were really ahead of the curve with with your remote team and and so I think it would be, I feel like we could do a whole nother podcast just on like what companies that are transitioning to remote should know. But but one fun fact for anyone listening, because obviously they cannot see you, but Brenna is literally going on maternity leave. Like what tomorrow?
Brenna (04:10): So today is Wednesday and my last day is Friday and my due date is in two weeks from yesterday.
Kathleen (04:18): So you are just on the cusp. Will this be your first?
Brenna (04:21): My second. Yeah. So I'm trying to combat pregnancy brain at as much as I can. So I'm hope I'm coherent enough for everybody today.
Kathleen (04:31): Oh, I think you're going to do just fine. And that's exciting. So congratulations. I remember the last few weeks they tend to go a lot slower than you want them to
Brenna (04:42): Yeah. Counting down the minutes basically.
Kathleen (04:44): Yeah. Yeah. Well, one, like I said, when we started out, the reason I was so excited to chat with you is that you guys have an unusual story. You've grown considerably, as you mentioned, you have a huge user base, you've introduced additional products. But you really have not followed the traditional marketing playbook. So I guess let's just start out by, by having you share, like what, what have you done for marketing and what do you credit to your success?
Brenna (05:15): Yeah. I personally really love talking about our story with marketing because it has a lot of different aspects that I think today would kind of be impossible. So it's hard honestly, to make sort of a playbook out of it, but it is really fun to look back and see what worked for us back in the day, because like I mentioned so to Doist was created in 2007 by Amir. He posted the app while he was in college. And then a few years later, I think it was in 2011, he kind of started noticing that the app was taking off. People were starting to pay for it. So to be honest, we have been a profitable company from day one which is why we've never raised any VC funds. So that's another part of being against the status quo in our history.
Brenna (06:16): But in terms of marketing, it has been a fascinating ride because we started out super small team and we are still a small team like today we're a hundred people and we manage two different software apps and three different brands. So we don't have like this crazy bandwidth that a lot of other larger companies have at their disposal. So when I started my expertise was in PR and for those of those people listening, like the PR landscape has changed dramatically. Like very, very much since I was working in this in 2012. So PR was a huge portion of our initial success, I think because we really invested a lot of resources in that. And by resources, I mean, like me writing out press releases, which today, like you can't even imagine, you know, writing a press release. Haven't done that in years, but so we started out with PR and a lot of journalists really engaged with Todoist and began writing about it organically, which I think contributed to a lot of our initial momentum. And from there,
Kathleen (07:39): Sorry to interrupt you, but a question. In those early years, when you were working on the PR, you know, I I'm sure a lot of my listeners do PR. My take on it is that it's worth doing a press release if you genuinely have something newsworthy, like, you know, there are definitely things that happen that, that, that are easy to get coverage for because they're, they're big news. You know, that could be well and big news is all relative, but like that could be raising a S a substantive round of venture capital. Like what you said you did not do. It could be you know, integrating with another platform that's more well known. There, there are a lot of different things could be getting a huge client. What was it that you were doing your press releases on that, that enabled you to garner coverage?
Brenna (08:29): Yeah, so I'm, I'm having a flashback right now of like the first few press releases that we wrote. And I think that the first big one was when we launched our first mobile apps and this was in November of 2012. So if you kind of like take a walk back, you know, at that time there weren't like a ton, the app ecosystem just is not what it is today. And so there were far fewer companies that had mobile apps especially for like the personal productivity space. So we were one of the first ones who actually created apps for both of these two platforms at the same time. And yeah, I'm trying to think back to the, to the other ones that we would, that we would write. It was always product based. We've always been a very like product led company. And a lot of, most of our marketing is, is led by the advances that we make in the product.
Kathleen (09:37): Fair to say that the coverage was driven by news around innovation?
Brenna (09:41): Yeah, definitely. I mean, we never had any press release that yeah, like you said before, we never raised any funds or we never had any like fancy people to our board. We don't have a board. So every press release we did was based around product news. But today, you know, I wouldn't even like almost dream of writing a press release for one of our product updates. Even when we do a massive product update, we don't do press releases anymore. But that's partly because we have close relationships with journalists and things are just very different these days, to be honest, like Product Hunt didn't exist back in the day.
Kathleen (10:23): I just did a Product Hunt launch a week ago actually. And it's, it's true. It's interesting. Like we, we wound up number one product of the day and I did get lots of reporters reaching out to me. So it, it's funny how there are these other channels.
Brenna (10:38): Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I mean, that worked really well for us and PR has, you know, it was a huge piece of the pie chart of our marketing, but today it's, it's considerably smaller to be honest.
Kathleen (10:56): So I stopped you, you were talking about how back in the day you were doing press releases, you were getting press coverage and then you were going to kind of go onto something else. And so I want to, I want to go back to that.
Brenna (11:06): Yeah. So I think a lot of, you know, one sort of fun anecdote about marketing and Doist is, you know, this is the year 2021, and it was only in 2020 that we began like barely dipping our feet in paid advertising. So, you know, from when I started working on marketing at Doist in 2012, until 2020, we never spent a cent on paid advertising. All of the other marketing campaigns were really focused on like creating a community around our existing users like announcing these big product updates to tech blogs and things like that. And for us, that was, it worked really well. Like we have grown organically and never invested anything into paid ads. And I'm, I'm looking forward to talking more about like, you know, how we how our mindset around empathy for the user and, you know, putting ourselves in their shoes has helped us grow in this like very unconventional way.
Kathleen (12:18): Let's dig into that because you and I talked about that a little bit when we first met, and I think this is something that I, that I find really interesting because there, a lot of people talk about authenticity and empathy and things like that, but, but there's no handbook for it and you kind of can't fake it, you know? So, so let's break down. What do you mean when you say empathy for the user and, and describe to me how that plays out in your marketing?
Brenna (12:44): Definitely. So it's, it's, it's really interesting because we have these two different brands, right? So we have these two pretty separate apps. So Todoist and Twist. For Todoist in particular, what we've learned along the way is that people tend to download like this, you know, task management productivity app in kind of times of like personal crisis, to be honest, you know, if, if or not necessarily crisis, but like, you know, something big is happening in somebody's life. You know, they're getting married or starting a new job, or you know starting a new semester at school and they really need a way to get themselves organized. So there's this kind of driver that leads people to, to sign up for the app and really putting yourself in their shoes and understanding what they're going through in that moment has been, has been key for us.
Brenna (13:38): And it's similar with our other app called Twist because it's also this sort of like light bulb moment that people have for those who are listening that don't know, Twist is a team communication app. That's based like very heavily around asynchronous communication. It's very much like an anti Slack, anti Microsoft teams tool that allows people to disconnect and spend, you know, a couple of hours working on what they need to work on without getting distracted. And so, you know, when people start searching for this app, it's clear that like something in their workflow or in their teamwork is not working and trying to meet those people at that sort of moment of that light bulb moment or that moment of crisis and providing them the education and the resources that they need to kind of come to this conclusion a little bit sooner and get onboarded into our products. I think has been yeah, pretty beneficial for us.
Kathleen (14:41): So how does that play out in your marketing? Like, I would love it if you could share some examples of say, you mentioned the example, for example, of somebody who who's going to college and they need to get, or getting married and they need to get organized. How do you, how do you weave that into your marketing strategy?
Brenna (14:58): Yeah, so we have a big portion of our marketing is content marketing. We have a blog that I am very proud of. My team is very exceptional. So we create a lot of content that is very in depth and like very comprehensive in terms of like creating a guide for students, for example, or, you know, for Todoist in particular, we have like a bank of templates, you know, if somebody is starting a new semester in school, like how can you organize your tasks to make the most out of your education, for example. So we do work pretty heavily with like we're really into SEO, sorry, I'm having like a brain of disfunction there. Like SEO is very important for us. We have increased the organic traffic to our blog, like a hundred percent compared to like 2020 compared to 2019. So that's great. Just really giving people the resources that they need to like have this light bulb moment and then take action on it as best as they can.
Kathleen (16:17): So to that point, and this is sort of interesting, like we have a lot of content marketers that listen and they get basic SEO, but but the debate I hear a lot is around like how top of funnel do you go? And so I'm curious, we'll use the example of the person who's getting married. Are you publishing content around how to get organized for getting married or is it other topics around getting married? Like what does that strategy look like?
Brenna (16:47): Yeah. So if we're going to use that example it would be something like the keyword would be, you know, wedding checklist or wedding checklist template, something like that. And then we would create content around, like, you know, this to-do is template that you can import into your own to do is and probably, you know, interview some productivity specialists that may be active in the, you know, wedding planning space, who knows. But we, we are pretty particular around like the breakdown of our content attacking like the different stages of the funnel, because we do have a lot of active users of our apps that, you know, want to know what's going on and what is the latest news product updates and to do list. And then also kind of like killing two birds with one stone, I guess, in terms of finding people who are exploring these topics and, and might need a tool to, to them.
Kathleen (17:50): So when you say you're particular about how you break down, I guess I would characterize it as like the customer journey or the steps in the funnel. How, what do you mean by that?
Brenna (18:01): Yeah, so we have different sort of categories of content on our blogs. So for example, a post that we published recently was around how to plan your day. So the keyword there is, you know, I think just planning your day basically. So that's anybody who is looking for some guidance on like how to deal with the work that they have to manage. So that will be the top of funnel, obviously like anybody who's Googling, you know, how, how do I plan my day? And then in the middle, we'll have content that is, you know, more related to our products, maybe some news about like new integration partners or things like that. And then at the bottom of the funnel, we do we do regular product updates as with these like what's new campaigns. So we'll gather, you know, two or three months of product updates and package them into a campaign called, like what's new in Todoist, or what's new in Twist, where all of our existing users can go in and read about what we've been up to and what's new in our apps.
Kathleen (19:08): So is that all on the one blog or do you have separate blogs for your like educational content versus your product content?
Brenna (19:15): Yeah. This is a fun question we really grappled with for a while, at the very beginning, we had separate blogs and ultimately we ended up bringing those under one umbrella under our Doist brand. So it's just you know, the newest blog and that encompasses all of our, you know, everything basically. But we do have separate sites. For example, we have a compilation of like productivity guides and a productivity quiz for Todoist users and that lives on its own site. And we also have a set of guides for remote working and that lives on the Twist domain, but everything else, yeah, it's under the Doist umbrella. And that was honestly like a really, really hard decision to make back in the day. Because the audiences are, you know, while we create productivity software, like the audiences, not aren't necessarily like seeking the same content at the same time. And then we have this other audience on top of that, that is looking for content related to like thought leadership around remote work. So it's, it's kind of a lot of puzzle pieces to fit together and doing that well is yeah, it's, it takes a lot of thought actually.
Kathleen (20:34): So I really want to pick your brain on this selfishly, because I'm in the same boat, I worked for a company that has two products that loosely fall under the umbrella of digital engagement security, but they are very different products for very different audiences. And so, and I'm sure there are people listening that have this situation too. I'm I'm curious, I guess first, why did you decide to put it all together?
Brenna (20:56): Yeah. it's, it was a tough decision. Like we deliberated about it for a long time. And even to this day, I think there are some times where we're like, Oh, should we have done that? You know, would these things live better in their own domains? But at the end of the day, like we use our dual brand umbrella to kind of guide everything that we do. So that means like do us as a company, we are really like, our mission is to help people live more productive, calm, fulfilling lives. And part of that is, you know, the way you work part of that is the way that you manage your day, you manage your time. And so these things kind of like loosely fallen together. And our reasoning was that like, you know, if somebody is interested in being more productive in their day and they're a Todoist user, like what's to stop them from being interested in content that will help them be more productive in terms of teamwork as well. So it was really driven by our company's mission and our vision for the future that we ourselves want to work in. So I think your brand, like the parent brand really dictates, like if those should, should live together or separately,
Kathleen (22:18): That makes sense. And how do you functionally manage creating blog content and also I'm assuming you have some email marketing thrown in there, like how do you manage all that in a way that you don't leave, like part of your audience feeling alienated or, or how do you prevent unsubscribes too? Because that's always a worry if you're creating content for lots of different audiences at different times in their lives, it's very hard to solve for everyone all at the same time.
Brenna (22:49): Yeah, that is very, very true. We have a very talented content team. I have to give all the credit to them to be honest. They're just very thoughtful about this and methodical about how we package our content together to make it as appealing as possible. And in terms of email marketing with our blog like not taking into account the email marketing that we have for our different products, but just for our blog. For example, we only send one newsletter a week, so we're not sending people a newsletter every time we publish a new blog post, because we figured if we did that, then that would be kind of spammy. Like, you know, if I'm a Todoist user and I'm receiving like a an email about a new Twist feature, like what, I don't know, it just, it doesn't compute.
Brenna (23:48): So that's why we decided to package all of those into just one single weekly newsletter. And the way that our team does that is like finding a common theme and then kind of like cherry picking the different content from our products, thought leadership and packaging that together in a way that is coherent and doesn't necessarily feel like, okay, look, here's this section about Todoist. Here's a section about Twist. Here's a section about remote work. It takes like a lot more thought than just, you know, going post by post. And I think that has worked well for us, our newsletter blog newsletter list just crossed, I think the 50,000 subscriber milestones. So that was exciting for us. And yeah, I think it's working and you send it out every week, every week. Yeah. And, and that's new. We had just sent it out every two weeks, but you know, our content team is kind of on a roll these days.
Brenna (24:55): And so we figured it we could, we could bump the cadence and I guess that is sort of another component of our unconventional marketing. Like we are really entrenched in the mentality of like, not spamming our users. Like we don't send people push notifications. We only were like very, very mindful about the communications that we send out to our users and you know, try not to bother them during their day because we know that they're busy and I have a lot of stuff going on and they don't need to be reminded that, you know, Todoist or Twist exists all the time. So that has something that has just been ingrained into all of our brains on the marketing team. And I think it's, it's different because a lot of other companies don't operate, operate that way. And a lot of the marketing playbooks, like, I don't think take that into account.
Kathleen (25:55): Yeah, yeah, yeah. You definitely have to be careful. So you're, it sounds like you're investing a lot of time and effort into content. You mentioned that, that that's a big focus for you. How are you getting your content out in front of your audience beyond, you know, organic search?
Brenna (26:13): That's a great question. And honestly, I think that's something that we could do better. It's the content that we have on our blog is really top-notch. And I think, you know, the, the increase in organic traffic speaks for itself, and that has been really gratifying to see, but at the same time like we also have never experienced with like, or never experimented with running ads based on our content or doing performance marketing with our content. At this point it's pretty much just our, like the email newsletter that I had mentioned are on our social media channels. And then also we do kind of pepper in our, our content into the, like the product email life cycle as well. So we try and find useful places where our content would fit like in the user life cycle and include it there, but it's a challenge for us. Like our team is very small. We only have two people who work on content full-time and they're writers and editors and, you know, coordinators at the content calendar doing a little bit of everything there, right. The newsletter. And it's, it's honestly hard to find the bandwidth to like, explore all these other different channels. But that is definitely on our radar for this year.
Kathleen (27:39): And, and what percentage of your marketing effort goes towards acquiring new customers versus marketing to the customers you already have?
Brenna (27:50): Yeah, that's, that's a great question. Honestly we focus most of our marketing on our existing users because Todoist, for example, has grown essentially organically since day one. Twist is a little bit of a different story that has been more of an uphill battle. But because we haven't had to kind of focus on filling the funnel for new users. We've tried really hard to like aim most of our marketing efforts at people who are already using our product.
Kathleen (28:29): Do you have any referral campaigns? Like where, where do most of your new customers come in from? Are they just finding you in the app store?
Brenna (28:37): Especially before people find us in the app store, we have like many thousands of downloads a day, so it's, we're almost like we don't want to fill the funnel anymore. We have this like very strange problem of like, we have a lot of downloads and new users and trying to figure out how to best onboard them and everything is, is a challenge for us, for sure. So yeah, a lot of our, our users come just from the web, from the Apple app store, Google play, and then for Twist it's a lot more word of mouth and people find us a lot more frequently through our content marketing because it's, yeah, it's a very different user journey that people have to go through. So they're both very different, like you know, marketing to us is, it's somewhat of a challenge because the journeys for the products are so different. And they require like very, very different tactics. And I think it's interesting.
Kathleen (29:42): That you're in the app stores because I mean, I, I have not done any marketing for an app before. And my understanding is that it is very much its own beast. I would imagine that getting reviews is a big piece of that. And so can you talk a little bit about any efforts you've put into increasing your visibility in the app store?
Brenna (30:00): Yeah, definitely. So we have experimented with that more frequently in the last few years before we would just kind of like, you know, throw our screenshots up and have our app description and not do too much about it. Like we didn't have any prompts in our apps, like asking users to, to write reviews. But we do now. And that has been very useful for us to find like this very specific moment in the user journey to ask people to give that feedback. Definitely a trial and error process. But yeah, having the reviews is, is key. And then we also do spend a lot of time on the screenshots and graphics themselves making those look beautiful and it's a science in itself of like, you know, how many characters and, you know, what should, what should be on the, on the screenshot and how much does the app to show. And it's kind of a science and we have started experimenting with Apple search ads. So that's new for us this year as well. And it's going pretty well, but yeah, the app stores are our huge source of new users for us.
Kathleen (31:23): Now, so, so recap for me your results, because I feel like that's what makes the story so interesting. You talked about a hundred percent year over year traffic growth, I think it was from your content. Are there other results in the, in the form of like user acquisition or any other growth metrics that would be good to add to that?
Brenna (31:44): Yeah. I mean to date, I, yeah, we have had like over 25 million people sign up for Todoist. So that has been exciting. Like one really cool marketing campaign that always sticks with me that we did was in 2016, I believe. And that's when our users crossed the 1 billion completed tasks threshold. So that was a really exciting moment. And we created a really special marketing campaign around that, like asking our users, what is the most important thing that Todoist has helped you achieve in your life? And the answers we got were just like, so mind blowing and emotional and really touching to be honest. And, and that it has all been done like organically, to be honest. So, and we're also very much an anomaly in that we don't track our data or ROI of marketing really at all.
Brenna (32:52): We've never really had to, until we started investing money in ads this year. So we've never really been a data-driven company. Like a lot of the work that we've done has been based on our gut feeling and you know, how we want our users to interact with our apps and like our hopes and dreams that we have for them in terms of like living a more productive, fulfilling life. So I guess that is another, another weird aspect of working at Doist is like, we, we just, last year, I think started like looking at Google analytics and things like that. So I don't know, like not a lot. I worry that people can't take much out of this this playbook because it is so unconventional and different than like a regular startup.
Kathleen (33:47): But there's some really important lessons here. And as I listened to you talk, I think there's like three that really stand out to me. And this is a very strong illustration of how you can, you know, follow the classic marketing playbook and still not see results, or you can not follow the classic marketing playbook as you did and see great results. And so the three things that stand out to me are number one, a very clear why, like you said earlier on that you have this really clear vision of the world that you want to live and work in, and that you, and you want to share that with your users and you want to attract the people that, that share that feeling. And so I feel like defining that sort of vision, mission, and values, and being really clear about it and, and putting some emotion behind it is something that every marketer really, really needs to start with, because that makes everything else that much easier.
Brenna (34:46): Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you totally hit the nail on the head, Kathleen like everything that we do at Doist, like any marketing initiatives that we do, we have this like a campaign brief and at the top of the campaign brief, it's always like a section that starts out with why, why is this great for the user? Why is this going to improve their life? And that goes from like even the biggest marketing projects we have to like the smallest sort of like release announcements that we do. So that is huge for us. And I think it's a huge like kudos to our founder, Amir. He has been very clear about that since day one. And so again, like I had mentioned this phrase before, but like, this is just embedded in our DNA. Everything we do starts with why and everything we do is formulated under this umbrella of like, what is the future that we want to live and work in and how can we like fast track this future for more people as well?
Kathleen (35:51): I love that. And that comes through very clearly when we hear you talk. I would say the second thing that jumps out at me is you talked about being a product led company, and I've always said, and I strongly believe that the best marketing in the world cannot make up for a poor product. Right. And so having a focus on the product first and letting the product honestly do the work for you, having a great product, focusing on continuing to improve it, continuing to add functionality that solves for the needs of your users. Like that's big, and that's not just a marketing thing, that's a company thing. And, and I would say the vision mission values as a company thing too.
Brenna (36:27): Definitely. Yeah. And in terms of the product, I think there are a few other takeaways that I could mention that might be useful for people. Like one other sort of unconventional thing that we have done is like, we always translated all of our apps into, I think, like almost 20 different languages. So all of our apps, all of our help center content, all of our lifecycle marketing. Part of our company's DNA is being like a, a global company. Like I said, we've been remote from day one. Our, our team is spread out all across the world. And so we are really passionate about like providing products for users in the language that they speak. So that has been one really important driver of growth, I think for us. And then just in terms of like always trying to like innovate and not rest on your laurels, like, you know, a lot of our competitors in the productivity space have been acquired and or, you know, kind of fallen off the wayside. Like everybody knows that like the, you know, the to-do list app space is very extensive. But just continuing to kind of like keep our heads down, focus on like what we want to see out of the app and not looking at competitors has, has worked out really well for us.
Kathleen (37:54): That the third thing that to me jumped out of this conversation was this sort of like obsessive focus on the customer and the journey that they're on and you referred to it as empathy for the customer. And, and to me, that, and how that plays out in terms of solving for the needs of the customer through content. Like those two seem very married together, having deep empathy for the customer and then creating content that solves for them. I feel like when you add these three things together, the clear vision and why, the product led approach, and then the deep empathy for the customer, how that translates into a content driven approach. Like you have basically thrown out all the rest of the marketing rulebooks, but you did those three things really well and it allowed you to not do the others.
Kathleen (38:47): Like, honestly, that's where your success sounds like it came from. And I love that because the three, those three things are things that transcend trends. It's, they transcend technology and it transcends tactics. So like a lot of marketers get caught up in what's the latest, you know, Google algorithm or what's happening with Facebook ads and what's, what's, you know, clubhouses new, should I be on that? And all of those things are like channel changes and tactics and technology changes. But if you stay true to the three core things we talked about, which are timeless and marketing, then none of the rest of it really matters, it seems to me.
Brenna (39:28): Yeah. I mean, for sure, like our brand you know, since I started at Doist, like, we have been kind of like maniacally protective of our brand. And in fact, I was listening to your podcast earlier today with Nandini Jammi about like the you know, not letting your company's ads run on these like not great websites. And that for us has been like a really great North star ever since beginning. And that allows us, like knowing what we want out of our brand. And like knowing that the products that we create, you know, we want people to be more productive. So for us, that's like, okay, well, productivity probably doesn't mean that like, people are going to be on Facebook all day. So what's the point of like running ads, because that's essentially against like everything that we're going for. So for us, that has been kind of essential in our process of elimination in terms of marketing tactics.
Kathleen (40:34): I love that. I love this whole story. You know, we're going to run out of time, so we've got to change gears now. And I have two questions for you that I ask all of my guests, which you've probably heard since you've been listening. First one being, of course, we talk a lot about inbound marketing on the podcast. So is there a particular company or individual that you think is doing really amazing inbound marketing work?
Brenna (40:57): Yeah, so besides my team, because I am so proud of them, everything that they do I guess my best example, these days would be Peloton. I know it's like such a hot topic. These, you know, with the COVID and, you know, people ordering bikes and stuff, it's like very trendy these days, but coming on the heels of what you just mentioned, like, I don't notice that many brands that do like this Y based marketing as well as Peloton, like as a user. I really appreciate the communication that they have with us. And I feel like it's very authentic. Like there, I find one of the few brands that walk the walk and talk the talk. Like if they say that they are investing in diversity, like you can really tell that they're investing in diversity. And they have just done like this insane job of like building a community around the product. And getting people like super hyped up into like all of the different offerings that they have. I appreciate us as a user. They like do beta testing and invitations that make you feel like you're part of the product roadmap. But more importantly, I feel like it's a brand that I just, I really appreciate their authenticity and their dedication to like putting their money where their mouth is.
Kathleen (42:31): Well, I too am a Peloton user. And so you can ride with me at kathslat, if anybody wants to join. I'm usually on it every morning from what is it, like 5:45 to 6:30 AM? Otherwise it doesn't happen, but no, I totally agree with you. And in fact, I posted something on LinkedIn recently about how they're like a marketing masterclass, because it's community, it's gamification, it's the personal brands of their instructors that they've, they've led with. The instructor brands which I think is really smart because people like to glom onto people. There's so much to the Peloton model that I, I totally agree with you.
Brenna (43:13): Yeah. It's kind of like a never ending story I would love to read. If somebody would be interested in writing like a book on Peloton marketing, I would totally buy that.
Kathleen (43:22): Yes. As would I. All right. Other question, marketing changes really quickly. How do you keep up to date and stay educated?
Brenna (43:32): Yeah, I actually like every Wednesday, I block off a time in my calendar for learning. So this is very important for me. It's very important. Like part of our team ethos at Doist is to maintain like your professional acumen. So there are a few sites that I regularly peruse on my Wednesdays on my learning Wednesdays. One is the blog that Open View Partners writes. So they're, they're kind of experts in product led growth. So they tend to have pretty good content about that. Reforge, which they focus on growth marketing, Brian Balfour. He's really good. Yeah. Marketing examples. Awesome. Just like really bite sized marketing content that's super actionable. First Round Review, which is another VC fund that has a really fantastic blog. And then anything by your previous guests, April Dunford, who I'm like, I think I've read her book like two or three times. So I'm a big fan of hers, but honestly, when I was thinking of this question, I do feel like I struggled to find like really well done content about marketing that is big picture and like, not necessarily focused on like the minutia of marketing. Like I would really love to read more content. That's like bigger picture branding, positioning, product marketing. And I, I find that it's challenging to find that these days, to be honest.
Kathleen (45:18): Yeah, there, and there is a sea of marketing content. There's so much of it. And so we didn't have to find the gems is tough, which is why I'm asking this question and, you know, hearing what other people have, have zeroed in on in terms of the needle in the haystack.
Brenna (45:34): Yeah, it's, it's, it's a challenge. Like there's a lot to sift through. So if anybody wants to share me their gems, you can find me on Twitter at BrennaKL. And I would definitely like to read some new content these days.
Kathleen (45:48): You know, it's funny, I should put together an article with all of the answers to this question that I've gotten from different people and share it out because it is a huge challenge. So thank you for sharing your sources. You just mentioned one way people can find you that is on Twitter. Any other particular ways people should reach out and connect with you online, or how can they learn more about Doist?
Brenna (46:11): Yeah. So Twitter is the best place for me. For the time being I will be completely disconnecting from work as of this Friday, but otherwise you can learn about Doist, Todoist, and Twist at Doist.com. And yeah. Thank you again, Kathleen, for having me on it was a real pleasure.
Kathleen (46:35): This was a lot of fun. Thank you for sharing your story. And, and if you're listening and you learned something new or enjoyed this episode, of course, I would love it if you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. And if you know somebody who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, please tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Brenna.
Brenna (47:00): Thank you for having me.
How will Apple's upcoming iOS 14 privacy updates impact your ability to use paid media to achieve your marketing goals?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Loop Club Co-Founder and CEO Tim Keen explains what will happen when Apple rolls out iOS 14, how it will impact Facebook specifically, what it will mean for marketers' ability to use retargeting, and what brands should be doing now to prepare for it.
From simple steps like verifying your domain in Facebook ads manager and doing more testing on ad creative, to advanced solutions like server side tracking, Tim shares actionable steps that marketers can take to ensure their paid media strategies continue to deliver value.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to hear what Tim has to say.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Loop Club website
- Connect with Tim on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I am your host, Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Tim Keen, who is the co-founder of Loop Club. Welcome to the podcast Tim.
Tim (00:22): Thank you so much for having me, Kathleen.
Kathleen (00:24): Thanks for being here. You guys are doing some really interesting work and I can't wait to dig into the topic at hand today, but before I do that, can you just tell my listeners a little bit about yourself, how you came to be doing what you're doing now and what Loop Club is?
Tim (00:39): Absolutely. So Loop Club is a performance marketing agency. We work with specifically performance, purpose driven Shopify brands. So we're trying to grow brands that have a kind of social mission or trying to do something good or that do something that we are interested in growing. And we leverage our direct to consumer experience to grow those brands very, very, very quickly. We all came from funny backgrounds and I came from, I didn't come from this world at all. I used to play in a band and I was in like a touring rock band that was playing all around the world. It was great time. It was really, really fun. But the thing about being in a band is that it just means you don't make any money at all. No matter, like, unless you're like really, unless you're used to like those mid tier bands of bands that you see play shows, even at like pack of venues, then I'll make it.
Tim (01:28): It's just impossible to me. It's like a labor of love. So that whole time I'm just thinking to myself, I'm like, okay, like I need something. I need to figure out how to add a crack this and started teaching myself how to do digital marketing, started building online stores and, and was seeing some success. Just, just after a little while saw traction. And then I went into an agency called Mute Six, which unbeknownst to me at the time was one of the fastest growing agencies in the country. And I just kind of like lapped it all up. And then my clients grew extremely fast. I grew very fast there and a few of my colleagues and I were just doing well. And then just think it's just kind of continued on our clients, wanted to keep working with us. And now we're here at the start of COVID COVID is a huge part of this as well. Cause we kind of sat down at the side of COVID being like, just they'll take a couple of clients, like have like a relaxing time. Like, and then that was a year ago and now we're here. And obviously having Shopify ecommerce experience has been very useful to us.
Kathleen (02:34): Oh yeah. I mean the data around the just explosion in e-commerce and the massive growth in Shopify in particular is, is pretty amazing. And I just have to laugh because, you know, I, I feel like in the last year I've reflected on this a lot lately because we're recording this on the exact one year anniversary of the day that COVID was declared a pandemic, which is interesting. And when this all first started, there was so much chatter online about people saying they had all this time on their hands and they were going to like take up a hobby and learn a language. And I'm like, who are these people? I mean, I get it. If you, if you've lost your job, that's a totally different situation. But I feel like everyone, I know who didn't lose their job is so much busier than they were pre COVID.
Tim (03:16): Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. If you still have a job, I think that there's an air of like a little slight air of like, Oh, is this gonna work out? Like, am I going to do my job? And everyone is working harder than ever and being more on top of things than ever, like, I mean, we'll take it, we'll take in 72 polls in the last 12 months.
Kathleen (03:36): Yeah. I mean, it counts more than ever now, right? Like making your work count and getting results just to be live at a time when, you know, there's nothing guaranteed for business or in life. And so I feel like there's a lot on the line for a lot of people. And certainly in the e-commerce world, it's something that I talk about a lot that, you know, the core over the course of the last year. So many brick and mortar brands have, have just been gutted and e-commerce has become like the lifeline that's, that's how they've survived. And the ones who've like made that pivot really well have, have one essentially in this environment. And those that have struggled have really, really had a hard time. And so I look at e-commerce as this, this kind of like shining beacon for businesses that want to be able to still be successful at a time when we can't do a lot in person, although that's starting to change now in the world starting to open up, but I don't think we're at the clock is going to be dialed back on that.
Kathleen (04:31): And so I love that you guys do work in that sector. And I know from previous conversations with you, a big part of what you do is in the area of paid media. And you know, not only do we live in an interesting time when it comes to the shift to e-commerce, but we also live in an interesting time when it comes to paid media, because there is so much changing with the death of the third-party cookie and all these different you know, platform specific changes. And, and one of the ones in particular that, that you've spoken about and have some opinions about is what's happening with iOS 14 and what that is going to mean for brands paid media efforts. So I want to level set here and start with, for those who are listening. I think, I think pretty much everybody who's listening is doing some form of paid media. There's obviously different levels of expertise with that, but for those listening, I'm sure there are probably a lot of people who are not familiar with what is changing with iOS 14. So can we start by having you explain that?
Tim (05:27): Absolutely. So I want to, this is going to get very complicated and annoying.
Kathleen (05:33): I love complicated. The more complicated, the better
Tim (05:39): At the highest level, there is a, a fight going on between Apple and Facebook. And what Apple has decided to do is change their privacy settings on the new iOS updates. So everyone's going to update their phones and it's going to change a setting and it's going to require everyone to explicitly opt in if apps can track them across their phones. Because right now Facebook has employed a lot of data out of your phone. It's fully, it's fully like your device ID. It's pulling your IP address. It's following like literally a lot other apps that you use on your phone. Like it's very, it's it's Facebook. They take everything. So Apple has been like, we've got to put an end to this at some point, shut it down. So this will make this, even as I say that it does, like it's obvious that this is a lot of data.
Tim (06:30): They're taking a lot of data. People haven't necessarily opted into having this happen to them. So I'm not opposed to this change. Like, I don't think it's a bad thing to happen, but it will make the difference to everyone's ad accounts because Facebook has an algorithm that optimizes towards engagement. Facebook's a big data system that uses all this information about you to more efficiently place your ads in front of people. So if you are running an advertising on Facebook, you need to adapt. First of all, is very logistical things that you need to do. And then secondly, there's things you need to do that are at a more marketing level. You need to think about what this means and where this trend is going, and then adapt to that.
Kathleen (07:12): So before we get too deep into Facebook, a couple of questions. So this is only going to, well, this only relates to people, obviously who have Apple devices. Correct. and then, and then obviously, I mean, I've seen in the news, Facebook has taken out like full-page ads in the Washington post and other places kind of complaining about this move by Apple. They're, they're clearly not happy, but and they are the loudest voice in the room, but is it only Facebook that is going to be affected? Or is it also, you know, your LinkedIn ads, your Google ads, et cetera, like how, how do the rest of the platforms that you advertise on get impacted as well?
Tim (07:55): The conversation around is that Facebook is going to be the most affected because they're the most dependent on this third party data. Google owns its own data. Like Google, Google is not a benign player. It's like Google is obviously like pivoting to privacy. They're getting rid of the third party cookie as well.
Kathleen (08:12): I was going to say, Google is making its own, you know, efforts to, as people like to say, like, there are all these platforms are building walled gardens. So Google will have its own walled garden and Apple will have its walled garden.
Tim (08:25): Exactly. But Google's world will govern as the whole internet because you browse around all day. So it doesn't matter that like, they'll be fine. They still have a lot of access to data. If the conversation is that Facebook will be the most effective, although all channels need to adapt. But the reason why that matters is because for most small brands, most SMBs and most SMBs Facebook is their largest acquisition channel. It's where you spend the most money, it's when you're acquiring the most customers. And there are many, many digital brands who built, built themselves around the premise that they could acquire customers at low cost and Facebook.
Kathleen (09:02): Yeah. So, all right, it's coming. When is it coming? Do we know exactly when it's going to happen?
Tim (09:07): It's starting to roll out already. We're seeing some changes from some people, anyone who has iOS 14 has that update. So it is trickling in the impact. iOS, Apple hasn't started forcing the restrictions completely yet. So we're not seeing like the full impact, but it will be over the next coming months that everything will just stop changing. And it's my experience so far has been that it's not like big bang, like something explodes. It's like, Oh, this doesn't work anymore. It's just like, Oh, that's a little more annoying. And I'm like, Oh, that number is a bit lower than it should be. And I'm like, Oh, okay. I have to go over here and click this button now that I didn't have to click before. Like, there'll be a million little things that change.
Kathleen (09:50): Like boiling a frog. Which, I hate that analogy, but it is, it does work well. So, okay, so the boiling has begun and the little changes are happening. Let's talk and I feel like there's two sides of this. There's the side. If you're like a person who has an iPhone and there are decisions you need to make about whether you want to turn this setting on or offer, you know, how much you want to be tracked, which I that's just like a personal choice. And then there's the, your, a brand that is advertising. You know, and you, you may or may not already have successful Facebook ad campaigns. So like you started alluding to this, what are the things that brands need to be thinking about and doing now so that they're not caught unawares when this rolls?
Tim (10:34): Great, great question. So I'm going to divide this into two categories of things. And one is like very easy things to do that you should just obviously do. And then the other thing is like slightly more complicated ways of thinking about this that will help you in the long run. So the short term things. You've got to verify your domain. What that means is you go into Facebook, you go into the business manager, you hit like domain settings. You write in the name of your domain. You add a little piece of code to your website that lets Facebook know that you own that. To me, that's very, very, very important that used to not be used to be an option that was available, but it didn't make any difference. Now they'll just turn your ads off. You don't have it.
Kathleen (11:12): Yeah. I think they're putting, I remember I had to do this not long ago. I think they're putting notifications in the ads manager accounts, right?
Tim (11:19): Yeah, exactly. You should have a notification. I've been doing it for my clients. It, at some point in time agencies couldn't do it for you because you needed to be an admin on the business manager, but we've been able to do it for our clients. So I would talk to you, I guess you'd have an agency. I would talk to your agency about it. If not, it is not a difficult thing to do, but you just need to follow your instructions. It is, it's gone from a trivial thing that no one would ever really bothers to extremely important overnight. So that has to be done.
Kathleen (11:48): Yeah. So get that done now. Or your ads might just be turned off.
Tim (11:54): Absolutely, so just do it. And then the other thing you need to do is once you've verified that domain, you need to set up a series of web what's called web of events. So that to me, so what this means is Google Facebook is going to receive data from Apple. Apple is now deciding what's going to be allowed to be sent back to Facebook. And you have to tell Facebook to tell Apple what events quote unquote you're interested in. So in Facebook language an event is like someone makes a purchase or someone views a page, or someone adds to cart. They're all mixed.
Kathleen (12:29): Is this the equivalent of like a goal in Google analytics?
Tim (12:32): Exactly, exactly, exactly. And so you'll need to create these web events, what is what they're called and then prioritize them in the order that you would like them. And that's also in your Facebook business manager and is, is a lot easier to do. Once you verify that domain, you create the series of web events and make sure that you have put them in the priority order. So your purchase event is the most important one that should be at the top. That is confusing. So what this means is previously each conversion, each piece of information about that purchase is sent back from someone's phone with personally identifiable data. So it says like I, Tim Keen, purchased something from this store on this data at this time. So you go to Facebook, Apple is going to give that data back in an anonymized way. So Apple is going to say in this last 24 hour period, 50 people purchased from this store. So you want to know who purchased. You want to know how much like, stuff like that. And that's the level of, that's what they call an aggregated events. So as you can see, there's a lot less data for advertisers to work.
Kathleen (13:42): So I'm just thinking through already, my head is spinning with like, how is this going to play out in real life? So now prior to iOS 14 like if I'm on my iPhone and I'm shopping and I go to a store and I put something in my cart and then I don't buy it, what happens now is like, let's say it's a pair of boots that pair of boots starts showing up all over my Facebook feed and I'm hammered with it until I purchased the boots, which works really well by the way. So are you saying that now that that basically will not happen or it may not happen as much because they can't associate the boots in the cart with me as a specific individual?
Tim (14:21): Well, exactly, exactly. There is talk of what you're thinking about is remarketing. And there is a conversation that remarketing will go away. That's the, that's the level of the, of the extreme change that people have people are talking about. On the other hand, the next tip that I will give is a potential work around. And I think that what we'll start seeing is larger brands doing this all the time. So people will start using, what's called server-side tracking. People already doing this. And what this means is instead of right now, you install a Facebook pixel in people's browsers. That pixel exists in their browser, sends data back from their, a server side of tracking events, sends data from the website's server, and doesn't touch the user's browser. So Shopify, the data goes directly from Shopify back to Facebook, fire and API, same giving information about your visit to that website.
Kathleen (15:18): And okay, I want to get a little nerdy on this. So we're going to go, we might get technical and I'm going to ask dumb questions, fair warning. So I want to understand how that works. I am on my iPhone. I go to a website that's powered by Shopify and I'm looking around I may or may not put something in my cart. I may or may not make a purchase. In the past, the pixel, the Facebook pixel on the website would have fired. And basically, as you said, via the browser that I'm in, which in this case would be whatever browser that I'm using on and on an Apple iPhone would have then communicated it back to my Facebook ads account. And I could then market to the person around that. But because Apple is essentially an intermediary they're, they're kind of like putting up a block on that data coming back. So now I am on a Shopify powered website, if so, I guess there's two sides to this. If I, if I do something that identifies it's me, like if I put something in a cart and put my information in there, that's obviously an easier way for Shopify to communicate back. Oh, Kathleen was on the site and she was looking at boots, but if I'm just shopping around on the site and I haven't done anything to identify myself, how does Shopify tell the brand who I am or give it the ability to market? To me,
Tim (16:47): That's the question for advertisers everywhere. That's the question. Will people solve that? And some people will. I'm sure there are some grants that are matching. So Facebook is basically just like, and this is where it gets really where you see the hotdog get made. Facebook is just like a data sloping machine. They'll just take it all. If whatever you give them, they'll be like, okay, great. I found that person. So if you'll just browsing around on the website, whatever we can give Facebook, they'll use, they'll try to use that information to figure it out. So just say that you clicked a Facebook ad and then went up to the website that Facebook click in the URL, like ID associated with it. So you're in sort once, once you're in your end. So it's not a perfect science. Exactly.
Kathleen (17:35): They will triangulate essentially. And try to figure out who you are. So one more question on this. So there's certain cases where there'll be able to figure out it's me, and then you can still do remarketing bypassing Apple. But then if they're, if they're not able to figure out it's me, does it then become more like what Google is talking about with, and I'm getting sort of technical here with FLOC, the cohort based approach where they're going to be like, Hey, you know, there are people on your site who are looking at boots. And so you might want to do a campaign around boots and, and loosely, it will help you identify a cohort of people who might be like boot enthusiasts.
Tim (18:14): Yeah, exactly. So FLOC is, this is another thing, and this is, this is really interesting to FLOC is Google's response to this. Google is also pivoting to privacy and FLOC is a cohort of people before a particular actions at a particular time.
Kathleen (18:31): Federated Learning of Cohorts, I think is exactly.
Tim (18:33): Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I mean, I trust Google about as far as I can throw them, and they have all of your search data. So this basically is the same thing in my mind. This is the same as what's called custom intent or custom affinity audiences, which are already existing Google, which is just, I can already just target everyone who searched for blank in the last week.
Kathleen (18:52): I mean, and the irony is not lost on me, and this could be a whole nother podcast episode. So we won't go too deep into it. That there's a tremendous conflict of interest on the fact that Google is building this privacy engine. And it is also an advertising platform. So talk about like potential monopoly abuse issues, but that's, that's a whole nother topic.
Tim (19:12): Yeah. I was thinking about that last night, actually, I was, if this is this maybe like an incredible Android, so Google, like they might, we've got this now we have,
Kathleen (19:21): Yeah. They're like, we are going to be the only ones now who have this data. And so you should definitely advertise via Google AdSense and you know, why would you not? So again, totally different topics. So let's go. So coming back to iOS and Apple so there, there may be server side solutions. Are there, I mean, you mentioned Shopify specifically, but obviously there's plenty of people out there listening. Some of whom may be on Shopify, some of whom may not be, is this something that's like accessible to the average business or do you need to be a huge business with your own internal engineering and dev team to build a server side solution for you?
Tim (20:00): It is changing in real time. Even two months ago, two, three months ago. I would've said you need to, you really need to talk to an expert. Like you need, you need a team for it, but I, I spun one off over the weekend. There are a couple of companies that do it successfully on Shopify. I would, I would probably talk, I would probably leverage a partner. I wouldn't just try to do that. It's not something that you should do yourself because it will break at some point, but it's a company called Elevar that does it for Shopify. They're very good at tracking analytics and helping set up Google tag manager containers. There's a company called Little Data, which also has a pretty robust analytics solution for Shopify. And then the last thing is, if you are just starting out with setting up the tracking properly, and you're on Shopify, the newest version of the Facebook sales channel, like when you install Facebook on Shopify, if you, when you set that up and you set the settings to maximum data sharing does actually send automatically purchase events via server side.
Kathleen (21:07): Sorry. So just to clarify on this, so you're not saying that this is built into Shopify, but there are increasingly more ways via whether it's plugins or apps that it might be possible, or you can work with a partner, like one of the ones you mentioned. So this isn't like a native Shopify capability.
Tim (21:25): No, well, no. In the sense that no, it's not you, nothing, nothing is sent from the Shopify without you telling it. I mean, Shopify is really a very basic and robust platform that is very extendable. So they don't usually build most of these advanced features. They build the core functionality of Shopify, and then they leave the extendible feeds and stuff to third party developers. It's a marketplace. Yeah. It's a mechanics.
Kathleen (21:52): The reason I asked that question is that it got my, my sort of gears turning. And I was thinking like, I wonder if going forward, this, this is something that either CMS platforms are going or, you know, call them website engines are going to have to build into themselves, or, or if they're all going to solve it through like a marketplace approach. But it makes me think like this becomes another thing that you need to start to think about as you choose the platform on which you build your website, because that choice it's like, it has such a domino effect on other things. And, and if you build it on a platform that is, that is designed with solutions for this in mind, then it might be easier later down the, down the road for you to have more effective advertising programs. So it's just, it's interesting. Cause when I hear people say, Oh, should I build on, you know, Shopify? Or if you're not e-commerce should I build on WordPress or web flow or HubSpot or, you know, whatever that engine is in the past, a lot of it has been around just kind of functionality as far as the user interface is concerned, ease of use on the backend, but this is like a whole nother set of criteria that people might need to start thinking about.
Tim (23:06): Yeah, it does. It does bring up another set of complications and considerations. And it is, I mean, every system at some level can be extended to send data from the service side. But the question is a really good one because it feels like where should I start? Question impacts a lot of what you do down the line, right?
Kathleen (23:25): How easy will it be? Like, because you could probably do it on any platform, but some are going to be like plug and play. Whereas others are going to require a completely custom dev solution, which is not only more expensive and complicated, but as you pointed out, maintaining that over time is a whole different.
Tim (23:42): Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I would, I would look to, I mean, my instinct is always to look to like new platforms that are growing fast because they're going to have a developer support. They're going to have an influx of capital. They're going to have new users that are heavily incentivized to iterate and grow the platform. So if you, if you grab onto, like, when I started working on Shopify, like I wasn't that good yet. And I was still kind of transitioning from WordPress and I was just like, kind of in shock. I was like a little bit slow, but it was growing so far. And I was like, okay. They just gonna, like the, the rate of growth means that the investment in this, the sophistication is just going to dramatically increase. And the same with the marketplace ecosystem, it's just exploded. And those apps got very, very good. And even in the time that I was walking on the platform and it's now like an incredible ecosystem, like it's so robust and really, really easy to use, but it was the like, look at the rate of growth of the platform, essentially what I was
Kathleen (24:43): You're totally spot on because I wasn't doing so much in e-commerce, but I I'm more involved in it now, but I have always been kind of like on the B2B marketing side I used to own an agency and we did a lot of websites and WordPress was like the platform to build on for so long. And then we happened to be a HubSpot partner and HubSpot built its own website platform. And I remember in the beginning it was the same thing. I was like, eh, this is kind of like basic, but they were putting so much money in and they're so innovative and they started basically building an ecosystem around it. And today I love that platform. It's amazing. And there's so much support and they're adding onto it all the time. So I think that's sort of like a parallel example from the B2B world.
Tim (25:24): Exactly. And it's a really good example in that way, because they have also prioritized user experience and they've done, it's done that in balancing that they've built their products through rigorous optimization and through building features that people needed. It is it's really good. It's very complex, but it's, it solves a lot of problems for a lot of people. Yeah.
Kathleen (25:44): So, all right. Back back to the topic at hand, see, I can go in a lot of directions cause I'm fascinated by all this. But you mentioned in terms of what people need to be doing, we started with number one, verify your business and your Facebook ads manager. Number two was set up your web events in there. And then, and then the potential of like possibly a server side solution. If that is something that makes sense. What else should businesses be thinking about?
Tim (26:15): Yeah. So this is where we start getting out of the, like try to plug the hole situation because on the one hand, there's a bunch of holes you can plug. You can be like, okay, I want to, I want to make sure that we track as much as possible. I want accurate data. I want to solve the problem. And you should definitely try to do that. But at another level you need to think about what the macro trend is. And it is a move away from hyper hyper targeted advertising, which let's be real, very creepy, probably not the worst thing in the world. Going to be more challenging for us potentially, but I don't know if it's, I really don't think it's going to be the end of most businesses and most of the robust businesses. I think, I think we'll find a way around it.
Tim (26:57): So what you need to do is think, just imagine in your mind, a world where there is no tracking, there's no ability to optimize their Facebook. The Facebook platform is just a black box, whether or not that comes in the next two years or the next five years, it will come at some point. So if you mentally start preparing for that, you'll make decisions that lead you in a direction where you're already on the cutting edge. So you don't have to worry about it. So if you're thinking like a cave, forget about these numbers, the numbers are on their way out. The numbers will be replaced with a robot that will do the number crunching for me. They're not going to give me my data. What are the levers that you have? The letters the ad, the copy, the site experience, the value of the author, the onboarding, the, the retention, the SMS that you send, people like you still, you still have a marketing program.
Tim (27:48): You just have to like, not get so obsessed with the data. Like the ad is the biggest thing. I see so many marketers it's so, so many much whether it's in B2B or in e-commerce with low performing static ads or like boring videos, or like, copy that. Doesn't explain what the product is that then clicks through to a landing page that I still don't know what the product is. I have no idea what it's doing and it's confusing. And they're spending all their time in Facebook, like worrying about whether they get an event data app, like this doesn't matter at all, like show me what the product does, show me why I should buy it. And then send me to a page where I can buy it easily. That will do way, way, way more for your business than like worrying about whether one number is going in the right direction.
Kathleen (28:32): So I think you're totally spot on. I actually think this is a problem now, even before this iOS stuff and, and as somebody who has hired paid media agencies, what I have seen is that a lot of them have been designed more around this idea that the data is the prime thing that will drive results. And what I mean by that is when you work with paid media agencies, a lot of them don't necessarily spend a lot of time on the creative or they rely on you for the creative. And they're more about like setting up your ads account and looking at the numbers and tweaking and turning things on and off and this and that. And they also don't really do much on landing page optimization, as you explained. And, and it seems to me that, well, first of all, like I, as somebody who hires agencies, like I find that so frustrating because if you're not focusing on those other things, you, you really are. It's like tying your hands behind your back. They're such important parts of the equation with, or without iOS 14 updates, but as you've pointed out, they're going to be even more important. So I wonder what is your take on how the agency world will or will not have to change in response to this update? Because I feel like they're going to have to start to service that side of things more where they're not doing it now.
Tim (29:57): Yeah. I mean, this is a question that makes me feel, I agree with you. My business is based on the premise that you're right. So I hope that you're, I think that this is true. So my experience at mid six, which is a, a, was a very, very fast growing agency and we all learn a lot from there. And what we learned was that the people who are really performing the best performance, who drove the most growth we're doing exactly that they would not stay in the accounts too much. They were getting stuff done on the accounts, leveraging automation, building landing pages, building feedback loops with the creative team. So there was a creative team in house, and we would work closely with them working in a, in a integrative way with the other channel managers and passing information between them and building a really building a flywheel on the website.
Tim (30:45): And that's what we do. That's, that's what our company does is what my company does. And we do that all day and it works. It will always work. There's no way it can fail because all you do is you, all you're doing is optimizing every channel, making them talk to each other and creating like network effects between you're increasing your paid media efficiency 20%. Then you're increasing your landing page efficiencies 20%. And you're increasing your creative by 20% increases. Like those 20% are multiplied by each other. So you make a lot more money, but will the agency world adapt to this? I dunno. I don't know if it will, like the, there are a couple of ways of running an agency and, and some of the agencies that are more integrated that I scroll up that have teams that speak multiple languages that have people who grew up and learned how to do paid media a little close to the world of automation.
Tim (31:38): Like, have more experience in the automation world. I think they are in a good position to thrive. Agencies who can quickly make creative, or you can keep the creative team close to the data team and who don't really see a big brick wall distinction between those two things. They will be successful. But, and we're even seeing this internally, like agencies that structure in silo, the different skill sets and who train people in a very, very old school analytics. Like here's what you need to like spreadsheets all day for Google. It's not going to work anymore.
Kathleen (32:20): The classic performance marketer, who's a data wonk. I think at the same goes for when you hire in-house, if you want to hire like a growth marketer or a paid media manager, you know, it used to be, you hire that data person who like, is very savvy about how the platforms function and can get in under the hood and manipulate how things are set up. But those people, at least in my experience, it's really hard to find people like that. Who've also have been trained on the creative side and who really understand what it means to like do multi-variate testing with messaging and with imagery and rich media and things like that. Like, I don't see a lot of crossover there. It's already pretty hard to find that combination. And, and so it will be very, very interesting going forward. But I think this is like the conversation we had about your choice of CMS. Where starting now, if you're looking to hire a PA outsourced paid media, or you're looking to hire a full-time person, this is something you have to think about, like that mix of skills and how they approach it. And like you don't, this is just me talking, but like, if you're going to work with a paid media agency buyer beware, if you're shuffled off to like a junior account manager who just knows how Facebook ads work, and you're not talking to somebody on the creative side, who's looking closely at messaging and, and the media that you're using.
Tim (33:45): Exactly. You just, yeah. Via the, where if, if you're not getting that kind of interactive feel, if no one is willing to tell you about your website or if no, one's willing to tell you about your creative or no one will give you genuine feedback other than like, Oh yes, I can run those ads for you. Technical aspect of running the ad state very easy. It's not, it doesn't take very much. And, but it's really hard to find you're absolutely right. And people don't come to me. Very much. People are coming to us, looking for a paid media manager. They come saying, I want to drive X amount of growth while I am looking for strategists. And that is extremely hard to find in the mock-up like a strategy layer on top of a paid media team that outs like, I don't really say outsource to CMR. It's not a value proposition, but I've thought about it. That is what people are looking for.
Kathleen (34:36): No, that's what I mean. I just went through this with my company. And I had to switch vendors. I hate that word vendor solution providers for my paid media and this, this was exactly the thing. Like I was really looking for somebody who would not just run my ad accounts. I wanted somebody who would challenge me and be like, look, you need to try different messaging because this isn't resonating or you need to change your landing page or Hey, you know, the video you gave me, isn't working for your ads. We need to focus on this instead. Like I w I just wasn't getting that. And it is really, really hard to find, especially if you don't have an enormous budget, like you can find a lot of things when your ads budget is huge. And then, you know, the principal of the agency is working reeling to work more closely with you. But if you're not a big advertiser, it can be really difficult. I think to get the level of attention you're talking about,
Tim (35:29): This is a huge pain point, and I completely agree one. And this is I'd love to hear from people. Actually, this is something that we're working on, especially for advertisers who are spending, just spending five to $10,000 a month on paid media. You're in a really tough spot. Like you can't really hire. It's very difficult to hire a very high-end agency. And someone who can rap, you can find on Fiverr or Upwork to run, your ads is not going to, they're not going to give you that level of consultative feedback that you want. So we've been trying to build some more scalable solutions for that, like courses trying to help people level up quickly trying to do coaching and kind of, kind of more like ways of scaling that expertise, because it is, it is really, really hot.
Kathleen (36:12): And not to be like doomsday ish, but I do feel like it makes me a little scared that in the year to come, when all these changes start to happen, it's going to like create this divide between the haves and the have-nots and the paid media world, where the ones that have the giant budgets and are getting that really good advice are just going to, they're going to get even better results. And the ones that don't have the giant budgets are really going to suffer because you could waste a ton of money on ads that aren't going to do well. And it's sort of like a snowball effect. Like when that happens, then people start to say, Oh gosh, well maybe ads just don't work for us. And they stopped trying, or the budget gets cut. And so I'm really curious to see how that's going to play out because I don't see a lot of middle.
Tim (36:56): Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. I think it is. It's incumbent on us. Like I like startups. I like small businesses. I like the way that people work when they're trying to grow companies. I think it's exciting and fun. And I don't want to be the kind of person who just ends up only working with people with big established budgets. So it is really nice
Kathleen (37:19): As a former agency owner, I will say, you don't turn those people away.
Tim (37:23): I'm looking at turning that business down. At all? But it is. We want to make sure that we can help. My motive, I learned this industry very, very quickly. I came from not knowing the industry to learning the industry within an extremely short time span. And my real goal was to help other people do that same thing, because I don't feel that this knowledge needs to be protected or in just a few elite agencies. Like I would rather more people are able to drive growth in their businesses profitably. That that's better. That's a better world. Yeah.
Kathleen (37:56): Well, it, what it says to me, and I think you've already alluded to this is that if you are a marketer, which you are, if you're listening to this and you are not already, you don't already feel like you are, you have an extremely high skill level in paid media. Now is the time to start getting educated, because especially if you're not at a huge brand with a giant budget, because it does sound to me like we're going to have to shoulder more of the burden and really start to understand more about creative and about messaging and about, you know, all that whole kind of conversion funnel maybe than we have in the past.
Tim (38:32): Exactly. Exactly. If you, when we're doing a job that was just you a spreadsheet think very seriously, like B try to try to level up a little bit and try to get out of that. The way that I'm thinking about it, it's like any job that any job in paid media, or in advertising that a robot, you could imagine a robot doing robots going to do it, but one of the things that they can't do, and it's understanding what people want, understanding how to build a process, to improve something, understanding how to, what good creative looks like, what a good ad is, what's compelling. Like how do you get a team together? How do you get people to buy into your ideas? All of that stuff is incredibly important to this business and is not in an ad account. It does not live in Facebook ads manager.
Kathleen (39:21): Yeah. Well, I literally could talk to you all day about this. It's a fascinating topic. And I just think it has, like, on the surface, it looks so straightforward. Like, Oh, it's Apple and they're changing the rules. And so maybe your data and Facebook will change. But when you really start to think about some of these implications that you've brought up today, as far as like what platform you're building your website on, and you know, how you educate yourself as a marketer and what kind of an agency you hire to do your paid media, like the implications are massive. So I love that we got a chance to dig into this, and I love that you shared all of your thoughts on it. I'm going to shift gears before we wrap up, because I always ask my guests to questions at the end of the interview. And I'm curious what you have to say. The first one is we talk all about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that, that you think is really doing fantastic inbound marketing work right now?
Tim (40:11): Yeah, so I am a recent convert to the cult of inbound marketing. I came up, I came in paid, maybe I came up and paid media. That's how I understood. I guess I learned SEO first, but I got out of SEO. I was like, I don't want to do that anymore. We got into paid media and recently trying to grow, growing this agency, it has been absolutely miraculous. Inbound marketing is, is really what I like about it is this specificity with which you've been captured exactly the vessel that you want to talk to. And because we do a specific thing, we work with purpose driven brands. We want to work with people who are like like us like that. We like it is really important to us that we capture the right person. So I've been thinking a lot about this. It's like, okay, how do we find out people? And I found this guy on LinkedIn, I've been looking for help with my LinkedIn looking for help leveraging LinkedIn as a, as an inbound traffic source, which by the way, it's incredible
Kathleen (41:08): I am a huge LinkedIn fan. Yeah.
Tim (41:11): Just do it. If you're not already doing it. It's amazing. I found this guy, Stephen G Pope, he's just like a LinkedIn guy. He ran a company before and I had one of those experiences where I was just like scrolling. I was thinking, I was just like, Oh man, like, I don't know, I'm too nervous to make videos for LinkedIn, I don't know if I want to do that. Like, how do I, how am I going to do it in a way that's like, feels cool and like, I'm not embarrassed by. I was literally scrolling my feed and he'd just made some video. And it was just like him in front of a black screen. And it was so clear and like a little bit silly and like concise and like told me what I wanted to know and gave me the information I wanted. I mean, literally in one click, I was like, all right. Appointment booked. And I love talking to Stephen. That it's, it's been such a pleasure because we're on the same page. Like his marketing, like spoke to his personality and spoke to the way that he walked. It made it clear to me what I would get out of, out of the relationship. And it's been, it's been a wonderful to me and it's just like, that works. That works so well.
Kathleen (42:13): Oh, I got to check him out. So Stephen G. Pope, and is he Stephen with a V or a ph? Okay. I will. I will find that. And I will put a link to his LinkedIn in the show notes for anybody who's listening, but you can also then go hunt him down yourself with that information. Second question is that a lot of the marketers I talked to say their biggest pain point is just keeping up, right? Like this interview is the perfect example. There's so much that changes so quickly when it comes to the world of digital marketing. So how do you personally like stay on top of it all and, and educate yourself?
Tim (42:44): Oh my God, this, this is an amazing question I used, I started tracking my time a little more effectively a couple of weeks ago. And part of that, I started tracking the tabs that I visited so I can try to get a sense of, okay, how am I actually doing this? And I would say, it's, it's looking at a lot of different sources quickly. It's not so much like having like one publication that I read all the time. It's, it's a lot of like, it's really about the speed of which you can take in new information. So it's like, okay, you're going LinkedIn for a second. See a couple of things that like help you like, Oh, okay. I should probably think about that. And then you might need to read like a Facebook one for a second, because that's what Facebook is saying. You might need to read like someone else's blog for a second, but you kind of have to jump around and like triangulate.
Tim (43:30): It it's really hard without a community. I think this is another pain point that I'm trying to work on, which is like, it would be really nice to have, we have a Slack and we're always chatting. And that gives me a lot of information. My colleagues, my co-founders like push me really hard with always learning. And if you're around people who will also will take things further than what you leave with them, that's, that's a really good way to do it. But I would think about it. Like you. One thing that I do is there's not much time for me between learning about something and testing it, whether that's a new product or a new SaaS or a new, like, like I would just test it, like literally just test things. Like if you have to get a 30 day trial, some software don't even think like, Oh, maybe my boss, like maybe I shouldn't do it because that's how you learn it. Like, if, if, if you can cut down the time that you spend planning and preparing and thinking about whether something is the right option in that time, you could investigate five different options.
Kathleen (44:33): Yeah. That's so true. Learning by doing is really powerful. All right, well, we're coming to the end of our time. This was amazing. I learned so much today. I'm super excited about this interview. I cannot wait to share with everybody. I suspect there'll be people who listen, who will have questions. And so if somebody does and they want to connect with you online, or they want to learn more about Loop Club, what is the best way for them to do that?
Tim (44:57): So you can go to my LinkedIn, which is linkedin.com/in/tim-keen. And just messaged me. Or you can go to the loop.club and learn about our agency there.
Kathleen (45:09): Okay, perfect. Again, I'll put those links in the show notes. So head there, if you want to connect with Tim. And if you're listening and you did learn something new like me and you enjoyed this episode, head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice. And I would love it if you would leave the podcast a review. That is how other people find us. And of course, if you know somebody else doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thanks so much for joining me, Tim.
Tim (45:37): Thank you so much, Kathleen. This was a pleasure.
How do you make marketing lemonade out of a pandemic?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, FreshBooks CMO Paul Cowan explains how the company pivoted when COVID hit, and made use of its proprietary data to create content and insights that drove a new marketing strategy.
When Paul joined FreshBooks, he inherited a 45 person marketing team with a strong SEO game. After reorganizing the team, he built on that foundation by adjusting the company's messaging to target an owner/CEO audience, while unearthing new content opportunities within FreshBooks' customer data.
Fast forward to 2020, and when COVID hit, the company was ready to launch a massive new original research series focusing on the financial health of various industry sectors based on their invoicing behavior.
In this interview, Paul talks about navigating an internal restructuring, revamping the company's brand and tech stack, and how its new content efforts have fueled significant increases in brand awareness for FreshBooks.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to hear Paul's story.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the FreshBooks website
- Connect with Paul on LinkedIn
- Follow Paul on Twitter
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Paul Cowan, who is the COO of FreshBooks. Welcome to the podcast, Paul.
Paul (00:23): Hi, Kathleen. Great to be here.
Kathleen (00:25): Yeah. I'm excited to talk with you. You have an interesting story and you've been at FreshBooks for about a year and a half, and a lot has happened in that time. Before we dive into it though, can you tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and how you wound up doing what you're doing now, and what FreshBooks does?
Paul (00:41): Yeah, for sure. So firstly FreshBooks. We're a cloud accounting software platform. So we focus on helping small business owners manage their business, really managing their finances for non-financial managers. So, you know, the key differentiator between us and other folks in this space that you you've probably heard of is that we really focus on the small business owner. So others have built their platforms for accountants. We were started by an owner from a pain point that owner had. So, we kind of started on a point solution 15 years ago and then have grown into being an accounting platform for business owners.
Kathleen (01:19): I so needed this when I owned my business. I owned a digital marketing agency for 11 years and I don't know how other marketers are, but the reason I became a marketer is I was terrible at things like accounting, which I did study in business school.
Paul (01:36): It's funny. Marketers are one of our strongest verticals. So we kind of target service-based businesses or people who kind of their invoice and their client relationship is kind of the core pieces of, of, of of how they operate. And so our software is really kind of built around that. And I was actually a FreshBooks customer in 2013 and 2014 when I was doing some consulting. So I do know the space and the need to actually arrange your books appropriately as well.
Kathleen (02:07): Yeah, it's a big deal. I mean, it's funny. They always joke. There's that running joke about how doctors make terrible business managers, business owners, but I, for me, the same was true of me as a marketer. I, again, I cannot speak for all marketers, but I was just not good at the money side so I can see the need for the product for sure. Now you came in about a year and a half ago and you've done quite a bit of work on the brand and, and on the marketing strategy, let's start by just talking about that. When you, when you got there, what did you find and what path did you start to chart for yourself as CMO?
Paul (02:46): For sure. So, so like most when most companies are looking for a CMO, it's generally indicating that some sort of change is going on. So, you know, I was, I was running enterprise and SMB marketing for Shutterstock and, and so I was selling stock imagery and videos and custom content to marketers. And I was having a grand old time doing it. I really liked it. And then FreshBooks came calling and, and, and they were really looking to go through some growth. And so they'd been investing a lot in product. They've been investing a lot into new channel activation and, and they were, they'd been on a hunt for a CFO for a little while, and hadn't really been able to find the right kind of person. And, and I think part of it was like the founder, Mike, he, you know, it was the founders CEO of a, of a company he wants to make sure you're getting people in there who get the pain points, get the problem.
Paul (03:40): And, and I kinda came in with like, I'd had B2C experience. I had B2B experience. I'd been an owner of three different companies in the past. I'd gone through all the trials and tribulations of what an owner had. So he was like, great. Like you, you know it, so, we got along very well and, and I joined the company cause they're like, you know, we need to, we need to go through this, this, this time of growth. So you know, I came on board to, to, to help kind of get a couple of things right. It, in terms of the, the organization that, you know, there was just some, some, some structural challenges that were there. So, you know, I came in and did the two things that every cliche CMO does. I reorganized the team and I rebranded.
Paul (04:23): And so, you know, the reorg I knew was something that I needed to do. So there was just a lot of challenges within the company in terms of like, not all the marketing kind of disciplines were together as a, as a full marketing function. There were some, some things that the company was doing in terms of like investing into a direct Salesforce, which it really hadn't had, it made a significant investment there before, and most of our business was done through self-service channels. So we needed to have self-serve, we needed to have demand generation. We needed to make sure we were kind of managing those two types of customers differently. And get the structure, the right structure in place. So I came in and did that stuff fairly, fairly early on in my tenure there. The brand stuff was kind of interesting because the company had been going through a two year process, like re-evaluating who it was and insuring and reaffirming its commitment to its customer.
Paul (05:20): So I kinda came in at the tail end of that, like all the logo and the design elements and all that stuff was done, but they just hadn't been pushed over kind of the finish line. And so so my role there, like, I didn't come in and say, Hey, we need to rebrand. I came in and said, man, we've done all this work. Or you guys have done all this work. You really just need to kind of move this forward and progress things so that we're making an indication to the market that we're changing as an organization. And, we're representing something slightly different in the eyes of our customer.
Kathleen (05:52): I have so many questions. In no particular order, let's start with the team, because that's kind of where you started. How big was the team when you got there?
Paul (06:03): Yeah, so I think it was, we were probably 45-ish type of people within the marketing group and in the companies around you know, right now we're at about like just over 400 people globally in a couple of different offices.
Kathleen (06:17): And talk me through how you restructured it. You mentioned not all of the different disciplines work together. So what did that look like the before and after?
Paul (06:26): So really it was kind of a tale of a couple of different departments. So you know, we had an acquisition team that was, was doing a great job in terms of driving top of funnel activity, but they weren't really too accountable to the conversion metric. Within that attrition funnel, we drive a lot of free trials and then those trials convert into paid users. But, but that team was really kind of focused on like optimizing that front end of the funnel. So we needed to do some changes and bring in some folks who weren't just going to be performance marketing oriented. We needed to bring in marketing strategy, the people who got demand, build the actual B2B capabilities. And then get that kind of funnel activity structured right then we had a pretty functioning customer marketing team or life cycle marketing or CRM.
Paul (07:18): However, you want to kind of frame it. The one area that we needed to just get in order was the marketing operation. So we just needed to kind of centralize that and make sure that that team was all together, that we built out like a capability in terms of how we managed our MarTech stack and centralized all that underneath our our customer marketing lead product marketing wasn't in marketing, it was in product. So we said, Hey, let's shift this back over. Comms wasn't in marketing. Kind of critical. So it was sitting within our strategy group. We had an event team that was doing event activity that was not tied to any of our lead generation activities. And they were just kind of off like running more of what I would call brand or community oriented activities.
Paul (08:01): And that was underneath our BD team. So, there was just a lot of like weird stuff going on, but just how the company had, had kind of structured a grown up and done things. So, just first needed to get everybody together and align under, under one marketing strategy, understanding what the goals were that we were trying to drive to and and just bring it all together. And, really, it was like a game of efficiencies in terms of content generation. And in terms of all the types of things that we could, we could generate by just like optimizing against like that, that customer journey.
Kathleen (08:32): Yeah. Wow. That that's a lot of moving parts, but I also am very curious to hear how you navigated just from a relationship standpoint and coming in as the new guy and, and looking at these different marketing functions that are sitting under BD and under strategy and under all these other places, how you navigated the relationships with the leaders of those parts of the company to I'm going to take these people and move them under me.
Paul (08:58): Yeah. I mean, thankfully we had a lot of adults at the table and there wasn't a lot of territory issues. I think most of the folks there were like, Hey, you know, I know that this really shouldn't be under me, but I've been shepherding it. Well, we haven't had someone who's seen the full picture. So I think just like previous regimes of leadership within the marketing group, either leaned maybe towards like direct marketing only, or performance marketing or, or, or in other areas. So they really didn't kind of bring all the activities together. So, so the organization knew it needed someone to kind of do it part of it. Half of like, yes, just like putting it down on a page and doing it. But I think, you know, you're alluding to the whole change management exercise and, you know, it was really more about like, how do we get you know, how do we get all the different people to then work together and make sure that, you know, because we're taking things that they may have built up and it's great within the, their, their portfolio, but it wasn't because it wasn't tied to like a demand gen activity.
Paul (10:02): And we weren't really kind of assessing the ROI of some of these action that we were running. It's like, you know, they were a little bit more under scrutiny, but, but really we're just like, how do we take these things and dose everything with, with gas so that we could just light this whole thing up on fire and, and, and get way more efficient with everything that we were doing.
Kathleen (10:20): Yeah. And you mentioned one of the key areas for kind of reorganization or, or streamlining being around your top of funnel content efforts, it sounded like your inbound efforts really aligning those with your strategy to pull prospects down the funnel. Can you dig into that a little bit more?
Paul (10:41): Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of things that were going on really well when I got there was like our, our SEO game was off the hook. Like we had a huge amount of volume and the team had some real solid SEO experts and, and they just were, were focused on, on what we needed to do to build out and to, to just like, make our site magnetic and and make sure that we're covering off, like all of the terms within the invoicing accounting payment space that, that we needed to be in. So, so like all of that activity was going, going really, really well. You know, we have like this performance machine, right. So we needed to, we need to make sure we're filling that machine. One of the things that I think we're ignoring the most previous immediate to me coming in was really the messaging we were putting into that performance machine.
Paul (11:27): So, you know, we had some great kind of stuff going on in the, in the SEO space where, where, you know, we're, we're getting people in our performance media and our ads. We are great in SEM, but not great in any other channels. Mainly I attribute that to just being like the creative felt like everything else in the space. So like everybody's out there saying all in one accounting solutions and you could rip the logo off and it would be for any other company. So we tried to pivot that and just be more focused on like appealing to the owner and the mindset of the owner. So that was a big portion of what we were doing purely from like a top of funnel ad content space, get our differentiation rolling and tie it into everything that we were doing from a branding and brand strategy standpoint.
Paul (12:09): The content game, like underneath there was, was pretty good. Like our blog is, is, is great. You know, we, we get some good traction. We just weren't doing things like webinars or, or, or other types of layers to our content strategy. So we could build a big piece in and you set apart. Or we weren't like taking research reports that we were doing and turning them into smaller blog posts. So a lot of the effort was like, Hey, let's look at all these assets that we currently have, that all these different teams are doing. And then how do we just like, get smarter with them so that we're not going to, we don't have to keep reproducing more and more and more and more. And so a lot of the effort, even now that our blog team does is just like repurposing old posts and just making sure that they're optimized and, and kind of rinse repeat. And now we're, we're taking a slightly different approach to how we really look at the content that we're going to generate and, and kind of put across the whole funnel off of some of the stuff that we really know about our customers.
Kathleen (13:05): So when you say you're taking a different approach, is it just shifting topic-wise or audience-wise, or is there something else to that?
Paul (13:11): Yeah, so a couple of things. So one area that I'm a huge believer in is like, you know, I think every company has some under-resourced assets or some sort of like gold or oil around that it's just not tapping into. And so, you know, one area that I see is like, Hey, we've got like a whole bunch of customers that are using our, you know, doing, entering their expenses and invoicing within our platform. And we have a big opportunity to start to reveal that to our customers or to the market as a whole. And, and, you know, there's, there's some gold within there. So it was actually interesting because through the whole pandemic and when the first, when the first downturn kind of happened in, in March of last year, what we found was like there was a lot of different government agencies that were looking to understand what was actually happening within the small business sector.
Paul (14:03): And so we said, we've got all this data on the small business sector, and we were able to see how much small businesses were actually impacted. And in terms of the revenue that they were, they were they were producing over that timeframe and when they actually recovered and, and so the government was like, Oh, great. We'd have to wait for like a census next year tax time to, to really understand what's going on and to inform stimulus packages and things of that effect. So we're like, Hey, you know, this is really valuable yes. To the government also to businesses, just for them to kind of be able to understand how they're performing versus their sectors, the industry as a whole, and that kind of thing. So what we're really kind of focused on is like, how do we take our data and use that as like a big magnet to bring people in?
Paul (14:48): So let's like publish this data back to the, to to our audiences and to owners, so they can understand different things that are happening within their verticals, within their sectors and that kind of stuff. And, and there's tons of like lots and lots of examples of, of, of companies who do this, like, you know, MailChimp or HubSpot. They do a lot of great stuff like that, where they'll, they'll publish like benchmarks in terms of email, open rates and these kinds of things, but we've got like what might be much more harder to get data.
Kathleen (15:16): Yeah. Now what does that look like for you? So, because I've worked on this too, we have lots of data in our platform, and we do a quarterly report where we sum up, in our case, what's happening with malvertising attack patterns and threat levels. It's very nerdy to the ad tech world. And, and that's something I think a lot about is it's one thing to say, we're going to share our data. It's entirely another to really conceptualize the right way to share it where it's not just digestible, but it's, it's kind of like set up for vitality. And then the question is, do you do it in one big report or do you chunk it out? And so I'm curious how you guys are approaching that.
Paul (15:54): Yeah. So like, I'm a huge fan of, of just like doing indexes, like being able to give someone a tool that they can, they can use and, and be able to understand what's actually going on. So, you know, we've, we, of course first started with reports because that helps us be able to build the different types of things that we would need to build, whether they're indexes or otherwise. And then, and then kind of piques our curiosity around where do we want to go deep and where do we want, not, where do we want to be very kind of general? So, so the first thing we did was we produced like a women's report and, and how how women were, were negatively impact or women owned businesses were negatively impacted by COVID and still are having a hard time performing at the, at the pace of, of their male counterparts. And, and so we were finding really some interesting findings there. We have our general report, we started going into trades and construction. That industry has actually fared really, really well through the pandemic. Like it had a big downturn, but then they've like, they're, they're exceeding historical patterns in terms of revenue generation. And, and, you know, I think the obvious is obvious, like around things like, Hey, there, you know, people are at home or disposable income, they're, you know, trying to improve their home office and all of that kind of stuff.
Kathleen (17:09): We sit around all day staring at all the things that are wrong with our houses and that we want to fix. My husband would tell you that our project list has grown exponentially since COVID started.
Paul (17:20): Yeah, absolutely. So I think from there, it's like, Hey, do we want to do quarterly reports? Or do we want to build a tool that people can just access all the time? And so we're, we're building a tool right now so that people can get there. We have a bunch of reports. But you know, I've looked at other companies that I really like, you know, there's companies in the lending space, like borrow well. And and they've like, they have, like, from an inbound perspective, they've got a credit there, so do loans and borrowing and and so they have a credit score calculator and that thing doesn't matter what else they do. Their credit score calculator is their magnet. It just brings everybody to their site. They fill it out, they use Facebook and lots of other places it's become such a lead engine for those guys that they sell leads to other creditors or people that they would not want to ever loan to.
Paul (18:12): So they've created this like revenue machine that they can go in and refer people to other places. So, you know, I see that as is, you know, that'd be a great outcome for us if we able to bring people in. But I also think like beyond even just our market that we're servicing today, like there's lots of people in the VC space, like who would be really in the investment space, who are really interested in this data as well. So, so I'm also interested in like, Hey, is there other markets that we could actually be servicing with this, the state of two that we could potentially monetize down the road as well.
Kathleen (18:44): Now, do you foresee the tool that you're building as really kind of destined to be a lead magnet like you described, or, or do you foresee at some point that the data or the tool you're building with the data could become a product in and of itself that you sell access to?
Paul (18:58): Yeah, absolutely. Both. So it's, you know, we're, we're kind of the sharp end of the spear to say, Hey, like, let's just show that there's demand for this in market. And and, and we've seen it already. So, you know, both from, yes, the government's interested, but just purely from a PR standpoint, we have like a huge amount of hits on, on just like that woman's report to say to, for us to just talk about it and, and, and go deeper into what's actually what people are, what we're seeing in the data. And, and so, yeah, and then I think that there's kind of two places. One is like, Hey, is there a place that we can actually take this and turn it into an actual product? And whether it's via API or otherwise, like, do we want to sell this data, or also, how do we bring this back into our platform and go a little bit deeper into it?
Paul (19:42): So, you know, if example of like you being a, a marketing services person, and you're kind of saying, Hey you know, what should my billable rate be? And, and us being able to surface those types of things, because we have that like all anonymized of course, but if we're able to say, you know, if you're up in North Dakota and you're doing graphic design work, here's what all the graphic designers are actually charging from a an hourly rate standpoint. And so here's where you kind of should, should really be thinking about it based on, on your business.
Kathleen (20:13): That is awesome. And you sort of answered one of the next questions I was going to have, which is around PR because whenever I think of original data and research, it's like, you know, candy for organic press coverage or earned PR press coverage. So have you, have you, have you done any specific pitching to the press around it or is it just getting picked up? Like, do you have a strategy to support that?
Paul (20:38): Yeah, we're, we're absolutely. So we're, we're absolutely tying it into our PR activity where we're just really kind of getting the ball go in there, but we, we took like, our women's report, for example, is one of the lead things that we wanted to see if there would be some, some market interest in and through January, we got a ton of pickup on it. So lots of people leading into obviously leading into international women's day. Like, so January, February, where some big months for us in terms of getting a lot, a lot of interests really across North America in terms of pickup for it. But yeah, I think, I think where we want to go with this is then turn this in and also, you know, use, use the media as, as a as a partner with us to also help, like, where do we want to interrogate the data and what's next?
Paul (21:23): And, you know, there's some obvious things like, you know, as vaccines start to roll out and travel restrictions get lifted, there's going to be like an uptick in travel. And so we'll be able to look at like the travel expenses within small businesses that they're logging and say, look at like, how are they actually increasing their travel expenditures and where are they actually spending their money? So are they spending money on Airbnb? Are they going to the chains? Are they spending on airlines? Like trains, like how travel patterns changed at all since, since in the past as well,
Kathleen (21:57): This is the clearest indication that I'm a huge marketing nerd, but like, I get so excited when I hear this stuff like, Oh, fun to dig into that data and turn it into things.
Paul (22:07): I think it's one of those things where, you know, we could have easily just kept going down the route of like buying a bunch of buying a bunch of units competing for keywords, doing all that kind of stuff, or, you know, which we still do, but we can also look at other ways that we can, can really kind of create and drive like this organic activity, which all marketers need to be really trying to figure out.
Kathleen (22:28): Yeah, absolutely. All right. Shifting gears a little bit, let's talk about the branding, because you mentioned that you came in and there was a rebrand and you specifically explained that like, logo and a lot of that was already done when I hear that, I feel like, Hmm, that could be a double-edged sword, because if you literally have just come in as a CMO and somebody says, guess what? We just redid the logo and the colors and this and that. I knew that it could be like, Oh, great. Yeah, no, cause then you're stuck with the new one and you can't be like, let's change it again. But it sounds like in your situation, it was not that way.
Paul (23:05): Yeah. It was the greatest way to come into a company. The biggest, the hardest part of it, any kind of rebrand or branding activity is getting, doing the change management and getting organizational buy-in. Yeah. That was done. So the entire brand effort was built up from the ground up. There was a brand council that brand council was like working on like what were the things that we needed to do and represent in the minds of our customers. So we had an agency called son and sons that was, was helping kind of, really kind of do that inward look. And also then, you know, what's what's role, what's the customer's role and how do those things, two things come together and, and getting down into like the, the challenges that every small business owner faces and in their journey of growth.
Paul (23:57): And then what our role is within that, when I came in and the first month it was this big brand fair, where there was the entire company was mobilized and to generate ideas and around, and it could be anything, product marketing, M&A, anything in terms of like, how do we action this for our customers? And it was just basically like a a huge kind of session that where people were pitching their ideas. And so you know, I came into that and so people were bought into it. They had already knew what was the place that we were going to occupy from a brand standpoint and a positioning standpoint. So I'm like, Hey, this is great. All I need to do is like, choose a logo.
Kathleen (24:39): I feel like that's sort of a risky move on the part of the company and it paid off in this case. But like, yeah, when I think about that, it's like, Oh, we're going to hire a CMO. I would be like, we got to put the brakes on all of this branding stuff, because we don't want to do it and then have them walk in and be like, here you go.
Paul (24:55): Well, I think there was part of that, like what I needed to do was like, you know, a lot of the work had been done in terms of crafting a story. But then we needed to get it down into like a strategy. So, so, you know, people got it and got what we doing now. We needed to make it tight and, and, and really just make sure that we can kind of bring it down so that once we engage other partners in, in trying to make this thing come to life, that once we kind of build up our story again, in terms of what we are doing externally, it, it made sense. So like, it was, it was really about like, you know, my it a great thing too, with the company is that like, it's very, very customer oriented in terms of, of, of being able to when you like, so for example, when you come into the company, you have to do four weeks of customer service training and product knowledge.
Paul (25:41): So you you spend basically two weeks doing classroom sessions and then two weeks doing ticket and, and customer support. So you get to know the product in and out and you get to know the customers in and out. And whether it's their pain points, their joys, their hates, it's like everything about their experience with the product. So you kind of exit when you go into your seat, like you, you get it, like you get what these people are trying to do and how they think of FreshBooks in their day in day in and day out lives. And so, so that part of it is like such an interesting dynamic, but I've never been in an organization that is so customer focused like this. So so, so all of this stuff is like, how do we now take this in and externalize it and make sure people understand that, that we get them.
Paul (26:26): And we get them at a, at an emotional level that not a lot of other companies do. And so that's where, where it was like, for me, it's like, how do we now take that and, and tell that story to our customers. And that's the journey that we're on right now. So we've done a ton of stuff there. Like we launched a campaign before, right before the pandemic hit in, in Texas, where we took a bunch of markets and we were looking at the lift that we would generate through through a bunch of different media plan media that we had in market. And we had like a big coordinated, integrated campaign and with OTT and performance media and some traditional media. And, and then of course, like everything got shut down. So it's like plans. So it's like, Hey, now we have to pivot on everything. But but it was great. Like all the early warning kind of early warning indicators are coming in very, very positively. So it kind of told us like, Hey, everything's right. Like we need to launch this thing and just get it out in to prime time. But when, cause the you know, COVID, so, yeah.
Kathleen (27:30): So when you, when you think about that, you know, you talked about, like, we had the, we had the, the story, we had the brand, it just like really, wasn't kind of like delivered to the market. When you think, when you came in and you were thinking about how do we take, what we've, this, this baby we've developed and like, put it out there into the world. What does that look like? I mean, obviously you had a lot of balls in the air and you talked about an integrated campaign. Can you give me sort of a high level overview of how you think about taking a new brand to market?
Paul (28:00): Yeah, sure. So you know, I think you know, most people don't care is like customers don't care whether or not you created a new logo or not. And, and, you know, I come in you know, I came in really with that type of mindset that like, we can go into market. This is more about us than it is our customers. So you know, this was about us just confirming a commitment as a company to what we're doing and, and moving forward. You know, we sure we got some feedback from customers when we launched the logo and things like that, but, but really the feedback that we wanted to get was, you know, if we're saying that we're in, we understand the, you know, the feelings that customers have, the isolation of being a business owner, and if not, we're here to help them through those times.
Paul (28:50): Like, are we credible in saying that? So it was really just testing that, making sure that, that, that message resonated well, that, that, like, it, it ticked off all the kind of key things that we needed to do from a brand tracking standpoint. And, and just go with it and really, you know, we got that feedback. We tried to line it up more with like, you know, kind of market moments and, and the things that we do, because we're a small business, we're, you know, we're a mid-market business, but we have lots of learnings. So everything we do, we try to then help tell our customers why we're doing it and give them a little bit of of an insight into you know, why are we changing our logo and what that actually means to us. So we wrote a big, long blog post about not just like why we're changing our logo, but how we did it.
Paul (29:35): And, and just like, so if you're thinking of changing your logo, here's like the playbook that we did. So everything we do, we try to like, then kind of turn it and take a little bit of a different slant on it. So it's not like, you know, bang the drums. We have a new logo, everybody come here and you'd be amazed with it's with this design. It was really a very like, Hey, we did this. And if you're thinking of doing it, here's like the thought process that you could go through. Here's like the tools and the, the different types of things you can read on, on doing that. So, so we always try to take that from the lens of, like, why would an owner really care about this? Well, maybe they're thinking of doing this type of effort to,
Kathleen (30:11): So it's been about a year and a half, and I'm, I'm sitting here feeling kind of blown away by how much you've done in that time. It's a lot, and a lot has happened in that time, because we've had COVID and all these changes, as you indicated, like, and it was funny listening to you talk about it too, because I started not this job. I started a new job a little over a year ago, January as head of marketing at a company did my whole, like after 30 days, I had my whole plan, my whole marketing plan mapped out, and then the pandemic hit. I was like, well, throw that out the window. You know, and it's, it is, it's incredibly disruptive. And so it's amazing what you've accomplished. I would love it. If you could speak a little bit to, you know, what, what that has done in terms of transformation of your marketing, you know, and I know there's only certain things you can and cannot share, but like, can you, can you get into a little bit of like before and after for me, or,
Paul (31:06): Oh, of course. I mean, as I kind of mentioned before, we're going through this, like a growth phase. So, you know, we were built out like, you know, we're building out our B2B capability and capacity and building up that, that whole kind of ability to just do demand gen do a lot more kind of intent-based marketing, building up our capabilities in that space, along with keeping our, this kind of a tree, this big funnel kind of going on our self-serve side. But, but really it's like it, I mean that the pandemic just like blew everything up because all of the assumptions that we had didn't know if any of them were gonna keep going. So, so we did three different models in terms of where we thought the year would end up, that we took to our board. We got feedback, like there was people coming with nine, 10, 13 different types of bottles for like, well, you might as well, why not?
Paul (31:56): If you're at 13, why not 20? Right. But, but it's, it's so we, we just said, Hey, let's take this case scenario. And then be very, very, very flexible with our cash. So, you know, like most companies, we can track that a bit, like in terms of we thoughtfully just like, let's like remove some costs from the equation. We think we're going to go through a bit of a downturn. Let's you know, pull back on our spending, but be really, really ready to just like open the flood Gates if seeing what happens. And, and really, we didn't see a tremendous down downward impact on our business. We saw some cancels. I think we were kind of pulling forward what may have been some cancels or some churn that that would have happened regardless. But then we stabilized very, very quickly. And then saw like the summer, like last summer was a very good time to be spending cause a lot of people exited the market.
Paul (32:45): The economies in terms of driving CAC were great. And, and so, you know, of course we're then doing re forecasting. And, you know, our August re forecast was then our 2021 reforecast, but then as new people entered the market in the fall, then, then the economy's changed around hot day. Yeah. And so, and so, you know, and so a lot of the assumptions that we made even in our, in our 21 plan are not coming true because we were doing them in a time when, when we were seeing some real, when a lot of people that just exited the market. So so it, you know, right now we're just in this continuous cycle we reforecast a lot now just within the marketing team.
Paul (33:28): I think the main thing that we're doing is really just trying to make sure that, that you know, we're hitting the core metrics that any SaaS company we really mindful of our LTV to CAC. So we look at our costs. We just look at all, all our early warning indicators in terms of people engaging in trials and making sure like our pipeline is healthy and all of those types of things. And it's right now, it's just being really, really ready to shift, to turn, to pivot, to pull back to. And it's, it's at a very, very like a channel by channel level now, like is mobile is our mobile channel working is, do we need to pull that back mobile web versus desktop versus, you know, it's so it's, it's a very it's w the, the folks who are on the controls right now, they're very hands on the controls.
Kathleen (34:11): Nice. Well, I mean, unbelievable. And, and I would love, I know I can't, but I would love to get a look at like how you guys do forecasting and modeling. I feel like that's something that we're grappling with. I'm at a, I'm at a series, a startup, and we're constantly re-evaluating and we've new products launching, and you come up with your kind of, back of the envelope forecast, and then you have to re forecast as soon as you start to see a little bit of traction. And so I'm always fascinated by that process, but that's for another podcast, right?
Paul (34:39): Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'd love it. It's such a fascinating area that I think a lot of people just don't really understand how much marketers spend on, on that and how much are our, you know, database assumptions, how much are WAGs or wild-ass guesses and what it takes to actually make all this stuff come true.
Kathleen (34:58): Yeah. You know, we go into marketing thinking, we're not going to be stuck in spreadsheets and jokes on us.
Paul (35:03): Yeah. That's why I, I love our FP and a team and having some good marketing, finance people are always a, a valuable thing to have within any, any department.
Kathleen (35:11): Amen. let's change gears now because we're kind of coming up to the end of our time. No problem. So there are two questions. I always ask all of my guests. And I'm curious to hear what you have to say. The first is, of course, we talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really kind of setting the bar for what it means to be a great inbound marketer?
Paul (35:33): Yeah, so one company that I can really appreciate today is Clear, but, and particularly because they're all over my social feeds promoting their social targeting capabilities. So when we talk about does the practitioner or the subcontractor have a really nice home, it's nice to see a company that's actually promoting its own product through the channels that it's actually promoting. So I'm like good, good for them. I give them a big round of applause. Companies that I kind of, I look at, like, there's a couple of folks you know, within this data space, there's a company. I look to a company called drop loyalty. They they're like kind of a millennial money. It's a little like a latent loyalty and rewards program for millennials. And they built out this product called Cartify, which takes the data. And then they've been able to build out some awesome types of insights there. So I think those guys are, are, are absolutely killing it in that space as well.
Kathleen (36:34): Oh, I can't wait to check those out. Second question. All the marketers, I talked to say that one of the greatest challenges they face is just keeping pace with the incredibly, you know, fast changing world of digital marketing. And so how do you personally keep yourself educated and up?
Paul (36:49): Yeah. so I will never recommend a book because I find books are generally out of date. I've in my career path, I've done a lot of different things. Like if you, if you look at it, you might say, Hey, there's some sort of rhyme or reason to that, but I've just gone into areas that I've been interested in, whether it's programmatic or whether it's data science or machine learning. And so I just find like, I get really obsessed with something and just read everything I can about it, and just try to target subject matter experts in that space. So, you know, I think nowadays, there's, there's so many different forums whether they're different Slack groups or, you know, I haven't spent a lot of time in clubhouse, but, you know, I hear it's the place to be if you want to go and learn some stuff. So there's, there's just like so many places that you could find those subject matter experts. Now, I think it's just like immerse yourself. And in that topic, I find personally, it's hard to do multiple topics at the same time. So I just, I just try to do one thing at a time.
Kathleen (37:46): Yeah. And it's funny, you mentioned clubhouse because I can't get sucked into it. Because for me, LinkedIn is the place. I feel like what I always say is you have to pick your platform and like go deep in the platform that you're going to commit to. And maybe, maybe you can have two, I don't know. But like, I, there are people I see who are on, who are everywhere and I'm just like, when do you actually get your real work done?
Paul (38:07): I know, I know it's a lot. Yeah. And I spent a lot of time doing social media consulting in like the late two thousands or working in a SAS company in the social media space. So I've I've, I've, I've let that all become very lax after like 2012.
Kathleen (38:23): Yeah. It's nice to be able to do that every now and then just say, you know what, we're going to turn that one off. Great. Well, speaking of social media and the web if somebody is listening and they to learn more about what you've talked about here today, or connect with you online, what is the best way for them to do that?
Paul (38:41): Yeah, they could just, if they Google CowanPKC, all of my socials will show up or I'm just Paul K Cowan on LinkedIn. And people can shoot me a note and just make sure you mention the podcast.
Kathleen (38:57): All right. Great. And I will put these links in the show notes so that they're easy to find. And any other resources you want to direct folks to.
Paul (39:05): If you're interested in finding any information about like the small business resource stuff and what we're doing, you can just go to our website. If you could just go to freshbooks.com, just head over to the resources or press area, and you'll find all that stuff.
Kathleen (39:20): I'm definitely going to check that out because I'm working on data stuff. So awesome. I love seeing what other people are doing. All right. Well, Paul, it was great having you here today for those who are listening, if you learn something new or you enjoyed this episode, I would love it. If you would head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast a review, that's how other folks find us. And if you know someone doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Paul.
Paul (39:49): Thank you, Kathleen. It was awesome.
How do the world's top LinkedIn power users get the most out of the platform for sales and marketing?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, #samsales Consulting founder Samantha McKenna shares insider tips on using LinkedIn, as well as LinkedIn Sales Navigator, for sales prospecting and marketing.
From understanding how LinkedIn's algorithm works, to diving deep into the ways marketers can use LinkedIn Sales Navigator as part of their account-based marketing campaigns, Samantha shares specific, actionable tips and strategies that you can use right away to get better sales and marketing results.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to get all of Samantha's tips.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the #samsales Consulting website
- Connect with Samantha on LinkedIn
- Check out Samantha's #samshorts courses on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Samantha McKenna, who is the founder of #samsales consulting. Welcome to the podcast Samantha.
Samantha (01:43): Thank you so much for having me Kathleen. So great to be here.
Kathleen (01:46): I'm really excited about this conversation. So for anybody listening you know, we've talked about LinkedIn a bunch on this podcast and coming at it from different angles every time. And I've always thought of myself as somebody who knows a lot about LinkedIn and is pretty good at it. But it turns out I still have a lot to learn. And how do I know that? I know that because I attended a talk that Samantha did on LinkedIn and all of a sudden I realized that there were massive gaping holes in my knowledge base. So I was like, Oh, I have to have her come on because I learned so much. And every time I feel that way, I really want to share it with my listeners. So with that introduction, Samantha maybe you could tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and specifically, you know, your background and experience and how you came to be doing what you're doing now and what #samsales Consulting is.
Samantha (02:39): Yeah, for sure. You know, I think the one you're not alone in that response, I think there's there's so many little nuances on LinkedIn for everything that you should be doing, not only with the free platform, but then with Navigator, you know, and I think that I've spoken to so many people who think I'm a total pro at this, what else can I learn? But then when we sit down together, they're like, Oh my gosh. So I think what's great to highlight for anybody, whether you're a marketer or your sales person, is there is so much just platform can do that. You might not even know just yet. My own personal background, I've been in enterprise sales for 15, 16 years at this point. I have been an individual contributor, broke a bunch of records while doing that and then convinced my leadership to move me to management.
Samantha (03:22): And I climbed the ladder through there. Having most recently run a line of business at LinkedIn for LinkedIn Sales Navigator, where I ran the enterprise sales team there out of the New York city office. And, you know, I think for me, like many of you guys, you probably have these, you know, pie in the sky dream come true companies that you've wanted to work for. And LinkedIn was exactly that for me, I had no plans of ever going there, but after doing a customer testimonial for them about the LinkedIn Sales Navigator platform, I think I almost fell out of my chair with excitement about what it did for our teams. And they said, we need that energy here. You have to come work for us. So I think for me really where the expertise in LinkedIn came from was just understanding early in my career, the power that I could leverage with the platform, the brand that it could build for me, not only as a sales rep, but as a leader and for the products we sold and frankly where #samsales came from was one my very first post giving a sales tip and then thinking, well, maybe this'll take off.
Samantha (04:25): Maybe there'll be something here. So I want to attach a hashtag to it. But where the first posts actually came from was every single time I gave sales advice to my friends, my bosses, my bosses, bosses, they always said, I've never thought of that. That's so interesting. What a great idea. And I was like, well, dang, like if you guys think this is revolutionary, then maybe I should share it with the world. So we did, I shared it my very first post. I added hashtag Sam sales, not thinking it would really go anywhere. And actually on that first post Sales Hacker reached out and said, this was great. Would you come write for us? And I was like, heck yeah. So excited. So we have a little bit of a, of my background there.
Kathleen (05:04): That's awesome. And I love that LinkedIn hired you because you just such a passionate customer. I think that's honestly, that's, that's such a great way to source sales talent, right?
Samantha (05:15): No kidding. Well, and I I'm lucky enough to still be a brand ambassador for them. You know, one of, I think about 20 people that, that have that role, but you know, who wouldn't want that someone who is excited and can wax poetic about your technology forever. Yeah, definitely got that in me.
Kathleen (05:30): That's great. The thing that I think is really interesting is, is the evolution that LinkedIn has undergone in the last let's call it decade because when I think back on it, and this is just my perception, I'd be curious to hear if you, if you've experienced and seen it the same way. You know, I've been on LinkedIn a long time and for, for a while there, it was literally just your online resume and there wasn't as much interaction. And then it was like the interaction happened in groups. Groups were so big for a while and people's posts in the feed were more broadcasting and less back and forth. And then it seemed that groups kind of, you know, died away a little bit. And now the main action is really happening in the feed. And it's like the last two to three years, I've just absolutely loved it. It has surpassed Facebook, Twitter, everything else as my main platform of choice. It's, it's where I really feel my people are. I don't know what that says about me, maybe. But it's really, truly become more of like what I really think of as a social network than it used to be. So that is my perception of it. I'm curious to hear what you think
Samantha (06:42): I completely agree with you. And I think the way that you articulated, how it's grown, kind of the little roller coasters and dips with groups, and then how it's really become this incredible content sharing platform is dead on Kathleen. I think what's interesting too, is that you think about how many members are on LinkedIn. So we're at about 750 million members on LinkedIn that are globally located. And what's interesting to me about that is that half of those members on average log in once a week onto LinkedIn and stay on at least five minutes on the platform. So what that tells me is that maybe they're coming in to update something on their profile, right. But what I think they're really doing is they're coming to look for content, right? They're coming to read that feed. They're coming to see what the expertise is that is out there to learn something.
Samantha (07:29): And the even more interesting number to me, which I hope will grow is that less than 1% of those members, myself included you, Kathleen, I know you post quite a bit on LinkedIn, but less than 1% of those members are actually posting content at least once a week. So for any marketer out there for anybody in sales out there, that's listening to this. This is a platform where you don't have that much competition to see what it is that you're posting and guess what it's free of charge. So you get to go build a brand, get your content out there and get your subject matter expertise and really use LinkedIn to, in my opinion, what it's built for it to be a demand generation machine, which is exactly what it's been for our business.
Kathleen (08:11): I totally agree. And I always tell people, I get a lot of questions about my LinkedIn presence. People are like, you're really active on there. Why do you post so much? And, and I, part of it is just that I enjoy it. And I am the weirdo who has LinkedIn opened, like all the time, if I'm at my computer, it's opened and I'm looking at it all the time. Both because I learn a lot also because I monitor my company social presence, but, but also because like there's so much great discussion there. I don't want to miss it. But I tell people that I do use LinkedIn kind of as a personal marketing sandbox. And it's an, it's a place for me to experiment and, and figure out what's working and what's not. And so right now, my goal is to post every single business day.
Kathleen (08:58): And then ideally I also post on the weekends, but I'm not like pressuring myself if I don't, I don't get it every Saturday and Sunday. You know, just to see like what will happen in terms of engagement levels. And it's funny, cause I was just this morning looking at shield app, which is a third party platform that helps you kind of like, it's like Google analytics for your LinkedIn account, how I think of it. And it was fascinating because I can see and shield app the moment when I made that decision to post every day and you can see all of my metrics, like go up into the right, the engagement, the number of people viewing my posts, all of it increased. And so that's the thing that I find so fascinating as like the true marketing nerd that I am is I get to like run these experiments. It's things like posting regularly or posting with videos or posts versus posting with texts, putting the link in the post versus not like testing out different topics. And you can really see like what's resonating and there's so much gold in there. So now I'm going to stop going on and on marketing talk.
Samantha (10:01): I love the data as well, because I think, you know, data only gets us so far. We need to know what's behind the data too, but it can be so tremendous in terms of guiding us to future decisions. So if we look right, if you look at your analytics and say, well, I don't seem to get a lot of, of, you know, engagement from this post or when I post on this day or this type of content, it helps you refine how and what you post. I'd be interested to see your, your analytics as paired up to what I'm about to tell you guys, but a couple of different things to think about that the ultimate times to post. So everybody always says like, what time should I do it? Well, guess what if we all told you, well, Tuesday at 11 o'clock in the morning is the right time to post and everybody's going to post them and you're going to be competing for that, those eyeballs, right? Because that's when the platform will be flooded with content. But a couple of things to think about, even if you're just getting started in posting one would actually recommend that you avoid Mondays. So Mondays are the day where everybody wakes up and they're like, this is the week. This is the day that I'm going to post on. Right. They're all energy.
Kathleen (10:58): It's like New Years resolutions.
Samantha (11:01): Exactly. Right. So I would stay actually away from that day. Check out Tuesdays. So to give you a good example, our Tuesday posts are through the roof. Of course, now everybody's going to post onto your site and that's going to go down, but that's all right for the, for the greater good. When we posted this just this week on Tuesday, I posted about the fact that we don't do introductions or set agendas at the beginning of demos and how frustrating that is. You know, we've all gotten on those calls where the sales rep just goes into it about 44 hours after I made that post, of course, you know, knowing some of the algorithm tricks and helping the visibility had 23,000 views at that post. And I think about that, just the difference in posting right on a Tuesday versus a Monday is huge as a game-changer, but also all of those algorithm hacks, right?
Samantha (11:48): That I just talked about those things that I know how to do because I've been inside LinkedIn and I've used this for so long. That's also what helps drive the value. So you don't really need to do this that much. If you get on the platform and post two or three times a week and you learn how to do these things that will help. And the other thing to think about is, think about a weekend post. So I'm with you. I try to post on the weekends. I'm not strict about it. And sometimes frankly, I just need the break from LinkedIn.
Samantha (12:15): Read my book. Yeah. So, but I think about this, if you try and post on a weekend on a Saturday morning or a Sunday morning, I think what you'll be interested to find is that you get a very different audience. So we tend to have a higher concentration of attendees on LinkedIn that on the weekends that tend to be executives. So we're running, running, running throughout the week. And then once we get to the weekend, we're like, okay, what happened on LinkedIn that we missed? So not only to get a different audience, but you might get to the more senior audience, also one other tip. I love my weekend post to be a little bit more about ourselves. So maybe how we can be better, you know, less multitask, more focused on something, how we can be more disconnected from our technology as I post on LinkedIn. And you know, things that are a little less businessy and maybe more professional businessy like personal businessy. There's some words that don't make any sense that I've used now. So you guys should definitely trust my judgment.
Kathleen (13:07): Oh, that, that makes, I think what you said makes complete sense. And it's funny because I've actually tested the same thing with email newsletters. The traditional marketing guidance is you always send them on like Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. And I have found sometimes sending it Saturday morning is incredibly effective for the exact reason you said, because that's when the people who are super busy and have packed calendars, tend to like kick back and go through their inbox.
Samantha (13:35): Yeah, and we, we, we did that same thing. So we have a a newsletter that comes out on Fridays, which is our mail, which is a really short, impactful newsletter actually. Jeff Rosset and he was the CEO of Sales Assembly was nice enough to announce our newsletter. The other day, we got a bunch of signups from him. We send that on out on Friday and our open rate is through the roof. Now I do imagine hopefully that's because some of our content is decent, but also I think it's the timing. And then we also send out some marketing campaigns on Sundays to talk about BDR, best practices for your, your business development reps. And again, open rate through the roof, I think just because we're not doing it when everybody else is competing for those eyeballs. Yeah.
Kathleen (14:15): So true. When they go right. You go left and there's some opportunities to the left. Exactly. So, all right. I have a couple of questions for you. Number one though, before we do this, is if somebody wants to subscribe to your newsletter, where do they do that?
Samantha (14:27): Oh, thanks. Yeah. Pop over to our website, sands sales consulting.com. And we'll, we'll hit you with a, Hey sign up as soon as you hit the website. So pretty, pretty easy to navigate them.
Kathleen (14:38): All right. Perfect. And we are going to be in a minute getting into some stuff about Sales Navigator, because that was what made my eyes pop open when I heard you talk. But before we do, you said the magic that every marketer reacts to, which is LinkedIn hacks algorithm hacks. So maybe we could just have like a little rapid fire. Like, can you share a list of some of the hacks that you are seeing working right now?
Samantha (15:07): For sure. So I'll give you two, let's say three that are really important. So if you are a marketer and you were trying to encourage your salespeople of how to post better, here's a couple of hints. So number one, you want to think about link in comments. I think that this seems pretty table stakes these days, but again, so many people do this the wrong way. If I have a link, let's say to a company event to a data sheet of white paper or webinar or whatever it is that I want to advertise on LinkedIn, if I put the link in my post, what that's going to do is get LinkedIn to say, huh? So what you're trying to do is take our viewers that we've worked so hard to get to linkedin.com and you're going to take them away. He said, no thanks. And so what they're going to do is throttle your post to make sure it doesn't get as much visibility on average.
Samantha (15:52): You'll get about 10 to 15% of the normal visibility that you will. If you had instead talked about the event and then said, link in comments and put the link in the comments. Now, let me also tell you why, because I know everybody's like that that makes no sense, like who cares the link? Is there no matter what let's say, I posted everything according to the LinkedIn algorithm. And then let's say you, Kathleen came along and said, Oh, this is great. This reminds me of an article I just read. And you posted the link in my comment. Linkedin's not going to punish me because you came along to try and get viewers away from LinkedIn, but they will punish me if I do it. Right. Punish is a hard word. You guys get it though. So throw it in the comments.
Kathleen (16:30): No question about that. Quick question. Cause I think a lot of people still hold on to that notion that their posts, like, especially if they're promoting an event, for example, they're like, Oh, but I have this amazing event graphic. Like if they upload an image in place of the, what I call the unfurl, like the preview image that would come with their URL. So if you need to do that as it is it make your post-sale Lincoln comments attach an image that substitutes for what would have been the preview. Does that work just as well?
Samantha (16:58): You nailed it. That's exactly it. So I can do that two ways when I go to the link and I look for an image that's, you know, on the article or already there, or I just post the link, just exactly what you said in my post. I wait for the preview image to come up. I take a little snippet of that. And then I delete the link from the post because yeah, the image, the image also works. People love image. They love being able to say something in front of them instead of just text. So that's a great one, two punch to make sure you're really double playing the algorithm there. Yeah. Think about to the structure of your content. So when you post something on LinkedIn, you've got about five lines of texts that you can have and that's texts. That's hard return, white space, it's five lines.
Samantha (17:40): And those five lines after those timelines, you will get a dot, dot, dot, a little ellipses there. Plus, see more. So what we're actually trying to is your post will get more visibility if you encourage people to see more so, as soon as they click on that LinkedIn perks up and says, Oh wait, there's something interesting here. If we can get a bunch of people to do that, then you're basically telling LinkedIn there's something really interesting here. A bunch of people want to see more. They're so captured by the first five sentences that they want to see more. Think about like clickbait and what we'll see out there. Right?
Kathleen (18:12): The Buzzfeed titles only don't be like disingenuous is what I always tell people. Like channel Buzzfeed but in an honest way,
Samantha (18:20): The one that I always fall for is what, what do eighties celebrities look like now? I'm like, I'm desperate to know. Right. So I think you're, you're absolutely right. Be authentic. So I hate the ones that are like, it was the most dramatic day of my life. I'm like get over it. I hate them. But so if you go back to look at mine, you'll see that where my kind of clickbait comes in and saying, you know, posing a question and then answering that question. Right. And getting people to think like, wait, that's the answer to it. I have to see more of what she says. Think about it that way. How do we just use that space to hook people into whatever it is we're going to talk about in a genuine, authentic, helpful way. Okay.
Kathleen (18:58): And that's like, what do journalists call it? Don't bury the lead. Like pop it up front and then people want to read more.
Samantha (19:04): Nailed it. Exactly. And I think the final thing, and usually the most shocking, especially for marketers that are like, okay, I've got to get my sales team to share our content is, do not use that share button on these LinkedIn posts. If you do nothing else, just create a new post. So let me again, tell you why, what LinkedIn really values is original content. So let's say today I posted on LinkedIn, let's say all three, 1 million members that are posting on, on LinkedIn every day, come in. And the only thing they do is hit share on Sam sales content. Now, to me, that sounds wonderful because LinkedIn is just filled with sound sales. And I'm all excited about that. But LinkedIn is like this isn't riveting. We already saw this, give us something new. So when you hit that share button, when you and man is that hard to get somebody to do, even like that's the Holy grail.
Samantha (19:52): When for me, when somebody says this was motivating enough to me, that I want to share it. But when you do that, what you're actually telling LinkedIn is I'm repurposing old content. There's nothing new to see here. And again, LinkedIn will throttle that post about 10 to 15% of the normal views. Now, two things to think about one, if you love this post, just copy the link to post, right? Copy the link of that post, write a new post originally by yourself, and then just say Lincoln comments, you know, or tag the person that wrote it. If you still want to do that, but you're still lazy hit share. And then in that post tag, the person's name and say, this was so great by Sam McKenna, yada yada, or by Kathleen loved it. Talk that person, that person will hopefully comment on your post. And as long as they do within the first 24 hours, you'll then get about 30 to 40% of the views that you would. So a little lazy route, but guys I'm like, let's get the a hundred percent of the, of the beers that we can get. Right. Let's maximize this out. So three, three little hacks that should help
Kathleen (20:48): There. Yeah, that's great. So marketers, write those down and share them with your sales team or better give them a link to this interview for them to listen to. Okay. So now let's turn to Sales Navigator because I don't know if I'm representative of most marketers or if I'm just particularly ignorant on this, but there was, so I learned so much. I mean, I know that Sales Navigator is it's a premium option. A lot of sales team use teams use it. There are marketers who use it to help their sales teams. I like, I want to start with some of the basics for those who may not have used it, but I don't want to stay on the basics for too long because you have so many good advanced nuggets. So can you just give us a quick overview and then let's dive into some of the really cool things you can do.
Samantha (21:32): Yeah. Let's talk about what the misperception is of Navigator. And that is that it's just linkedin.com on steroids. It can do more searches. You can see a few more things. It's basically the same thing. Just looks a little different. It has more bells and whistles couldn't be more wrong. So what LinkedIn Navigator really is right? The way I've always described it is you take all of the data and intelligence that resides on LinkedIn and you curate that data and intelligence specific to your book of business. So if I'm a salesperson and I'm going after a mid-market commercial territory in the Northeast, and I'm selling to X titles for X company size, I can tell Navigator, tell me everything that's going on. Not only with these types of companies, but with my specific book of 400 accounts that I'm targeting the thing that's really neat about Navigator.
Samantha (22:17): In addition to all the cool bells and whistles is that I can pop in Kathleen, let's say you and I made, and we made it a conference. And you say, I would love to buy Sam sales, but I'm not interested in buying you for six months, but let's stay in touch. What I'm going to do then is obviously I'll connect with you on LinkedIn. But what I'm also going to do is I'm going to go to LinkedIn and I'm going to hit this really cute little button that says save. And I'm going to save you as a potential prospect. I'm also going to save your company now automatically. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to find your other decision makers within the company. You know, your, your CEO, your C-suite, your president, anybody else on your marketing team, and I'm going to hit save on them too.
Samantha (22:54): Why? Because I've made it my mission now to sell to you guys. And what I can do by hitting save is that I can track what you guys are doing. And on LinkedIn, I can track anything where you're mentioned in the press outside of LinkedIn, and I can see what's going on with your company in and outside of LinkedIn. So if you are somebody in your, C-suite just wrote an article, I'll get notified about it. If you guys are sponsoring a conference, if someone on your C-suite speaking at an event, whatever it may be, I now get that in my feed. So I can go and say, what is happening with Kathleen's company all without you guys, knowing that I've saved you attract you anything. It's very big brother and the best.
Kathleen (23:30): Okay. But all marketing sort of is these days. If we're being honest with ourselves you know, I mean, it's, this is the whole conversation, right? I mean, the interwebs know all about us. There's nowhere to hide.
Samantha (23:41): Well, and I'll tell you, this feature is fantastic for ex boyfriends and girlfriends. They won't know you're on their page. So I had it. Right. See what they're doing. Not that I've ever done that. Yeah.
Kathleen (23:52): All right. So if we use our LinkedIn Sales Navigator powers for good and not evil w you know, you, I know you talked about some really specific searches and things like little, let's call them hacks again, but more on the Navigator side. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Samantha (24:07): Yeah. So one of the, I've got a couple of favorite things here. So in your searches, if you guys are Navigator users at the top of your Navigator page, there's a search bar URL. And just to the right of that, there's something that says advanced search. And in that you get 25 different search functions. So you can set all this criteria of who you want to look for now. That's great. But what I find right is that most marketers and most salespeople are just like you, Kathleen are not totally sure of the full power of what can do what can be done here, or frankly, what you even do with that search. So here are two of my absolute favorites. Number one, you've got this really cool thing on the search that says current company and past company for the past company field, I love to put in our top 20, 30, 50 clients in that.
Samantha (24:55): And what I'm doing is I'm saying, tell me anyone, anyone on LinkedIn that used to work for some of our most important clients. And then I'm saying, okay, great. That's a few million people. Boof, what am I going to do there? And I say, okay, now tell me, who's your buyer persona? Who is your drool worthy title, right? That you would pay, I don't know, two, $300 cost per lead to get to a time to a webinar. Well, who are those people? And so put those in your title field, and then second down, further territory North America, whatever it may be and hit search. What you're going to find is a treasure trove of leads that you can reach out to and say, hello, you used to work for one of our current customers, now you work for a prospective customer. We would love to talk to you about what we can do for this current company. Caveat - t doesn't matter when they work there. I don't care if they weren't there in 2006, in 2002, 1998. Who cares? The fact is they worked for a company that trusts us with work. And so perhaps they could also trust us with some work. I have one more, but that's, there are questions there.
Kathleen (25:56): I love that approach. Especially, I mean, yes, hitting people who've worked there ever, but I mean, I feel like especially people who've recently departed, it's such a gold mine of, you know, I'm going to mix metaphors here off low-hanging fruit, because you know, fruit grows in gold mines, but like, really it is it's, it's such, it's such an opportunity that I think not a lot of marketers or sales people take advantage of it's to me, it's the equivalent of when I send out my big email marketing, like newsletters and things, the, the replies I get when it's like, I'm no longer here I always go and like hunt down, where are they now?
Samantha (26:34): Yeah. As you should. And that's exactly, that's what makes you so good at your job, right? Because you put these puzzle pieces together and you're like, well, this is still a quality lead for us. You on that note too, you can set up a search that says, tell me, anytime people change jobs within my accounts, within my territory within anything. And they're say I have all these little recorded videos by the way, you guys on my website, but I've got a video specifically about this that talks about how, when we want to be the first person to congratulate somebody on a job change, especially in our sector. So whoever does, at first, in, in the sector in vertical, that they represent is much more likely exponentially, more likely to get the business. However, we also want some EQ right. So Kathleen, if you changed shops and I'm like, hi, congrats, do you want to buy #samsales?
Samantha (27:19): You're going to be like, know where the bathroom is? Like, slow your roll. So I think there's a, there's a balance to that for sure. But capitalize on those job changes. I think the other piece of the search that I love so much is the idea of, especially if you work for, let's say a company that has I don't know, north of 250 employees let's even get wild. I have a hundred employees. One of the things that I love to look for is the key buyer persona that we're looking for and past company of my company. So let's say when I worked at LinkedIn, if I looked up you know, VP of sales, CRO that used to work at LinkedIn and now works for another company, either in my specific book of business or in the territory of all the people that I managed, I can find people who love LinkedIn and who are enthusiastic about it and who I can be like, you're an alumnus.
Samantha (28:09): And I currently work here and help us out. Yeah. Did me a warm intro? Oh, heck yeah. I mean, it's, it's amazing. So just those two searches. If you, if you spend the weekend doing that in Navigator, you'll be in such great shape. Oh, one more thing. If I can plug one of the great things that I've got as a, as an ambassador pop over to my website, go on the LinkedIn section under solutions. And there's a 60 day free trial at Navigator. You typically get 30 days, but through me you can get 60. So that's great. Yeah. Pop over there and get it, give it a shot and then set a reminder for 59 days to cancel if you're not wowed by it. And if you're not wowed by it, call me.
Kathleen (28:43): So there's, I think there's obviously so much that people who are in a sales role can do with Navigator. A lot of my listeners are marketers. So as a marketer, what should or can you be doing? Should the marketer have a Sales Navigator account?
Samantha (29:00): So I'm going to give you guys one of the biggest benefits that I see here. And hint, hint that I really think LinkedIn should include in their product development. So think about this. This is a little harder if you're a huge company, right? But you can even segment this down every single time you guys close a deal as a marketer. What I would go, especially if you're in demand gen, go to that sales rep and say, Hey, who was responsible? Who was involved in this deal? Tell me all of the players. On the other side of the business, the key decision maker, who was in legal, who was in procurement, who was our champion, our skeptic, who are those people have the sales reps in those names to pop into your Navigator account, find all those people and hit save. If you just do that one thing and go in every day to track job changes, you will open up a massive SQL benefit line of line of leads for yourself that never existed.
Samantha (29:55): So we talked about this as marketers all the time, right? How do we get more leads in the system? How much do I have to spend? What's my cost per lead? You guys, if you spend $900 on an account for Navigator, this will, I mean, your, your CPLs will be cents, like pennies on the dollar. It's what I love about this is that you can pop in every day or you can get the emails delivered directly to you. And every time somebody changes jobs, you, as the marketer can say, fantastic job change. See where they went, send the lead to that person or pop it in Salesforce, HubSpot, whatever, put an SLA, obviously around when they should reach out to the lead. And now you have ROI tied to a specific marketing activity that you did, that wouldn't be monitored by sales. I want to just think about the reverse of this. If I'm doing this as a sales rep, or if we teach our sales reps to do this one, we're giving them the responsibility and control of tracking those job changes. And to frankly, most reps, if they see that the person changes into another territory and it's not there, assuming they're bothered to look it up, they're certainly not going to look it up 10 times a day. So you guys can do this. And Holy smokes, does this pay off?
Kathleen (30:58): I love that. May or may not be leaving here today to put that in place.
Samantha (31:05): Oh, I can't wait to hear. We do it at #samsales. It's a, I mean, it's, I can't even say how beneficial it is. Go get it.
Kathleen (31:11): Well, it's like an extension of something I'm already doing in a kind of cheap and, and and less programmatic way, which is that you know, I'm, I'm, I started working at the company I'm at probably five months ago. And one of the audiences we sell into is large online media businesses. And I don't have a lot of contacts in that area. So every time I go to an industry event or I do anything and there's anybody else there, I always reach out to all of them to connect on LinkedIn, because I'm like, then they'll see the content I post, hopefully. Right. But this is even better because it's a way of building a relationship. And we talk about that a lot internally where I work, it's all about building relationships, especially when you're taking like an ABM style approach, et cetera. So awesome tool to add into the arsenal. One, one, maybe this is a dumb question, but does, how does Navigator link at all into your LinkedIn campaign manager?
Samantha (32:08): It doesn't. So they're, they are two separate things, which I know is a, is a hassle, but I think, you know, I'll go on the record there. I think there's so much opportunity to really bridge those gaps for, for LinkedIn one day, again, even just charging on the data that we get from that. And then being able to put those together with campaign managers, you can see like, Hey, these are, these are prospective clients or existing clients that we can target. I mean, there's so much value. They're just not quite there yet.
Kathleen (32:32): There is no current way, if you build like a target list in campaign or sorry, in Navigator, to then target those through Campaign Manager?
Samantha (32:42): Unfortunately, not that there was something that came out quite a while ago called stereo for LinkedIn, that they weren't, they were trying to do that. Exactly. That basically reps would save things out in their Navigator and then marketing could see that and be like, Oh, well, these people are important to you. And maybe they're not in our CRM yet we should start marketing to them. But it just seems like a no brainer. There's so much, it seems like a no brainer listening, we're going on record. If you invent this give Kathleen and I royalties.
Kathleen (33:09): Yes. Or, or at least call me and I'll be in your early private beta. Awesome. So, so when you're, if you're a marketer who is first getting started with Navigator, what are the first kind of most important steps you should take to, to get off and running quickly and see value out of it?
Samantha (33:31): Yeah. So one, I would definitely do the saving of your clients, especially if you guys are doing anything with ABM. If you have tier one accounts, you know, the big boys of the world that you're trying to get into, go in and save them and have somebody that's exclusively responsible for keeping tabs on what's going on with their C-suite, with their executive team. And that the company is mentioning in the press. What I think you'll find is that a lot of the missions that these companies have and the things that they're really focused on achieving come from that. So if you want to even think, how can we market to them? How can we use their vernacular in our marketing campaigns, the content that we send out, easy home run way to aggregate all of that together, directly on LinkedIn, and to see what their executives are using their voices to talk about. I don't think it sounds like you,
Kathleen (34:17): I could use that same approach for competitive research.
Samantha (34:20): Oh, absolutely. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And we, you know, even on a, on an individualized level, we see tons of marketing teams and then tons of salespeople who track their top competitors. So I work with an unbelievable amount of big law lawyers who say, like, I always lose to Bill. Like I want to keep tabs on Bill, you know? And I'm like, well, let's do it. And you won't know. So it's great. But yeah, it's fantastic for competitive intelligence. And then the other thing I would think about is kind of talking back to that search. So where have our most prestigious clients, right? Where are the people that the buyer personas, where are they now, if they've worked for our most prestigious clients and being able to kind of put together marketing strategy that says, you know, you used to use to work with us.
Samantha (35:02): We'd love to talk to you again and figure out how to do that. If your sales reps aren't doing it. The final thing that I would say is, as a marketer, think of how you can use the search to find people who have used, who have previously worked for again, your biggest clients, but now all work for the same client. So think of it this way. If I can find that there are six people who used to work for Deloitte, and now they all work for Accenture and I don't have Accenture yet, I can, I can pull those people together and I can send a little campaign to them to say, Hey guys, you all used to work for Deloitte. You all have used our technology before. I don't know if you know each other, but maybe as, as Deloitte alumni, you guys should be connected. Also we'd love to just have a group zoom with you and executive round table. How can we help you? You guys can put the pieces together with that as marketers build these campaigns. And again, tie it to ROI for you guys.
Kathleen (35:51): I love all of these ideas. I feel like we could go on and on and on forever, but we don't have forever. I want to shift gears for a minute because there are two questions that I always ask my guests, and I would love to get your take on them. The first is, of course, this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park when it comes to inbound marketing right now?
Samantha (36:19): So I will give a shout out to two different companies. So I think Kyle Coleman at Clari, if I'm sure some of you guys listening know him he, I think has done such a tremendous job of using the LinkedIn platform, building awareness, but the entire Clari team really is on LinkedIn. You see their presence as a whole consistently, they've really mastered it. The other thing that I would say is for the team at Sales Assembly. So this is a company out of Chicago. I'm lucky enough to be on their board of advisors and not only do they use LinkedIn to educate sales reps and leaders about what should be done properly in the market, but I've noticed a trend with them. I actually don't know if this is a fact, but I've noticed a trend where they're really using their voices for the power of promoting other people and finding, you know, really not just, you know, commercial that saying like this isn't really impactful tool. Right. And helping get the word out. So to that together, collectively, those two companies are really on LinkedIn then and on their game.
Kathleen (37:18): Those are great examples. I can't wait to go dig into those a little bit more. Second question is the marketers that listen to this podcast and many of the ones I know in real life, I think one of the biggest challenges I hear them express pretty frequently is that the world of digital marketing is changing so quickly. You know, just when you feel like you've mastered something, the platform changes the algorithm or the rules of the game. So how do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated?
Samantha (37:49): Yeah, I think for me, I met I'm bananas reader. I read as much as I possibly can, but I, when I looked at LinkedIn, obviously I like to just see what's being posted there. I also look at some of the more modern publications and see what are people, what are people promoting on Crunchbase, or people talking about on Revenue Collective? What is it that we can ascertain from platforms like that? Where people who are in the thick of it and constantly marketing and doing different things share. And then the other thing that I would say is, I know it seems like it changes so fast, but I think where I could, if I could guide you in one thing is to really focus on, have I mastered the foundations of the job here that I'm doing, whether it's content marketing demand gen, whenever I find this on the sales side too, that people reached out to me and they're like, what's the hack? And I'm like how are your discovery calls? And they're like our discovery calls. They're like, they're not great, but what's, what's the latest hack. And I'm like, well, let's, let's back go back to the, like the basic principles. So thinking about that too, you know, even from, from your perspective, not thinking about all the latest greatest, but have we really mastered the basics and if not, like what a great place to focus,
Kathleen (38:56): I feel like the equivalent of that is when you're trying to lose weight and know that you should just like eat less and exercise more, but you're like, is there a diet pill that would help me lose 20 pounds really fast?
Samantha (39:05): They just want a better body.
Kathleen (39:11): Well, whoever does invent that magic pill will be a billionaire.
Samantha (39:15): Oh my gosh. I can't imagine.
Kathleen (39:17): But it doesn't exist yet. So. All right. Great. Well there are, sounds like there are a lot of resources on your website. So maybe you could share for people who are listening and want to learn a little bit more about you connect with you online a what is the best way for them to do that and be where can they find all these fantastic resources?
Samantha (39:38): Yeah. So there's so much on my website, Samsales consulting.com. If you want to follow me on LinkedIn, come on, come on over. I post a lot of content there. I will say, you know, the most cost-effective way to get even more out of what's in my head check out our website, the shorts section. So it's under our solutions. We have 18 different shorts, including a masterclass on discovery calls, but there are three, four or five minute videos to teach you all of these hacks and practical things about sales, marketing, LinkedIn, and Navigator. So if you find yourself, you know, getting some kind of objection in sales, you're like, what was not that she said about Navigator again, it's not there. You can sign up. And this prescription is in my humble opinion, super inexpensive. So come over there. We'd, we'd love to see you.
Kathleen (40:22): That's great. I will put links to all of that in the show notes. So as always head over there to check it out and connect with Sam and find all of her great content. But if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, or you learned something new, which I can't imagine you didn't because you have so many good tips. If you're listening and you liked it, please consider heading to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leaving the podcast a review. And if you know someone else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Samantha.
Samantha (40:59): Thanks.
Influencer marketing is a hot topic amongst marketers, but what does it take to structure an influencer marketing program that will drive real results?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Fancy.com Director of Marketing Abbey Schoenberg shares her approach to building influencer marketing programs that drive double digit results for brands like Oakley, Contiki and Fancy.
Fancy.com is the world's best social commerce platform, connecting over 10M users directly to the most unique creators available.
From launching new stores and product lines at Forever 21 to leading the global digital brand team at Oakley, to driving a direct-to-consumer shift and refocus to brand-building at Contiki, Abbey is an expert in B2B and B2C marketing.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to learn exactly how Abbey has used influencer marketing to drive brand awareness and pipeline.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit Fancy.com
- Connect with Abbey on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and today my guest is Abbey Schoenberg, who is the Director of Marketing at Fancy.com. Welcome to the podcast, Abbey.
Abbey (00:23): Hi, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here.
Kathleen (00:26): Tell me a little bit about Fancy.com and your background and what you do there.
Abbey (00:33): Yeah, amazing. So I've been with Fancy for about seven months. So I'm relatively new to the Fancy team, but it's been an exciting seven months with a lot of change and progress for what we're working on within the organization. So for those of you that don't know, Fancy is an online marketplace we source and curate interesting and unique brands from around the world. We bet each of them to make sure that there's a high level of quality and, you know, innovation to the products that we put on our website, which I think gives it a little extra level of curation. And we basically bring together an audience that is interested in those types of products. So you can find anything from home decor, to kitchen essentials, to face oils and new footwear and different things like that.
Abbey (01:18): So we have a really wide selection of products on, on the sites but they all kind of have this underlying quality of something, just a little more unique in inherent quality. So that's a little bit about Fancy. As I mentioned, I've been there for about seven months. My, my history has been kind of in multi-industry I've been in travel, like been in retail. I've been in other e-commerce brands, I've been in sports. So I've, I've kind of moved a interesting path through my career but always very focused on direct consumer, always very focused on consumer marketing building brands and, you know, both in the traditional and the digital spaces. So from forever 21 to Oakley, to Contiki, it's kind of been an interesting path for myself. And now landing in a kind of true e-commerce marketplace space, which has been such an incredible journey.
Kathleen (02:08): Yeah. I love that. And I love Fancy sounds like a great site. I now want to go online and go shopping. I mean, it's, it's sort of solving a pain point because it is hard to, I feel like it's hard to find really interesting unique products and I like the fact that you sourced them from all different places.
Abbey (02:26): Yeah. And you know, I think with the surge of direct to consumer, there's so much option and you don't really know what to trust when you get served a million ads on Instagram or a billion ads in on Facebook, or, you know, you're just unsure of what you're getting. I think we're trying to solve a bit of a problem by sourcing all of those and bringing them into the platform, but then still giving you the assurance that a big brand is sitting behind it. So, you know, you can return it if it doesn't work or, you know, you're going to get it shifted. It's going to arrive, which is sometimes questionable when you buy some at a funky step off.
Kathleen (02:55): Yeah. Or if it's even going to look like what you saw in the picture, because there's how many stories of dresses. I feel like dresses are a particularly egregious area in e-commerce where it looks fantastic of the picture and it costs $29 and it shows up and it's like, nothing. Like what you saw online.
Abbey (03:12): It was a huge victim of that. I had seen the dress millions of times. I was like, I'm just going to do it. I'm going to pull the trigger. It took, took like three months to get to me. And then I pulled it out of the bag and it was like a miniature. So I was like, I'm not going to try to return it.
Kathleen (03:25): I actually have a funny story about this. I'll digress for a second. So my son turned 14 in the fall and my parents were getting him a present. And my dad saw he was targeted on Facebook with an ad. And it was an ad. You may have even seen it because it was funny. When he told me about it, I was like, I saw that ad too. It was an ad for this like circular shaped rug. And the rug makes it look like, like you're spiraling down a black hole and he was all excited. He's like, I think, I think he's really gonna like this. He ordered it first. He ordered it and then it never came. So then he called the company and he's like, I want to cancel my order. It never came, but you charged me for it. And they were like, no, no, no. Okay. We'll resend it. So they resend it. He gets to him. And what looked like a five by eight rug or like a big rug on, on Facebook turns out to be this little two foot by two foot. And it's not even a rug. It's like a foam pad.
Abbey (04:21): It was so funny.
Kathleen (04:21): We actually, like, we had so much fun taking pictures of my son holding this little foam pad that was supposed to be a giant rug and like pretending to get sucked into the black hole because it was just so absurd. Anyway, that is my that is my Facebook ad targeting misleading product story. Yes. but I, but I'm digressing. So you guys you're, you are responsible for marketing. And one of the things that you guys have done is use ambassadors to help with your marketing. And I think this is something that you hear marketers talk about a lot. And I think there's a lot of interest in it, but not a lot of marketers have been able to do it successfully. And so I'm really interested for you to kind of break down exactly what your ambassador program looks like and what you think it takes to build a successful one.
Abbey (05:10): Yeah, of course. We're working on our ambassador program right now for Fancy. Having only been there for a few months, but I've pulled together ambassador programs at two of my other roles pretty successfully. So we've built a woman's ambassador program while I was at Oakley. And then we built a travel ambassador program while I was at Contiki. And, you know, I think when going into how we start to roll with ambassadors, I think the most important thing is you have to look at them slightly different than you would look at an influencer relationship. And you have to look at them in the way of how they engage with the community in general, not just online or socially, but how they kind of participate in, have an organic and authentic relationship with their audience. And I think that's the biggest hiccup that I've, you know, fallen into for sure. But then how do you kind of move and start to build a program of people that are really going to be advocates for the brand are really going to be behind. It are going to do, you know, do their best to shine you in a, in a good light, but also be really authentic to their audience. And I think that that's the biggest hurdle that you have to work towards when you're working on these ambassador programs.
Kathleen (06:17): Now you mentioned you, I'm really glad that you started the way you did because you mentioned influencers and then ambassadors, and there is a difference between the two. So can you kind of explain how you see the differences?
Abbey (06:28): Yeah, I look at, so sometimes I look at influencers as a speeding pool into an ambassador. So I look at an influencer is someone that I'm going to test things out with someone that has strong reach someone who has, you know, on the surface level shows engagement within, you know, whatever channel you're running with them, whether it's YouTube or Instagram or Facebook, or, you know, some other realm, which, you know, there is a million ways that you can engage with influencers. And then I think the next step is taking them towards more of an advocacy role, which is where I point ambassadors. And that's something where you are building a mutual benefit between both where you're building a relationship. That's not just post this for this. It's about bringing them into the fold and really having them involved in the progress and the process of how we communicate the brand to their audience and what we want to focus on with their audience.
Abbey (07:15): And how do we bring them into the fold, even just beyond posting, like how are we bringing them into product development? How are we bringing them into the feedback loops within the organization? So the way I look at it, as, you know, influencers tend to fall for me in a little bit more of a pay to play the testing realm, like which type of influencers are going to do well for this particular brand or this particular product. And then using that as kind of the pool to seed into an ambassador program, that's really built to be an extension of the brand family. If that makes sense.
Kathleen (07:45): Yeah, that does. So, so you say you're building out a new program now and you've done this a couple of times before, so I would love, I have a feeling, many of the people listening, haven't done it. And I like that you're kind of in the thick of it. So can you talk through like your mental and strategic process of like, okay, I know I want to do this. How do you start to put some meat on the bones there?
Abbey (08:06): Yeah, I mean, I think the very, very first thing I do in any program I'm putting together is think about the value proposition. So what am I going to ask these individuals to do for me on a regular basis and what am I going to do for them? And I think that's going to help you set up how you recruit what that process looks like. What are you looking for them from a monthly or quarterly perspective to help you get the plan together? Because I think where a lot of companies fall is they think, you know, okay, well, I'm just going to put a contract together, pay them a thousand dollars a quarter and expect them to do 10 posts. That's fine. Like there that I put that a little bit more in an influencer bucket, but I think if you really want to build these relationships, you have to have this broader value proposition.
Abbey (08:45): So right now, obviously what we're looking at is, you know, how do we bring them in and have them part of product sourcing? How do we bring them in and have them part of product testing? Like, do we build those different funnels and streams so that when they're talking to their audiences and advocate for the brand, they can do it really authentically and say like, I've tried this. I was part of this process. I believe in this because I understand why they're doing it versus here's a brief of messaging. Can you please take this out and try to explore it with your follower, your base to see if it resonates? So I think that's always where I start and every I'll take that back. Probably the first ambassador program I did not start there. I learned second I've started in that kind of process of how am I going to make this as mutually beneficial, beneficial to each of us within and outside of kind of the financials right within like, how are they going to get paid? How are we going to make this like monetarily worth it for them, but also how am I going to make them feel like I care about them as part of this team and part of this family. So I think that's always where I start.
Kathleen (09:49): So now you've done this before and you said sometimes one, one time, your first time you didn't do it that way, but subsequently you've done it. And you've used that approach. Are you able to share any examples of like from your previous companies of how you've put together those relationships so that they are win-win and they really work?
Abbey (10:05): Yeah, I think you have to. So I'll kind of talk about the Contiki one that I put together just because it's a bit was a bit more flushed through and we activated for a bit, a bit longer term on it. I think we, you, there's a point where you, you know, think about the value proposition in general saying, okay, I want to be able to provide additional ad hoc opportunities for them to travel. I want them to be able to earn free travel. I want them to be able to participate in product brainstorming and so kind of setting those up. And then as we started to get influencers in, we started to identify which ones would fit well into which pocket, if that makes sense. It doesn't mean you have to have each influencer ambassador doing each of those things. It's about how you kind of navigate each of their different roles.
Abbey (10:47): So for one example, we had a girl, her name was Patricia and she was just a great talker on camera. She just knew what to say. She was very eloquent, were like, we can really use her in, you know, having a more real and human person, explain these trips and explain this in a real, more authentic level, versus having someone on staff who's a bit more robotic or really what we never want it to go down and do was hire outside individuals who potentially had never traveled on the trips. So we're like, let's take her and let's get her into the mix on, you know, doing some testimonials, asking her questions, letting others, ask her questions and having her feedback to them. So I think that that a bit of is about, you know, defining who these ambassadors are defining the different kind of tiers and levels that the ambassadors will roll into, whether it's okay.
Abbey (11:37): I want a couple of photographers. I want, you know, a couple of really strong spokespeople. I want a few on YouTube. I want someone that's, you know, really crafty and then starting to build each of their paths independently. It's a lot of work. I will say that it does take bandwidth to manage these types of programs. And I've been lucky to have, you know, individuals and teams that have been able to focus on them a bit, always within a shared goal. But I think it's starting to one understand, okay, here are the pillars of the values that I want to be able to provide back and continue with the perfect example of like, let me find ways to get these kids that love to travel, to travel more. And that was a huge motivator for them. But then for me, making sure that I had a business objective to tidy each of those travel opportunities, whether it was sending someone to Italy for testimonial or sending someone, you know, to be a spokesperson for us with the tourism board or doing different things, just so that they had opportunities based off their own skills and strengths.
Abbey (12:33): And I think that that's important when you think, okay, I started with this influencer program and now I've gotten to know these individuals and I know the strengths before you start to move them into this ambassadorship.
Kathleen (12:44): So now I have a ton of questions. Okay. My, yeah, my first one is I like how you broke that down, because you talked about like, in your Contiki example, having some people who are strong on YouTube, having somebody photographers, et cetera. So like, let's say you do identify these different categories of people that you're looking to pull in. How do you then go find the actual individuals? Like what's that research process look like?
Abbey (13:10): Yeah. So a bit of it, it's kind of been twofold in a lot of scenarios, so there's some of it that we'll source directly. So if I know, I want to make sure I have one, you know, videographer that has a strong YouTube channel. I'll probably go and try to source that myself and start to have those conversations. But I've also used the power of media to just basically help with calls to action. So having other ambassadors make recommendations for new ambassadors, having a kind of ongoing campaign that says, Hey, are you interested in joining this program? And then having an evaluation process for getting people on board to it? I think that there is this daunting feeling that every single person you bring in, you have to go out and source or use an agency to go find these, these influencers that have value and credibility, but you would be surprised on how much people are willing to come to you.
Abbey (13:58): And on occasion, I feel like the people that are coming to you directly have a little more enthusiastic about the brand to start with. So in, I would say both my Oakley and Contiki experiences, we actually put a call to action out to our audience. So people that were already friends of the brand who had already purchased the product, who knew about us, you'll be surprised with how many influencers actually probably sit within your own database. So we start there and then, you know, we start posting about it on social. We see who can come to us and we have application processes and forms you fill out so we can understand how you fit into the mix so we can make sure, Hey, we're looking for five new tubers. Let's filter by anyone that submitted that said they have a YouTube channel and that doesn't always work. And sometimes you're always going to have to go out and find and fill the gaps in the holes by sourcing yourself, which does take time and can be exhausting. But at the same time, it can you balance out that work a little bit by just saying, Hey, if you're interested in joining this, come join it with us and taking the time to evaluate it. Then on Hulu, the submissions come from on the back end.
Kathleen (15:01): And that evaluation what are the, what's the criteria you're using? Are you just looking at like audience size? It sounds like with your Contiki girl, it was also just her presence. What, what, what are the factors that play into who you choose?
Abbey (15:12): So a big thing I have always focused on with our ambassador programs has been some connection to a community. So I don't, I'm not a big fan of you have to have over 50,000 followers. I don't necessarily think that makes you the strongest ambassador. What I care about is that you have some authentic connection. So, you know, one thing we found, particularly at Contiki and at Oakley was okay, this person has 10,000 followers or 5,000 followers. We try to stick to the 10,000. So we get the swipe up on Instagram, but if we have something, someone that's a little lower, but they come out and say, Hey, I'm involved in Greek life. I play sports. I am belong to these clubs. I'm very engaged in this type of community. We've found that we can take some of that engagement even offline and see better success with someone who has an authentic tie to a community pool versus just worrying so much about the number.
Abbey (16:04): So that's always been something I keep in the back of my head and something I've always ingrained in my team is don't get obsessed with the count, look and read about their profile, read about how they're engaging, what community they participate in. Do they have an outlet even outside of their social channel? And it was interesting and I'll use Contiki. It's just the most fresh, probably while I'm talking about it. The most an example of that was we had a student that was, you know, decent following probably 15,000 followers. So, you know, would fall into the kind of that micro nano influencer space, but she was really active on her, on her campus community. And she was our best seller because her audience trusted her for audience knew her. So she had this big audience because they were people who knew her from school or knew her from around, not just these random people that started to follow her. So her trust level was higher. So we saw her outperform individuals with hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers. So I think that that's always been a criteria that we've put a lot of pressure on is how were they participating in what authentic community do they belong to? Because you can get really lost in the numbers. And sometimes it's just not going to translate,
Kathleen (17:14): Do you ever work with somebody for whom it's their first time participating in a program like this? And, and if you do, I would guess that there's some education and training that you need to do for them as to like how to do it. I don't know. I mean, do you, or do you not just come naturally to them?
Abbey (17:32): No, it doesn't come naturally to them. We, I would say in every program there's has always been someone that's relatively new. That's maybe done a poster too for a brand or, you know, participated at a really small level, but has not necessarily had like a contractor, a longterm relationship with, with the partner training is critical and in both, in all kinds of three scenarios and what we're setting up for Fancy now as well, there is a physical and in-person training exercise that we do with these ambassadors. So, you know, continue, it was very easy because travel was our things to bring people together to travel was very simple. But you know, in, at Oakley, we just had a weekend where we brought everyone together, they got to inter mix and mingle. They met the team, which I think is really, really important to put a face to the team, managing the program.
Abbey (18:17): Cause once you start to show your real person and see that they're a real person, the communication improves but all of those are a hundred percent focused on brand education. What we expect, how you can engage, you know, what to talk about, even how to engage with the others within the community, which has been a really interesting benefit of some of these programs and seeing friendships foster between our ambassadors. So then they start chatting about the brand between, between different influencers ambassadors. And you just start to see this rub up in this really organic relationship forum, but training, I think, expecting someone to just kind of come in and read a pamphlet or know what to do, just because you kind of stamp them as an ambassador is, is unlikely. I think the training access is definitely a critical piece of it and something that should be part of that initial kind of value proposition planning at the beginning of, you know, what could benefit can I give this individual app start even it's this opportunity to come and talk with other people in the program, talk with staff, like meet product developers. And even if it's just bringing them to your headquarters for, you know, two days or a day, depending on if you localize or you want to work a little bit more nationally, but I think that's a really critical piece and it was a great question.
Kathleen (19:25): Are you still going to be able to do in person training with the world that we currently live in? Or do you have a plan B?
Abbey (19:31): We have a plan B. I mean, I think there's virtual training. I think there's kind of the carrot that will always dangle in the sense that we'll want to get back to in-person training and have that opportunity to meet face to face. But we won't necessarily stall the program because we can't necessarily can't have that in-person event or in-person experience. So I think we were optimistic for one we're planning to kind of get things off the ground at Fancy for kind of a opportunity for in-person obviously we'll stay domestic. It's not going to be this fun travel experience, like something like we did at Contiki. But I think that in the meantime, brands can still make a lot of progress by hosting something fun and interactive. I think what you want to make sure to do is again, think about these individuals. They're excited. They're wanting to join to not make things so stale and to figure out a way to make things engaging and fun in a zoom experience, whether that's sending them a box to, you know, unwrap like live on the call or whether that's bringing on someone into the, the meeting that has some sort of influence whether it's, you know, your CEO or if you have endorsers for the brand that have some sort of, you know, equity or clout within the community, bringing them, those people in just to give it something.
Abbey (20:43): So they don't feel like they're on, you know, a work onboarding call to, to say the least.
Kathleen (20:48): Now once you've, once you've identified your people, obviously you talked earlier about how there's the whole contractual aspect of this there's what are you going to give me and what are you going to get for it? Are there Stan, like norms or standards that you use to determine, you know, like I don't even know. I know in the influencer world, there's a lot of standards. Like if you have this many followers, then, you know, there's, this is probably what we'll pay you and how does it work in the ambassador world?
Abbey (21:16): So I think the ambassadors, the way we look at it as in the ambassador spaces, we obviously have additional benefits. So there's, you know, perks and rewards for completing a task or being a part of the program. So whether that's, you know, dislike lifetime, lifetime discounts or commission kickbacks on anything that you sell or, you know, once you hit a certain threshold, the opportunity to earn something I think is ways that we supplement some of that, that program. And I think we also have, I've always added in like an annual kind of get together that always has incentivizing, like stay engaged, continue to post, like, make sure you're participating in this program. Then you can join, you know, maybe the next class, that code ambassadors that comes in and join us on this, you know, fun onboarding experience, whether that be that weekend a week or whatever you do.
Abbey (22:02): So I've always tried to handle kind of a little non-monetary carrots to keep the motivated and in a way that they are no, it's something fun. That's coming down the pipeline. Do we pay them for sure. We pay them via commission. We will usually contractually pay certain people that you know, are doing a little bit more heavy production for us. So in the YouTube space, or if we're asking videographers and photographers to come in and do work for us, we obviously pay them. You know, we're not going to ask them to do their craft for free. So it also opens up those doors of like, Hey, this is also an opportunity for you to continue to expand where you are and where you're going. Those are things that we don't necessarily put in the contract, the rewards and travel perks and those types of things are.
Abbey (22:46): But I think the big difference is it's always crafted in a way that says the more you engage, the more you're going to get, but we're not necessarily going to pay you for every engagement you for a minimum, we'll pay you, you know, 500 bucks to do a minimum amount of postings. But if you do the more you do the more you're going to get out of this. And again, it's just that mutual benefit. So they see like, Hey, I went above and beyond. And it actually was worthwhile for me versus I went above and beyond and they still just pay me what they paid me.
Kathleen (23:14): Now, you mentioned paying, in some cases, paying people, a commission based on sales, that they are able to help generate. How do you track that?
Abbey (23:23): So Fancy, we track it with an affiliate link. So it's just a system that we've built internally with our developers. Contiki. We did it through a promo code Oakley, since it was so long ago, it was a little bit, a little funky. So I won't use that one as an example, but I would say promo codes or affiliate links has been the best way for us to do it. I know there's other, that we've looked into this for management, like, you know, brand ambassador or brand ambassador app that, you know, have different ways of monitoring and tracking performance even beyond just a sales level. So those are things that we're looking at bringing on board for Fancy in addition, just because we obviously want to continue to reward at a higher level for, you know, posting or social engagements and things like that.
Abbey (24:07): So there are different apps and partners that you can bring in to help you track it. The promo code is maybe not the methodology you want to go down, which is fair. I've definitely been part of companies that don't want to discount and then affiliate links. Some people can do it, some people can, but I think that there are other tools and I kind of just mentioned two companies that we've looked into that I think are really interesting in this space that really do help with the tracking and the evaluation of like success in your programs that can help you progressed and, and keep people incentivized.
Kathleen (24:38): So I have a, I have a, kind of a selfish question. This is, this is me doing research for my day job. If you use promo codes, how do you know when somebody converts on that code that it's not coming from Honey or CapitalOne Shopping, or one of these other extensions that scrapes and injects codes.
Abbey (25:01): So we tend to change our promo codes. We tend to change quarterly just to make sure we keep track of those types of things that we also always had an affiliate partner, which helps us kind of identify some of that promo code leakage that we want to make sure we stay on top of it and monitor and do those types of things. And there's also really interesting opportunities where our ambassadors have gotten smart. We had one ambassador who was super, super integrated into Reddit. So he got into a travel forum and said, Hey, if you want to travel to use my code, like, and we saw sales from it. And I was actually really happy about that because it would have been sales that we wouldn't have gotten if he didn't see it out and kind of let his code leak beyond just like a friends and family thing, affiliate, obviously you, you don't necessarily want the scraping happening. So you're getting like misleading information, right? Exactly. But we're not necessarily against our ambassadors, finding ways to mass promote their promos. But I think that that's, you know, incentivizes them where we don't penalize. Like, Hey, you found a really interesting way. You were able to get our brand into Reddit in a really authentic way with that community being very, very suspect of brands being participants.
Kathleen (26:06): Yes, it's a land, it's a land field landmine field, a field of landmines.
Abbey (26:11): Landlines, for sure. So finding a way that we were able to kind of get ourselves authentically and there, we were really proud of him for doing that. And we, you know, rewarded him and use, you know, let others know like, Hey, this is something guidance name was Archie. He's doing, and he's seeing success success with it. So feel free to like find these interesting opportunities. But I think when you have an affiliate partner, we obviously share codes with them that we do not want ending up on, on our affiliate networks. We keep an eye on, you know, usage, obviously if someone's cadencing five orders a week, and then all of a sudden they're at 50 orders a week. We've flagged that. And we're like, okay, something's happening here? And we'll start to dig into it. But generally we just try to change their promo codes as frequently as we can. So usually quarterly is what we do. Some people prefer not to go down those paths because they connect them to old YouTube videos and they want obviously the views to continue to rack up. And they know that there's residual and they don't want to constantly be changing. So we do make exceptions in certain situations where we try to keep them on long-term and then just monitor. So it is a risk. There's, it's just how much you're willing to take that risk. And I guess the level of discount you're offering.
Kathleen (27:14): Yeah. That makes sense. All right. So shifting gears. You've done this a couple of times. Can you talk me through just impact, like, you know, obviously that's at the end of the day, what all of my listeners as marketers care about, like what impact does this have on the business? I would love to hear some, some stories that from your experience.
Abbey (27:34): Yeah. I mean, I'll start, you know, back at, back in the Oakley days we launched the ambassador program as part of the launch for kind of our women's branding campaign. So we always had some women's product, but it's such a masculine brand. It's known for men's product. We were really having a hard time breakthrough. And so the theory and the, and the logic was like, well, let's get women who other women athlete connect with and get them to talk about Oakley and see if we can get some, some traction there. And, you know, this one was a little bit harder because we didn't have as much kind of direct attribution tools set up to our ambassador program. But that year that we did this really focus campaign and we continued the campaign for years until I left and kind of has trickled out since then and moved into more sports marketing relationships.
Abbey (28:20): But we saw double digit growth. And I think we attribute a lot of that to authentic representation of our products, people seeing other women that they respect and care about wearing the products. So we definitely saw some really good traction, I will say there was a conjunction with media and spend and things like that that, you know, also helped, but we were very surprised by the volume of increased during that period that we saw from a sales perspective, Contiki was much more direct. By the time I left Contiki, when we were still, obviously the program is still running, it was accounting for about 10% of all of our sales and all of our revenue which was really impressive for us because we've been, you know, we had never had the program before. It was literally in market for a year before it took that type of share, like that type of share from our other channels.
Abbey (29:10): And it was net new. It was, you know, generally new customers coming in yet. Occasionally you'd see a repeat, but generally it was all new travelers for the brand. We also saw, even with the commissions, we were paying out and with the Burkes and benefits, we were kind of paying it at the end of the pay I'm air, quoting a look can see that, but we were paying the, the ambassadors, a smaller commission than we were paying our travel agents. And they were generating more sales at this point than a travel agent community. So the Contiki one was a major success story. I think it was one that we launched it in the U S which was a team I oversaw from a marketing perspective. And as unfortunately COVID has taken quite the random.
Kathleen (29:54): I was going to say that industry has been hit so hard.
Abbey (29:57): So hard. So kind of during those right before kind of all of that kind of hit the fan, we were starting to roll it out globally as well because of its success. So it was a program that I would say had upfront costs. Of course, I think, you know, between travel and building incentives and any contractual agreements, there was upfront costs, but it was at the end of the day, it ended up being our lowest CPA channel, even calculating all of those upfront costs into it being a major revenue source for us. When we think about the mix of where our sales was coming from, improving that these ambassadors in this kind of social seller was, you know, could compete with the traditional sales person could compete with the traditional sales channel. And I think that was really eye opening because the travel industry can, in some of those respects be very, very traditional.
Kathleen (30:43): Yeah. That's so true. So what advice would you have for somebody who's kind of starting now, or like knowing what, you know, what would you do differently?
Abbey (30:55): You know, what would I do differently? I think start small. I think there is an under people under estimate the importance of the relationship that you have with the ambassadors. And I think trying to jump in and do too many at once. You're never going to create that relationship. And I've been very lucky in the sense that I have, you know, the women that I worked with for the Oakley women's campaign and the Contiki ambassadors I've worked for for travel that I've created relationships with. And I'm pulling some of the really good ones into, into the Fancy program because I've built those connections in those relationships. But if you try to jump too far and say, I'm going to immediately be with 50, unless you have a team of five, that's going to kind of divide and conquer management and relationship handling. You're just going to end up in a kind of hamster wheel of kind of attrition of the ambassadors.
Abbey (31:43): You're not going to see the relationships build, and it's going to be really hard to start to understand the value. Each of them will want out of the program to build something that eventually you can scale, but those learnings you get from some of those initial people you bring into the program are really, really powerful. So I would say that's probably the biggest learning is I think that there is especially from management and I get it all the time. Like, well, if you think you can do this with 10, why don't we just do 50? And that's always a hard, you know, when they're throwing extra money at it and they're saying we can do it, but I think unless you have the team to manage and relationship build with these influencers and these, I call them influencers at the beginning, they eventually their role to the masters as I mentioned. But I think the relationship part is probably the most important piece of making sure you have the bandwidth and you have the resource to communicate, talk to them and build it, versus just having them as you know, someone that sits in a contract that you talk to a month. Yeah.
Kathleen (32:40): That's good advice. It's funny listening to you talk about like somebody saying, well, why don't you just get 10 more? And it makes me think of, I was having a conversation earlier today and I had to laugh because it was, it was an analogous conversation. And somebody that I know said, it's like saying, you know, nine women could make a baby in a month. It doesn't add up. Right. You know, like you still need the there's more effort required. I just thought that was so funny. I'd never heard that phrase before. And I'm like, yeah, that's true.
Abbey (33:11): It's very true. And I think that there's, I think we live in such a digital world where you feel like, okay, you throw more budget at it and you scale, and it's really easy and it's in a dashboard and you just watch it. And it feels simple. But I think that ambassador programs need to bridge that digital and traditional relationship in the sense that you have to scale really thoughtfully, if you want it to be successful. If you start to throw money at the problem and outsource and do all of these different things, I think you're, you're just going to have a disconnect between the company and the individual. And that's where you start to feel where the relationship doesn't feel. It's authentic when they're talking about it. Yeah.
Kathleen (33:50): That makes sense. Well, so interesting. I could talk to you about this forever, but we're going to run out of time. I'm going to shift gears and there are two questions that I always ask all my guests. And I'm curious to know what you have to say the first is we always talk about inbound marketing on this podcast. And so is there a particular company or individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park when it comes to inbound marketing right now?
Abbey (34:14): Yeah. so one, and I think one that I always use as an influence for myself and the way I structure my team is Goop. I think it's, you know, Gwyneth Paltrow's skincare brand, but she's built this organization that pulls people in based off of like her expertise and her knowledge and her content. And she's not afraid to talk about other complimentary products that, you know, I think she now sells on her site, but she does give you a really kind of holistic view of her industry when she talks about when they goop the company, talk about the product. So I think what I think, and they're one that inspires me, I'm trying to, you know, take a little group inspiration. We're, we're working on some editorial things at Fancy as well, and, and taking the success that they've seen from bridging those two worlds really, really well.
Abbey (35:02): I think that that's a company I think does outstanding. Just because it feels very, they feel very user first, I would say, in, in the way that they execute their marketing and how they really kind of pull you in through content and pull you in through storytelling and pull you in through kind of their knowledge of the industry. And you just, you land there and you just trust it inherently, right. Because you feel like you're not getting a full of crap. Right. so I think they do really, really well. I also think Fabletics does, does a really good job because I think they do a really good job letting other people tell their stories for them. Obviously you have the benefit of Kate Hudson running the company, but I think they do give a really good voice to a community of women to talk about the brand. And I think that's a really powerful thing. I think not everything needs to come from the brand itself, but how do you get the, I think it ties back to the influencer and ambassador kind of model of how do you get people to speak on your behalf in an authentic way to a community that's connected to them. And I think they've done a really good job with that.
Kathleen (36:09): I'm not as, I mean, I know Fabletics, but I'm not as familiar with their marketing, but I have to say I I've given a talk a couple of times at conferences about, and I've mentioned goop in it because I think they were brilliant in the sense that really it's, it's a media brand more so than it is a product company, but it has become a product company because the media brand has been so successful in building an audience and loyalty. And what I always say in my talk is like, they could literally introduce any product and their audience would buy it because as you said, people trust them and love it. And some of the crazy products and, and, and then I always sort of say, just Google Jade egg, because they charge a lot of money for this round Jade sphere. And I'm not going to say what it does on this podcast, but you know, it's, it's fascinating to me.
Abbey (36:58): Yeah. It's I, they do. They're huge inspiration for like the way I'm looking at structuring some of the things that at Fancy and I I'm with you in the sense that they've, they've done a really good job kind of keeping church and state and blending church and state between editorial and product in a really interesting way. And it's, it's really inspiring, I would say as a marketer to see how they accomplish that.
Kathleen (37:22): For sure. I totally agree with you. I feel the same way about Magnolia, Chip and Joanna Gaines. This company, it's like the loyalty people. They could start any new business and people would run out and buy whatever they're selling.
Abbey (37:35): It could look hideous, but Joanna stamped it.
Kathleen (37:37): Exactly. It's nuts. I give all of them a ton of credit for what they've built. All right. So that brings us to the end. And before we wrap up, I want to make sure I ask you if somebody is listening and they want to learn more about Fancy, or if they have a question about what you've talked about and they want to connect with you online, what is the best way for them to do that?
Abbey (38:00): From a, from a marketing perspective, I would say LinkedIn. I'm pretty active and responsive on LinkedIn. I, you know, love that channel it's place. I do kind of my market research. So it's Abbey Schoenberg. You can see my name in there. You can find me pretty easily. It's not a common name. So LinkedIn is probably the best place to connect.
Kathleen (38:20): Great. And I will put that link in the show notes. So had there, if you want to find Abbey and if you're listening and you enjoyed what you heard, or you learned something new, please consider going to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leaving the podcast a review. And if you know somebody else doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thanks so much for joining me.
Abbey (38:45): Thank you for having me. It was super fun to chat.
Personal branding can be a powerful way to grow your executive career AND your business, but creating content at the scale necessary to see results can be challenging.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Influence Podium founder Marti Sanchez talks about why it's important for executives to invest in building their personal brands, and how to overcome the "but I'm too busy to create content" challenge.
Marti's agency works with countless executives on content creation, and he's boiled his process down to a simple, streamlined set of steps that require minimal time from his executive clients while getting maximum results.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to learn more about Marti's process, and how you can apply to building your own personal brand.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit InfluencePodium.com
- Connect with Marti on LinkedIn
- Follow Marti on Twitter
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Marti Sanchez, who is the founder and CEO of Influence Podium. Welcome to the podcast, Marti.
Marti (00:21): Thank you so much for having me.
Kathleen (00:23): I am super excited to have you here. You're my first guest who hails originally from Spain and particularly from parts of Spain that I've spent some time in. And so that's just an aside, but that makes me really happy.
Marti (00:38): You had a big connection there. I'm very, very excited to be here.
Kathleen (00:42): Before we dig into our topic, tell my audience a little bit about yourself and your story and how you came to be doing what you're doing now, and specifically what Influence Podium is.
Marti (00:54): Absolutely. So long story short, I was born in Boone, North Carolina, but my parents are from Spain. So we moved back to my home country when I was about six months old. So all I got was the passport. I don't remember much else, but that passport there allowed me to come back when I was 17 to the United States to play college basketball. Since then it's been a lot of back and forth between the United States and Spain. When I was 21, I had just graduated. I was looking for a job back home in Spain, but unemployment was very high and there was no jobs available. So I kind of went back to what I knew how to do, which was writing. Back in college, I would ghost write my classmates' papers for them for $10 a page under the table, just to make some cash for, to get some groceries.
Marti (01:39): So I started ghost writing online. I wrote on Quora, which is a QA platform, every day for about six months. I got two to 3 million views in that period of time. And then some people started reaching out to me if I could go straight to them. I just, people ended up being B2B CEOs. And that's where I first started learning about personal branding and inbound and content marketing without even knowing what those stamps actually meant. Eventually my career as a freelance writer went pretty well, but it was short. We started getting a few clients and it turned into an agency and that's where Influence Podium was born. Since then, we've helped over 25 B2B CEOs grow their personal brands, create content, scale, and drive inbound opportunities for their companies. And it all really started by writing papers for my classmates.
Kathleen (02:25): I love it. I love sort of like necessity is the mother of invention. And I love that you just stumbled into writing and were kind of doing inbound marketing without even knowing it.
Marti (02:36): Yeah, I didn't, I mean, I started business and, and I had an MBA, but I didn't really know what anything of that or that meant it didn't really get much of that. So eventually it was a lot of trial and error and I stumbled into it. It was fun. But looking back, it all circled back together.
Kathleen (02:53): Yeah. Now it's interesting because B2B content is something we've talked a lot about on this podcast. We've talked a lot about personal branding and why it is so important for particularly executives to build strong personal brands. You know, that's a topic that I love talking about. I believe in it strongly, it's something I practiced for myself. And recently I've had several guests on to talk about it, but I feel like the challenge with that though, I think a lot of people get why they should do it. But I think the challenge they run into is, is the, how, like, it's sort of like saying you should exercise every day and then you're like, yes, I should. But how am I going to fit that into my schedule? How am I going to be consistent? I don't have the time, like all those same complaints I've heard, used to describe the process of creating content. And you have somehow come up with a solution that, that really solves for creating content at scale for executives in order to support personal brand building. So that's what I really want to pick apart today.
Marti (04:01): Actually, it's funny that you referenced that example of working out because I find that it's very similar the challenges of somebody trying to work out and somebody trying to create content. The first challenge is I don't know how to do it, right. I don't know what exercise to workout. I don't know how to do this exercise. It's very similar to creating content, right? I don't know how to create content, so it's not for me. Maybe I'm not a great writer or maybe I don't feel very comfortable in, in camera. So that's something that actually relayed a lot. And it's one of the objections that a lot of our clients, which at the beginning when they're talking to us and because like your audience are convinced that this is the right solution for them, but they don't know how to do it.
Marti (04:43): So for us, I think that main challenge is solved by one being very self-aware and really understanding what are your main skills. And if you are a naturally better writer focusing on that, if you're naturally a better speaker focusing in that maybe it's not even on camera video, maybe it's a podcast. And then using that channel of communication that comes more naturally to you and then understanding that it's not going to be perfect at the first time it's going to be perfect or better eventually. So that's one of the challenges that we face a lot with people of like, how do I do this for me personally, I was a good writer and I didn't do any video content for two years or three years. Right. I was self-conscious about my accent. And only now I'm saying to branch out into that, but I still, I stayed very focused on my core skills at the beginning. So that's one of the first times just that we see with people, right? How do I do this? And how do I work out? How do I create concentration?
Kathleen (05:35): Yeah. It makes a ton of sense. And it's really funny that you just said that because I was interviewed for somebody else's podcast earlier today. And one of the questions they asked was you've been podcasting for three and a half years. Like most people don't get past episode five. How have you been so consistent? And my answer was, it starts with knowing yourself and like, I'm a pretty good writer. I can say that like, I am a pretty good writer, but it's, it's, doesn't come as easily to me. Like, it takes me more time. I, you know, it feels like work versus this format. I'm like, I can jump on zoom and talk to somebody for 45 minutes, no problem. And so honestly there's no more secret to it than that. It's just that it's easy. And I know if it's easier and I feel comfortable and it comes naturally to me that I'm going to stick with it. So I think you're spot on.
Marti (06:28): We're all wired differently, right? That you have different things that come naturally to us again, for me, I was a good writer. That's what I did. So 95% of my content during the first two, three years was winning and that's fine. Right. We have to take ourselves out of the comfort zone, but not at the beginning because then it's too easy to give up. If somebody had forced me to the video content at the beginning, I would have been like, I'm not doing this. I'm like, I don't want to hear my accent. I don't want to do all this stuff now that I have the confidence that I've built up after years now. I'm okay doing that. But it's too easy to allow ourselves to expand too quickly, versus just focusing on what we do best at the beginning. And that's something that we recommend all our CEO clients, like, let's be self-aware, let's see, what is your number one skill and then optimize for that double down on it. And then we'll, we'll explain later.
Kathleen (07:18): Do you have a particular process you use to figure out what their number one skill is? Or is it really just a conversation and then you can land on it?
Marti (07:25): I think they're very, it's very easy for people to know, like a lot of them, once we have that initial conversation during our onboarding process, they're able to decide which version they want to go after. Right. Then if we're creating like LinkedIn content or Twitter content, and then we're like look, for us, it's fine to create through video content or written content because the process is very similar. Just tell her what, what, where do you, what side of the equation do you feel more comfortable with? And they're able to know which side is easier for them. So I think at least of the guidance that I've talked to, and obviously I guess it's the person is different, but for us there, it's very quick for them to know which side they're usually more self-aware to the point of like knowing what comes naturally to them versus the, the one who doesn't.
Kathleen (08:17): So once they know what their strong suit is, then what?
Marti (08:21): Yeah. I think that like the other objection that we get, and I think that's what these two objections are, what dictates the whole process is I don't have the time. Right. And just like working out, like I don't have the time to workout. I don't have the time to create content, especially if you're a marketer or you're a salesperson or you're running a company, you have a nine to five job. If you were running the company, you have a lot of fires to crowd, but every position has their own complications and their time consumption. So the key here is how do we optimize so that we can leverage your time, the better so that you don't have to create 20 LinkedIn posts by yourself, or you don't have to create 20 videos every month. Cause nobody's going to do that. Like, I don't want to do it.
Marti (09:05): You probably don't want to do it. It's too much. It's too time consumption. So the key is how do we reverse engineer that time that you have, let's say it's 60 minutes per month into leveraging that into the content creation. So that the whole process for us, it looks like this and I would get tactical and cover the nitty gritty because I think your audience getting tactical. So the key here is we first start by creating a pillar piece of content. And it can be either a podcast interview where they're the host. It can be a podcast interview like me being a guest, or it can be an interview. Or we usually do two interviews of 30 minutes per month with our brand manager by that 60 minutes that they're either speaking on a podcast, hosting a podcast or speaking to a brand manager and that's recorded.
Marti (09:58): And we record the video. We recorded the audio. The next step is, and this is for clients who work with us, but it can be similarly gone with other people and find out cheaper ways to do it is to create a brief. So break down that pillar piece of condom into smaller pieces of content. So for example, after these episodes, district is recorded that we're on right now. My team's going to go in and find the best one minute, two minute highlights of our conversation and create either video content or reading content. So what that does is it allows me to create content without me being present. All I had to do was show up here, talk about things that I hopefully know that my team does the rest. If you have a team that can work with us like us, then perfect. If you can hire a freelancer, that's probably cheaper way, but even if you can not hire a team, it's easier to find ways to do clips with software than have to record yourself. 20 more times.
Kathleen (10:58): There's so much software out there now. Like I've, I've been in this game for awhile podcasting. And in that time I've repurposed my podcast, video and audio in different ways. And I've been really amazed in the last like six months to a year at the number of new companies that have popped up to solve for that need of like how to repurpose your video and audio assets. It's awesome. And they're very, user-friendly,
Marti (11:23): It's incredible. And they threatened my business. Why I'm super focused on that. Cause I love that these things are coming out because they would save us a lot of time. And maybe that's another topic, right? AI and, and what to acquire manually. I do think there's still going to be manual in both and needed.
Kathleen (11:44): 100% because like I I've, I've used some of these tools to create things like audio grams and video grams and this sort of thing. But it, you still to know how to go in and capture exactly the right piece, like sends the right message and
Marti (11:59): Know what's good content for people, for an algorithm to know that. But like you said, there's ways to do that. That doesn't require a full team like us. And it sounds contrary that I talk about it, but I want to be super transparent. There's other ways to do that than hiring a team. Like it's going to allow you to create that large piece of content into smaller pieces of content that then you can distribute.
Kathleen (12:24): I understand how that works. If you're talking about a podcast or a video, but are you saying you would do that also with like a written along written piece of pillar content or just with audio?
Marti (12:36): Yeah. So you can do it through different ways. We just found it. It's easier when it's a conversation for 30 minutes to 60 minutes, then repurposing an article. The reason why is because when you start with the pillar being audio or video, it allows you to create it's more versatile. So you can create video content, you can create freedom content, you can do many different stuff with it. When you're repurposing from like, let's say a long form article, then you're limiting yourself to reinforce them, which is still fine, but it doesn't allow you that versatility, that audio and video gives you. So we'd recommend to start with that just because it opens the world for more types of content that you can create from there.
Kathleen (13:20): That makes sense. So you're you create this original piece of longer form content. That's really a conversation then you're breaking it up into little pieces. Talk me through what those little pieces look like.
Marti (13:33): Yeah. So it can be, we find three to four main different types of pieces. The first one can be winning content for LinkedIn Twitter, Quora or written oriented platforms. So if those are Tweets, you can turn the best quotes into Tweets. If you've made a point for about 60 seconds, 90 seconds, that can turn into a LinkedIn post and you can even create long form articles from the main point that you covered during the interview or the podcast. So you can create an SEO strategy, create a LinkedIn and Twitter strategy from that. Option two is to create a video call. So you will be looking for one to two minute tips not more than that and turn them into touch with a title that catches attention, subtitles time bar, and you can post that on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, across all social platforms. Option three is if the podcast is recorded with audio only, you can turn it into audio. So audiograms is an image that is still with the sound wave for the people that are listening. And you're using that as video content, but just audio and finally something that we were assigned to do as well now is design oriented content. So we're doing carousels, Instagram decks for LinkedIn. So things that visually give it more appeal that's a fourth type of content that you can create.
Kathleen (14:59): And when you say carousel, like what does that look like? Is that is that carousels with, I know what a carousel is, but is it like paint like individual images with different words on it? Or is it images? Like how, how do you put that together?
Marti (15:12): Yeah, that's a good question. So basically what Instagram and LinkedIn allowed to do is turn it into like a slide deck, like a PowerPoint presentation, how that looks like usually is you have this initial slide with it, which is the main title that kind of tells you what you're going to see over the next few slides. And then slides two, two, seven, eight are usually the main piece of content. So if we're talking about how to repurpose content, so that's going to be the slides for, I talk about why then I talk about pillars and I talk about content repurposing that distribution. And usually there's a final slide. That's a call to action. So either follow for more visit our website. So I think that leads the reader, the consumer into the next steps. So you can repurpose that from LinkedIn to Instagram, we found that to work really well. And it just a different type of content that it's more time consuming because you don't need a designer and that's not something that comes naturally to me. I have no eye for design, then you have to watch source. But if something, somebody that their main skill of communication, which comes back to what we were talking about before is design. That's something that I would double down on that for now.
Kathleen (16:21): And when you, so you talked about like creating all these repurposed assets and then distributing them on social, are you saying that those would be distributed via the executives, like personal social media accounts or by the company account? Where would you put that?
Marti (16:35): Yeah, that's a great question and something that we get a lot. So I started the company because I believe people trust people and people want to work with people. So we think that the content performs better and resonates more when it comes from the point of view of the CEO or leadership or a person doesn't matter, they don't have to be an executive or a founder. Each person has their own personal brand. So my opinion is always, the posts should be posted from the company, from the personal profile, from the individual that said, if you want to maximize the value that you're getting for your content, I always agree that you should, reshared it from your company standpoint as well. So if your CEO talks about XYZ, then you can re share that on the LinkedIn page or the Twitter page or whatever that looks like the company profile to reach a different audience that you built. And say, this is our founder talking about XYZ, and this is why we think matters. So you're getting two for one, but I always recommend that the first wave of posting comes from the, the person from the CEO. We just found from our data to be usually over 300% better reach men, 2.5 more inbound leads coming in through when it supports the personal profile. So our numbers back back that idea.
Kathleen (17:59): Yeah. That makes sense. And then once that initial piece of content is created, do you then kind of establish a rhythm for future content pieces? How do you handle that?
Marti (18:10): Yeah, so we usually work on a monthly basis, so we have a monthly deliverables. So if we're talking LinkedIn, if we're talking Twitter, if we're talking long form content, and then we have one or two pillar pieces of content every month, so it's either one podcast or two podcasts whatever that looks like. And then from there we create the content for the whole month, from that one pillar piece or two pillar pieces, and then we can do it again next month. And then the next month we funded results combined over time. So usually we work in long-term partnerships because it's something that I was you'd probably say that you to see the same thing. You're not going to get results today. It's more of a longterm play, what brand played and you really need to believe in long-term for it to be successful. So it's something that we look for long-term partnerships, even though, I mean, I don't need to get into this because contractually we work month to month, et cetera, but it's when I'm watching a renewal.
Kathleen (19:10): How often do you personally think somebody should be sharing content in order to get traction?
Marti (19:18): Yeah I think the more, the better, as long as it's sustainable. So there's a point where if you try to do more, you eventually give up because you were not, but the more content you can create the better, because you're only one piece of content away from that. Inbounded, you're one piece of content away from that. Ask to get an, a podcast, your one piece of content away from whatever you're looking for, that book deal. So you, you know, all your professional life or your company's life can change from one piece of content that reaches the right person at the right time.
Kathleen (19:53): Is there a frequency under which you think it's like, why bother?
Marti (19:59): It's a good question. I don't think at the beginning. So I encourage people to start, even if it's with one post per week or whatever that looks like and then scale up, right? Because if you start to see traction, even if you're special, so engagement where you start to enjoy the process, which is what I eventually, that's the turning point, and you really enjoy the process of creating content. Then you start seeing results, but even if you start small start that that's my whole thing. I don't think that you need to create as much content as possible, even though as much content as possible is the best thing for me personally, I'm posting about five to six times on LinkedIn just to give some references three or four times sweeter. And then we have a couple of episodes every month, at least. So that's sustainable for might be different for somebody else.
Kathleen (20:49): And what I mean, what a, what a good results look like. Cause you do this for a lot of different people. I'm curious if you can share some stories of what impacts.
Marti (20:59): Yeah, absolutely. So obviously it depends on like length of sales cycles and depends of like average deal size. Usually we work with a lot of agency owners who have monthly retainers as similar or larger than what they pay us. And we're starting to see people get ROI by the month four or five. So at more than four or five, they usually have break. And even for the year, which allows the fall with the rest of the year to be for profit obviously that depends and we cannot go into results. Any content migrated can guarantee leads and revenue is probably a line, but we that's what we're seeing in terms of traction. Some kinds are getting more, some kinds are getting less, but from an art standpoint, that's where we're, that's where we're at right now, which is pretty good in my opinion.
Kathleen (21:49): Yeah. I would say I want to talk about like what good content looks like, because we've talked about why you should do it. We've talked about the overall framework for kind of scaling up content creation, but there's in my experience, there's good content and there's some really, really bad content out there. So what, how do you counsel your clients on what makes for good content?
Marti (22:13): Yeah, so, so we tried to find the balance between content and content that educates in content that empty to entertains without leaning too far on either side. So I think content that only educates is that physios from college that nobody wants to read because it's boring and sure it's plenty of good info, but it's not never going to get structured. And it's never going to resonate with the audience. There's nobody wants to read 45 pages of that, but then content only entertains. You're just posting cat videos at that point shortly, they get a lot of beers and other oppressions, but it's never going to get any actual results. So for us, we try to find a balance of content that really drives the conversation forward. And I hit calling it thought leadership because everybody calls the leadership, everything. But for me, the real thought leadership is ideas that drive the industry forward. That's actually I add value and that people can utilize because they're technical enough for them to be used on a day to day life. And then
Kathleen (23:20): What's that look like in practice? Like give me some examples. Cause it's one thing to say it's content that entertains and educates, but like I'm sure people have said so. Okay. So like what is, tell me what that means.
Marti (23:33): Yeah. So for me, content that entertains it's content that is actually enjoyable to consume. So content that has good spacing that is used, at an English level that is easy to understand and that it allows for that flow consumption of that content. It's hard to explain. I think you can tell, you can tell when they don't have and then content that educates for me, it's about getting as tactical as possible. So if you can share actual best practices, if you can share the themes that only you would know because you've been doing it for so long, those are the contents that people appreciate. So if you're creating content for HR and professionals, right, and you're looking for things about what are the best platforms and what are the threats within those best platforms to go to Upwork this and never use this key terms.
Marti (24:26): So whatever that looks like for your industry, and if everybody can put that content out, it's probably not create content. And so if you actually want to drive the conversation forward, it's about saying those things that only we experienced can tell. So that's why we also vet our clients very hard. And because we don't want to work with people that sell the courses or people that are like new to the industry, you want to work with people who have proven expertise and have done that themselves. So we can actually create content. That means something, otherwise we're just adding to that loud noise that will use the internet sometimes. Yeah.
Kathleen (25:07): And, and I guess the other thing I would wonder is from your standpoint, you know, obviously at some point I'm assuming your clients are looking for this to turn into business for them. And so how do you advise them about converting, right? Like you don't want to be too salesy in your content, but at some point it probably makes sense to have some kind of a call to action. How do you strike that balance?
Marti (25:32): Yeah. So we usually try to do call to actions. We do call to actions in almost all our content, especially on LinkedIn, but those call to actions are never caught, not always call to actions that are meant to drive new business. So sometimes they're call to actions to engage. So questions at the end of the post, those types of things that are going to help engage, have more conversation with your ideal prospects. So we ask questions that if your ideal prospect is like we said, an HR manager, it's helping them as I get answers from them. And then two out of 10 times we do that, what seven to eight times out of 10 and then the rest, which is really one or two times for every time posts, we do a call to action to the next step in the file. So if it's, they have a free resource, if it's go to the website, if it's a free consultation, whatever that looks like that, tell me what, 15 to 20% of the time on the content that we create something that's important.
Marti (26:32): And I encourage our clients to look at the full audit of their funnel and see if the handoff steps are clear. So if it's easy to go from one step from content consumption to the next step, so is the call to action clear if it's about scheduling a call, do we have a Calendly link? If do they know where to go to the next step? So making sure that straightforward and as direct as possible it's something that helps the conversion because you can lose a lot of people in those handoffs. So being that base rate for is important.
Kathleen (27:08): And do you do you generally have your clients create any sort of like purpose-built landing page for the stuff you're doing with them,
Marti (27:19): Which might create something with them? That's a middle point between content and a set score. So something that can help do that in between process. And so if it's a free consultation, but an actual free consultation, not a theme with this guy sales scope, like actually helping people, then we can do that. If it's a free resource via email, and then they go into like a seed email sequence, we can also do that. So something that's in between that's free and that's actually valuable. So something that people would pay for, but you're giving it for free. It's something that has really helped us. And then that also allows for better tracking and better attribution if they don't have it and we cannot create it, we do have some clients that go straight to sales scope, which is fine. But something in between is usually very helpful.
Kathleen (28:12): You raised tracking, which was going to be my next question. So how are you tracking results? What is your preferred way to do that?
Marti (28:18): Yeah, so I think there's a lot of platforms and SaaS software that kind of have improved trackability and attribution with content marketing. I still don't think we're there yet. And I don't know if we'll ever be, have a clear way to fully attribute content marketing and personal branding So I personally, and I know a lot of marketers disagree with me. I really believe in qualitative data. So if somebody comes to a sales call and her said and says, I read your LinkedIn post and that made me reach out, or, Oh, I remember you mentioned that on the podcast, those are the data points that I look for because it's really hard to track higher data just because I called it the dark attribution, which is things that we can just not track. I like me telling somebody that, Oh, that agency did really good job.
Marti (29:12): Or I read that look, you should read that blog post that they wrote and sending it via email or whatever that looks like. You're just not going to be able to track that. So we can go crazy and track everything, track leading indicators, like impressions, engagement. We can track all of that. Sure. But what really matters. And the North star for a lot of our clients is inbound revenue generated. No, it's not even about inbound leads. Cause if they want to get a load of fleets, there's other ways to do that for when you're doing content in personal branding, get less leads, but they're higher quality, which means that they close more and they close faster. So we're just looking for this qualitative data points that show that we're doing our work.
Kathleen (29:52): And have you, have you seen your clients have like ancillary benefits beyond revenue?
Marti (29:58): Yeah. So one of the main benefits that I think is very underrated is the ability to attract new talent. So something that when you're growing your brand as a company or as a CEO, you're also going to get, if you're doing your job, right, you're going to get a lot of people interested in the company that are not clients, but will want to work for you. They don't want to work for the company. They want to work for you. So that's something that we've also seen. And I think sometimes it's even more valuable to attract new people to work with that are great. Then new clients for me in my company right now, we're looking for people we're not looking for clients. So that's something that's, I think it's one of the secondary benefits that are really important for companies that are fundraising and trying to raise money, you've also seen that they can get better traction from investors. So we've gotten people that I've gotten investors for the condom. So that's when it just rambling, like good things happen. You're breathing your brand, use those leads faster, you close more, and then you have all these secondary benefits that are also support how your goals.
Kathleen (31:04): Yeah. That makes sense. So what advice do you have if somebody is listening and they're thinking, I, you know, I know I need to be creating content, so maybe it's time for me to get serious about it.
Marti (31:17): Yeah. The first thing I'd say is you actually have to believe in it. If you don't fully believe in it, if it's maybe then don't do it because you're going to give up too early, it's one of the things that you have to commit and you have to commit for a longer, long time. So that's what the one thing that I would say at the very beginning, like if you're not fully sure that this is for you, don't even do it. Second is your personal brand is your reputation and your reputation follows you everywhere forever. So it's a long-term investment that you're building and yourself, your personal bank will follow you everywhere. You've got for companies as an employee to then a founder, whatever you go that for some Brown follow-ups here. And then third, try to do it in a sustainable matter.
Marti (31:58): Like we created this process right, where you get one pillar piece of content and then you repurpose it and do it at the pace that works for you and works for you, your resources right now, both time and money, and then scale, right. Maybe start with one platform and then eventually go to two, may start with two pieces of content a week, then go to four. So don't burn yourself out doing that and, and just try to enjoy the process because when you do that, then the whole thing is easier and you're going to be committed for a longer time, which is when you were serious.
Kathleen (32:29): Yeah. That makes sense. All right. We're going to shift gears and I'm going to ask you the two questions that I always ask my guests. The first one is, we talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you would say is really setting the example for what it means to be a great inbound marketing person or company?
Marti (32:49): Other than ourselves? I mean, there's this big companies. I think we've all seen them. Like Refine Labs, like Gong and Drift, that they're doing amazing stuff. I want to give a shout out to this small agency out of Europe called Funky Marketing. The founder is a good friend of mine and we actually ran a book test together and they were one of those companies who get it. I like they understand inbound marketing, they understand content creation and branding, and they don't have the resources of these huge companies, but they're building a community at first in Europe and now they're moving it to the United States. So if you go follow them, they're called Funky Marketing on LinkedIn. You're going to see how people with not that big of resources can actually do very practical stuff and start seeing results. So highly recommend seeing what they're doing.
Kathleen (33:42): I love the company name.
Marti (33:44): Yeah. The guy loves funk and rock and roll, the founder. So it's, it's a good, it's a good company to work with. It's a good company to see what they're doing for sure.
Kathleen (33:54): Very cool. Alright. Second question. Most of the marketers I talk to say that one of their biggest pain points is just trying to keep up with everything in digital marketing, because it changes so quickly. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and stay up to date?
Marti (34:07): Yeah. Twitter is my go-to platform for myself to get educated and to hear conversations. I think if you follow the right people, your feed is basically an education platform straight from the minds of great marketers and great founders. So Twitter is my go-to because then you can engage with them, which I think is the key, right. We can consume a lot of content, but if you can engage with people that created that, it makes it even better. So for myself is Twitter and then talking to people I'm more of like a conversational person to learn. I need to ask questions, followups. So for me, if I can get people on a podcast or have 20 minutes with them, that's how I try to educate myself, just talking to them, having those conversations and honestly just going there and listening because I know they know more than I do. So, so that's how I approach my education.
Kathleen (35:02): Amen. I mean, that's, for me, it's hosting this podcast and talking to people. That's how I learn everything.
Marti (35:07): Yeah, yeah. Probably the best way to pick their brain, like face to face. And you can ask selfish questions. I a hundred percent agree that having a podcast is probably the best way to educate yourself.
Kathleen (35:19): Yeah, I actually had one guest that I interviewed and I'll mention, so it's, Val Geisler, who's this incredible email marketing copywriter. And she now recently has been hired by Klaviyo to be like a customer evangelist. And I love her and she came on and I was asking her all these really detailed questions. And she just sort of like half jokingly said, is this, is this a free consultation? And I was like, absolutely.
Marti (35:45): What's a better way. Right? Yeah, absolutely.
Kathleen (35:50): Well, if somebody is listening and they want to learn more about Influence Podium or they want to connect with you and ask a question, what's the best way for them to find you online?
Marti (35:58): Yeah, I think LinkedIn's probably the easiest way. I'm at Marti Sanchez on LinkedIn. Also same on Twitter and via email at marti@influencepodium.com, probably the easiest and most straight forward way to reach out.
Kathleen (36:13): Fantastic. And I'll put those links in the show notes for anybody. Who's curious. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, please consider heading to Apple podcasts and leaving the podcast to review. And of course, if you know someone else doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. Thank you so much for joining me.
Marti (36:34): It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for so much fun. Thank you.
April Dunford has advised countless companies, from startups to scale ups, on positioning their products and she details all of it in her book Obviously Awesome.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, positioning expert April Dunford breaks down the process she's used to develop positioning that helps her clients stand out and win customers.
April has a long history as a startup marketer, having worked as VP of Marketing for a number of technology startups. It was that experience that taught her the importance of getting positioning right before investing heavily in the development of a lead gen engine.
Today, she works exclusively as a positioning expert and has documented her approach in the book Obviously Awesome.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to learn exactly how April approaches the development of positioning for the companies she advises.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit Aprildunford.com
- Follow April on Twitter at @Aprildunford
- Buy your copy of Obviously Awesome
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I am your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is April Dunford who is the author of Obviously Awesome. Welcome to the podcast April.
April (00:57): Oh, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Kathleen (00:59): I am so excited to have you here. True confession, I have been a fan girl for a long time. I saw you speak at HubSpot's Inbound conference a really long time ago. It was a really long time ago. And at the time I owned a marketing agency and you talked about positioning and I sat through your session and like the light bulbs were going off in my head and I was like, somehow or another she just made a very complicated topic, incredibly straightforward. And now I'm going to use this approach with all of the positioning exercises I do. So if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then, then I've flattered you tremendously for a very long time now.
April (01:44): Well, that's cool because, you know, back then I was in the early days of working through how to teach this stuff. So you would've gotten the money first version of this on like, you know, unlike the version I'm doing now, which has a lot more polish on it than it did back then. But yeah, that's, that's neat to hear that.
Kathleen (02:03): And, and, you know, it's funny because the reason I started this podcast was that I used to go to a ton of marketing conferences and, and I would go to these sessions by the so-called experts and you know, all excited to learn stuff. And I would feel when I left the session, like they had done a good job of getting me charged up about why I should care about their topic, but not really leave me with enough to go and do anything about it. And so I was like, I'm going to interview people and actually leave listeners with enough information to go do something. And that's what I felt you did in your session, which is why I think I liked it so much. So I will stop now fawning all over you. And what I would just ask is maybe you could talk a little bit about who you are and what you do. So for anyone who isn't as familiar with your work as I am and explain maybe a little bit about Obviously awesome.
April (02:56): So this has been kind a long road for me. I spent the first 25 years of my career being a repeat vice president of marketing at a series of startups. I think I did seven of them. Six of those startups got acquired. About four or five years ago I decided to switch gears and move to being a consultant now. And that's what I do now. I only do positioning work. I don't do messaging. I don't do lead generation campaigns. I know there's, there's a laundry list of things that I don't do. And the only thing on the list of the things that I do do is positioning. I work mainly with tech companies, mainly with kind of growth stage startups and and yeah, positioning is my bag. The book is, is kind of my attempt to take my framework and methodology for positioning and write it down so that anybody can use it.
Kathleen (03:53): Yeah. And it's a great book. I got my copy as soon as it came out and because I do love what you do so much. And I think the reason that I, that I appreciate your work so much is that I'm sort of like who you were before you went out on your own. I am a serial startup VP of marketing. And so every place I go very often I'm the first like true marketing leader they've brought on. And so there's always this exercise of molding the raw clay and trying to help them figure out how to present themselves to the market. So it is a really helpful framework. I want to just start out by actually talking just for a minute about why positioning is so important, because I do think that there are a lot of marketers who come in and they focus so much on demand gen and they, they think of demand gen a little bit too narrowly as lead generation, but there's so much more to it. So what's, what is your take on that?
April (04:44): Yeah. You would know this because what you're doing now is very similar to what I used to do, but like you, you come in as the new VP marketing and, and here's the thing, what everyone wants is demand gen, right? So they're like, get me the lead, fill the pipeline leads, build the pipeline, get going. And what you learn from doing that job a bunch is that you're like, okay, I'm happy to go and build you lead generation campaigns, but there are a set of questions you're going to have to answer for me first. So question number one, who do we compete with? Even that question? Yeah, that question. A lot of the companies I worked for there, you know, they'd say, Oh, well, we compete with this, this, this, and then you go fast. The head of sales, head of sales says something different.
April (05:31): Had a product, says something different. Founder says something different, somebody over in customer success, something different. And you're like, Oh, so we don't really know. And then it was like, well, who do we compete with? How are we different? What's the differentiated value that we can deliver for customers? Oh, by the way, who are these customers? Like? What is the profile of the ideal customer we're trying to go after? What is the market we intend to win? If we cannot answer these questions and clearly I can't build you good lead generation. These are the fundamental inputs. And so, you know, if I don't solve that first, then what I've got is, you know, mushy garbage coming in, mushy garbage is all you're going to get coming out. So if we really want to do lead generation, well, we needed to be focused and targeted around.
April (06:24): You know, we need to focus it on the folks that we're trying to get to. We need the messaging and everything that we're doing inside of those lead gen programs really resonate for those folks, which means we need to understand how we're differentiated, how we're better than the actual alternatives. And so if you don't have that, then you know, all the great marketing, tactical execution is going to save you, right. You can be doing perfect tactical execution, but if you're a little mushy on who you're going after and a little mushy on what you're going to say, once you get them kind of, doesn't matter if you keep foundation
Kathleen (06:59): Yourself effectively, and if you're not differentiated in the minds of your prospective customers, then the only thing you have left to compete on is price, right. You know, become commoditized, which is a terrible position to be in.
April (07:16): And prices, you know, people don't realize it's hard to even compete on price, right? Like everybody can drop the price, right. Well-funded startup up the street, they don't care if they make any money on, on customer acquisition. They've got VCs with deep pockets that are going to pay them for that. Let's drop the price to zero. Well that sometimes you've got big companies you're competing with and they can just include everything in the thing. Because they're going to get the money out of you later with something else so they can drop it to nothing. Like even competing on prices is not easy.
Kathleen (07:47): Yeah. That's so true. And it's just a race to the bottom anyway. So race to the bottom. So positioning, it's a big topic. I think it feels intimidating for a lot of marketers because it feels like, you know, it seems like these days in marketing, there's the science side of marketing like the performance marketing and then there's the quote unquote dark arts, right? Like, do you have to be, you know do you have to be like a creative genius to come up with great positioning, great branding whether that be visual or otherwise, but you, what I liked about your approaches that you took, what some people consider to be a dark art and you made it more like scientific, which is so great.
April (08:33): And you know, I have an engineering background and so, you know, when I approached positioning, I was a bit like this can't we can't just be making this stuff up. Right. It's gotta come from somewhere. And, and that was kind of my driving thing at the beginning, when I was trying to figure out how to do positioning, I was like, it's funny. We have this concept positioning everybody in marketing and about, it seems like it's super foundational, but when I ask people, how do we actually do it? I get a lot of this like art department stuff.
Kathleen (09:07): Don Draper came in and invented a creative position
April (09:12): And that just didn't sit with me and my little engineering brain. I was like, that can't be how we do it. That can't be how we do it. And so I got really obsessed with the idea that, you know, we, we should be able to have a methodology with this with steps, right? Here are the steps we're going to go through. And so, you know, my way of thinking about it at the beginning was, you know, if we look at positioning, can we break it apart into pieces and then solve for the component pieces and then put it back together. And then we get the positioning. And it seemed to me that we could, because, you know, if you read all the stuff on positioning, we didn't argue too much about what the components were. And so the components of positioning, you know, even, even when I started out and all I knew was a positioning statement as a way to get positioning done.
April (10:01): The blanks on the positioning statement are essentially what we, what we agree are the components of positioning. And so there's five things. There's, who's your competition or competitive alternatives. There's differentiated features. What do you got the competitors don't have, there's differentiated values of, so what for customers, why do they care about those features? And then there's customer segments. Like what customers are we talking about? And then the last one is market category, which is, this is the market we intend to win. And so the way I looked at it was all right, we've got five components. We should be able to figure out what the best answer is for each of these components, smash it together. And that's how we're going to get good positioning. And when you
Kathleen (10:40): Talk about the five components, you're referring to what I like to call. I think the marketing Madlibs, that famous kind of like positioning statement with the, with the fill in the blanks that you see everywhere,
April (10:52): The dumbest thing ever. Yeah, yeah. Like that, like that thing just drove me crazy. Like, you know, and again, maybe it's just my engineering mindset. Like people are like, okay, we need to do positioning. And I'm like, all right, how are we going to do it? And they say, well, we've got this thing. And it's like, fill in this thing. And I'm like, what? Wait, like, you know, the first company I ever worked at, we had this product that it was originally positioned as desktop productivity software is going to be like compete with Excel and Microsoft access. And it was a loser. Like we couldn't sell any of it. The thing was a dog. We almost pulled the plug on it, but before we did, we did this experimental repositioning, and we repositioned it as an embeddable database for mobile devices, pretty different market category.
April (11:39): So we repositioned as this thing. And the thing took off and we sold tons of it and it was super successful. We ended up getting acquired. The thing got bigger and bigger and bigger. It was hundreds of millions of revenue at its peak. Anyway, this taught me that, you know, I've got a product that positioned in this market looks pretty bad, but you take the same product position in this market looks pretty good. But the other thing it drove home was, okay if I'm supposed to do positioning by filling in the blanks of a positioning statement well, one of those blanks says market category. So how do I know that my thing is better in this category versus this category? Because as far as I can tell most of the things I worked on and they can be positioned in multiple different categories. So just writing it down, doesn't tell me which one is the best. So how do we get to that?
Kathleen (12:31): I always also hated that. And it's funny because a lot of the analyst firms are big proponents of that fill in the blank framework. If you use that, your positioning statement is going to sound like everybody else's right?
April (12:48): That's what I think is so dangerous about it, right? It's not even just a useless exercise. And in my opinion, it's pretty useless exercise, but it's also kind of dangerous because it tricks you into thinking, well, if this is the way we do it, and all I have to do is write down the market category. Well, the most obvious one or the first one that pops into my mind must be the best one. And in my experience in quite often, that is not true. So quite often the root of your positioning problem is because you're falling into some kind of default positioning. And that default positioning is actually weak and therefore everything else is everything else is hurting as a result. And so that positioning statement exercise has really, really bugged me. You know, first came across that I was like, like this, not only does this not work, I think this will actually mess you up if you do it.
Kathleen (13:45): Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. And it's really interesting to have this conversation at a time when so many marketers are also out there trumpeting this notion of category creation, because like, if you want it to be, and I have mixed feelings about that, I'll just copy cat it. But if you want it to be a category creator and you went to try and fill out that positioning statement, like, again, by definition, you're putting yourself in somebody else's category. So it's cool.
April (14:10): Let's say you're a category creator, and you've just decided, okay, my category I create is floop flummer. And I just write that down in the, in the blank, that's it? We're done.
Kathleen (14:20): Yeah. That makes sense. Right?
April (14:24): What I hate about it is it's not a methodology. It's a, it's a, it's a, at best, a way to write down positioning and not even very good way to capture it. Really. If you wanted to capture it in a way to share it with the team, you wouldn't be putting it into this gobbledygook Frankenstein statement of pseudo English. You would actually want to write it down in a document or something that captured some of the nuance of how did you actually get to where you got to on this. But yeah, no positioning statement, not a fan.
Kathleen (14:54): We could hate on that all day and probably do an entire podcast on it because I feel the same way, but that would not leave our listeners with anything practical. So, so I love that you approach this with an engineering mindset. It, now that you've said that it totally explains the whole thing and like, why, why I'm so drawn to it. So you've in your book, you break the process down into 10 steps. Maybe you could like walk me through how this works because it's very,
April (15:23): So I, I can give you, I could give you the abridged version of it.
Kathleen (15:27): Because there is an entire book on this.
April (15:29): Right. So the, so if you think about it this way, like, so my starting point was, okay, I know that positioning statement is not going to work. Right. And I, I know from trying it, it doesn't work. So again, could we take positioning, break it into component pieces and then figure out how to solve for the component pieces. That was my first idea. So I was like, okay, do I know what the pieces are? Well, kind of, yeah, there, the blanks and the positioning statement. Now, if you go studying positioning statements, there's lots of different versions. And so I, you know, I did the tour through all the different versions, but we kind of circle around these five components, right? So competitors differentiated features, differentiated value, customer segments and market category. Those are the five things. So then I said, okay, all I've got to do is solve for each of those things.
April (16:18): So when it's the best answer for each of those things and put it together, but when you start thinking about it, that way, the first thing you realize is that all of the components have a relationship to the others. So if I pull something out, like let's say value, the unique value add your product can deliver to costumers is completely dependent on your differentiated features, right? You can't, I can't separate those two, one flows from the other, but then I, if I think about it, my differentiated features are only differentiated when I compare them to my competition. So those things are related. And then if I think about it, my best fit customers, these are the people that care the most about the value that I deliver. So I, you know, I can't pick one without the other. And then the last bit is market category, which is a little bit more esoteric.
April (17:09): But if you think about it, the best market category for a given product, this is the category that we position our product in, that makes this value kind of obvious to these people we're trying to target. So I can't really figure out my best market category until I understand differentiated value in the market segment I'm going after. So all of these things are going to relate to each other. So you're like, well, this is a bit of a pickle.
Kathleen (17:36): It's very chicken and eggy.
April (17:37): Right? Like where do I start? And so for a long time, I thought that the way you did it was you, you picked the starting point and differentiated features is usually good one. And you work your way around the circle and you'd get candidate positioning, and then you would go out and test it the market and see if it worked.
April (17:57): And if it did, great, you just ran with it. If it didn't, then you throw it out and you'd develop another candidate positioning. And so for a few years, like literally two, three years, that's what I did was I worked my way around. We can take our best guess at it. And then we would try that problem though, is, you know, I'm working at startups, so we don't have all day to test this stuff out. And if you're doing B2B startups, like sometimes it would take you a while to do a task because your sales cycles are long. And yeah. And so people were getting impatient with me. And so I was like, man, we gotta, there's gotta be a better way to do this faster. And what happened was I actually went way down the rappel reading Clayton Christensen's stuff, and I got really into kind of jobs to be done.
April (18:43): And anyways, and after reading all that stuff, I had a bit of an epiphany where I realized you had to start with competitive alternatives. If I started anywhere else on the circle, I would end up with positioning. That potentially sounded really good in the office, but doesn't actually win out in the market because it's not differentiated. And so you had to start there. So so then I decided the way the process would work, as you would say, okay, I've got something it's out in market already. People are buying it. If my stuff didn't exist, what would the customer do? And that's kind of my competitive alternatives. So that, that sort of includes status quo. You know, like maybe they use a spreadsheet, maybe they hire an intern, but it also includes anybody that the customer might put on a short list when they go looking for solutions.
April (19:35): So that's the first one, the competitive alternatives you'd start there. Well, once I had that, then I had sort of a stake in the ground and I can say, okay, well, here's what we've got to beat. And if I know I got a beat, then I can say, okay, theoretically, let's look at my product. What's my product got that they don't have feature function wise. Right. And I can write those down and there might be thousands of things, but I can write it all down and fill up a whiteboard with that. That gets me to differentiated features. Once I have differentiated features that I can say, well, how do those features map to value? And so for each of those features, I just go down the list and say, so what, so what for customers, we can do this. And then what you're trying to get to is a set of value themes, like two or three value themes.
April (20:21): This is a bottoms up way of doing of developing value propositions. But what it gets you to is differentiated value because you started with, here's what I've got to beat. Here's how I'm different. This is the value for customers in that differentiated stuff I can do. Now, once I got that, now I got value. Then I can say, well, what are the characteristics of a target account that make them really care a lot about that value? And that's literally my definition of a best fit customer. Yeah. That makes sense. So those are kind of a bottoms up way of doing segmentation. Once I get segmentation, then I can say, you know, at that point I can lean back and say, all right, so I need to position this product in some kind of market context that makes this value obvious to these folks. So is it better if I position this as email or chat, is it a database or a business intelligence system? Like, and that's how I do it. So in the methodology, I've got, you go step by step by step through those things. But you start with this idea of competitive alternatives as a stake in the ground, and then you flow through the rest of it. That's how it works.
Kathleen (21:28): You know, you mentioned at the end, they're positioning something in context. And that's the part that I think is so interesting. I feel like that's the part that I really enjoy listening to you talk about at Inbound because you had this like really fascinating way of breaking down the, I think it was, if I remember correctly at the time, at least I know it's evolved since then, but you had like four different approaches to putting your positioning in context, within a broader market. And, and I seem to remember some of the examples you gave were like, you know, you could, you could try to take on Coke with a competing product, or you could be the Coke for dogs.
Kathleen (22:08): Another one was like, you used the example of Tesla with electric cars and just changing the changing the game I think was right. Put it, you know, changing the conversation and changing the focus from like battery life to sexy design and speed for fun. And there were all these different frameworks and I just, I loved, I loved having those mental models to use and understanding the different ways that you could contextually place your own offering within the broader market. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that and how your thinking on that has evolved. Do you still use those same frameworks?
April (22:43): Yeah, I do. And you know, and there's a section in the book that talks about that. And, and the way I thought about it was I'd always get this question, like, how is it different if I'm positioning in an existing market category versus making up your own new market category? And so the way I looked at it is there's kind of, I used to talk about four, but I've kind of narrowed it down to three now. Like, so basically you either the market category exists or you're going to have to go make it. If the market category exists, you've got two choices. You either position your stuff in such a way that you're going to position in the existing market category. And your intent is to take on the whole thing. Did I call this the head-to-head? So that's like saying, you know, I'm email, that's it I'm email, no qualification on that and not email for a particular sub market or anything.
April (23:33): What I have here is the world's greatest email as basically like announcing your intention to take on Gmail and outlook, you know, the email. So, you know, an example I'm used to that and talk with Coke, like, like I'm Cola and that's it, no qualifier. I'm just the world's greatest Cola. Well, that's like, basically say an ID, declare war on Coke. I'm going to go get those guys. And that sounds stupid, right? Like, like, are you actually going to be Coke from nothing? Like if you're a startup and you're just starting out.
Kathleen (24:04): Although it's funny. You used the example of email and immediately in my head, I thought, well, this is like Basecamp with Hey or Superhuman. Like there still are people trying to take on the Coke of the email world.
April (24:15): They are, they are, but Superhuman's a great example. Yeah. If you look at Superhuman and particularly the early days of when they were like, you applied to get Superhuman and you didn't get it, if you didn't meet their criteria, like they were not trying to be emailed for everybody. They were trying to be email for people that thought email was too slow. There was this component of speed. And if you didn't answer the questions, right, you didn't get home, they didn't get it. So they were very specific about that. They were like, we're not email for everybody. We're email for people that think they wish they could do their email faster. Because that's the only problem we solve because there's all a bunch of stuff that Superhuman doesn't solve. Now, if you look at Hey, Hey's a great example too, right? The Hey folks have come out and said, we're the email for people that actually care about, about privacy and control over who hits your inbox and who doesn't.
April (25:14): And, and even more specific when the thing first came out, they, they couldn't even do business email. It was personal email only because you couldn't do your own domain and all the rest of it. That actually drove me nuts. Cause I didn't, you know, they weren't explicit about that. And so I signed up and paid it and everything else. And then I was like, Oh, I can't use this. It's not for businesses. They shouldn't have told me. Now I think they got a business version, but it doesn't have calendaring and a bunch of other stuff. So it's the, you know, it's not forever.
Kathleen (25:42): That's a tough, that's a tough market to crack with how kind of insidious email is in our daily lives.
April (25:48): I think they're trying to be everything. I think they're more this style too. So the style to it. So head to head is like I'm coming in and I'm going to take on the leader from nothing. And that literally never works. Right? What works better is to say, I'm going to go in and I'm going to shave off a part of the market that is underserved and I'm going to serve those people. And I'm going to eat the email for X right. Email for people that want speed email for people that care about privacy now, because you know, because the other guys like Gmail, isn't going to do that ever. This is so, you know, it, my alternative is Gmail. I got them beat. They can't match my feature. And I'm going to dominate in this sub segment of the market that really cares about that.
April (26:34): And so the vast majority of companies that we know and love today started out serving a sub of an existing category. Like Salesforce was CRM for SMBs, SMBs that didn't have an IT department. And you don't worry, you don't need an IT department cause this one's no software, man. It's a, you can just have it run and you don't have to worry about it. I keep looking after it. So I mean there's so there's loads and loads of examples, almost every startup that later becomes successful, starts out being in a niche in an existing category. In fact, I did a little spelunking around because you know, category creation is hot right now. So everybody likes to think about style three, which is I'm going to create a new category. And then somehow I'm going to dominate that. But if you go back and look at tech IPO's of the past five years, so this is IPO.
April (27:28): So if a company gets big enough that they, you know, they're more than a hundred million revenue, they're going to go public. If you go through that list of tech companies that are YPO in the last five years, over 90% of them at the time of IPO are a niche play in an existing market.
Kathleen (27:49): That makes sense.
April (27:49): Over 90%, which surprises most people because there's this idea that, you know, you can't get big unless you create a category and then position yourself within that category. And it's not to say that doesn't work. That does work in very limited cases, right. That you actually carve out a new key. You say my thing is so new, so different. So I don't know. And none of the existing categories really work for it. So I'm gonna make up a new category and then position it in there.
Kathleen (28:19): Yeah. There's I think there's a lot of BS around category creation. Like everybody says, they're doing it and there can't possibly be that many categories. It's just invented word, word art.
April (28:32): Yeah. And some of them are saying they're category creation when that's not even what they're doing. Right. Like I like, so I had some guys call me the other day and they said, we're a social media man. We're creating a category. And I said, Oh yeah, what's the category. And they said, we're social media management for agencies. Okay. One category, social media management for agencies. That's a niche play. And they're like, yeah, but nobody else does it. So we're creating it. I'm like, yeah. Okay. So first of all, you're not creating a category. You're basically leveraging what we already know about social media management and say we're social media management, but for agencies, that's why it works so well is I don't have to teach you what social media management is. I just have to teach you why agencies need a different kind of social media management. Then the category leader can give you. And then I just dominate my little bit. That's it?
Kathleen (29:26): Your first approach is the head-to-head.
April (29:30): The only time it works is if the, is if you know, if the market is created in the minds of customers, but there is no established leader. So an example of that might be smart glasses, right? Like, you know what smart glasses are, we all, you know, we don't remember Google glass had that thing. They did a great job establishing that category and then they just kind of exited it. So now if you wanted to buy smart glasses, who would you buy them from? No idea. No idea. So that's an example of, we kind of know what smart glasses are, but it's a dog fight out there right now. There's a thousand companies trying to do it. And eventually someone will emerge as the clear category leader there, but it hasn't happened yet. Yeah. So that's kind of wide open market. And if you had a, you know, there was a company here in Canada that raised a pile of money and took a good run at being the dominant player in the smart glasses market.
April (30:22): It didn't quite work out and they got acquired by Google. But if you were to raise a bunch of money and take a big run at it, you might actually emerge as the leader in that space. So we know what it is. And we can say smart glasses and everybody gets it. But we don't know who the leader is. So that's an example where you might do, you'd say like when my guys were trying to do it, my Canadian guys were trying to do it. They weren't saying we're the fashionable smart glasses or we're the smart glasses for manufacturing or the smart glasses for anything else you might want to use them for. They were just like, no, we're smart glasses. Whereas our glasses where everything. So that's, that's head to head Denise plays where you say, no, you know, instead of saying I'm Coke, you know, like, you're, you know, I'm going to say I'm Coke for dogs, right? So you're like, okay, I know what Coke is. So I got a mental image of that, but it's for this chunk of the market that Coke's never going to dominate in and you're going to, you know, your intention is to go dominate there. And the last one is you create your own category, where you stay, you know what? I'm not smart glasses, I'm not Coke. I'm a flu flummer.
April (31:29): And you say what the heck is a flu flummer? And I say, I'm glad you asked. Let me tell you, look, we got email and we got this and we got this. And then there's this space in the middle. And we call this the flu flummer. And that's what we are. And let me tell you why you need a flu flummer. And the hard part about category creation is you essentially fall into this thing where you've got to evangelize the problem. Because if people knew they had a problem, there would be solutions to solve that problem already. And so first you got to sell the problem. Then you got to sell people on the idea that you're the best solution to that problem. The real risk in category creation is that the history of Silicon Valley teaches us that the most likely outcome is you pour all your time, energy, effort, money into creating the category.
April (32:26): And the moment the category starts to emerge, you kind of end up in that style one, don't ya? And then it's a dog fight. There's a thousand other companies show up and they come in and steal the category from you after you've already created. That's why we don't use ask Jeeves. We use Google. That's why we don't use my space. We use Facebook. Like there's a thousand examples. All the companies, you know, in love, they didn't create the categories they're in. They get whipping in at the last minute after the hard work of category creation was already done. So I don't know why everybody's so keen on category creation. It's literally the hardest one to do. But you know, but there are examples of folks successfully doing it. Like in my book, there's an interview in there with Mark Organ, who was the original founder of Eloqua, you know, who did create the category marketing automation. And so he talks about how he did that. So it does work sometimes. It's just, it's rare. And it's fraught with peril.
Kathleen (33:23): And it's funny, cause there's a lot of debate in the marketing world over what really is category creation. Like, because there's, and I was on a conversation.
April (33:32): So a lot of people come to me and they say, they're doing a gray area. And I know you're not. Yeah. I just read this book about category creation and everybody was telling me, Oh, I read this book April. You know, it's going to tell you how to create categories and I'm reading it. And I'm like, tell me kind of a compelling case know, but the first example they give is Salesforce. And I'm like, what are we just going to ignore? What happened for the first 200 million revenue? We're just gonna ignore that part. Like they didn't become a category creator until they were massive company. They were a niche play in the CRM market. There was a 2 billion revenue company publicly traded in CRM when they started create CRM. Are you kidding me? And then yeah, you can argue about, they're creating a category now of like, you know, platform as a service, whatever, but that's different.
Kathleen (34:23): That's like hindsight is 2020, right.
April (34:26): They were a group and company by the time they did that. So most of the examples that people give me, I'm kinda like, well, yeah, like once for the absolute dominant player in your market, then you get the luxury of moving the goalposts and defining what exactly the market is. And that's different. But if you're a little startup and you're just starting out, you don't, you don't get to do that. Yeah.
Kathleen (34:47): Well, one of the things that you talk about in the book is forming a positioning team. And I just wanted to take a minute and talk about that because again, I'm always all about making sure there are some really like practical, actionable takeaways. So beyond the framework that you discussed, like organizationally, what is the best way to kind of get the team organized in order to move forward on an exercise like this?
April (35:10): Yeah, so, so I included a bunch on this in the book for a reason. And it's because I think a lot of positioning efforts fail because the, the marketing team or the product team decides they're going to fix positioning and they're going to do it in their department without involving anybody else, which I think is crazy. So, you know, if you think about it, like, I'll give you an example. Like the one I mentioned earlier, the first I worked at and we repositioned it, like we thought it was basically desktop productivity, sell it for a hundred bucks compete with Excel and Microsoft access. We ended up repositioning this as an embeddable database for mobile devices, which we would sell to, you know, at a much higher level in the organization. We would sell a hundred copies at a pop because you'd be arming your entire sales team with this thing. Or you put it in every device that you had completely different, go to market, completely different pricing, completely different sales model, everything different. Could I make that decision myself as the person running marketing? No, I think the CEO would want to talk about
Kathleen (36:24): Well and the sales team. I mean, it's the same thing. Like with, I just went through a pricing exercise in my company. Like you, there's all these things you can do in a silo, but unless you're you get the buy-in of your sales team to go out and like evangelize it in their conversations with prospects, it's not going to do you any good.
April (36:40): This is it. So a lot of these things end up like a shift in positioning often ends up feeling like a shift in the whole company strategy. And so if you're going to do this properly, I think marketing is in good position to lead a positioning effort, but they're not going to be able to do it themselves. And so what I recommend is you get the heads of the teams together. So you need sales, you need product, you need customer success, you need the CEO, the founders and anybody else who's important in your company and you need to get everybody together. So that's the first thing. So I need to establish a team. And then once I've got that team, there's a few things need to happen. One. I need to convince the team to at least look at it so that the team has to kind of let go of their positioning baggage and say, you know what?
April (37:33): Like I know we've always said, we're a database, but for this exercise, open your mind to the idea that, you know, we could be something else. Maybe we're a data warehouse. Maybe we're a business intelligence tool, maybe we're something else. And so that's, so we'll get to get the team together. I got to get the team to kind of put their positioning baggage aside. And, and then the last thing I gotta do is if we're going to do it, and we're all going to get together, we need to follow a process. We can't just get together in a room and say, okay, so what's our market category. Like that's just going to become a war of opinion. And if it's a war of opinions, let me tell you marketing never wins that war.
Kathleen (38:14): Right. Opinions and some very long meetings that have no end in sight.
April (38:19): Right? So what we need to do is follow a positioning process that for as much as we can takes the opinions out of it. So that's what my process attempts to do. Like you know, we could get together in a room and we can agree on what's the status quo in all the accounts. Who else are we competing with when we are in a competitive deal? So that establishes who our competitive alternatives are, that we're going to work through the rest of it without kind of asking for your opinion. It just sort of is what it is. Yeah. So, so those are the things I think you need to have in order to have success. You know, I need to, I need to get the gang together. I need to get everybody to kind of leave aside their positioning baggage. And then if we're going to do it, an exercise, there needs to be a structure and a methodology to that exercise that kind of takes the opinions out of it. Otherwise, we're just going to get, well, I think it's this one off. I think it's this. Well, if we all have an opinion, I like mine the best.
Kathleen (39:17): How long do you generally, like when you're setting expectations with your clients, how long do you generally tell them that this process takes
April (39:24): Well in the work that I do? Like? So if, if the company comes and hires me, I act as the facilitator for this exercise. So there's a bit of prep that happens ahead of time. Like sometimes we'll pull some data depending on what the company's like. Most of the prep is literally for me to get up to speed enough on the market and the product and the landscape so that I'm not so that I'm able to facilitate the exercise without slowing everybody down. And then we used to do this as the, as a two day thing. I used to fly to you. We'd all lock ourselves in the boardroom and we just bang it out in two days. Now since, since, since COVID hit, I've gone to doing these things virtually. And one of the great things about that is we can take a bit more time about it because I'm not flying in. And so what we do now is we spread it out over a series of sessions across a week, but we get it done in a week.
Kathleen (40:18): That's great.
April (40:23): Efficient, right? Like doing it yourselves, the companies can, you know, again, get into big arguments and fresh around on that stuff for months. And when I was internally at companies, it was not unusual for us to thrash around in it and his mom for months. I think, you know, one having a methodology and process to having an outside facilitator that can walk you through it and help you through it. You know, again, not everybody qualifies to work with me. Like some people come in, I don't think they're ready to do it, or I don't think positioning's even their problem. But if you do have a positioning problem and you look like somebody I'd work with that, we get it on the counter. And yeah, we, we bang it out in a week. And then what do you do?
Kathleen (41:02): To tell your clients about like, they spend that week, they come up with their positioning? What then, because I would venture to guess, I mean, you already talked about Salesforce and how they started out being kind of niche, and then they moved to category creation, quote unquote you know, do you have like defined points where the group gets back together and evaluates and checks in and the process evolves?
April (41:27): Yeah. So, so here's, here's how, how I instruct everybody, like, you know, what should happen? We're done. So we get the position and we do two things in these workshops to actually, so we do the positioning and then we do an exercise where we take the positioning and when we translate it into a sales narrative. So how do I actually tell the story of this product? If I'm sitting across from a prospect that doesn't know too much about it yet. So, you know, this is how we tell the story, and then that's what we do in the workshops. So we got positioning, we got the sales narrative. Then I leave now what other people do when I'm gone is they take that sales narrative, they turn it into a sales pitch. So it's usually slides and a demo or some kind of a script. So they worked that into a sales pitch and then they go test it with some prospects.
April (42:16): So that's the first thing I recommend. I'm going to take it out and test it. Usually it works. I got the smartest people in the company sitting in the room. We don't usually get it wrong, but it often needs a bit of tuning because customers are weird. So, you know, so we tune it up and then once we've got a tune, then the positioning plus that sales narrative together goes over to marketing and then marketing can work on messaging. And so I recommend you build a, make a messaging document, but most folks will do that, or they'll work on the messaging for the homepage and off they go. Now let's think about positioning is we don't get to just set it and forget it because you know, everything's changing. So our product is changing as we put new features into the product and new things happen.
April (42:57): Sometimes we make an acquisition. So our stuff is changing at the same time, the market's changing. So we got competitors coming in and out of the market. We've got you know, the landscape itself has changing. Like COVID is a great example where all of a sudden your buyer's priorities might have really, really shifted and positioning that didn't work pre COVID maybe does now or vice versa. So so because everything's changing, you need to check in on the positioning. You can't just set it and say, well, that's it. You know, we're done positioning. Don't have to think about that anymore. So my recommendation is about every six months. So when I was a VP marketing, we would do the workshop. We go through the process of testing it, get the messaging sorted out and everything else. And I wouldn't have a standing meeting with the same group of people every six months.
April (43:46): And so we'd all get together every six months and we get together in the room and say, okay, has anything changed? So if we think about competitive alternatives, do we have different competitors? Are we seeing different things in sales accounts? Is the status quo the same as it always was. What's changed there. And we've got new stuff in our product. Has that changed our differentiated features at all? And if so, you know, does it change it enough that we actually going to have to update what we're talking about in terms of value? And if it's really updated, does that change our target customers that we're going to go after? If so, it may even change our market category. So we've got to check in on that regularly every six months, sometimes we all just get together and we're like, Nope, Nope, Nope. Everything's the same. Okay, good. And then, you know, it's a short meeting. Yeah. Sometimes you get it together and you're like, Ooh, actually stuff is changing. If we have the standing meeting, then we'll catch it early and we won't be caught flat food and trying to react to something that is actually causing us pain revenue wise. We'll get to it earlier. Cause we, you know, we had the standing meeting over six months to go in and review it.
Kathleen (44:52): That makes sense. I like having that kind of cadence already. Pre-Planned. Well I could talk to you about this forever, but we're going to run out of time. So I'm going to shift gears and ask you the two questions I ask all of my guests the first and they're softballs. The first one is, you know, the podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park when it comes to inbound marketing these days?
April (45:18): Well, you know, the one that comes to mind when you say that and you know, and, and I think they're just killing it in marketing in general is I sit on the board of a company in there called Samplr and I've been super impressed watching the way that this company has reacted to the change in the market that had happened because of COVID and how they've managed to shift that and turn it into this massive opportunity for them. So what sampler does is they they do digital product sampling. So if you think about, if you ever remember when we used to go to the grocery store. People would hand out samples at the grocery store or they would have, you know, people on the street corner giving you samples of granola bars or snacks or something. Consumer packaged goods brands spend billions a year on product sampling campaigns.
April (46:11): What Samplr does is it is a digital way of doing that. So they match people with samples and then the samples come in the mail and they can actually, you know, survey the people afterwards and find out did you like to sample, did you buy this stuff later? And so it's just a way smarter, digital way to do it anyway. So that's what they've been doing for years COVID hits. And what happened in COVID was the big CPG brands were just like, we can't sample anymore because all the things are thing. And so we're just not doing sampling at all. We're done.
Kathleen (46:48): I would think they're tailor made for this.
April (46:51): You can imagine they had all this stuff in the pipeline, all this stuff, and all their customers were just like, yeah, no.
April (47:02): What Samplr did was, you know, they are clearly the solution to product sampling if we can't do it in the store. Right. So, but you know, but at the beginning, the customer companies just didn't want to hear it. And so what they did, they did a very good job of crafting a message around contactless product sampling and the future of product sampling. And what would it, what was it what's product sampling gonna look like if we truly digitize it and do it in a way that doesn't involve direct face-to-face human contact and they dominated the story around this for months where you, you know, when every reporter in the land was looking for a, what's going to change because of COVID story. And there was Samplr saying, well, let me tell you about this thing. We're never testing the lipstick tester at the Sephora ever again. Oh
Kathleen (47:56): Yeah. That's so true. I can't even.
April (47:58): Let me give you a different way. We could sample lipstick, right. We could send you a sample in the mail and here's how it would work. So they do this really good job of being everywhere. And then within two months, their business was absolutely taking off and they raised around and financing and, you know, in the early days of COVID, which was, you know, again, pretty fantastic. And if you look at what they've done is just amazing. And so I think they've done an amazing job.
Kathleen (48:24): Ooh, I'm excited to go check them out. That's my favorite part. One of my favorite parts of these conversations is learning about new examples like this. My other question that I always ask guests is that marketers commonly cite one of their biggest pain points. As you know, the landscape of digital marketing is changing so quickly. It's really hard to keep up with it and stay on top of everything. How do you personally kind of stay educated and keep yourself on the cutting edge?
April (48:48): Yeah. You know, so I, so I read a lot of books. I'm, I'm big on books and, and so I'm reading a lot of books. I'm also kind of, you know, one of the things that I think is really interesting about COVID is there's been sort of this emergence of these kind of neat online communities. I feel like that's really accelerated. And so in particular I'm kind of on the product marketing side of things like positioning a sort of product marketing thing. And so one of the communities I'm kinda active in is the there's these folks called the product marketing Alliance.
Kathleen (49:21): I'm in that group. Yes. It's great.
April (49:23): It's cool. Right. And that thing came out of nowhere. Like that was like, that was like not a thing. And then all of a sudden they had 12,000 people in a Slack, in a Slack community and I'm like, well, how the heck? And so I've been really enjoying the stuff going on in that community. The other one that I, that I've, you know, more recently been engaged with is and I was engaged because they reached out to me and asked me to write a thing for them, which I did. And then I was like, Holy cow, look at this thing. Which is more on the product management, but again, product marketers side is there's this guy does a newsletter called Lenny's list. And so I, he reached out to me last year and said, Hey, do you want to write an article for my newsletter?
April (50:04): And I was like, Oh man, I'm really busy. And he kind of pestered me and I said, well, you know, I got Christmas break coming up. And so maybe I'll write something when I'm on the break. So I wrote this thing and then it turns out he has this massive community. These is huge subscriber lists. He started a Slack community. And so that's been neat me and just sort of crack into these communities where smart people are hanging out and doing things. And there's a lot of neat ones popping up now. Yeah. I couldn't agree more to a lot of paid newsletters now just because I think they're cool. And there's a lot of qualities.
Kathleen (50:41): Yeah. There's a lot of great innovation on the product side. I'm going to have to check them out too. I have so many good new ones now. Well, all right. Before we wrap, if somebody wants to learn more about you and what you do, or if they want to buy the book what's the best way for them to do that. Yeah.
April (50:57): The book's available wherever you buy books, like there's a, there's a paperback book or an ebook or an audio book, if you want to, Oh, you can listen to three and a half hours of my Canadian accent. So yeah, most people just buy it off Amazon, but if you've got a local book seller, usually they've got copies too. So I'm in distribution all over the place where you buy it online. My website is Aprildunford.com and if you're interested in, you know, if you think you need a consultant or something, you can find me there and then I'm not too active on social media except Twitter. So I'm @Aprildunford on Twitter. So if you want listen to me, I don't know, listen to me talk to them about cat jokes or whatever you can follow me on Twitter.
Kathleen (51:46): Great. Well, the book is Obviously Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me April Dunford. This was fun.
April (51:51): I'm glad. Thanks so much for having me.
Kathleen (51:54): Yeah. And if you're listening and you liked what you heard, or you learned something new, you could head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast a review. And of course, if you know someone else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, and I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thanks April.
April (52:10): Thank you.
Working with an agency can be a great way to get valuable strategic advice, get more done, and get better marketing results—but finding the right agency partner isn't always as easy as it might seem.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, YouShouldTalkTo founder Daniel Weiner digs into the dynamics that make for a successful agency-client relationship.
Daniel has built his career on helping match brands with the perfect agency for them, and he's seen what works and what doesn't.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to learn more about the factors that you should consider when searching for a marketing agency.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the YouShouldTalkTo website
- Get in touch with Dan at Daniel@YouShouldTalkTo.com.
- Connect with Dan on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And today my guest is Daniel Weiner who is the founder of YouShouldTalkTo. Welcome to the podcast Daniel.
Daniel (00:24): Thank you for having me. I'm pumped to be here.
Kathleen (00:27): Tell my audience a little bit about what YouShouldTalkTo is. By the way, I love the name. And also about yourself and your story and how you came to be doing what you're doing today.
Daniel (00:37): Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you liking the quirky name that I wish I could say there was a, a genius behind that, but it came to me one random morning and the URL was available. So I started that.
Kathleen (00:47): You know you've got a name when you can find the URL.
Daniel (00:50): That's what I'm talking about, but yeah, YouShouldTalkTo essentially pairs brands and marketers for free with vetted agencies or freelancers for virtually any marketing or technology need. I was VP of sales at an agency here in Atlanta for the last, roughly seven and a half years. So I led new business strategy, all that sort of stuff for many of our clients. And after resigning in July amidst the madness of COVID and trying to figure out what I wanted to do next, I was still getting contacted by former prospects and clients and stuff like that. So it was kind of dipping my toes into referring business, out to people I trusted and yeah, it was successful in the short term. So I decided roughly around September to go full steam ahead and I officially launched with a brand name and all that sort of good stuff beginning of September and been very exciting, stressful and everything in between ever since.
Kathleen (01:46): Well, I love it. And you know, I, I spent 11 years as the owner of an agency, so I've been on both sides of this. I've been an agency owner who is looking for companies to work with. I've been an in-house marketer for the last several years that works with agencies. And so I've definitely seen this from both sides. And this is going to be a little bit of a different episode for us because normally in these episodes, we talk about like how to do a certain kind of marketing, but that's not exactly what we're covering today. And I'm actually really excited about what we are going to talk about because I think it's so important, which is how do you pick the right agency? And I say it's so important because most of the marketers I know, at some point or another, will work with an agency, whether it's for a very particular niche, like project or a particular aspect of their strategy, whether that's paid media or, you know, social or ABM, what have you, some marketers will work with agencies for all of their marketing, either way.
Kathleen (02:49): It can be either the greatest relationship you have that is a total game changer for you, or it can be the most horrible experience you've ever had leaving you feeling as though you have poured money down the toilet and gotten nothing for it. And I have seen both, I have experienced both. And so I think it's super, super important to talk about if you are thinking of working with an agency, how do you find one that is right for you? And so like you do this for a living, you pair people. So I really want to kind of like dig into your head on, you know, what is that process you use to try and determine what agency or freelancer is going to be the right solution for a particular client?
Daniel (03:35): You bring up a lot of good points and it's definitely you know, the more marketers I talk to, it seems the norm is it's usually a pretty polarizing experience. It's either really good or really bad. And, you know the in-between doesn't exist as much as you would kind of hope it was. You know, I think it's obviously better to have no feelings about your agency than super negative about your agency. But the, the short answer to what I do is it's, it's honestly not a perfect science which is probably counter to what I should say from a sales perspective. It really depends on the personality of the person I'm talking to. And the marketer and the company and their goals. You know, somebody could say five different things on a call that makes me switch, you know, who I think is the best fit for them from an agency or a freelancer standpoint.
Daniel (04:24): But to me, the, the biggest thing comes down to who do you like the most? You know, unfortunately it's a bit of a popularity contest in that, in my opinion, you know, doing great work is the price of admission. You know, if you're an agency and you don't do good work, the rest is not going to come. So, you know, there is no agency or freelancer or anyone that I would recommend, or hopefully anybody making a recommendation would give to someone if they didn't think they did good work, but it's, what do you think you can get the best work out of your head from to be completely honest, you know, who do you trust the most with potentially astronomically large sums of money from like a suspense standpoint, who do you trust when undoubtedly something goes wrong or there's the scope creep, you know, to help you get through it in the most efficient way possible, those types of things. So it's hard to say like, you know, one exact thing that leads me in the right direction, but I've intentionally built out my agency network to theoretically be able to help virtually any type of company in any type of vertical and have several resources for them to chat with.
Kathleen (05:32): So let's break this down because I like that you brought up kind of doing good work as being table stakes. So in my mind, when I think about this topic, having been on both sides, there's like three categories of kind of evaluation that I would do. If I were going to work with an agency, one is like you said, will they do a good job? Do they have the expertise, the, the track record, et cetera. The second one is, and actually, maybe there's four. The second one is culture fit. You know, I, I do think there's some intangibles around like just culturally, are they aligned with me? The third one is what I would call like operating styles slash communications, you know, like, is it an agile shop or is it a waterfall project management shop, but also like overall, how do they communicate with their customers? You know, and what am I going to find that, that communication, cadence and style works for me. And then the fourth category is like, who you're going to be assigned to, because this is a big one. There are lots of agencies out there that do amazing work, but if you're shuffled off to like a junior PM who doesn't know what they're doing, you may not get the benefit of it. So to me, there's like, those are the four categories. I'm curious to know what you think about that taxonomy that I just rattled off.
Daniel (07:03): I completely agree. I actually wrote a blog post right when I launched about, I think those were four of the five that I have in the blog posts to me three and four that you listed are arguably the most important. So we, you know, we both agree that everybody's got to do good work to get good work though. It's a, you know, a two-way street of communication between the marketer and the agency. You know, I think a lot of people, which is, you know, a misnomer is if you hire an agency, your problems are fixed or you're automatically getting, you know, amazing work. And you know, you only get as good, you know, if the, if the input isn't good, the output isn't going to be good either.
Kathleen (07:43): Right. And let's be honest. I just want to say this for the record. It's not always the agency's fault. There are many clients who make it really difficult for an agency to help them.
Daniel (07:56): Yeah. So, you know, you bring up a good point. I'll, I'll get back to the four things you mentioned, but you just made me think. Yeah. You know, I hear from part of what I take out of this process is if you, as a marketer ask somebody, you know, one of your friends or colleagues, you know, do you have a good agency? You know, you're either going to get, yeah, I have a great agency or you're going to get a no don't ever work with these people. And neither of those are objective, you know, just because you had an incredible experience with an agency, doesn't mean they're the right fit for your friend. And if you had a completely horrific experience, you know, it doesn't mean they wouldn't be the best fit for your friend as well. You know, there's, what is it, two sides to every story and the truth, you know, typically somewhere in between.
Daniel (08:35): But I think number three, a number four communication style and the team you're working with are the most important, because I think that's the quickest way to tarnish or end an agency client relationship. If the work is incredible, that's great. If the communication sucks you're just going to be miserable. You're going to be annoyed and you're going to, you know, it just breaks down. If you're not, I would argue that's more important than the work, knowing where they're at, you know, in your project, knowing what milestones are coming up, you know, which makes to me a project manager is one of the most important roles or the account lead, you know, with, with, depending on the type of agents to be.
Kathleen (09:13): I would go so far as to say, you can't have great work without good communication. I just, I think marketing is so collaborative and I just can't imagine a scenario where your agency wasn't communicating well with you and, and the work product could ever be what it needs to be.
Daniel (09:29): It's what makes people the most angry too, from my experience, you know, like at my former agency, we did a lot of big website projects, you know, that were six, nine months long, sometimes stuff like that. And very rarely when it was what I would call a successful project, would we get to the end? And they'd say, wow, like the website is the best thing I've ever seen when they were really happy. It was like, wow, like you made this stressful thing, supremely less stressful. And like, you know, we knew where you were at. So we could report to our board and our C suite and that type of stuff. So I, I completely agree there, but yeah, if there is a communication breakdown, regardless of how talented the team is, you're never going to get what you want from your agency as well.
Daniel (10:10): So I think that's first and foremost, if I had to tear them, even being able to, you know, eloquently and appropriately communicate the ask, you know, you can, anybody can say, I need a website or I need a logo. Those types of things, when creative is getting involved at such a personal thing and, and a good agency is going to be able to take what's in your head and put it to paper, which is like, sometimes when I've been involved in those projects, I'm amazed by creative people because I'm like, how the hell did you do that? You know, they gave you a bunch of statements and you turned this into something awesome that they were like, Oh, that's exactly what we wanted. One of the most common things I do here though, is, you know, when I'm making introductions is, yeah, we want to make sure we're, we're dealing with the, a team or you know, senior level people and stuff.
Daniel (10:57): Which, to be honest, I don't have a good answer to that. You know, the hope is everybody's the team. Even though that's not the case probably, but it is really important. I encourage everybody I talk to to ask those questions, Hey, I'm talking to you now. If I sign a contract with you, am I still talking to you or am I, you know, getting passed to, to other people? Those types of questions, because yeah, when you sign a contract with an agency, you should be a really excited. That's one of the things that I tell every marketer I talk to. If you're not excited to sign this contract, you probably need to talk to more agencies.
Kathleen (11:34): I would say, and I'll jump in there because I would say when you, you know, when you talked about how do you know if you're going to get the A team, right. My take on this is that if you, it depends where you are in your evolution of work. So I'll give you an example. Pay-Per-Click marketing. I I've been going through this for the last several months, trying to like get a new pay-per-click funnel built. And I went with an agency and I didn't know a lot about them. They were, I was introduced to them by somebody and clearly a great agency. The person that was assigned to me was lovely, great communicator, but I think she was, she wasn't like the top subject matter expert in the agency. She was doing the best she could. But I think when you're first, like in my case, when you're first developing your funnel, when, when, what you're looking for is much more like thought leadership and strategy at that stage.
Kathleen (12:39): Sometimes it might make sense to go to a much tinier agency or even like a freelancer. When, you know, you're going to get the senior level person who's been there, done that. And that's actually what I'm doing. I'm going to, I'm going to move to an agency that is an agency of one, essentially. It's a, it's a person who is an incredibly experienced PPC person, because I know I need that senior level attention on my funnel because we're just building it. Once it's humming along, if I have a well running funnel and it's just a matter of like checking in and tweaking and introducing some new creatives now. And then like, that's, when I think I could, I could go back to an agency like the first one I had because it's more of a maintenance project. So I do think there's this element of, like, you have to understand what it is you're looking for out of the agency you're working with and kind of match your solution with that. If that makes sense.
Daniel (13:32): It does a hundred percent, I think that comes back. You know, I, I kind of skate sales and marketing. So I think, you know, the biggest thing for me when I was doing straight sales was you know, expectation management. Like what are you expecting, you know, in terms of communication and who you work with, but that, you know, you bring up a good point. That was when I first launched, I didn't intend to do this on the freelance side as well. And the very first call I took was with a large company in Atlanta that had a tiny need. And it was similar to your situation, you know, if they had gone to an agency, they probably would've paid substantially more and had not as intimate or senior of an experience than they needed. So I started doing this with freelancers as well.
Daniel (14:17): And I, it, a lot of it's so situational, right? So a lot of times I'm talking people out of working with agencies at a particular stage, because I don't think they're ready in my opinion, or they're not going to get what they want, but yeah, it depends a lot on the personality. I find a lot of marketers have in their mind, they have to hire an agency and they don't necessarily, you know, I love all the agencies that I partner with and work with, but if you get them to a client at the wrong period of time, it's never going to work.
Kathleen (14:45): Yeah. And if your budget isn't like, that's the other thing. If you have a small budget and you get, you go to a bigger agency, you are going to be given very junior level person. Like you just are
Daniel (14:55): No, you're right. And I intentionally like, I'm most likely not the solution for a you know, really big holding company agency or anything like that. I I've intentionally tried to only partner and work with agencies from like 15 to 40 head count. Because again, now that I'm in the middle and I remain objective, I really do want to give the brand, you know, my promise to agencies are, I of course, want you to close. And I think you're wonderful, but before anything, I want to be an objective advocate for the brand to get whatever they want and get the best work and all of that stuff. And it's it's interesting. Every marketer I speak to, I've learned more in the last five months, I feel about in terms of marketing now being in the middle between agency and brand, because once they hear that I'm free to them, I get all this information that I never got when I was selling and beating my chest, that our agency was the best. And it really is. People just want to work with people. They like who are trustworthy and can, you know, help them look good to their peers and their, you know, their colleagues and stuff, pull it down.
Kathleen (15:57): Well, let's, let's actually break this down and get really specific now. So we mentioned a bunch of categories of, of like, or factors that play into whether it's the right fit. Let's go back to the very first thing we talked about, which is they have to do great work. If somebody is out there shopping for an agency, that's obviously going to be their number one question, do they do great work? How do you figure that out? Because every agency makes it sound as though they do. I mean, we're all in marketing, let's be honest. We know how to make ourselves sound really good.
Daniel (16:26): I was going to say like, contrary to popular belief, I think it's a little bit impossible because again, you're going to get case studies that look great. You're going to see former, nobody's going to send you something that you think you hate. So I almost recommend, like, I think saying I hear it all the time when people say like, Oh, I want a company with a proven track record of success. You know? Well, they're going to only show you the case to every, any agency who says they have no negative, you know, case studies or they've never done a campaign that didn't perform well is, you know, respectfully lying. So I would say, you do the best you can. If you see work that you like, that shows you that they are capable of doing that, but you still don't know the story behind it. So I think you go in with a little bit of an open mind.
Kathleen (17:13): Do you check references? Do you read review sites? Like, are there other proxies for that?
Daniel (17:19): I think references are great if you can get to them that aren't provided by the agency, because again, they're going to give you the people who love them, which again, you know, not to poo poo on agencies, but if you want to get the real story, that's why I like to think my service is super valuable because I'm giving you my 2 cents and I'm pushing you in one direction and you get to make your own decision, but yeah, references are great. I think were view sites. Again, I take it with a grain of salt, you know, to equate it, to like the restaurant industry. You know, if you go a Yelp and you look up a restaurant, probably gonna see a lot of negative of people that you don't know the context around what happened. So asking colleagues is a good thing and asking for companies that have worked with them, if you're able to have access to it. But I think as a marketer, the more you go through your career, you get a good feel for who you think is is, you know, full of it. And who you think is going to give you a good performance and all that sort of stuff.
Kathleen (18:13): All right. So some of the other factors let's talk about communication. How do you, as a marketer, who's looking to hire an agency that, you know, are they going to be good communicators? Are there questions that you can ask as in the evaluation process? Like what are some ways you can suss that out?
Daniel (18:31): I always recommend marketers put that a hundred percent on them of what they want and a good agency, theoretically, unless it's something, you know, insane will potentially push back a little. But I think the marketers should drive that ship. What makes their life easier? And put it to the agency is that, you know, within the realm of possibility and if possible to take it a layer deeper, I would put it in the contract. If there's anything you can contractually obligate yourself to have check-ins or reporting and stuff like that of when you expect it. But again, it's a feel thing too, you know, as, as a project manager and somebody in sales as well, like you can tell when someone needs a touch point, you know, and it's not a tangible some of the time, but as a marketer, I always recommend they go to the table and give the agency as much as they're comfortable giving, you know, we expect a weekly check-in.
Kathleen (19:22): I was going to say, what are some examples of things that you could ask for?
Daniel (19:25): I, you know, for bigger projects, I'd always want to know where we're at in the project. And I think like an end of week check-in, depending on how deep the engagement is, it's not too much to ask and it can take two seconds. Like, you know, the stuff that we talked about a lot at my former agency in terms of communications was some of these things really do take two seconds and they don't have to be super detailed and crazy reporting and stuff like that. I think a monthly check-in is normal, I think, or quarterly if you're doing reporting or anything like performance related, I think you know, monthly reporting and then a quarterly like QBR of sorts to look at the whole program. Looking at stuff for 30 days doesn't oftentimes tell you the entire story. But yeah, I mean, I have plenty of people for like bigger spends that I talk to, you know, if you're spending, you know, half a million dollars a month, they want to see live reporting and some sort of dashboard, which at that type of spend level, I don't think is, you know, overkill. And if an agency is not willing to do that, then that doesn't work for you. And to me, that's an amicable way of saying this isn't gonna work.
Kathleen (20:34): Is it reasonable to expect access via Slack, you know, like, or real time responses?
Daniel (20:43): I think it's unnecessary because if you have a good relationship with your agency, to me, Slack for the company is like a safe space to to, you know, you, you've got your day to day, but if you have a good relationship, you know, you're typically getting the cell phone of your account lead or your project manager. And if you shoot a timely email, like they should be replying in a timely manner. But you know, it depends, I know some agencies who have their clients are one person from their client in a Slack community with them, for, you know, quick communication and stuff like that. So if that, again, I go back to the beginning of that's the expectation of what you want, whether it's right or wrong, you're, you're in control of the budget and then your expectations. So as long as you tell them that upfront, I don't think that's a bad thing.
Kathleen (21:26): Now what about like project management styles? Because in the last several years, I feel like there's been this movement within the agency world to adopt agile for marketing. And I've worked at companies that have used it and companies that have not, my experience has been that it, for it to work, you really have to have a lot of communication and education because most clients don't understand agile. Certainly not as it applies to marketing. I think if you do that, well, it can work, but it can also lead to a lot of frustration around like, well, why, what do you mean something's not in the sprint? Or what have you, so like what do you think people should know about that? And does it, maybe you, maybe you think it doesn't matter, but I'm curious to get your take on it.
Daniel (22:17): Yeah, I have. Most of my answers will probably be somewhere in the middle, but I think it matters in the sense that you think of it like this. If you hire an agency for a bunch of money and then you tell them to do a different project management style, like, you know, you, you want them to do what has worked. You've decided they've won and you're going to work with them. You want their process. If that's something insane, you should probably know that before, you know, you engage with them. In my seven and a half years at my former agency, I don't think our project management style came up once or anybody asked for a specific, you know, a type of project management. It was more the frequency like, Hey, it would be great if you could send a weekly recap of what's going on in the project, or if we can have a weekly 10 minute check-in that happens, you know, 45 times a week with everyone I talked to.
Kathleen (23:11): I do find, I do find that project management comes up you're right. Like it never came up when I had my agency, but when I worked at the agency that used agile, it came up all the time because people didn't understand, like, what do you mean if I want to do X that it's going to be this many points? And what do you mean I have to wait until the next sprint? Like, there's, it just, it was like a complicating factor that I think could it introduced friction a lot of the time. And I actually like agile. I just think, like, I think it can introduce friction if you don't handle it well, and you don't educate your client.
Daniel (23:46): My experience with sprints and stuff of that nature too, is it it causes friction because I think sometimes it's arbitrary. Like, you've put, we're going to do this in two weeks because that lines up with something else, but it really might be like something that should take three or four weeks, you know? So you're, you're speeding things up and putting them in a box that don't necessarily need to be. I know a lot of product companies I talk to bill based on sprints and stuff like that. And it's easier from their development team standpoint to see where things are at with a project. And, you know, once they finish one sprint, they can clearly move on to the next. But you know, it, it all comes back to, again, like if you're the client and you're controlling this budget, you know, you're, you're not necessarily doing the agency a favor, but I tell people all the time, I give them the answer. If you want this thing, ask for it. The worst they'll say is no. And if that's a deal-breaker don't work with them, you know? I don't, for me personally, like I want whatever the agency, if I was the marketer, I want whatever the agency does best. I don't put them into some situation of like, figuring out how to use some other system or tool or project management style. So
Kathleen (24:51): Most agencies will just turn you away as a client if you want them to do that anyway, because it's not really realistic.
Daniel (24:56): The good ones I think what I find is a lot of smaller hungrier agencies will just say yes.
Kathleen (25:03): And that in and of itself could be a red flag. If somebody is saying yes, and you're making that kind of an ask, maybe you should walk away.
Daniel (25:10): Yeah. A hundred percent. I think that's one of the biggest thing that separates good agencies from the bad or good from great is willingness to say no to stuff and, and push back respectfully on stuff that they don't think is going to work. You know, I, I hear that line all the time that, you know, clients want agencies that will push back. And I, from my experience clients, they want it to a certain degree, not uncertain things. And there, there is a line of well, we're paying you now, like don't push back too much. So I think coming to a happy medium between client and agency pre contract signature is super important.
Kathleen (25:45): Yep. Agreed. all right. I think the one we haven't covered yet is culture and it sounded like you didn't have that high on your list. I't not as much of a deal breaker as some of these other things, but I do feel like there's like a culture fit aspect to, can we work well together? I'm curious to get your take on that.
Daniel (26:08): Yeah. I think it's moved up the list of priorities in the past few years and stuff like that. And the biggest thing I can tie to it that I think is a really good example of it is diversity. You know, if you're, you know, a company looking to increase, you know, visibility around diversity and stuff like that, you do want a diverse agency and you want people of all shapes and colors and size and fit and all that sort of stuff. And that aligned there. You know, if you are a non-profit like, you may not I'm trying to think there, you know, like you may not want an agency that's working with stuff super counter to your nonprofit, or, you know, when I think of like hotbed or guns and cigarettes and stuff like that, like there is a line where culture comes into play and it's different for every person. But when I think of culture, I think it's super important. The team makeup of like, you know, if you're a fun, cool brand, like you'd probably want a fun, cool agency.
Kathleen (27:06): Yeah. That's kinda what I'm thinking of. Like there, there's also like if you're super buttoned up and formal, you know, like, I don't know. I'm just guessing, like if you're IBM, you may not go to an agency that, that is really like young and casual and hipster. And like, there's that aspect too. And, and I guess that's where culture kind of also veers into like aesthetics and design sense and things like that. But but I do think there's something to that of like, you want an agency that's similar to you so that they just get you more easily.
Daniel (27:40): Yeah. And I think it comes back to the work to look like it's easier and you don't have to be like, you know, exactly the same as the people, but your, your personalities can't clash to get good work. You know, they have to align in some capacity. And the reason I say it's a little bit of a, you know, a popularity contest is because if you just actually don't like the people and you don't mash well, like you're probably not going to look forward to working with them. And it's, you're, you're, you're starting off, you know you know combating rather, rather than being super excited and ready to create whatever awesome work you're trying to do with them.
Kathleen (28:15): Yeah. So we covered those four categories that I mentioned in the beginning. What did we miss? What else should people be looking for?
Daniel (28:22): I think budget and just transparency around budget, which is something I try to take out of the process as much as possible for both sides by talking about it is something that's like a dirty word. A lot of the times, you know, I've in my experience in my former agency, very rarely were we given a budget, it was always, you should tell us what, you know, our budget should be with something I heard a lot which I think is a little bit of a time waste for both sides. So I really attempt when I'm talking to the brand to tell me and think of their budget it just takes out so much of the back and forth. And I think it gets you to a better place with your agency earlier by saying, look, we have X amount of dollars, or we would hope to spend X amount of dollars.
Daniel (29:07): How do we use that the best, you know, rather than this, you know, the thing I hated the most, the few times it occurred is if you send, you know, a proposal for a hundred thousand dollars, and everybody has in their mind what something should cost, and they were thinking $50,000, you're automatically disqualified. Because they you know, you didn't have those conversations upfront where there probably is a spot where you could have done something for $50,000 that they liked. So I try to take encourage people to think really deeply about their budget. And then the biggest thing I encouraged that we didn't talk about is whether or not you're ready for an agency. Like you have to, it's a lot of time and effort on yourself as well to make an agency successful.
Kathleen (29:52): You know, we talked at the beginning about having an intern. It's so funny, like everyone's always like, yes, get an intern, you'll get help. And it's like, no, God, sometimes interns just take so much work, you know, to organize and train and manage.
Daniel (30:04): It is a full on relationship and marriage and my, your agency can't be successful if you're not providing them a ton of information, feedback, strategy, you know, agencies, there's just no way at the beginning that an agency can know a brand as well as the brand knows itself. So at least at the beginning, there just needs to be so much time and energy spent in making sure your investment is protected and going as far as possible. So when people immediately jump to, I want an agency, I encourage them to take a step back and say, are we ready to make this investment and make it successful?
Kathleen (30:43): Yeah. That's, that's great advice. What are any other advice that you would give if somebody is out there thinking of re-evaluating their agency process like during that vetting process, any other best practices for them to be aware of?
Daniel (31:01): I'm very anti RFP. I think it puts a lot of stress on the entire situation. You know, I know for bigger companies, oftentimes they have to for procurement purposes and stuff, but when people are thinking of going through RFP, I really encourage them to just put together a very neat brief so that they can compare agencies, apples to apples without putting them through this gauntlet of you know, sometimes free work and stuff like that. But I think it's also really difficult in an RFP process to get to know some of these agencies as well, the things that we talked about, personality and, and that thing, because it's a, it's a competition and you're, you're giving what you think they want to win this thing. And then oftentimes you're figuring out what you're actually doing after the fact.
Kathleen (31:47): Yeah, that is such a great point. I could not agree with you more for two reasons. Number one, some of the best agencies flat out won't won't compete for an RFP because they don't need to because they get so much work without it. And RFPs are a hassle and a lot of work. And so if you have an RFP very often, you, you eliminate your ability to work with the top agencies because they don't have the time for that is number one. And number two, you're absolutely right. Like you're going to an agency because they're the experts, especially, especially if you're going to an agency like that, and you're asking them to develop your strategy, like going in thinking that, you know, what you need and writing an RFP is going to tie your hands and prevent agencies from being and telling you what you need, as opposed to just catering to what you think you need. Like, that's my experience 100%.
Daniel (32:48): No, I agree. And I work with several agencies who will not compete in blind RFPs, you know, at my former shop, you wouldn't either in less, we knew someone there and it was a formality where they'd had to go through RFP and we already had a relationship, or we were able to have a like regular hour long meeting prior to submission, you know, some have the question and answer phase and stuff, which still doesn't oftentimes give you enough information back and forth. But yeah, I just think it's a an antiquated system for picking agencies. It might apply more for whittling down like a short list, say if you've got 10 agencies and you want to get to five, you know, that could be a decent first step in my opinion, but it oftentimes just turns both sides off. In my opinion, I've seen plenty of RFPs where they're asking for free ideas and strategies and creative work, and it's just a stressful process for for all involved, I would say.
Kathleen (33:43): So my last question is, is this so often when companies go and look for agencies, their mindset is very much around, what do I need the agency to do for me? What am I looking for in the agency to be able to deliver value to me? Selfishly as somebody who used to own an agency, I'm going to ask you this question, which is what should we, as the potential client of the agency understand is our obligation and what is the part that we need to play in making an agency relationship successful?
Daniel (34:18): Yeah, it comes down to communication. I'd say as the first step, step one, one a of a million steps would be to clearly and concisely communicate your ask of what and I would put it in two columns, one being tactics slash services. What do you think you want them to do? And what is the home run outcome or performance metric that if you're trending in that direction, what makes this a lifelong relationship? Those two things to me are the most important cause that kicks it off. And then, yeah, just thinking about your own time, you know, if you're a VP of marketing CMO, your day is probably crazy busy. You know, once you hire an agency, if you're going to be the one managing it or being involved, I would make sure you have time. I'll audit to have those conversations and give the agency at the beginning, at least truthfully, whatever they need to be successful, you know, access to certain platforms and data and all those things.
Daniel (35:23): And then, you know, I typically encouraging if you are a VP or a CMO that you have somebody else managing the day to day, you know, the, the agency isn't just going to replace everything you do for most engagements agency. If it's a straight execution thing, somebody is creating, you know, 10 blog posts a month for you or whatever that may be. It's a little different, but for bigger agency engagements, I would think just being realistic with your own time is an excellent, a way to make sure at the beginning that you're getting the most out of your agency.
Kathleen (35:56): Yep. Absolutely. All right. Well, speaking of time, we are coming up to the end of ours. So I have two questions. I always ask my guests and I want to make sure I check in with you on these first one being, we talked all about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular person or company or agency that you think is really knocking it out of the park when it comes to inbound marketing these days?
Daniel (36:20): From the company side, honestly, it's timely. I would say RobinHood's had an embroiled a couple of weeks of I don't know, good or bad publicity however, you look at PR. But I would say their podcast Snacks Daily is my favorite, one of my favorite podcasts. It's daily, it's 20 minutes long. I think it's three investment stories, pop culture related. I think they do an incredible job at that. And then Morning Brew I can't say enough good things about. I think they do an incredible job you know, just making it as relevant as it is. And I look forward to that every single day, honestly.
Kathleen (37:00): That's great. Second question. Marketers always I think suffer from this drinking from a fire hose problem where digital marketing changes really quickly. It can be very, very hard to stay on top of all of that. How do you personally keep on top of that changing landscape and make sure that you stay educated?
Daniel (37:20): I read a ton. I consume a ton. I'm sad to say I don't read a ton of books anymore because I didn't want to content. I read per day. That seems daunting at the end of the day. Can't believe I'm saying this and this is forever on the internet, but Tik TOK has become a central point of truth for a lot of marketing and news-related items. So digestible. And Adweek does a really good job in particular on there. They do a I think it's weekly, a weekly 60 second segment of what you missed in the world of marketing and advertising, while you were doing everything else you need to do. Mashable, I've been reading for like the last 10 years and stuff like that. And then yeah, Morning Brew, The Skimm are how I start my my day. And they both typically have either subsets of their newsletters or separate newsletters. The Morning Brew has Emerging Tech. I think it's called that. I read almost every day as well. So I try to control as much without making myself go blind by reading all of these things. What's what's, what's your go-to?
Kathleen (38:25): Well, my go-to is hosting a podcast and learning from all the people that come on as my guests.
Daniel (38:30): That's the best answer you could give.
Kathleen (38:36): Some of the newsletters you mentioned are on my list, but I, yeah, I am a voracious consumer of content and my LinkedIn feed and Twitter feed. On Twitter I am ruthless in how I curate. I don't follow a lot of people and if I'm not getting value, I unfollow. And so my Twitter feed is extremely helpful to me. Linkedin, I have a much bigger network, but I still find a lot of value there.
Daniel (39:00): Well, if you ever follow me on Twitter and I see you unfollow me, I'll know I'm not a curator for you.
Kathleen (39:10): Yup. All right. Well, thank you, Daniel. This has been so great. For those listening, if you enjoyed this episode or you liked what you heard and learned something new, please consider going to Apple Podcasts and leaving the podcast a review. And if you know someone else doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork. Last question, Daniel. If somebody wants to find you online, what is the best way for them to do that?
Daniel (39:35): Www.Youshouldtalkto.Com or Daniel@YouShouldTalkTo.com. And I'm also a very active on LinkedIn if anyone wants to connect there.
Kathleen (39:46): Awesome. Well, I will put all those links in the show notes. So head over there to get in touch with Daniel. And that's it for this week. Thanks so much, Daniel. This was a lot of fun.
Daniel (39:55): Thank you. I appreciate it.
Want to get better results from your webinar? Elias Zepeda has developed a webinar funnel that generates big ROI for his small business clients.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Need Clients Now founder Elias Zepeda breaks down the webinar marketing strategy he has used time and time again to generate new leads and revenue for his clients.
What makes Elias's webinar strategy so successful is his omnichannel approach that incorporates more than just email and pay per click marketing.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to get all the details on the strategy and learn how you, too, can get better results from webinars.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Need Clients Now website
- Email Elias at elias@needclientsnow.com
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Elias Zepeda from Need Clients Now. Welcome to the podcast Elias.
Elias (00:22): Thank you so much. So happy to be here, looking forward to it.
Kathleen (00:25): Yeah, this should be fun. I'm excited to chat with you about some of the different ways you help your clients get better inbound marketing results. But before we get into that, tell my audience a little bit about you and your story and how you wound up doing what you're doing today and what Need Clients Now does.
Elias (00:45): Awesome. Happy to do so. I started my agency at a very young age. I was 20, 21 years old. And I I happened to just get into it by luck. I was initially first working as a manager for a marketing company and we were doing a marketing for a large newspaper newspaper conglomerate and the West coast. And and I was worked as a manager for nine months at a very young age. And by luck the contractor, our client offered me my own contract to become a contractor. And so what that entailed, I had to hire, train and develop a marketing slash sales team to sell newspaper subscriptions. And this is quite some time ago, of course, but that was my first entry into, into the marketing world. And I, and I did that for four years.
Elias (01:42): I had that contract for about three years and I learned so much because what we did is we set up booths and we had a sales team that was giving away offers and incentives in exchange for getting people to, to subscribe to the newspaper. So we had a lot of promotions, giveaways, incentives, and, and that type of stuff. And so that was kind of my first entry into, into the marketing world and through that contract, because we had our activations at football games, basketball games all different types of expos. So we were essentially representing, you know, the newspapers. So we had the ability to do a lot of media trades. We would we would give out, you know, 10, 20, 30, $50,000 worth of ads and exchange of having a booth depending how long of, you know, of an event it was, if it was a fair, if it was a multi-day expo, if it was a season for the football or basketball game and so forth.
Elias (02:41): And so that was my first client many, many moons ago, and through networking and through being at so many events, that's how I, I spiraled into my second client and third client and fourth client just by actively networking because I was out and about at all times, managing the teams. And so we initially started as an experiential event marketing company and, and then we transitioned into digital marketing. So when I would tell you know, business owners, friends, colleagues, clients, that we were a marketing company you know, this is around the time that newspapers started losing its popularity and digital marketing, social media started being introduced into the world. And so they would ask you know, do you do any Google ads or, you know, how can you do leads or, you know what else can you offer? And so I essentially immersed myself into, into the world of digital marketing, into the world of inbound marketing.
Elias (03:39): And, and that's essentially when we started pivoting from an experiential agency into, into a, an inbound agency. And that's kind of how, how it all started. And so today you know, need clients. Now, what we do is we build sales funnels for, for small and medium-sized businesses, and that's what we do. And so what that entails is a fully done for you service, where we're generating the lead we're advertising on social media, and we are essentially building the whole a done for you aspect of the customer journey. And that's really what we're doing. And I'm extremely passionate about it, especially now that we're working with smaller businesses because it truly makes a difference when you produce the right customer journey, the right strategy. It makes a really big difference in the lives of the business and the business owner. And so that's kind of where we're at today.
Kathleen (04:29): Yeah, for sure. This is a tough time for a lot of small business owners. And I know you work with some businesses and some industries that are, have been hit particularly hard by the things that have been going on in the last year. And you know, that's one of the reasons I was excited to talk to you because it's easy to host a podcast like this and talk to a lot of marketers, have really big budgets and are from big companies that are venture capital backed. It's entirely another thing to be a marketer at, or for a company that has a smaller budget. That's really struggling, you know, and for whom these kinds of increases in sales really are meaningful on a personal level. And I was a small business owner, and so I have a soft spot in my heart for anybody who has the guts and the work ethic to start and run a business of their own.
Kathleen (05:27): So very, it's an issue very close to my heart. And I think with COVID, it's really just underscored how important it is for us to all support small businesses. So that was one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you because you ha you do just that you help smaller businesses fill their sales pipelines and you do it in a way that doesn't require a tremendous budget. You know, or lots of fancy tools. I think from what I've heard, it's very accessible. It's very doable and it's very repeatable for anybody out there who's listening. And so I'm going to think of this episode as my gift to small business owners out there who are looking for a way to try some new tactics in order to bring business in the door. Now with that as the kind of table setting for our conversation, I should say one of the strategies that you've used successfully to do just that is webinars.
Kathleen (06:21): And I feel like people hear the word webinar these days and they roll their eyes because they're like, Oh, webinars. We're also tired of them. We spend all of our life on zoom. Nobody wants to go to another webinar. Webinars are so like 1990s, you know there's a lot of poo-pooing around webinars, but the reality is they can still work if done well, and they are working for you. And you have a webinar funnel that you've used with a number of clients successfully. So I would love it if you could just maybe start by explaining the types of clients you work with and where webinars fit in their overall strategy.
Elias (07:07): Absolutely. Right now we work with a handful of, of industries and niches. And one of those industries is beauty academies. You know, which is quite interesting because that's not absolutely these are academies. These are institutions and organizations that train others. It's, you know, it's a business and they train others on learning the craft so that they can essentially start their own business. So when it comes to the beauty industry, you have your service providers, these, your lash artists, you're microblading artists, you're microneedling, and many, many dozens of beauty procedures that are out there in today's you know, marketplace. And then you have the academies, those that teach the individuals so that they start their own business. And that's one of the industries that we specialize in is working with these beauty academies and, you know, back to the whole COVID thing.
Elias (07:57): You know, most of the academies, we have a lot of clients on the West coast. And you know, COVID, you know, hit that area specifically in Southern California very hard. And so our clients at that time, they were, they were quite scared because they weren't able to hold classes. They weren't able to, to fulfill the service and, and this specific funnel that we're going to dive right into, it made a huge impact because they were still able to, to generate revenue when collect deposits for future dates. And so it's something I'm very proud, proud of because our clients were scared. You know, these are these, these are small local businesses and they didn't know what was going to happen. And they didn't know how long of a pause they needed to take and how they were going to continue paying their employees.
Elias (08:44): It was a scary time for them. And so I'm very proud that we were able to successfully execute this webinar campaign for them. And, and you're right, you know, we have done webinars, we've attended webinars and we see it all out there, but you'd be surprised. There are so many industries where to them, they have never attended a webinar. They have never produced a webinar. And so for them, it's a whole different ball game of like, understanding how was this delivered? How can I generate revenue and so forth? And so I'm sure many of the listeners here are familiar with a webinar, but for maybe a small percentage that are not really familiar, it's an incredible opportunity for you to really deliver your message. And so for those complex industries where you can't really just get the message across and just, you know, a minute or five minutes, you really need a longer time to really get out the benefits and explain how it works and present your offer.
Elias (09:45): That's when the webinar works extremely, extremely well for, you know, and so the biz-op industry career ops and, and the beauty industry is it's a perfect campaign because the people that are getting into the industry, they have lots of questions. And on the webinar, you have the opportunity specifically live webinars. We prefer live webinars over prerecorded. But you have the ability to really present your personality. You have the ability to, to answer questions and then take the attendees through, you know, through a journey that explains the benefit of what you're doing and, and essentially indoctrinates them. And towards the end of the webinar, those that are really interested are able to take action and they're able to, to, you know, to take the next step. And so for, for these academies, it's, it's something that works extremely extremely well. And I'm happy to share some numbers.
Kathleen (10:36): Yeah. And you have a, like a true Omni channel approach to webinar marketing. I think a lot of the companies and marketers I talk to often rely heavily on a combination of like email and maybe pay-per-click advertising or organic social to draw in their webinar attendees, but I think you've taken it, you know, a step or two further. So I'm excited to, to hear more about that.
Elias (11:00): Absolutely. Some of these clients have a very small list, less than 20,000, less than 10,000. And so what we do for top of funnel is we're advertising. And so for that particular industry, Instagram and Facebook work extremely well for top of funnel. So that's, that's the top of funnel is we are putting out an ad that says register now to learn XYZ, right? So that's an example of one of our creatives with a nice image and so forth. So that's top of funnel, people are browsing. Our target audience that we're targeting is, is spending time on social media, many hours a day that we've seen,
Kathleen (11:37): And this is really a B2C webinar, right? Like you're going after sort of the individual person who would, might sign up and come, which is interesting because that's the other thing that's different is that I think every other time we've talked about webinars on this podcast, it's been B2B.
Elias (11:51): Yeah, absolutely. These are, these are consumers. These are nurses, you know these are, these are you know, professionals. These are primarily women that get into this, into this specific industry. But these are consumers that see an ad on Instagram and and they're registering for, for, you know, for the webinar to learn a little more of, of, of the industry and, and, and just learning a little more about it. So that's the top of funnel. And so our first kind of KPI is seeing how many, you know, registrations were able to get. And so for some of these local academies, and we do work with academies as well, they have multi locations and different cities across the country, but let's use a local Academy as an example. We're able to get hundreds of registrations through Facebook or Instagram ads. And that works extremely well. On average, our cost per registration is between four and $6. And so we're able to get you know, hundreds, depending on the client's budget, you know, but we're able to get people to register for the webinar. So that's our first KPIs.
Kathleen (12:57): And how are you, how are you targeting those ads? Because like, I imagine you could theoretically go out to a very broad audience.
Elias (13:05): Absolutely. So we target based off of all the parameters that Facebook and Instagram allow. So pages you know, pages that they follow those that are interested in beauty, interested in the specific procedure. So so our media buying team essentially goes from either general or, or, or really segmented a bunch. It depends on the city. So some, a city like Los Angeles, Orange County is going to have more interest than, than a smaller city. And, you know, toll says that example. So, so yeah, we're targeting off of pages they follow and just general interests based off of the, the procedure that we're presenting. So that's top of funnel. And then our second KPI, once we get those registrations is the objective is to get as many people to attend, right? So we want a lot of people to listen to the message, because we know that those that listened to the message, a percentage of them are going to be interested in converting.
Kathleen (14:11): That's a good point because that is, that does tend to be the real problem with webinars is lots of people register, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to show up. And so how you get them to actually show up is where the magic happens. I think
Elias (14:26): Absolutely. It's, it's very important. You'd be surprised, lots of marketers. They strictly just rely on email, but as we know, email on a good day, depending on your industry is going to generate maybe 20, 30% on a good day open rate. Right. but so what we do is in terms of the omni-channel approach is we want to not only send an email reminder of course, but we also want to send a text message reminder, of course, these are opting in, of course, and then we also want to send a ringless voicemail. So having those three different, different touch points of sending them reminders of when the webinar is, is really important, we take it a step further too. So not only are we sending reminders immediately once they register, they get a message and then a day before, and then the morning of, and then a message 10 minutes before the webinars.
Elias (15:18): So we have found that that's the sweet spot. It doesn't really annoy people because they really want to attend. They're registering for it voluntarily, and they want to show up. And so these reminders are incredibly helpful and having the text message and having the ringless voicemail, it's so important because, you know, you can't just rely on email. You need to have those multiple touch points and the different platforms to, to remind the audience. And so that's, that's our second KPI is what percentage are going to be attending. And right now we're seeing between 30 and 40% you know, attendance from cold traffic, which, which is good.
Kathleen (15:56): Yeah. Now what platform do you use for texting and ringless voicemail?
Elias (16:04): We use Twilio. So it integrates with a lot of the CRMs that our clients are using. So the, for, for these local businesses, the CRM that we're implementing is called go high level. And it's, it's really has been increasing in popularity over the past couple of years and the industry that, that we're in. And we like it because it has the ability to control all of the messaging within the CRM. We're able to listen to the call recordings, we're able to see the Facebook messages and the emails and everything is just bundled in, in that platform. So we use Twilio to connect it and then for ringless voicemails I will have to get back to you.
Kathleen (16:46): Oh, that's okay. I'm always just curious about these things.
Elias (16:50): It's very inexpensive. And that's a great part. So on a, on a local campaign you know, I mentioned the, the webinar registration you know, four to six dollars, but the, when it comes to the ringless voicemails, it's so inexpensive a client will spend less than like $30. It's like 0.0, zero, zero 6 cents. And so it's, it's very minimal cost for you to have the opportunity for someone to get a voicemail that says, Hey, you know, just a reminder, we have this webinar today that you registered for. I'm really excited to have you there. Right? So it's also about the messaging as well, has to be really positive. And you have to show that excitement through, through the email, through the text message or through the voicemail. And that's the, that's the difference on the voicemail. You're actually hearing their voice. So you can, you can really implement that tonality and little things like that. They really make a difference.
Kathleen (17:37): And so a couple of questions on that. Do you have your clients record the voicemail? So that it's the same person they're going to be hearing from on the webinar? Basically
Elias (17:45): Very important. Absolutely. Absolutely. We help them out. We write a script or we'll write an outline you know, and these, these voicemails, they're, you know, they're 45 seconds or a minute max, right? People don't want to listen to a long voicemail, especially if it's sent directly to their phone, that's what a ringless voicemail is. It's, you don't get a call or just send directly to your voicemail. So these messages are recorded by the person presenting, and that's very important cause that's that's typically most of the time, the people that are in them that they're buying from. So, and then that the same person that they're seeing deliver the presentation. So it's more you know, more of the face touch points that, that the, that the prospect is able to see, but the client is delivering the voicemail of course
Kathleen (18:32): Way. And this might be a dumb question. But is there any way to get any analytics back on ringless voicemail? Like, well, you know, if somebody listened to it?
Elias (18:43): Yeah, and most of these platforms they provide they provide analytics. So they'll show the delivery rate, right? Sometimes as we all know, with, when it comes to advertising on social media people, there's a percentage of people that are giving, you know, fake numbers and so forth. And so there are analytics that show you know, the delivery rate. And then also sometimes you're able to also assess if that person ends up calling back that number. And so what happens if they call back? Well, it depends on the platform that you're using, but it can connect directly to a call that you afforded. So so it depends on the platform.
Kathleen (19:23): Oh, that's smart. So you send out all these reminders you have about between 30 and 40% of people who show up and then talk to me about what the actual webinar itself is like, because this is the other area where I feel like there's, it's like ripe for screwing up. If you're, if you're too salesy, it can be a huge turnoff. But you obviously, especially in the case of, you're talking about you, you want to have some kind of a pitch because you're trying to turn this into business. So how do you coach your clients and work with them on structuring the webinars so that it, it gets the results you're looking for, but also delivers value to the attendee?
Elias (20:03): Absolutely. So it's, there's a formula, you know, you're, you have to deliver value on these webinars. No one wants to attend a webinar where it's entirely just a pitch, a pitch. That's not fun for people, right? And so obviously there has to be some congruency between what the ad is saying, what they're registering for and so forth. But the formula that we adapt really encompasses providing as much value as possible. And that formula includes edifying the, the speaker, you know, so, so there's a couple slides that, that, that give background on the speaker, her training, his, or her training and you know, results that they've generated. So there's a whole formula to it. It really is 90 value. And then I mentioned that these are live webinars, so there's questions, there's engagement, and that's what makes the webinars fun because they're live.
Elias (20:56): So you can ask questions like, Hey, where are you? You know, where are, you know, coming in from, or press one. Like, those are the best webinars when you're really engaging with the audience. And that's why live webinars convert more than prerecorded ones, but, you know, the formula entails edifying, the speaker providing value, and that value is so helpful because it also demonstrate your demonstrates your knowledge of the, of the industry and also demonstrates your expertise, right? And so a lot of value that we're presenting and teaching something, right. Teaching the benefits of the industry we're going to sprinkle in testimonials. That's obviously very important to show you know, to, to show social proof. And then so I'd say 90% value driven and information driven. And then towards the end of the webinar, there's going to be an irresistible offer, right?
Elias (21:46): And so that's how it works. There has to be a true irresistible offer that is only offered to the people that are, that are really making the time investment to join on the webinars. So there's a special discount. There are bonuses offered, but that's how we're able to get people to convert is by taking them through that journey. And this journey is about an hour long. And sometimes depending on how many questions the audience has, it can be an hour 20, an hour, 30 minutes long, but we've found that an hour is kind of the sweet spot for this particular industry. But that's typically the framework of how the webinar works. You have to provide as much value, edify the speaker, sprinkle in testimonials, teach and demonstrate your expertise and your authority, and then present you know, the irresistible offer and have people take action.
Elias (22:32): And that's, and that's how these clients are able to generate revenue. So let's look at the numbers on a high level. If we are getting, let's say a hundred you know, attendees you know, Oh, a hundred attendees, and let's say we have 40 40% show up rate. So that's 40 people that are showing up. We typically see a 10% conversion. And these offers from these clients we're working with are three, four, $5,000 for three, four or five day events. So it's very lucrative for these small businesses. And so if we're doing the math okay directly, we have, you know, 40, 40 people that are attending and, you know, 10% of that, that's, you know, that's for, you know, conversions you know, initially from the webinar and if it's you know four or $5,000 a course, right, we're talking about 20, $20,000. And so that may not seem like a lot for, for, for large, large budget, but for these small businesses based off of their, their student acquisition costs and based off of their numbers and their marketing budgets, it's a game changer. And what we do is we repeat the process. We can do two live webinars per month, three live webinars. And so that type of revenue that you're bringing in it makes a huge impact.
Kathleen (23:53): So let's talk about a couple of the nitty gritty details on the webinars. Do you have your clients use slides? Is it just a person talking? What does that look like? What is that experience like?
Elias (24:06): We are designing the slides for them. And so we have found that, that, especially in this industry, it's a very aesthetic based industry. You know, having high quality design makes a big impact, and it's a lot of work. It's labor intensiveness where my design team, because some of these presentations can be 80, 90 pages. And so we're designing each page, we're customizing each page and then we're also helping them out with the script. And so it's a, it's a PDF or a PowerPoint that they're presenting and they're going page by page by page. And then in certain areas within the webinar, they're answering questions and engaging and so forth, but that's typically how it works. It's a, it's a nicely designed professionally designed presentation. And how long did the webinars last about an hour? We've seen the sweet spot be an hour and that can, you know, that's give or take some of them depending on the number of questions. If you have a larger audience, we have done webinars. We've had hundreds, you know, and over a thousand people attend the webinars. And so depending on the number of questions that you're allocating you know, the webinars can be much longer than that. It can be an hour and a half. It can be an hour 40 minutes an hour, 20 minutes, but we, we, we found that an hour is kind of the sweet spot for, for really getting the message across and, and really presenting the offer strategically and carefully.
Kathleen (25:27): And what platform webinar platform are you using with them?
Elias (25:32): The one, the webinar platform of choice for using is Click Meeting. And there's so many, you know, we're, we're vendor agnostic. So the reason we like this one it's, it's it's low price. And also what's most important in what we're doing is being able to obviously have analytics, but also we have the ability to drop the link. That's how we're getting people to actually click during the last 10% of the webinar. When, when they're presenting an offer, we're dropping a link, right, where we're showing it, and they're, the prospects are clicking that link to the sales page that has, you know, the countdown, it has the headline, the call to action, and it essentially illustrates all that they're getting with that irresistible offer that we talked about. And so that's just the platform that we're using, but there are so many that, that, that have similar features.
Kathleen (26:21): Yeah. There definitely are a lot now you're working with these clients, I'm assuming in many cases, you know, these are businesses that up until recently probably did everything in person, you know, or, or, you know, they sent mail or they used the phone, but they're not, these are not businesses that typically do webinars. So for many of these people, it's going to be their first time running one. How do you coach them on, you know, what it means to be a good webinar host? Like I assume that many of them are nervous, right?
Elias (26:54): Absolutely. Some of them, some of them are very nervous and we do rehearsals. We have them send you know, after the coaching, we have them send us videos. So they're rehearsing to me and my team, and they're sending us prerecorded videos. We have them practice with their friends and family before the live webinar. So it depends some of these clients, because they're in a, in the industry in the beauty industry, they're very comfortable being on camera and they've, some of them have had many speaking engagements. So it depends, some clients are more nervous than others, but we're going to help coach them. And then really the presentation is really helping them as much as possible. They're really talking about themselves, they're sharing their story, they're sharing about something that, that they have lots of experience with. So that part's easy. You know, the hard part for some of these clients is really the pitch going into how do you, how do you get people to actually sign up and how do you, you know,
Kathleen (27:50): Yeah. What makes for an irresistible offer because you used that term a few times. So I'd love to hear kind of in your mind, what's the formula for that?
Elias (27:59): Well, people love discounts, right? So that, that, that's, that's, you know, topic number one. So if, if this course is, let's say, you know, $5,000 and they're able to get it for 45 or 4,300 of they're able to save 500, 700 or even a thousand dollars, that's, that's, that's a huge part of the irresistible offer. So a price discount, that's really going to motivate people to take action now. And then scarcity too, this is only limited for the first 15 people that take action. So scarcity, and then the bonuses that, that makes a huge difference as well. So some of these bonuses can be, you're going to get a one-on-one with me, or you're going to get this, this, this course, you know, so we work directly with the client to, to really understand what is this target audience want? How can we make it an irresistible offer and what can we add to sweeten the deal? And that's how you're able to take people and to get people to convert the discount, the scarcity, the the whole webinar format, and then the, the bonuses. That's really what makes people you know, triggers or impulse.
Kathleen (29:05): Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love that. So, so talk me through, if I'm listening to this and I'm a small business and I'm thinking, gosh, I don't know if I could do this. Like, it sounds expensive. Well, talk me through, like, what kind of a budget do I need to have to do something like this? Cause you've mentioned a few tools and then the fact that there are low cost, but like, what does it really take to pull this off?
Elias (29:27): Yeah. Well, first of all you need to assess is, is a webinar, really the right type of strategy for my business, right? So if you're selling, let's say, t-shirts, it's not going to work. What are you going to talk about for an hour show a t-shirt right. Get people to purchase. And it's, so it has to be you know, the right, the right type of client, it has to, it has to be a product or a service. That's thousands of dollars. If it's less than a thousand dollars, it's not going to be worth your time, putting all the effort and, you know, presenting that offer to too many people. And, and that's kind of the game changer with these clients is like previously, before they start working with us, they're, they're, they're pitching one to one, like you said, you know, they're working with referrals, they may have done some ads before.
Elias (30:10): Right. But they're still having to them or their team. They're having to contact these individuals on a one-to-one basis. And the webinar, the reason it's so amazing. And we love it is because you're, you're, you're presenting one too many. And so that's a big game changer. So those that are considering doing a webinar, they have to have the right price point. So the sweet spot that we've found is, you know, two to $5,000, anything higher than that is going to be a longer sales cycle and anything lower than that just doesn't make fiscal sense. Right. and then and then in terms of dialing in your numbers, when you're running ads for that industry, like I said, we see four to six you know, our, our, our cost per registration, but in a different industry, it may be a lot higher than that, depending on the competitiveness to it. So you need to first first gauge you know, the level of interest from, from that audience and then the topic. And there are so many factors that go into it, but you know, these, these clients that the ROI that they're generating is pretty significant they're spending you know, they're spending less than $2,500 in ad costs and then softwares and tools. And many of them are making you know, 20, 30, 30, $5,000 per webinars. So it's a, it's a huge ROI.
Kathleen (31:24): Great. And are the tools that you're using. I mean, some people who listened to this might be like, I want to hire Elias and his firm to do this for me. And others might be like, I want to do this for myself. So the tools that you use are they easy enough for anyone to, to use, to program, to set up or do you really need specialized expertise?
Elias (31:45): Most of these tools are very, they're very user-friendly. I think it's, it's, it's, it's certainly very possible for you to go out and try your first webinar. One of my recommendations would be you don't need to have a platform. You can test out a webinar. Why don't you test it out on a Facebook live or Instagram live, that's a mini webinar. Right. And right now people are talking about what's that app, that clubhouse that's right. That's right. Everybody's addicted to it. Right. House. And, and they're saying like, some of these people are really leveraging clubhouse because it's kind of like an audio webinar. And so I know some of these people that are on it that are getting lots of coaching and consulting clients by delivering value and that's, you know, similar to webinars. So you don't need to have those tools specifically just to get started. And I think that'd be a great practice for you to go on to Facebook, live Instagram live, and and then present, you know, present your offer, present your story. And that's kinda what it, what it's all about.
Kathleen (32:46): Yeah. That's great. I mean, you're right. There are so many platforms where you can test these things and like at no cost and clubhouse certainly is the wild West right now. So a worth a shot if you have an invite and if you have an iPhone, because it does not currently work on Android, although they're working on that, I hear
Elias (33:01): I was on an earlier vanilla ice was on yesterday, like Tiffany you know, hot dish and, and like, you have all these it is like the wild wild West, but right now is a really interesting time because you know, it hasn't been like broken in yet right now. It's still very new and it's really interesting. And if you joined the right room, you can get a lot of Valley from men. So it's really interesting.
Kathleen (33:26): That's great. Well let's shift gears for a minute and there's two questions. I always ask all of my guests. And I'm curious to hear what you have to say. The first is, of course, we talk all about inbound marketing on this podcast, and I'm curious if there's a particular company or individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park when it comes to inbound.
Elias (33:46): I think HubSpot does a phenomenal job. And you know, I, I, when I get their emails, they're always interesting to me as a marketer because I'm their target audience, you know, they, they but I think in my opinion, they're kind of, you know, the Kings of inbound specifically their content the way that they frame their content just makes me specifically want to download. And even though I'm already on their lists, you know, it really makes me want to want to consume the content. So I think whoever's responsible for their content or the team has been doing a great job at really understanding their target audience. But
Kathleen (34:24): Yeah, they, they undoubtedly set a very high bar. Second question is, you know, the pain point I hear from a lot of marketers is that digital marketing changes so quickly. And it's really tough to keep up with all of it. So how do you personally keep up to date?
Elias (34:45): I'm always learning, I'm always learning. So in, in the beginning of my career, I was, I was, I immersed myself and, and joining webinars and forums at the time and so forth. And that really hasn't stopped. You know, I'm a lapsed subscriber to digitalmarketer.com. I'm a big fan of, of the movement that they have in the community that they've built. But, you know, it can be from subscriptions and courses that I purchased or it can be something like clubhouse that we were just talking about. Right. You can get some value from it, depending on the room and the topic and so forth. And so I think it's very important to, to, to really, you know, stay on trend and to always be a student, essentially.
Kathleen (35:27): Yeah, absolutely. Any particular places other than digital marketer that you like to get your information
Elias (35:34): Well, HubSpot you know, HubSpot again, Digital Marketer you know, one of, one of my favorite, you know, marketers is the founder of Click Funnels and he has a great community in Facebook groups is, is amazing another amazing research and social platform. So I, I think it's undervalued as far as, you know, Facebook groups are concerned, but you can join a group that's specific to sales, marketing inbound, right? And so if the group is being curated and managed correctly, you can get a lot of value from it. So so really I get my info from various different platforms in different organizations.
Kathleen (36:13): That's great. Well, I totally agree about groups. Both Facebook and Slack groups, I get a tremendous amount of value out of all right. Well, that brings us to the end of our time. And so before we wrap up, if somebody wants to learn more about Need Clients Now, or wants to connect with you, or has a question about what you talked about today, what is the best way for them to do that?
Elias (36:33): You can visit our website, it's www.needclientsnow.com. You can also email me. It's Elias, elias@needclientsnow.com or you can message them on Instagram. I love talking to fellow marketers and I love answering questions. And if you want to join one of our webinars for one of our clients, I'm happy to invite you to that as well.
Kathleen (36:54): Oh, I love that. That's a great offer. Well, you know, I just want to say before we finish that, I appreciate the work you're doing, because like we said, in the very beginning, it's so important right now for us to support small businesses and to do whatever we can do, whether that's as marketers or as, you know, consumers who go out and shop and use our shop and spend our dollars, you know, with, with local businesses, et cetera. It's so, so important so that when we hopefully come out of this pandemic, that has felt like it has lasted forever. All of those businesses that we love will still be there. And so thank you for, for doing what you do.
Elias (37:29): Oh, you're welcome. This has been a pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity.
Kathleen (37:33): And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, or you learned something new, I would love it if you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. That's how we get found by more listeners. And of course, if you know someone else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. Thank you so much, Elias. This was great.
Elias (37:58): Thank you.
What do you do, as a new head of marketing, when your marketing budget is zeroed out, but your lead generation goals remain unchanged?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, David Kirkdorffer talks about creating a "campaign in a box" and, together with his sales team, using it to drive new pipeline and new closed won deals at a time when his marketing budget had been eliminated.
David's approach is one that any marketing leader can use, whether they have a big budget or none at all, to drive greater alignment with sales and increase pipeline opportunities from an existing database.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Connect with David on LinkedIn
- Learn more about Josh Braun, Chris Walker, and Andy Raskin
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is David Kirkdorffer. David is an experienced marketing leader who has helped a number of companies grow and exit through acquisition. He is also currently advising a number of companies as an outsourced CMO. And David, I know you're looking for your next gig. So I have a feeling you will not be available for long. I was excited to talk to you because I've gotten to know you through a number of the CMO groups that I'm involved with and you shared some great stories of getting pretty big results on not a big budget, which is always one of my favorite things to talk about because that I think is a situation that plagues a lot of marketers. But before we jump into it, maybe you could give my listeners a little sense of who you are, what your background is and, hey, why not share what you're looking forward to doing next in case somebody is listening?
David (01:37): Kathleen it's a pleasure to be with you here talking and to everyone in the audience. I hope the conversation that you're about to hear is going to be helpful to you. Yes, as Kathleen mentioned, I've been doing software marketing for a number of years. In fact, my career has almost followed the history of software in so many ways where it used to be on prem, and then moving to the cloud and all the different technologies that have been enabling along the way. I enjoyed being in the marketing side of the software companies and oftentimes I'm on the side of marketing that's closest to sales. I've always had a demand gen remit and as my career has advanced of course, then my remit has expanded to include other things like positioning, and messaging, and PR and AR, and so forth. But there's always been the core needs to, to satisfy the hungry mouths of the sales team to keep them satisfied and smiling.
Kathleen (02:31): I love that you look at it that way. I've always said that sales is one of my biggest customers as a marketer and not every marketer thinks that way.
David (02:42): My function, you know, most of the time it's, it's really very much been that way. I've worked in, many times they're like, series B or series A and a half type of companies. And so naturally the situation there is how do we find you customers. But also when I'm working in larger, at one point I was working at CA and obviously that's, as I said, largely yet almost right. Again, it was entirely focused on trying to provide leads or as we were calling them then, inquiries. We were very early adopters of the Sirious Decisions, waterfall language back in 2006, which is awesome language by the way, just as a side note. So it's always been around keeping the sales teams and the sales managers happy.
Kathleen (03:29): Now to that point you know, it's one thing to come in as head of marketing and be given a big budget and then be told to go out and make it rain. It's entirely another thing to be thrown into a situation where company leadership is expecting big results and they're not giving you a big budget or any budget. It's true. I know you found yourself in that situation from time to time and you've figured out a great way of approaching that and, and being able to still show ROI in that situation. So maybe give us some background on that and let's start to break down what you did.
David (04:17): So I joined a cybersecurity as a service company a number of years ago. I was brought in by the VCs to restart marketing. The company had a number of years of history and installed customer base. And soon after I arrived, the VC organization started a hostile process to oust the existing Founder/CEO. And while that was going on, the marketing budget that had been promised went to zero because that process turned out to be rather expensive. So my goals didn't change and the VP of sales who also came in at the same time, his goals didn't change. So I'm like, what are we going to do?
Kathleen (04:58): Oh my God. That's like the nightmare for every marketing and sales leader. We're keeping your goals the same, but we're eliminating your budget.
David (05:07): Right. so, and it was unknown how long this process was going to play out because it's a legal process. And, and so those things kind of, it's always unexpected situations in that. Now every company situation is different, the resources available, the existing database, the market you're going into, you know, are you a brand new brand into a brand new category. That's a different context of marketing than here is a, here's a technology and a category that's somewhat well-established. Your competition is oftentimes more based around price rather than unique new capabilities, right? Because the market has matured and there's a lot of sameness across the market. So in this particular company, there was a bit of that. There's an established category, this software as a service category, targeting small and medium size organizations across North America primarily the USA.
David (06:05): So at this company, I, of course like any good marketing person you try to see what's in the company database right? That HubSpot, that Pardot, that CRM, whatever. And you try and do an emailing delicately because you never know what kind of SPAM traps might be awaiting you. And so my typical technique is to break out that one dataset into four separate emailings. And I use the first letter of of the person's email address so that I don't by accident knock out all of the employees at a particular company by sorting by company or by geography. But I might knock out all of the Adams, so trying to mitigate my risk factor there, I found that that particular dataset was really not re-performed at all. In fact, I did get caught on a spam trap and I had to subscribe or apply to see if they would want to resubscribe one quarter of the dataset because my vendor.
David (07:02): At the time, HubSpot of course appropriately put me through a process to try and verify it. And this is because this company had been existing for 10, 15 plus years. And so there were many email addresses that had obviously turned over and so forth. So if you're familiar with any of that emailing type of scenario, you're going to understand that story. So what I did know, or what I did put together, was what I call the campaign in a box. And in this particular scenario, I had access to a large data set about 250,000 records that had found its way into Salesforce and about nine sales rep, SDR individuals who working in teams and kind of playing a little bit underneath the CAN-SPAM rules. I know that those SDRs leveraging Outreach, which the company also had, could send a certain amount of emails every day.
David (07:53): And indeed they had been and they were seeing poorer and poorer results. There was a bit of a spray and pray kind of mentality. How many names can I find in Discover.org? Can I bring in those records into Salesforce? Can I then put together an email or two that I blast out to my territory, right? They were geographically based. And if you're listening to this, you might find your company and your teams might be doing something similar, right. Because when you don't have a budget, this is a way to be able to communicate with an audience. And sales is taking its fate into its own hands this way. There's oftentimes that scenario where sales does these things, because it feels as if marketing isn't really supporting them. And perhaps that's a whole other conversation for another day.
David (08:43): So what I say is this process can work, but can we do this in a more targeted, more refined manner? And the first step in any kind of emailing is who are you sending to? So I spoke with the VP of sales and said, I proposed an idea and we spoke to two of his sales directors. And I said, what about this campaign in the box idea? What that means is I would put together a list for your teams. I would provide targeted emails by industry. It turns out in the security world, the drivers of security at a legal firm are very different than the drivers of security at a university or a credit union. They have different compliance situations. They have different user populations. There are different challenges in securing those environments. Ultimately they all want the same security.
David (09:36): So you talk to the message better. So we talked about the message, tried to say what if we did this in sprints? So all the team is working together for that kind of you know, Viking shield wall approach of like, let's all do it and we can all learn together. And then let me put together some training on each of these industries some of the team has experience with, with, you know, industry X or interest you, why some of them don't. So let's level up and share what we know and add some information into the training so that you can have a better conversation when you did reach out and speak to someone. So that was high level. That's what I proposed.
Kathleen (10:10): I love it. I just want to pause there because I really love that you took it upon yourself to train the sales team. I think you know, as marketers, we're all taught to create personas. And hopefully, you know, we're doing that in some way, shape or form, or at least profiling our target customer, you know, creating an ICP. And but I, I don't know that all marketers necessarily go that extra step to really teach the sales team about what they've learned. I feel like, I feel like a lot of marketers actually do the reverse where they're like sales, I need you to tell me what you're hearing. And there's a lot of like one way, like, tell me what questions you're getting, tell me what pushback you're getting, you know, give me all this information sales so that I marketing can create content around. It can create messaging around it, but there's not a lot of like, Hey, we, as marketing are going to come in and tell you all the things that we know about the customer.
David (11:09): I think you're absolutely right. And, and all those questions that marketing asks of sales are still great questions to ask, but there's an opportunity to also bring something to the table. Here's something that we have learned that we are aware of. And many times that kind of teaching happens under the radar in collateral that's created. So you said marketing might create certain collateral that has that educational elements to it, if you will, or captures the the synthesis of that education. And it gets put into a website page or a, an industry note or something which is great, which is not bad, but the personable let's walk through it. Let me extract the points that are interesting. I'm curious why this is useful kind of, and being available to answer questions about that learning is going the next step. So maybe what this means is that the content team who might be, if you have, if you, if you're lucky enough to have a content team, right. Okay. especially the startups can, can provide like notes that go with the document in some capacity, or perhaps a kickoff I'm kicking off this particular piece of content and live or recorded, provide some kind of extra color around that learning. Cause I think you're absolutely right. There's more going on. That's understood by marketing than sales ever gets to hear of. And it shouldn't be that way.
Kathleen (12:37): Well, and it's an opportunity because, you know, if I had a dollar for every time I heard a marketer talk about the challenges of sales and marketing alignment, I would be retired and living in some sort of tropical Island somewhere in a palace. You know, and so obviously that's a challenge. And I think looking for these opportunities, as you say, to give something back is a great way to build bridges, to demonstrate that it's a two-way relationship and to really form great relationships with your sales team.
David (13:08): It definitely is. It makes my life easier. Right. I remember when I was interviewing at one particular security company, a number of years ago, they said I was one of those situations where I'm in the room and all the different people I'm supposed to meet with come by one by one. And everything went very nicely and every single one of them was saying, we're looking for connective tissue. We want connective tissue. So obviously that had to become a conversation point and, and I felt well, okay, this is what I am. I'm supposed to be connective tissue. And, and that's, that's been the challenge. How do you connect the two groups? And it's not just sales, right. And, and, and, and kind of demand gen marketing, but it's product as well. Right. and sometimes it means even connecting finance, but that's a, that's another conversation, but yes, it's all about this kind of understanding what we're all working on.
David (14:01): Having trust that what we're working on is meaningful to each other, right. That sales can trust marketing is actually working on something worthy of time that will enable and facilitate penetrating accounts and advancing accounts through opportunity cycles. And it's that trust and the trust is it's, it's given kind of cautiously when you first arrive. There's always a lot of pent up demand when a new marketer arrives. You don't just arrive and look, we're now trying to find things for you to do is typically a long stack of things that they'd like you to be getting to finally you're here. So and then you have to keep earning the trust, right. Campaign by campaign. And if you're a marketer who's reporting up through sales, that's an interesting and challenging environment because you can find yourself a bit more on the tactical trying to meet tactical needs that are quantifiable in various ways.
David (14:58): And you might find yourself trapped in the chase for MQLs, as opposed to trying to build something a bit more sustaining, less tactical, more strategic that brings traffic to your website, which is kind of a different approach. But I can dive into some of the details on this campaign in the box if you'd like that. So the first trick, as, you know, as in real estate, it's location, location, location. So yeah, with email or direct mail it's list list list. So for each industry, I'd go through Salesforce and see what records do we currently already have. And in some industry categories and these categories, I was looking at where like legal, law, credit unions, manufacturing, banks, special campaigns targeting CFOs and small to medium business because they often a lot of that decision and universities and colleges, those are the industries.
David (15:58): So for each industry we said, well, what do we have already in this great big database of 250,000 names? And I saw there were lots and lots of records in some categories and very few in others. So we went category by category, because it just made it easier to kind of get something out of the gate and I would aim to have as small a list as I could put together that would give each of the team members enough coverage in each of their geographies. So in some industries, I would go back to Demandbase myself and say, Oh, I just need some more people in the Southwest because we don't have, for some reason, anyone, you know, the right way. And then I would limit very strictly by job title, the types of people we would go after. And if I had an abundance of names, which sometimes happened, for example, in the banking, smaller, medium size, I would avoid the major football cities.
David (16:49): I would avoid the major metropolitan areas and go more to the rural areas. Why is that? So two reasons. One, this isn't the time pre COVID when people actually could travel as sales reps, right? So take New York state, for example. Manhattan. Huge, huge market for this type of thing, right? And all the sales reps are often based in the city and really don't want to go to Rochester. They don't want to drive to Syracuse and meet a customer. So those customers in those rural States are less visited and receive less targeting. So that's one side of it. The other side of it, which is true in the cybersecurity space and probably generalizably true to all types of IT environments is talent leaves those areas, those rural areas, and moves to the big city where the bigger companies are.
David (17:43): And those bigger companies are attractive because they pay better. You have an opportunity to work with better technologies. There is more opportunity to move from one job to another. So if you're a great basketball player in your college you want to go play for the Boston Celtics, of course, right. Or perhaps the Lakers, I suppose, as the second time you don't want to go play for the Wooster bees or the you know, the San Jose, I don't know who they are. You want to go play where the best coaches are, the best facilities are. It's the same thing with tech people. They want to go to those. So, so by targeting the companies that are headquartered out of the smallest cities, I'm with my cyber security as a service offering more attractive because they have a greater need because they lack the skills, they lack the available staff. And so the service that we're offering becomes a much better proposition for them because they have, they have a bigger void to fill.
Kathleen (18:48): Do you think that that still holds true now with COVID and everybody kind of being able to be anywhere?
David (18:55): Probably. Yes. So perhaps to a lesser degree because I, because companies, software companies and sales teams are, we're creatures of habit, and we want to go where it's easiest and where it's easiest often seems to be where we've gone before. And so we have this history of going to the bigger cities and the bigger companies, perhaps this, I learned this, I kind of was introduced to this notion of going to the boonies, if you will, from another Boston based company called Toast, POS, they are in the point of sale systems business. They provide technology for mom and pop bakeries and coffee shops and so forth. And in chatting with a friend working over there, he kind of said, well, we were doing this because there's this untapped market of, of, of coffee shops that no one is approaching. And so that's great. Let us be the guy. And so Toast is a big success story. They've grown a lot. Absolutely. So it was like, huh, that's really insightful. And as we all do, we borrow and steal,
Kathleen (20:06): Oh my gosh, yes. I just did a LinkedIn post on this as a marketer. Don't try and reinvent the wheel, just copy what the successful people are doing and make it your own.
David (20:16): That's exactly right. And great artists. You can find quotations by great artists who say the exact same thing. So if it's okay for Picasso it's okay for me. Right.
Kathleen (20:23): And it's like the same thing with writers, there are no new stories. You know, all of them are just some version of the Hero's Journey that Joseph Campbell wrote about.
David (20:33): And Joseph Campbell, if you're not familiar with him, is a phenomenal read that's fully worth checking out. So, so we started with the list. Okay. So if I had too many, I was always targeting by job title. So for your business, you might want to kind of think about what that would mean. Right. and keeping each of these lists to small numbers. I maxed out at a thousand per SDR. They were paired up for their entire territory messaging. Okay. So as I said, each of these industries has got different kinds of drivers as to what is causing their security requirements, different compliance mandates, perhaps different types of customers, different kinds of user populations. And so I did my research. You know, what is it that, what are the issues that drive a law firm versus what are the issues that drive a university and, you know, spend a day or two in the you know, the library, on the internet called Google, you'll find law written on, on various topics trying to help you understand, you know, in security space.
David (21:43): There are periodicals that are, you know, the, the law review every now and again, there's an article on securing your law firm that type of thing. So I capture all this knowledge, put it into you know, documents, try and synthesize it sort in my mind, kind of playing professor, if you will, what is this a marketing, you know, program manager put together some draft emails. And I would, my approach to drafting emails is I try and tap into the three or four themes. Maybe it's compliance, maybe it's security, maybe it's cutting costs, whatever you will, themes are right. The planks of your messaging. And then write lots of emails around those. Kind of work through my demons. It's a creative process wiggling the wording. And then I would go to sales with my top three or four and say, what do you think? You've been doing this longer than I have after all. I've just joined this organization. You sales directors have been here for a year or two, right. What do you think? What can I improve? I'm trying to get their buy-in.
Kathleen (22:47): Yeah. I was going to say, because not all sales teams were, would necessarily be receptive to marketing coming in and saying, here's what I want you to email.
David (22:55): That's exactly right. Right. I want, the more, what's more important to me is the big picture on the overall refinement that the process is going to give me rather than any one particular element of the process going my way. Right. that's not the point. I was really trying to steer a bigger picture here. I've got this resource. I have no budget. The sales teams can be executing these emails using outreach, which is just as sophisticated as HubSpot, as far as managing cadences and who opens and who clicked and all of that. But I wanted to improve the message, improve the timing and improve the intensity of the team doing work together. And the individual components were less important to the big picture game. So I get some refinement on positioning, so on the messaging, excuse me.
David (23:44): And indeed, when I targeted credit unions, they had messaging they wanted me to use because the company had a history of success with, with certain messages. And I was like, that's great. Excellent. Thank you very much. Right. So, so this is, this is good. The next part was to kind of organize coordination. And I, I tried to work with these two week arcs and the kickoff would be, I I'd agree with the sales managers, when is a good time to kick off this particular campaign in the box. And the arc of the campaign started with a training session. So I I'm in marketing. I put together a PowerPoint presentation, surprise, surprise, and the team moved into the conference room for two hours. For one campaign it was particularly long training. Other times it was more like an hour 90 minutes.
David (24:29): We would walk through here's what's important. Here's the training. Here's the lists that I've put together for you. Here are all the materials to support this particular campaign. And I'll get into some of that. But we start out with this opportunity for everyone to talk with each other and across to each other. I sold this to this company. These are the things that were important because you had some junior team members and some more senior team members. And so this is a way to kind of create this old talking together because ironically, while everyone's working in an open floor space every day, they go to their desks and do the same thing and sometimes don't even talk across the room to each other as they're trying to keep up with, you know, their day. So this is an opportunity to kind of come together as a team.
David (25:14): And so that's how we kicked things off. The formal kickoff, if you will, would be we chose a date to send emails. I worked with someone who was on my team, who put together the individual sales team lists. So after we had the master list, then that person went through and broke it out for each team. So that all the person, the team needed to do was select the report that had already been built for them so that they can load in the records into their Outlook sorry, Outreach environment. So it was all taken care of who to mail to. There were three emailings or four emailings in each two week arc. They could choose as a team which second and third emails would be sent, but the first ones were sent the same time for that sense of we're all doing it together. And they found much better open rates and click-through rates because I also kind of gave them subject lines. We had AB testing on the subject lines too, right. As you can do you know, Outreach provides SDRs the same campaign management tools and capabilities as 25 years ago, Bank of America was paying a million dollars a year for
Kathleen (26:31): Isn't that crazy though? I mean, it really is interesting too, to think about like how much technology has enabled us to, to do these very sophisticated experiments to optimize what we're working and to just do it all seamlessly and automatically for a very low price.
David (26:48): I was at a company in the nineties that sold campaign management software. So I'm kind of innately familiar with this and it, you know, you can do more with outreach than we could do back then. As far as if then else type of cadence conditioning or condition trees and so forth, it's, it's, it is very true. However, while the mechanics have become simpler, what you say and how you say it and the message that's never been simpler, that's gotten much more complicated actually. And so that's the, that was the principle point of this is trying to put together the messaging so that they didn't kind of, so you didn't do silly things quickly.
David (27:35): So we'd kick off these emails. Are they sort of much better open rates? I think we were seeing open rates in the, in the kind of 25, 30% range, which was like phenomenal. And we could learn campaign in the box to campaign in a box what kinds of subject lines were resonating? Right. So we can kind of make the next campaign slightly better because we would have incremental learning, which is always what we do. And I never asked or, or, or suggested, or I purposely said, I'm not asking you to call all of these people. You've just mailed to, I don't think that's appropriate. Maybe you'd want to call the ones who you think are appropriate to call. It's follow up. And here's a voicemail by the way that I would propose that you could use very similar to the emails. I think I would take a very different tack today on, on voicemails provided. Because I think I've learned a few things since then.
Kathleen (28:35): Oh, I would love to know what, you know, what you would change.
David (28:39): Since doing those campaigns, I've been much more active on LinkedIn as perhaps many of us have in the last year or so. LinkedIn seems to have just blossomed as a great place to go for information. And I have always enjoyed reading what Josh Braun has to say. If you're not familiar with Josh Braun, he's somebody who perhaps you might want to follow. Ironically, I first met him in 2007 when I was at CA and he was just another company and he was trying to sell me some technology, which I quite liked by the way, but the rest of the team didn't think it was a good idea at the time. But Josh makes a practice of introducing ideas and ways of thinking to help AEs and SDRs penetrate accounts.
David (29:30): And do quality discovery in a way that doesn't leave you feeling or leave you as an SDR or an AE feeling kind of dirty, right. So as a marketer and as a person in marketing this very close to sales, while I, I started my career as an SDR, I'm not an SDR now, but it's very informative for me to read what they are thinking, what they are learning, what the current techniques, current, current best practices are. And I look at what Josh does as a source of great great best practices for me. So that's good.
Kathleen (30:06): Great resource for people to check out who are listening. I'll put a link in the show notes to his LinkedIn profile.
David (30:15): So that's fine. I'm a big fan of Josh. Too many SDRs are quite young in their career, and so he he provides a great insight in a way that makes me feel like, wow, I can do this. Yeah. I can do that. That's great. That's I feel so much better than what I think I'm supposed to be doing, because somehow that's what I've been told, but this, this sounds better. Yeah. People are having success with it. So I would, I would adopt some of my my voicemails around some of the things that he's he's.
Kathleen (30:47): So you wouldn't necessarily stop voice mailing or like you wouldn't change the channel. It's more about the message in the chat.
David (30:53): Absolutely. It's the form, not the, not the medium. Got it. Definitely I am of the, there are some people who would suggest don't leave a voicemail. Wait until you get them alive on the phone. And I'm like, well, you just went through all the time and energy to find the phone.
Kathleen (31:09): And the reality is, people right now, I mean, I will use myself as an example. I have robo killer installed on my phone. You can't get through to me unless you're already in my contacts. So the only way you're going to get through to me is if you leave a voicemail and I will, you know, I'll get those, I'm also a big fan of ringless voicemail. You know, cause it's even less obtrusive, but yeah, I think there's going to be more and more people like I am, who just have apps in place that flat out will block any call that isn't a known contact.
David (31:38): I do the same. And there are technologies of course, now that will transcribe the voicemail for you so you can read it. So that speaks to the importance then of having something quite clear in your mind to say so that the sentences are whole and complete as it's been written. And that's a different type of skill. That's a different kind of style to, to speaking. So anyway, definitely folks were asked, choose who you leave voicemails with. Perhaps it's the people who click on the, on the, the resources we provide them. Perhaps it's the people who open, perhaps they didn't open at all, but you know, that they're the right person because of previous history. You know, these people in this territory, it's not like all of them are new to you. Right. so that was the, the idea was to be an enabler, not a driver of what you're supposed to do.
David (32:28): And at the end of the first week, we'd have you know beers and debrief. Well, it was, for me, it was a debrief. For them it was beers. Get them talking, how did it go? What did you like? What did we hear? What did you learn and share across the team? So it was all part of this. We're all doing this together factor. One of the other things that this campaign kind of data is aside as a side note was really helped raise morale. And this is something that I didn't, I didn't think of starting this, but became very important to me as this process went on. You can imagine you're a young sales professional and your company's CEO is getting fired by your VCs. What does it mean? Are we going out of business?
David (33:21): Lots of unanswered questions because people don't necessarily have good answers and catastrophizing and, you know, we can kind of get together and talk about what does this mean? So this process was successful and it was successful on two fronts. Really one, nobody in marketing had ever done this for sales before. And I put together all this stuff and, and what this stuff, I should say where there wasn't already a web page dedicated to a particular vertical and our cybersecurity as a service capabilities for that vertical, we created one where they didn't already exist. It is a kind of a data sheet note for that vertical. We created one where there might have been resources around case studies or videos or other information. We captured that and made it very easily accessible so that all of a sudden the sales team was like, wow, I didn't realize that we had all this stuff to do with cybersecurity as a service firms.
David (34:28): And I'm thinking of law firms, just because you know, that, that, that stands out in that particular market. And look, we're not talking to the biggest law firms because they're kind of out of our league. They're not in our SMB space and we're not targeting the small one to four person law firms. Here are the law firms that are really in our sweet spot, as far as the firmographics go. And here are the job titles. And so, and marketing was putting this all together so that it was like, Oh, and it will seem so obvious when you look back in hindsight why weren't people doing this? Well, they might have been two years ago, but then those people who were holding it together and doing it were not there. So you, so by doing this process, sales was feeling supported, failed sales was feeling enabled and they were finding better open rates and their conversations and voicemails were receiving better replies. And so this was, this was great. And they were getting meetings and dental opportunities and you pipeline was added
Kathleen (35:31): Talk about this, cause this is like, this is my favorite part of these conversations. You know, everybody talks about, Oh, I got great results, but like, I want to hear, I want to hear the details.
David (35:45): In the first six weeks of running these campaigns in the box. So that would represent perhaps three campaigns in a box because we went on two week sprints, we'd been switched to another industry. The sales team added one about $1 million in new pipeline opportunity value, if you will, for a solution that had an average sales price of $40,000.
Kathleen (36:06): Wow. That's great.
David (36:08): So part of it is because this was an opportunity to, in an organized way, go back to where they previously had maybe had conversations part of it because it opened brand new conversations that they'd never gone to before. Never had never had that success. So that was, that was a real plus. And within that same six weeks, they won over $300,000 in actual business closed.
Kathleen (36:31): That's good.
David (36:31): This is a tremendous shot in the arm, right. If you do something that's new and you find success.
Kathleen (36:35): Wow, that's great.
David (36:39): And you know, for the morale factor, and then as a, as a practice, as a process, so after we'd done one or two of these, they were like, well, when's the next one coming? And what's the next industry. So that's where I go back to the sales directors and say, what industry do you think we should do next? What date would you like to do the kickoff on it? Because it's continuously organizing and coordinating with them where next and so forth. And they pick a date and they say, okay now I've got to create this material. If we, what we do and don't have, what do we have? Okay. you know, manufacturing, do we have, do we have a manufacturing note? You know and, and, you know, these notes that I talking about, they're like data sheets essentially, where 30% of it is unique to the individual industry. And 60% is kind of the same service. Just maybe tweaking a word here or there and change a couple of images. So it doesn't look like a bank.
David (37:32): And we just cycle through these. And it was a great, it was a great kind of feeling of like, wow, this is, this is going to be possible because of course, it's the marketer with no marketing budget, with a marketing number to get, and the sales VP with a marketing person who has no budget, not do any marketing where we're looking at each other across the table, like, what are we going to do? And I, I very much remember sitting in our little kitchenette with the sales VP there, like, I think this is going to work.
Kathleen (38:01): Now, you mentioned, you mentioned in the first six weeks adding a million dollars in new pipeline. And I think it was $300,000 in new closed won. How did that, and I don't know if you have this at the tip of your fingers, but how did that compare let's say to the six weeks prior? In other words, like what factor of growth did that represent?
David (38:19): So that's a great question. We found that there was on average, 20% increase in deal size that went along with this and that they had a 37% increase in close rate.
Kathleen (38:36): Wow. That's huge. Both huge, right? Yeah. so, you know, so what part of this is me? What part is the team I'm just enabling?
Kathleen (38:49): I don't think it even matters honestly. Like that is something that I rant about a lot, which is that marketer, this is a problem in, this is why we have the sales and marketing enablement problem is that there's too much like siloing and, and organizations put in place incentives for sales and marketing leaders to try and claim sole credit for something, when really we're all on the same team, trying to get more revenue. And so if we're all comped on revenue, if we're all incentivized on revenue, then it doesn't matter. Right. That's, what's good for the organization.
David (39:28): It's very true. And, and you want to think carefully about how you compensate or what dials and OKRs you put in front of people, because people will bend their behavior to meet that need right? So if I was giving them an MQL number, I have to fight for years not to create MQLs. And I want to lower the bar on what an MQL might be. Give me an MQL number, give me a ratio number, give me a ratio of how many inquiries I've provided that turn into opportunities. The better the ratio, the better I'm doing. So it incents me to, instead of adding 10,000 inquiries to a system, which is just noise, downstream noise, what do you do with 10,000 inquiries? Whether you're trying to filter through them, if you only put in a hundred, but they each had 10 times better chance of closing. Your sales teams are happier.
David (40:22): Bunch of people it's like, wow, okay. The ratio of my phone calls to something meaningful happening goes up. So incent on quality would be my advice and then try and scale how you get that quality. You know, one of the things I mentioned earlier is, depending on what kind of company you're working in, is it early stage? Is it in an established category? Are you a new category? You need, you have different challenges. And I have increased, over the years, increasingly come of the opinion that having a brand makes it a lot of help to everything down pike.
Kathleen (41:04): Oh, 100%. I say that I'm a big believer that, you know, you can have a great product. You can have a great marketing strategy and still not do well because brand is what generally gets you what I would term as at-bats right. Brand gets you a seat at the table. Then is when you need to have the great product and the great messaging and the great sales product. But if you don't even get an at-bat you're, you're out of the running, well, even if you do give the at-bats, they're not ready, right?
David (41:34): So interestingly, at that company where I was asked to be connective tissue, also the other term that came up or some at-bats, we, if we got more at bats, we do better. After six months of doing, you know, leaves for this company seen, we had doubled the number of at-bats, but the number of deals that we're advancing, were getting stuck at that 30% kind of point in the opportunity cycle, why that company was targeting larger enterprises with a new category of technology that was proven, absolutely working because we had an installed customer base who was doing it, but larger companies take a longer time to cycle through the, is this a good idea? It is a good idea. Let's move forward with this good idea and displace what we have now for this new thing. It's just a longer cycle. So if you're early with a new technology and a new capability, you might generate great leads that in two years, we'll close it. Doesn't do your, this quarter numbers. Very good, which is, which is again, why it comes back to an industry challenge. If you're reporting up through a sales kind of you know, management line, they want this quarter type of results. And sometimes that's possible depends on the category. Sometimes all the best marketing in the world can only get you at the table. It can't make your clients change their plan.
Kathleen (43:02): Yeah, absolutely. Well, I could talk to you about this all day, David. Both because it's fascinating and I love hearing your take on it. And also because I love your accent and I could listen to it all the time. You have a very, it's almost, it reminds me of Sean Connery, even though it's not the same accent. That is what your voice sounds like to me.
David (43:24): My wife would be thrilled and delighted if she believed that.
Kathleen (43:31): I think it's great. I love it. Sounds great. Thank you very much. No, no, no. Of course. Well, I want to make sure we leave a little bit of time because I always like to ask my guests two questions at the end of our conversation. One is, of course the podcast is all about inbound marketing. And so is there a particular company or an individual that right now you think is, is setting the standard for what it looks like to be a great inbound marketing?
David (43:56): So that's, that's a great question. And it's one that I like to find the answer to. We don't, I don't, I don't hear from other in-company folks as much as I wish. So I'm going to provide two answers, but there are agencies, which is a little different, right? So I'm on the East coast. Refine Labs and Chris Walker. I came to him through LinkedIn. Again about a year and a half ago.
Kathleen (44:32): He has a strong LinkedIn presence.
David (44:32): He has a strong voice. He has strong opinions. He backs them up. He's entertaining. He's energetic and dynamic. And he has found a truth that works for him, right. And it's a particular kind of play to drive traffic to your website, very specific kinds of traffic. And his, his arguments. I hope I'll get this right. You know, for the audience is basically you want the leads that will close, that your sales team will enjoy the most are the people who were saying, contact me, I'd like a demo, or they're looking at the pricing page. He's not about trying to sell whitepaper downloads, right? He's looking for people who are closer to intent who have actual interest. Certain research we read says that 3% of the overall market in your particular category is in a buy now mode and 97% are not.
Kathleen (45:26): And they don't want you to contact them, which is why they have things like robo killer on their phone.
David (45:31): Exactly. Right now they're interested in learning, right? Many of them go through a long learning cycle. They know they'd like to do this, but they're in a contract. They can't do something. They're not in a position to make a change right now. So you know, I've, I've suggested to people change your CTAs. Make your, the button that you press at the bottom of the page to get free information that's not gated because I believe in the non gated world, right. Make the button say something like, you know, I'm learning about this. This is interesting. Thanks. Or I need to make sense of all of this. And I know about this already, but now I need to make sense of it. And now I need to make sense of it. I've learned about this stuff. I already kind of know about it, but now I need to do something right. But I haven't said, call me, or I want a demo.
Kathleen (46:22): A whitepaper does not equal call me on my phone.
David (46:25): That's right. However, it does happen when you are trying to, actually, now I need to, I've known about this category. I've been on your nurture list for the last year and a half, but now I actually need to do something. Right. That's what we're always trying to figure out. Right.
Kathleen (46:38): Well, I love Chris Walker. He has a great presence on LinkedIn. And if people haven't checked them out, they definitely should.
David (46:46): He has a weekly Tuesday night, or Tuesday afternoon depending on what coast you're on, demand generation live show. So his presence, you can find him on the West coast. Similarly, there's a company called Directive and the CEO Garrett Mehrguth.
Kathleen (47:02): Who I have interviewed on my podcast.
David (47:05): Who, who that similar kind of idea. Right. And the trick is to, you know, obviously they're not going to know your product as well. They know the mechanics of how to kind of turn a crank, but they're going to rely on you for the creative though. They can also provide creative, both of these organizations, but you need to know your market. They can just help you with the mechanics of what to do and how to do it. Yeah. so those are two kind of leading lights, if you will, for me that I go to. I mentioned Josh Braun. If anyone's in the marketing side of things, if you're doing positioning, if you're doing campaigns, even though you're not an SDR or an AE, I think he's got great insight to share. And understanding what the SDR and AE world is, is, is vitally important to, to demand gen folks in marketing and the other person, maybe most of the managers, marketing managers is Andy Raskin.
David (48:05): Andy Raskin, based in California, speaks about the strategic narrative. And he works almost exclusively with CEOs of large and small companies in a variety of industries. But the way he frames how to message, who you are, what you do, why you exist is different. And when, when successful, makes demand generation so much easier because if you're, take the hero section of your website, you are doing research on some new category. You go to a bunch of websites and doing some research. If you can't understand what they are, what this website is saying to you, in 10 seconds before the chat bot pops up, or before the invitation to an event that you didn't want to really go to pops up, or before all these other pop-ups get in the way, if you can't understand what these guys do and how it can help you, you move on.
David (49:12): So crafting the end, if I have spent all this marketing money, trying to drive you to my website, and I've done a great job of driving a lot of traffic, but no one's clicking on anything. It's because the message isn't resonating. And so I'm getting that, that strategic narrative at a company level or at a product level is something demand gen side of world doesn't always get to control, right? That's out of there. But if you can have a, if you're in a company that's small enough, where you could, Andy Raskin and his approach is old way, new way way of trying to create compelling need is something to think about, because I think it will change how you're writing the email. It'll change, how you do a presentation, change how you create content. And that is how you get people to decide, I want to talk to you and that's the goal we're after.
Kathleen (50:12): I like those suggestions. Yeah. And I, so this is funny because now my second question that I always ask, I think I might know the answer to based on what you just said, but we'll see, which is that marketers very often say that trying to keep up with the changing world of digital marketing is like drinking from a fire hose. So how do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated?
David (50:31): Well, that's a, that's a really yes, I have to challenge just like everybody else. So LinkedIn has become my library.
Kathleen (50:38): That's what I thought you were going to say.
David (50:40): It's become my university. Yeah. you can learn a lot quickly. The trick is to figure out who to follow. It makes sense to you and then interact with them. Yeah. If they, if, if you, for example, Kathleen, you, you write on LinkedIn and you're there every, you know, once or twice a week, you, you propose an idea. And if I understand it, I'll say, well, I think this is great. Or if I don't, I said, can you explain better?
Kathleen (51:06): Well, and that's really how we got to know each other. That's what led to this conversation.
David (51:09): That's exactly right. So what's nice about the LinkedIn process is if you discover someone who's, who's, you know, an idea from someone you can ask them about it, and it's a good chance that they will answer your question perhaps, or expand on the idea if you will. And then there's the opportunity to meet with them, have a conversation. So that's definitely a great resource. And if you're, if you're not active on LinkedIn, and I think the statistics show that less than 1% of LinkedIn members are active on LinkedIn posting any content. So there's a lot of people who don't post anything for all sorts of cultural and business reasons, they might be holding back, which is not for me to say it's right or wrong, but you can read. And so if you find some people and you can ask questions, you can ask it's a huge opportunity for sure.
David (51:55): Very much. The other place that I would suggest is there are, you know, in the last year that sprouted up like weeds various types of communities. I mean Revenue Collective, for example that's a great resource for sales and marketing professionals to investigate. There are local chapters and within these communities, Rev Genius, there's a CMO group. There are many of these groups. You have an opportunity to ask questions of peers, which is great because especially in the marketing side, unlike sales, many times in marketing, you're the only guy or gal doing what you do. And if you've done 10 years of marketing, you've seen what you learn from books. You read agencies, you've had the opportunity to work with right managers and or teams that you've worked with, but it's a pretty small group of people, especially if you're in a startup, which has always kind of, you know, resource constrained.
David (52:53): So there might be 15 people across five or 10 years that you've had a chance to really interact with, with these communities. Now, many of them have Slack environments. You can ask a question because they're seeking that kind of interaction. Hi, I'm interested in learning about category of technology or campaign approach. Does anyone have any experience with this? And now you can tap into a resource of hundreds of individuals and the, and the, the these environments are very collectively helpful. So people want to help say, Oh, I did this, I've done that. Well, I can lead you to this reference. So this has always existed when you went to lunch with your friends and so forth and so on, but this is so much easier now. And so much more effective because it's not just limited to your geography. It's, you've got for literally the country or perhaps even the world.
Kathleen (53:49): Yeah. I've had the same experience with Slack groups and I've spoken before in the podcast about what a fan I am of Revenue Collective in particular. That's a big one for me. So I totally agree. Well, I think we're at the top of our hour. So if anyone has listened and wants to reach out and speak with you, ask a question, connect with you online, what is the best way for them to do that?
David (54:12): Well, actually, LinkedIn. I think I've discovered I'm the only David Kirkdorffer on the planet, so I'm easy enough to find. So that's a great place to kind of reach out to, and try and connect. And have you had dialogues and conversations with anyone?
Kathleen (54:28): Fantastic. Well, I will put the link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So if you're listening, if you want to connect with David and if you listened to this episode, you've enjoyed it, you learned something new, I would very much appreciate it if you would take a moment and head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. That is how we get more listeners. And of course, if you know someone who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, I would love it if you would tweet me at @workmommywork and let me know so that I can invite them to be my next guest. Thank you so much, David.
David (55:02): Thank you. Kathleen has been a pleasure and an honor.
Most marketers know that personalization can improve conversions. But how do you implement personalization at scale?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, McGaw.io founder Dan McGaw digs into the details of how companies large and small are building marketing technology stacks that allow them to create highly personalized experiences throughout the customer journey.
Considered "one of the original growth hackers," Dan specializes in building tech stacks that drive results at the middle and bottom of the funnel.
In this episode, he discusses how companies can build and leverage Amazon-like automation without the need for expensive back end developer resources, and how to do it without seeming creepy to your audience.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit McGaw.io to learn more about Dan and his work advising companies on their marketing tech stacks
- Text "creepy" to (415) 915-9011 to experience Dan's personalization test
- Watch Dan's webinar on How to Build a Martech Stack
- Visit UTM.io and enter your email to get in touch with Dan
- Connect with Dan on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Dan McGaw, who is the founder of Mcgaw.io. Welcome to the podcast, Dan.
Dan (00:23): Hey, how are you today?
Kathleen (00:26): I am awesome. How are you?
Dan (00:29): I'm doing amazing. Thanks for having me here.
Kathleen (00:31): Yeah. I am excited to have you here because we get to talk about some nerdy marketing stuff having to do with e-commerce, which is currently a favorite topic of mine. And I say nerdy and I put myself first in line of the list of nerds who care about these things. But before we dig into this topic could you just tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and Mcgaw.io?
Dan (00:56): Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I'm Dan, I'm the CEO and founder of Mcgaw.io. But I've been in the marketing tech space for over 20 years. So I got my start in 1998, sending mass emails since, before there was even mass emails. So as I like to say to people, I just kind of have seen some I've been around for a long period of time. but some people recognize me for when I was the head of marketing at Kissmetrics. I replaced Neil Patel as the head of marketing at that company. Before that I was head of growth another company called Codeschool.com. We were one of the pioneers in the online education space for developers. So some people know of Codecademy or Team Treehouse, Code School. We took the early exit. We sold out to Pluralsite, which is the publicly traded company in that space.
Dan (01:36): So as you might imagine, I'm very technical. I'm also very analytical, but I'm also understand marketing and sales really well. And some random things about me. I was coined as one of the original growth hackers, which is kind of terrifying. Somebody called me that one time. And then it kind of caught fire. And I've just been involved with MarTech for a long time, but with Mcgaw.io right, like we're a marketing technology and marketing analytics agency, but it's like, what the hell does that mean? Right. That's just difficult to say in general. We help companies with two main problems. Either they lack of visibility in the customer journey, or they lack the ability to engage in the customer journey. So we help companies choose their tools, integrate their tools, operate those tools, and always are focused on trying to make the money.
Dan (02:14): But the big focus for us is that we are not a marketing agency because we don't do PPC, SEO, content marketing, as we would say that TOFU, Top of funnel stuff. All of our work is on the middle and bottom of funnel, leveraging technology. So when you think about that, that nerd that you wish you had on your marketing team, that's probably our team, right? When you think about that developer, you want on your team, that's us. But we do a lot of work with Marketo, Amplitude, Salesforce, but we're tool agnostic. So you can come to us with any stack and we'll help you build your stack. And that's really what our niche is, is the marketing stack.
Kathleen (02:45): There is such a huge need for what you're doing in the marketing world right now. And I say this as a marketer who does not come with a highly technical background. I mean, I was like a political science major. Don't ask me how I wound up in marketing. That's a whole story that we don't have time for. But you know, it's interesting because I've worked with a lot of different marketers over the years and some of the best marketers I know do have unusually technical backgrounds. Like one in particular that I'm thinking of who I've worked with for many years, she has a computer science engineering undergrad, and a marketing MBA. And I was like, man, are you the perfect combination of skillsets? So I love that. That's what your team, you know, that's sort of the profile of your team and what they work on.
Kathleen (03:34): One of the reasons I was really excited to talk to you, as I said, is because of the work you do in e-commerce. You know, if people regularly listen to the podcast, they may or may not know that in my day job, I'm head of marketing for a company that is selling into the e-commerce space. And it's been really interesting for me because I've been in marketing for a long time. I own an agency. I've worked with a lot of different companies, but I hadn't necessarily done a ton in e-commerce. And it's been fascinating to me to learn just, like, the level of performance marketing that is required to do well in e-commerce. I mean, you know, it stands to reason, but I think from my experience that I've had so far, the e-commerce marketers I've met are the most data-driven marketers I've come across in my career, hands down by a long shot.
Kathleen (04:26): And I guess, you know, it's because it's sink or swim, right? All their, all of their revenue is coming through digital as opposed to, you know, other types of companies that can get by, on, you know, business development and events and, you know, pressing the flesh at in-person networking things when those come back. You can't do that in e-commerce. So anyway, I'm going on and on, I will stop, but I'm fascinated by this because it really does take, you need to have a very data-driven mindset and you need to have the right stack in place in order to do it well. So I just want to kind of like turn it over to you to react to that. And, and I'm curious if you found the same thing in terms of e-commerce marketers tending to be more kind of technical and data-driven performance marketers than marketers in other spaces.
Dan (05:13): Yeah. And, you know, I think our views of the world maybe are slightly different. Cause I tend to see one of the things that, and it depends of course, on the type of e-commerce business, whether it's B2B or B2C. But what we have seen historically, and there's a joke inside of our company that B2C marketers, e-commerce is what we're talking about, are fighting basically with sticks and stones. And then when you talk to a B2B marketer, typically not going to be e-commerce right, but typically fighting with machine guns and crossbows and all kinds of stuff, which are really intimidating. So I, what I will say is I, while I am saying somewhat I disagree with you, I actually do agree with you on the data-driven part heavily. And the reason why I say that is in B2B companies, when you have this larger transaction, that's a sale through Salesforce, you lose track of that, the time that it becomes a lead, right?
Dan (05:58): Like it becomes a lead and then its in Salesforce and like, okay, well that's sales's problem. So there's hence why there's a little bit of that separation there. And then same in SaaS, like there's that first purchase, but then there's this subscription, right. Which they don't really track, but in e-commerce right, the marketer is heavily responsible, even more so than in any other company for the purchase, which is the only thing there is now, the marketer is also responsible for the repeat purchase, which is usually what marketers are not responsible for in any of those other situations. So I will agree with you in an e-commerce there's this innate focus on performance marketing, and then as well as the purchases, because that performance marketing, paid media, whatever it may be in there is so directly connected to their success and failure that it's just, they're, they're extremely focused on that.
Dan (06:42): And I think performance marketers in general are very, very data-driven on that that spectrum of what they're looking at, but it's also a shorter cycle. Like I think about, so one of our clients is Hydro, right? Hydro is the Peloton of rowing. And they are super focused on paid media because that's where all their stuff comes from. So we are constantly analyzing their data and looking at that tiny little funnel. So there's definitely a big data-driven focus, but the way that they look at that data compared to like some of my SaaS companies or my B2B companies, very, very different. And I'm not saying anything is lesser or more on either side. I'm just saying the way that they look at the data and what they're looking at of course is very, very different.
Kathleen (07:19): You make some really good points and I should actually append my comment to say that there's, it's impossible to make sweeping statements about quote unquote e-commerce because that is a very, very large basket of companies. And I think the companies that we've started to deal with tend to be maybe on the mid market side, as opposed to the micro side, there are, it's a lot of teeny tiny mom and pop e-commerce businesses that I'm certain are not employing you know, world-class growth marketers. So I should clarify those comments that I made.
Dan (07:51): I mean, I have to say so, and we, we have very fortunate to work with hundreds of clients at this point. Some of the biggest companies that we've worked with, like, and I'm not going to say their names, but like large companies, their marketers were, we were like, how do you guys even sell this stuff? Like, how did you, but then you realize, okay, well, not everybody wants to work at a large company. Like in the mid market, that's where you see some of the bad-ass people cause everybody, and especially with millennials and even more so now gen Z, they want to make an impact and they want to see growth. So at a big company, they can't make an impact. There's just, it's just too, what am I going to do? I'm going to make one thousandth of a percent of a difference? Like I don't care. So I think the mid market where you're talking about for sure, you're going to see a lot more of that like, let's get this. So yeah, I think some of the best marketers I meet are at small companies and they're just so smart that their company is small because of it. So it goes both ways. It goes both ways.
Kathleen (08:46): Great point. Well, one of the things that I think is interesting is you've done some work on the concept of personalization and how marketers can use that through the customer journey in order to improve outcomes. Tell me a little bit more about what you're doing there.
Dan (09:04): Yeah. So personalization to me is amazing, right? Like I love being able to personalize every single thing to the individual we're interacting with, whether that's online or offline. So I definitely like to be able to consume as much data as we can. And we've done everything from personalization, like hardcore personalization and direct mail to obviously retargeting programs, email things SMS, every single channel you can imagine we've been able to do really, really hardcore personalization. And just as a, as a fun test, and I don't I don't know how well your audience is, is it okay that I have an SMS test and show everybody something to test out? So in, in marketing naturally, there's the ability to do data enrichment. So what we did is we felt that we would try to make people aware with just your email. We can kind of come up with some creepy information.
Dan (09:47): So what I want ever to do is pull out your cell phone and I'm going to tell you to text the word creepy to this phone number. And if you do this, and you're well known on the internet, it tells you everything we found out about you on the internet.
Kathleen (10:03): Oh can I do it as we're talking?
Dan (10:03): Absolutely. And it's about your company and it's about you and things like that. Now, I haven't tested this service out. We made this for a conference and it did very well, but the phone number is (415) 915-9011. So I'll say that again. (415) 915-9011 and text "creepy" to it. When you text creepy to it, give it a little bit, it will text you back and it should ask you for your email. Now, if it doesn't email you back and if it doesn't text you back and ask for your email, shoot me an email at dan@mcgaw.io because I want to know why it's not working. But that being said, you should get a text back in a little bit. That then says, Hey, tell me your email. When you get that email, give it your email and go through the process. And then we'll come back to this conversation later.
Kathleen (10:48): I am super interested to see what this turns up, especially because like, side note, I can definitely be found on the internet, but it's really funny. I got a Google alert for my name. This was several months back. And it was an article that was written saying that I was one of the top 10 women in computer science. And I was like, what the heck is going on here? And there's a famous woman named Kathleen Booth who invented like computer programming language, who I don't even think he's alive anymore. And Google was pulling my picture for her Wikipedia entry. And so when people were writing this article, they like tagged my Twitter account and put my picture.
Kathleen (11:25): I was like, really? Wow. I wish I could take credit for all that, but I can not.
Dan (11:30): Use your corporate address when it does ask you for your email, but it takes a few minutes for it to respond back. It's doing some backwards math right now. So, but use your corporate address that way and also give you your company email. But for us, when we think about any one of our clients or anybody out there doing personalization is there's all these other places to get information from. So with just an email address, you can ping full contact com. It will give you all kinds of demographic information. You can ping clearbit.com. It'll give you firmographic, demographic and technographic information. You could ping builtwith and just get technographic. You can ping Tower Data. You could be super expensive and go to Melissa Data or Experian. The creepiest thing that I ever got was I wanted to test out Experian data. They have it on their website. I don't know where, but you can put in anybody's email and they'll tell you what they know about that person. And I put in my wife's email Meredith at amazing corps.com. It told me that she has kids, she's into soccer, she's into baseball, she drives a large SUV, like, and it gave me like 35 attributes. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so creepy. But that's, that's the truth.
Kathleen (12:31): Use your powers for good and not evil.
Dan (12:34): Yeah, it's totally. But like I've done some crazy stuff in personalization. We learned this from OkCupid. There's a, when we know where you are from your IP, we know exactly where you are, your lat, longitude. We know where you are basically within a hundred miles guaranteed. And if we ask you for your zip code, we know where you are within usually five miles, right? So if we know the weather, we can change the experience that you're going to have on our website or in an email or in a text message because it's now raining. So as an example, and I can't say the client's name, unfortunately, but just imagine you're Banana Republic, right? Very, very large company. They have the budget to do this. And you go to their website because you're trapped inside because it's rainy. And as soon as you come to the website, you start seeing people in rain attire.
Dan (13:16): Well, you were immediately connected to that experience. There there's, there's a one-to-one match. You're going to be engaged. Now, if it's sunny outside, you can make it so there's a sunny experience. You're going to be engaged. So by simply knowing the local weather, you can, you can engage the consumer at a much better way and optimize their experience and sell more products. And this is done, even like Burger King. Burger King is the best. I think they, they did the best thing. If you're within 500 yards of a McDonald's, we will give you a free Whopper. Just download the Burger King app and we'll prove it to you. You would drive within 500 yards of a McDonald's and you would get a notification. You have five minutes to claim your free Whopper, go to a Burger King now.
Kathleen (13:58): That's genius. I have not heard about that one before, but Burger King has such good marketing. I mean, so good.
Dan (14:05): Because of their stack, they bought a contract with mParticle and Radar, and they, they built this amazing stack to do these cool things and the campaign crushed it. Like, just so those are the types of personalization, things that like, I get super focused and excited about because you're starting to take into consideration all the things that maybe people aren't telling you as well.
Kathleen (14:24): So I have a lot of questions, but before I get to them about, specifically about the stack and about personalization, the one that immediately prings to mind when I hear something like this is like, is this the kind of thing that smaller companies can do? Or do you have to be like Burger King or Banana Republic? Or what have you.
Dan (14:43): Great question. And for me, yes, as a small company, you can do these things. It is going to take a little bit of elbow grease, not going to lie. It is going to take some work, but you can definitely do it. So in my book, so I wrote the book Build Cool Shit. Really, really short book, about 125 pages. It's got color pictures in. It makes it nice and easy to read. What I always struggled with is I've worked with some of the, I mean, I've worked with some of the best companies out there and I get to work with some of the smallest companies. I always feel bad because they're not playing at the same playing field, right? Like, so in my book, if you went to mcgaw.io, my book is offered for free in the top of the headline.
Dan (15:17): You can definitely go there and do it and get a free copy of it. And the whole point is about talking about how do you break down the stack to make this easy for a small business to understand, and then also hook them up with the tools which are going to be free for them to use. So, as an example, we love using Segment to implement our stacks because it makes integration easy. Well, Segment is free for most small businesses. Maybe it's a hundred dollars a month, right? Maybe it's a hundred bucks. That's not that much of a cost for the value that you're going to get in return out of it. If you set things up correctly, you then have Autopilot, which is the marketing automation tool that we recommend. You can get Autopilot for less than a hundred dollars a month, but it does a lot of powerful stuff.
Dan (15:51): You can build SMS bots with it. You can do direct mail directly through the product. You can do email marketing, you can do on site pop-ups, it does pretty much everything. And it's extremely easy for a small business use. You just have to invest the time to learn it. I'm actually staring at my Autopilot dashboard right now, waiting for your text message to come in, which it just pinged the system. So you should get a text back in just a second, by the way. Naturally Autopilot is easy, but if you then set up Amplitude, don't get me wrong, it's not the easiest platform in the world is set up but you can do it. Just hire somebody on Upwork, you know, have amazing marketing analytics and amazing way to pass your customer data and an amazing way to do marketing automation and engagement. So you can do these things. It just takes some, some elbow grease. It's not going to be easy, right. But a small business can afford it. And a small business can definitely do it.
Kathleen (16:36): So Segment, Autopilot and Amplitude are the ones that you've just mentioned is that right?
Dan (16:42): Yep. Segment, Autopilot, Amplitude would be the three easy tools to get set up. So you can have interesting superpowers.
Kathleen (16:47): And I, I'm not familiar with Amplitude. What does that one do?
Dan (16:50): Yeah, so Amplitude. So you have Google analytics, which tells you kind of what's happening on your site, but it tells you more about traffic and channels. Amplitude is going to enable you to be able to see much more of the behavior that somebody is using and then track what an individual user is doing. So as somebody who's using your website, you can of course, track who that person is, see what pages they visit to see what's going on and better understand their analytics. Amplitude is a little bit more advanced, but it is going to give you the ability to track your e-commerce funnel. It's going to give you better ability to track repeat purchase rate. As you might be familiar, Google analytics doesn't track repeat purchase rate. It also doesn't track revenue per customer. Amplitude is going to be able to give you those features.
Kathleen (17:27): Oh, shoot. I just responded to your text with the creepy experiment and my phone auto corrected my email address. Just something different. So can I still send the correct one or is that, is it now not going to work?
Dan (17:40): It's not going to work.
Kathleen (17:41): Okay. I'm going to start it over.
Dan (17:45): So you cannot. Let's look the logic, so to see what happens, it is going to take your email. Oh, you're, you're, you're so trapped in it.
Kathleen (17:57): I'm so sad now because I was really excited about that. Darn autocorrect!
Dan (18:01): Wait five minutes and then it should correct itself.
Kathleen (18:07): So I can resend the creepy?
New Speaker (18:11): It has a five minute delay, so that at the end of five minutes, it will kick you out of the journey and you can start it over again. So we'll try it again in five minutes.
Kathleen (18:18): Cool. I'm like so bummed out. All right. So, so it's accessible to small businesses. Let's talk about as the, as the business gets larger, what other tools are in the toolbox? And like, talk to me about like really, how does this play out in terms of how this information is used in the customer journey? Because my one thing about personalization is like, I get that you can use it a million different ways, but I do feel like there are some things you can do that, like they're fun and they're novel, but are you really going to see anything from them? You know what I mean? Like is the juice worth, the squeeze kind of thing.
Dan (18:55): Yeah. And that's definitely a big one is a lot of companies don't understand which juice is worth squeezing. Right. So, cause if you squeeze lime juice, like naturally nobody cares. So it would totally agree with you there. I think the biggest thing that we have to focus on is one, how do we as part of the customer experience, tailor that experience, so they're going to purchase more, right? Just because you can create magic doesn't mean that you should. And I think a lot of companies where this really goes awry, just because you can create automation, they create a ton of it. And just because you have automation doesn't mean you should know the hell out of me. Like if you sat in a restaurant, somebody leaned over your shoulder and was like, Hey, you want to buy the glass of wine.
Dan (19:28): You'd be like, I'm good. But if they did that every 35 minutes, right, while you're at the restaurant, you're like, I'm never coming back to here again. Right. So you make sure that you do it ethically and kind of with a right frame of mind to get them to purchase. But when you think about trying to like, keep it really, really simple in regards to like personalization, try to help people pick up where they left off. Right? So we worked with a company called Carolina Designs Realty out of the Outer Banks. They're one of the largest vacation rental realtor companies. When you go to the Outer Banks. So they have like 300 something homes all over the place. They're like the premier vendor, great company. One of the things that we did to help them really be able to maximize their revenue was is that when people basically came in to check out houses, we set it up so that every single time they looked at a house, their marketing automation tool would save the URL of the previous house that they were at.
Dan (20:17): So as they're going through the website, they also have the ability to save a listing. So they would hit save a listing. It would save that listing, save it in marketing automation, send them an email with their saved listing. Great. We saved their listing. We sent that on. Now that wasn't rocket science to build, but it really helped get people back into the process. So having the ability to favorite something in an e-commerce store and then saving that, and then emailing it to them, that's personalization, that's still personalizing their experience. Now what you need to do to make that even more effective is that when you then send your newsletter or your thing, the bottom of the email, add a little spot that says pick up where you left off. Show an image of the product that they last looked at, the name of the product and anything on it, and then offer them a 10% discount on it, right?
Dan (20:58): Like, come back, pick up where you left off, we'll offer you 10% off. Just use this promo code. Building those systems, while it sounds really difficult, really isn't that hard? Yes. If you need help, email me, dan@mcgaw.io. I'll send you to the exact webinar where we show you how to do this. I talk about it in my book as well, but that kind of little personalization is how you get people back into the funnel. Right. And that's what a lot of this stuff needs to be focused on is how do we get them back to purchasing, but making it more personalized to them.
Kathleen (21:27): So I will, if you send me the link, I will definitely include the link to that webinar in the show notes to make it easy for people to find it. Cause I do think that that would be interesting. When does personalization, speaking of your earlier experiment, get creepy? Because there is a little bit of a big brother aspect to it. Just because you can doesn't mean you should, there's the annoyance factor, but then there's also the creep out factor,
Dan (21:55): Super, super creep out factor. Right. So definitely happens, not gonna lie. So I have a talk that I did called When Personalization Gets Creepy and How Not To Do It Wrong. And that's where this whole automation came from is this whole creepy request. Right? So either way, there's definitely times when it goes wrong. So, and I'll use just a couple simple examples. I mean, Target, as an example, got really, really creepy back in the early two thousands. Target can predict with 85% accuracy that you're pregnant.
Kathleen (22:27): Oh, I heard these stories.
Dan (22:28): Yeah. And they sent a mailer, a direct mailer to a 16 year old girl who was pregnant based upon her loyalty card usage. And the father lost his mind. The father then had to apologize. He went to the news, complained. He then had to apologize because come to find out his daughter was pregnant. Now that's pushing it too far. Now Target made a mistake. It is what it is. Like, whatever.
Kathleen (22:48): They also did similar things and targeted women who had just had miscarriages, which didn't go over really well.
Dan (22:55): Yeah. That doesn't go off well. Pinterest did the same things with brides. Just because you're looking at wedding dresses doesn't mean that you're going to have a wedding. It just means you like the dress. So that was super hysterical. And then Shutterstock had a snafu with baby pictures, people looking at baby pictures, congratulations on your new baby. And it's like, this is not my baby. So, so people, we always make mistakes and sometimes you have to understand like whatever, like we're going to make a mistake. And I think sometimes we get too worried about being crazy. But there are times that you shouldn't be telling people, Hey, we know where you are like, Oh, like, you don't need to tell me that. So like there's definitely ways that you can kind of push that line. But the thing that we always try to tell people is like, don't use their images and stuff. Like try not to sound if it sounds creepy, like just, just put that little bit on there.
Kathleen (23:51): It's so funny. Cause as you're saying this, it's reminding me of that little, like song about Santa. He knows when you've been sleeping, he knows when you're awake. And I'm like, Santa sounds really creepy now.
Dan (24:03): I totally agree with you on that one. Right. So Santa can sound really, really creepy sometimes. Yeah, I would agree. But yeah, just don't be creepy is the big one.
Kathleen (24:13): So talk me through, if you would some actual examples of companies or customers and you can anonymize them if you need to, but like use personalization as part of their marketing and like what really have the results been. Because again, I think there's many ways you can use this. Not all of them will actually produce results. So I'm curious to know like what kind of a lift does it give you?
Dan (24:38): Yeah, great question. So we worked with an easy story that I can think about is we worked with a large vegan company. So their job was to sell vegan products. Vegan softwares, vegan stuff. And people really, really know of them in this market. So people would come to their website because they found a vegan recipe or because they found them through their content or something like that. And they would, they would download a recipe, right? They'd type in their email. Here's your vegan recipe. We sent you an email with that recipe. Check it out. Now with that email, we would also ask the question, Hey, where are you at in your vegan transition? Because if you don't know, most people who are looking at vegan recipes, aren't vegan. They're trying to become vegan. They're vegan, curious as we might say. So we had to understand where were they at in that buyer's journey to make sure that we could deliver the right products to them at the right time.
Dan (25:28): And this was the best type of personalization. If you're vegan, you probably liked our dressings or our grain kits. If you're not vegan and you're trying to become vegan and failing, you probably need access to our cooking school or our meal planning service or something else. You needed more help there. So the first email you would get would ask you, where are you at in your vegan journey? Are you just vegan curious? Are you trying to become vegan and struggling? Are you currently crushing it and need more help? Or are you completely vegan and you don't need us for anything? People would click on that button. It would have a UTM parameter, which you know what a UTM is right. So click on that. They go back to the website, the website would know the UTM parameters. We now see that in Google analytics, which was great. Our automation tool would save that and then bucket all of those users into the right journey.
Dan (26:11): So with that being said, the user would now their next email would be focused on products which of course would be better able to serve them. So as an example, if I'm vegan curious, and I don't know what it is, I'm going to be sent information. This is why you should become vegan. Maybe you should look at your heart. Maybe you should look at your diabetes. Maybe you should look at these things. What we're able to do, what our major metric was, is you don't want to look at purchase rate cause sometimes that can be a little skewed based upon the people you're getting. What we looked at, what we were most focused on, was the average lifetime value of a customer. Could we get a customer from spending $25 to spending $50 or spending more? And then we track each one of those cohorts of users.
Dan (26:47): So the users who were already vegan, we weren't making any money on them because we kept sending them stuff saying, why don't you sign up for our cooking class or sign up for a meal planning class. They don't need that. They're already vegan. Well, because we started sending them the things they would actually use, like grain kits or something like that, or cereal, something that they could actually eat. We're actually able to double their lifetime value in a very, very short period of time because now they're actually being served stuff that they care about. That's the easiest personalization you can do. I mean, that's list segmentation. So that type of stuff makes a massive impact. But going back to leveraging Segment, leveraging a good marketing automation tool, having Amplitude, I had Amplitude in that case. So I could actually see those metrics. I could see those cohorts. I could see the amount of money I made for each one of those cohorts because I had the analytics. I could really track that stuff.
Kathleen (27:31): That's cool.
Dan (27:34): So, okay. So I got a notification. I hate to text. You can text creepy. You've been kicked out of the journey. I do know that you're I did get some facts about you, which have already been populated into the system.
Kathleen (27:45): Is it the right me?
Dan (27:47): Well kbooth@clean.i.
Kathleen (27:50): Yeah. It's missing the o. Auto-correct removed it.
Dan (27:53): I got you. I got your your address. So from the mistake, is the company in Annapolis?
Kathleen (28:00): Nope, that's my home.
Dan (28:02): Oh, see, look at that. Right. I got your zip code and Annapolis already. Don't even have the correct email. I apologize to interject with the creepy thing again.
Kathleen (28:13): That's good. I love this. I love that we're doing this real time. It's awesome.
Dan (28:17): The segmentation is huge. So we did the same thing in my book. If you, if you check out the book, we use a company called realthread.com. They're actually a company. They make t-shirts.
Kathleen (28:27): I know Real Thread. I used to be head of marketing for a company and they, we had a partnership with them and they did all of our t-shirts for our conferences and they would actually send a team to the event and like screen print on the shirts live.
Dan (28:42): I loved it. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. So Real Thread has been a client of ours for five years. Like they've been around since like the beginning. I'm buddies with the founder and stuff like that. Now we did the same thing when people signed up for their email list because they have multiple different personas. So, Hey, thanks for joining our email list. We just want to make sure that we don't send you crappy email. Are you a designer, a business owner, a t-shirt a marketer, like, what are these things? People click on the button, we then change their experience. So now when we send our newsletter, instead of sending business owners, you should choose the right Pantone for the inks that you put on your shirt. The CEO doesn't care about pantones. If you don't know what pantones are, those are colors. Some. Very rarely, right. So this same thing is in my book, it talks about how you can create that system to make it so you can segment your list. And I think that's what most people really, they don't ask enough questions. They make assumptions. And it's like, your customers are nine times out of 10 willing to give you the information. If you phrase it in a way that's going to make their experience. Everybody uses Facebook, even though they know their data is being sold because they know it makes their experience better. Right? Like tell we're going to make your experience better. And they'll tell you information. Yeah.
Kathleen (29:44): It's the whole principle behind like, choose your own adventure. You know, and I love the idea of years ago I spoke to somebody at HubSpot. It was a woman who ran their email strategy and they, they made a change along these lines where after you first converted on something they would put you into this, this nurturing sequence that was like the first immersion I think they called it. And the first email you got was exactly like what you're talking about. And it was sort of like, which of these problems are you trying to solve? And depending upon which one you clicked, that would then determine the rest of the nurturing sequence, which makes all the sense in the world. So choose your own adventure. Definitely works. And that, that kind of like leads me to what my next question was going to be, which is, you know, we're talking about how to use it in e-commerce and it's so clear to me as a buyer, just the value in having like reminders about things I've looked at or favorited and customized product recommendations. But how do you apply this in B2B?
Dan (30:46): Yeah, so B2B. You perfectly teed up my next story, which is great. So this is hysterical that you asked that question. So I'll use the email example because this is really, really simple. And I can't talk about the company name, but they are very large video hosting company. So I can say that. So this video hosting company basically sells a high-end video player that you can put on your website, right? And when you come to their site, let's say, Dan@mcgaw.io, I sign up at that moment in time. We ping a service called Builtwith and Builtwith knows every technology that's on every website on the internet. So we hit Builtwith.com. Builtwith then spits back a payload of all the technologies that are on that website. So very easily, we now know that the company is using Marketo. Hey, we know they have money, right.
Dan (31:30): So that's great. But with, they also get all the video streaming they're using. So YouTube is on there. Vimeo was on there, things like that. So when that happens, our marketing automation tool, which was HubSpot, interestingly enough, HubSpot then knows in their first email, after their welcome email, we now need to focus on the value props we have over Vimeo. What do we do that Vimeo does not? What do we do that YouTube does not? And then when that email would go, and it would explain our value props in an order where we knew we were strong and where we knew they were weak, right. So we can actually compete with that. We never once said the creepy, this is where people get wrong with the creepy. We never once said, we know you have Vimeo.
Kathleen (32:08): We notice upon stalking your site.
Dan (32:12): Yeah. Now in an automated email, you don't want to say that. Now in a sales email not so bad. Right? Cause we automated sales emails.
Kathleen (32:20): That just means you've done your homework.
Dan (32:21): We didn't do our homework. They were automated. You just thought a person did their homework.
Kathleen (32:24): I mean, like when you send a sales email it means you as the sales person have done your homework, if you say, I noticed on your website, X, Y, and Z, like fine. Yeah.
Dan (32:32): That's totally fine. Even though automation may have happened. So either way this, these emails were sent out and we were able to increase engagement of the emails. Now, I can't remember, this is nearly five years ago. I don't remember the exact statistics on that, but I do know that we have very good lift on the engagement of those new emails. And then of course, being able to get people to stay involved in the email sequence. And that is a very stereotypical way to get people's attention, leveraging that data enrichment once again, to better personalize, better segment that email for that person. And we were able to get much better engagement out of those emails. And of course, turning into purchases.
Kathleen (33:06): It sounds like you could easily get into a territory where you're using a lot of different tools to put these kinds of programs together. And in doing so, data is moving between many different platforms. I mean, like, you know, you talked about using HubSpot and my company, for example, we have HubSpot and Salesforce and those are, you know, just enough work to keep those two systems of record in sync. Do you find that when you get into these areas of, of cobbling together, different systems that you need to put like a customer data platform in place? Or or are you finding that the tools are getting sophisticated enough that they can all talk to each other in a way that keeps them in sync?
Dan (33:55): Yeah, really, really good question. So I definitely think so, going back to, I definitely think companies should start out with the right CDP. So a customer data platform is really helpful. And I think the reason why a customer data platform is helpful is not what usually people were thinking of. Segment as an example, which is the biggest CDP in the market. The primary value that Segment started with is that you basically send all of your data to one thing and it distributes that data to everything else. This is a great reduction in developer time, right? So instead of spending five hours implementing this new tracking event or this new thing, I only have to spend maybe a half an hour because I only have to write the code once compared to having to write it 16 times for all these different tools. So that's the, the real initial value of where like the CDP kind of came into place is distribution of that, that stuff.
Dan (34:40): Now they do help with integration, but at the same time, you're not going to replace HubSpot and Salesforce's integration. You're still going to need that. A customer data platform does not solve that problem necessarily. It can, but it, it now you're working with some really, really big, expensive CDPs, which just are usually pricing a lot of people, a lot of people out of the market. So in that case, when you're trying to keep two systems up to date, one, a CDP is helpful. Segment is of course going to help us so that you have a live stream of data getting in there, but that's going to be really where you start getting into the place of where you're leveraging tools like Zapier, right? Zapier is going to help keep that stuff together. And there's, there's more enterprise competitors, Zapier like Tray.io or Workado that are becoming really popular.
Dan (35:20): If there's also a technology called hull.io and they're beta basically a data orchestration tool. And then if you get super crazy, you leverage tools like Fiveran or funnel.io or Stitch data. These are going to manage large, large, large datasets, but for most people, right, HubSpot and Salesforce, they have a great integration. Right. And just make sure it doesn't break. And then when you're trying to make data get into all these tools, cleanly, that's where a CDP really comes in. But the CDP I would say is higher up the funnel compared to like, where I would say, HubSpot and Salesforce is kind of in the middle. And I would say Zapier is below the funnel. It's interesting. I have an online course, which I always forget that I have this course. Kind of embarrassing.
Dan (36:04): I have an online course at cxl.com. So CXLInstitute.com. It's how to build a MarTech stack in like class three, which is also a free webinar on my website. You don't have to buy my course. You can go to my website and get the webinar. We talk about the three types of integration. You have platform side integration, you have service side integration. You have clients that integration, it's important to understand those three and how you build things out as marketers. We're more so using the platform side integration, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, and for anybody out there who says Zapier is Zapier.
Kathleen (36:34): That is the GIF v JIF debate of the data world.
Dan (36:38): Yeah. When you go talk to the founders and you're talking about it, they're like Zapier makes you happier. And I was like, totally get it. So, I'm doing my service to help them out and get the right name out there. So I always recommend Zapier to try to hook all the things together because you can do some really, really cool stuff with Zapier.
Kathleen (36:55): I do feel like though, and I agree with you. I love Zapier. And I've interviewed, I've had a couple of interviews with people like big, big company marketers, but also like teeny tiny dot com company marketers doing unbelievable things with Zapier. Like I interviewed one guy who was pretty much a solopreneur attorney who does his own marketing for his own solo practice. And that guy has like built marketing automation out of Zapier. Like he's, he runs his entire business on it. And the only thing that makes me nervous when I hear stories like that is, I'm like one thing breaks and the whole house of cards comes crumbling down. It's that, that makes me so nervous.
Dan (37:33): No, I, I can totally understand that. And that makes me nervous as well. Right? Not going to lie with like running everything through Zapier, but at the same time, I mean, I have over 50, 50 zaps right now, but most of my zaps are like automating my calendar, adding my zoom link to my emails and my Gmails and like my favorite use for Zapier in our company. So when we win a deal, we have to create a Trello board, create a Harvest project, create a Slack channel, inform the sales team. And for the services team, all our sales rep has to do, is move the opportunity to closed won, and everything is automatically created. Everything's handled. And our assistant just goes in and does some polish and it's all automated. So to me, that's really the use case of Zapier is a lot more workflow automation.
Kathleen (38:16): Yeah. I would agree with you. All right, well, we're going to switch gears because we could talk about this forever, but we do not have forever? So I want to ask you the two questions I always ask all of my guests. The first one you know, the podcast is all about inbound marketing. Who do you think, either a company or an individual, is really doing great work in the inbound marketing world?
Dan (38:39): Yeah. So I thought about this twice, right? So like I had to have two answers, one, I think Segment.com. I know we've talked about them a lot, but Segment has some of the best content on the internet and they do a great job with their inbound stuff. I think they really, really focus on helping people. And it's less on trying to be a it's more altruistic than like, Oh, come to my site so I can hit you with 55 pop-ups. And they just, they really have great content and they cover a lot of different people and it really drives a lot of traffic. And I have to say it, even though I don't want to. So I was the head of marketing at Kissmetrics and I learned a lot about content marketing while at Kissmetrics. I mean, we were the number one digital marketing blog for a long time.
Dan (39:16): And we drove a ton of traffic and Sean Work who worked with me. I love that guy, cause he ran the blog for me and did a great job. But Neil Patel, man, I used to work with that guy. Very, very smart, smart gentlemen. He has really figured out the content marketing inbound marketing game, even though sometimes he can be a little slimy and a little creepy, I guess, because he's super pushy. He's a great guy, like personally, like, I know Neil. Like he's one of the only people that I still see at conference circuits. How's your wife, how the kids, right? Like just such a, I don't know, maybe I'm on his good side, but he's a good guy, but he's just really, really talented at inbound marketing. And the Neil Patel blog just sucks up the internet. Like just honestly sucks up the internet, whether you want to get there or not. If you search for anything in marketing, you're going to wind up with the Neil Patel blog posts in the top page, like on the first page. So I've got to hand it to him.
Kathleen (40:05): Yeah. It's it's funny. Neil Patel is one of those marketers that, that I feel like is polarizing in an interesting way because people either love his stuff or they really, really don't. Like when I ask this question, I've had a lot of people say, you know, Neil Patel, but then I've also interviewed people who, who are like, not Neil Patel. Yeah. I mean, but I, I think that's great. Like I've always said, if everybody loves you, you're definitely doing something wrong because you're not like, you're not putting your stake in the ground hard enough.
Dan (40:36): His company LLC is I'm a big deal LLC. Right? So like, just gives you an idea of his character. And I have no room to talk at all because Neil and I got along great. My company name before it was Mcgaw.io Was called F'in Amazing right. Because that's just me,
Kathleen (40:54): Which I love. I, when I saw that on your your bio, I was like, Oh, I really liked that name.
Dan (41:00): Yeah. And I'm bummed that we had to change it, but Oh man, since we changed the company name and we've doubled in size, like it's just, we should have changed years ago. But at the end of the day Neil has his persona. He lives his persona. And I mean, he's making millions of dollars. Right? So like that for him, you don't have to like Ian Lopez or whatever that guy is that's on YouTube making $400 million a year, but he's making, I should say 400 billion a year. I think his networks is like 400 million or something now. You don't have to like him. Take the money.
Kathleen (41:34): That's great. All right. Second question. And particularly interested in your answer because of what you do. A lot of the marketers I talked to express that one of their challenges is that the world of digital marketing is changing so quickly that it's like, you know, keeping up with the pace of technological change in particular, it's like trying to drink from a fire hose. You are very immersed in marketing technology. So how do you keep up with all of it?
Dan (42:02): Yeah. I I'm so bummed for the answer that I have to give here. Cause I am like the last person to do innovation. Right. So I am against the hipsters. Right. So everybody's like, let's sign up for Webflow and I'm like, no, like I'll wait three more years. I'm good with WordPress. Like I don't need to change my solution.
Kathleen (42:17): You're not the guy camping out in front of the Apple store when the new iPhone comes out.
Dan (42:22): Hell no, I didn't get it. I wasn't. I was like the last person that I knew that was on Facebook. Now, when I think about like, I'm using, I've been using Segment for nine years, so naturally I'm on the bleeding edge of some technologies, but it's very, very rare that that really happens. And I actually did not become a fan boy of Segment until about four years ago. Like I advise my clients against it until about four years ago. And I wait, I'm the early majority. When you think about Crossing the Chasm, but where do I get my information? That's what really, what we wanted to ask first, LinkedIn, I get probably 75 to 85% of my stuff from my LinkedIn. I follow everybody. I don't use Twitter too much. My feed is really from LinkedIn. I follow a lot of really, really important people.
Dan (43:02): I connect with everybody. I mean, I have 25,000 connections, but I follow a lot of smart people. So I get their updates and then that's going to be where I get most of my news. That being said my team keeps me probably up to date with a lot of the crazy technologies because they're interfacing with our clients and our clients are actually the ones that exposed me the most to new tech. Now what's sad is I have to tell most of my clients, no, we're not doing that. Like that's just too hipster, bro. And for every one of my clients now that has Webflow, I always tickle them and make fun of them and tell them you're a hipster. Let me get you those new glasses. So like I always push back on brand new technology because the internet doesn't work with it.
Dan (43:41): And the key example that I always try to, if anybody has ever worked with a single page application, a Spa app, anything that's React, Angular or whatever, the other JavaScript technology. And you had your website built today. When everybody started doing those things, they lost all their SEO. They lost all of their analytics. They lost all of their tracking. They lost all of the things and they all of a sudden had to go my, Oh my God, Oh my God, nothing works. Dan, let me give you 50 grand to fix this. And I was like, sure, I'll take your money. Right. But why did you have to move to the single page application? Because you were a hipster. If you would've stuck with the, the legacy stuff that would've worked just fine, you would have saved yourself a bunch of money. So I just pushed back and say, sometimes I don't care about staying on the cutting edge. I actually like being old and lame.
Kathleen (44:23): I'm right there with ya. You stick with what works, right.
Dan (44:27): If it's not broke, just maintain it.
Kathleen (44:32): All right, well that brings us to the end of the interview. So before we wrap up, if somebody is listening and they want to learn more about you or connect with you, ask a question, check out some of the resources you've mentioned, what's the best way for them to do that?
Dan (44:48): Yeah. So what I would recommend is you're going to want to go to this website called utm.io, right? Go to utm.io, sign up for a free account. And I'm going to personally email you and say, what's up. And then you can directly communicate back with me. Now I tell you this because I'm of course shamelessly plugging my product, UTM dot IO. And I want to talk to you about how you use UTMs. But that is definitely one of the best ways, I'm on LinkedIn. Follow me on LinkedIn. That's usually where everybody hangs out with me is on LinkedIn, but I don't want to miss out. We messed up this whole creepy text thing.
Kathleen (45:18): Well, we're waiting for the second.
Dan (45:20): We'll text you. There's a, there's now a, it used to say, it will not text you again in one minute, but now the rule has been changed to one hour. So I got an error notification saying someone with this number tried to text in and we can't text them back because it happened, the same message we sent to them one hour ago.
Kathleen (45:39): So tonight I'm going to send one. There you go. I'm going to make this work.
Dan (45:45): And in your next podcast, you're going to update everybody. So you've got to not only listen to this podcast, but the next one to find out.
Kathleen (45:50): Right. Stay tuned for part two. I love it. I love it. And if you're listening, make sure that when you test it, you put a space after your email address to see if your phone is going to auto-correct your address before you hit send. I did not do that, which caused the entire problem. So user error, you can't, you know, there's nothing you can do about that. All right, well, thank you so much for joining me, Dan. This is awesome. We are wrapping up now and if you're listening and you liked this episode, enjoyed what you heard, learned something new, I would love it if you would head to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. That is how other people find us. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I'd love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Dan.
Dan (46:41): Thank you for having me. Great to meet everybody.
How do the world's top Google ads experts develop their Google ads strategies and budgets?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, WebSavvy founder Mike Rhodes breaks down his approach to helping his clients getting the most profit out of their Google ads strategies.
Mike says it's at the margins where you make the most money from Google ads, and that means understanding how to measure incremental profits and incremental CPAs.
He uses the concept of a profit curve to demonstrate this, and shares specific examples to illustrate his point that sometimes, higher CPAs are actually better for hitting your overall business goals. He also explains how to use Google Performance Planner to develop your plan.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Read Mike's blog post about the profit curve
- Get free access to the Google Ads Fundamentals course by AgencySavvy (use code PODCASTFUN for 100% off)
- Visit the WebSavvy and AgencySavvy websites
- Email Mike at mike@websavvy.com
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Mike Rhodes, who is the founder and CEO of WebSavvy. Welcome to the podcast, Mike.
Mike (00:41): Thank you, Kathleen. Lovely to be here.
Kathleen (00:43): I'm excited to have you, and you're coming all the way from Australia. So I am winding my day down getting ready for happy hour. And you are just waking up over there. It's awesome to have you. You are a Google expert. In fact, I think if I'm not wrong, your Twitter handle is @theGoogleguy. Is that right?
Mike (01:06): It is. Yeah. All my clients used to call me that back when I actually used Twitter back near for the last decade or the decade before that. Actually I think it probably was 2007ish. So yeah, just went with that and Google haven't asked for it back yet.
Kathleen (01:22): I love it. It's a great Twitter handle. So speaking of Google and, and things related to it, maybe you could tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do and also what WebSavvy is.
Mike (01:35): Yeah. I've always loved the business of business. I've always loved growing businesses. I always knew I was never going to do the corporate thing. I guess, as kids we decide fairly early on we're either going to be just like our parents or the exact opposite of our parents. My dad did the corporate thing for 25 years and I think I worked out as an 11 year old, I ain't going to do that. I wanted to be a helicopter pilot, actually there's a whole tangent we could wander off down there. At six years old, I must have seen something on TV. Decided I wanted to fly helicopters. I actually went down that road. I learned to fly helicopters in Hawaii.
Kathleen (02:14): That's like Magnum PI.
Mike (02:16): Funnily enough, my boss was the pilot for Magnum PI.
Kathleen (02:22): Stop it! No!
Mike (02:22): So we would fly around Oahu and I learned to fly in the canyons of Kauai and flying around the volcanoes on Molokai. And when we would go around the Island one day, he took me to Higgins' ranch and we landed on the end of the pier. But it was in that thing where Higgins lived. I'm like, Oh my god!
Kathleen (02:40): That is so Epic. I love that story. I was a big Magnum PI fan.
Mike (02:46): Oh yes. For different reasons I'm guessing. I liked the helicopters. You liked the mustache. But it was, it was a good shot.
Kathleen (02:51): I mean, all of it. I watched it with my brother. It was one of the shows that appealed to both of us. So that is a really cool story.
Mike (03:00): I was still at uni at the time I went back to the UK. I grew up in the UK, if you haven't figured out the dodgy accent yet. And I ended up working for the most prestigious helicopter company in the UK. We had clients like, you know, the queen Bill Gates, Michael Schumacher, boy bands, all kinds of stuff. But I figured out right really quickly from talking to the guys and sadly, they were all men, all ex-military and they all could not wait to retire. And I thought, I do not want to spend the rest of my life in an industry, surrounded by people that can't wait to get out. So I left the UK, I headed for Australia. I went to New Zealand for three weeks. I stayed for three years and I started my first business there. A mate handed me two books as I was starting that business, the cashflow quadrant from Robert Kiyosaki and the E-Myth by Michael Gerber.
Mike (03:53): And those two books changed my life. I built that business up over 18 months. I worked in the business for 12 days of the 18 months, sold it for a chunk of change. I moved to Sydney thinking, well, I'm not sure doing the helicopter thing. I've got a chunk of change. I thought I was semi retired. I started playing lots of bad golf. And I went to a Tony Robbins seminar. Gosh, I won't give you the whole story. Cause I could really wander off on a huge tangent here. But I came out of Tony Robbins seminar hair on fire. I wrote a letter to Gerber saying, you know, your book changed my life, yada, yada yada. And I'm a bit stuck. I love helping businesses. I don't know what to do next. And I got a phone call from him six weeks later from actually from his PA saying Michael is just walking out of a meeting.
Mike (04:40): He'd love a chat. I'm like, Oh, this is the Michael Gerber, a hero of mine at the time. Long story short, he invited me to go to California and train with his team. That was Friday morning. He said, if you can be in California by Tuesday, we can get going. So I said, yes. And I jumped on a plane, flew to California. This is a month after nine 11. So fairly empty plane. America was a very interesting time, obviously back then. And ended up licensing the name E-Myth, being an E-Myth coach and consultant helping businesses grow. And I sucked at it. Because I would walk into these businesses. You know, here I am, this young guy. I've sold one business. I've had one business and I thought I was going to go in and systemize all of these businesses. And I'd get there and we'd start chatting.
Mike (05:37): And, and they'd say, mate I just need more customers. I just need more patients. I just need, you know, more covers in the restaurant. When do we get to more customers bit? Well, you're lucky. It's good. But it's a system, you know, there are seven modules and that's module five. Okay. When do we get the module? Is that like day five week five. I'm like, Oh, most businesses month 10. Get out, get out. Like, I just want to buy a module five. Well you can't, it's a system. I'm not allowed to sell you module five. We've got to go. Cause you had to go through a mindset and building a team and systems and all of that stuff, which in hindsight was actually genius. But it wasn't what all of these businesses wanted.
Kathleen (06:21): It's sort of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, like safety and things like that first. And that's why I think when people look at you, they're like, you just need to deliver more revenue. And then we can do the rest.
Mike (06:32): Most businesses. If you went into most businesses and doubled the number of leads tomorrow, they would break. Those businesses would break something. And those businesses would break. So you kind of had to prepare for that before the leads. But of course, every business thinks that's the magic solution. If you just had more leads coming in the door, the dog wouldn't have died. The wife wouldn't have left. Like they wouldn't have fallen over and failed. So I sucked at it. And then I saw this guy, Perry Marshall, speak about Google ads. This is really, really early days in Google ads, 2004, excuse me. Google had only been around a couple of years. And I was just blown away. Like, what? You mean you only show ads to people that are searching for the exact thing that you sell? And you only pay if they're interested enough to click on your little ad and come to your website? And back then, you know, all the clicks were about five or 10 cents.
Mike (07:29): It didn't really, you could do it quite badly and still make a lot of money. Oh my God, this is exactly what all of these businesses that I've been talking to. This is what they want and need. Sorry, Mr. Gilbert, not paying you any more money. I'm dropping all of that. And I pretty much started the agency then and there. I started trying to teach anybody. I came across about Google ads. I went back to my mastermind group hair on fire, like telling everybody about this thing. I would meet people at conferences and tell them about this new thing. And you know what, nine out of 10 people said mate, I don't care how it bloody works. Just do it for me, would you? Just do it for me. And so, yeah, that was really the genesis of WebSavvy. So that's what we do.
Mike (08:16): We do it for brands all around the world, mostly Australia and the US. We're pretty much half and half between the two. We started with Google ads and an all of those things around Google ads, like Google analytics, you know, the data that runs everything, Google shopping, YouTube ads, that's all part of the Google system. And we also do a fair amount of Facebook ads these days for our clients as well. But we've really stuck to our leader. You know, we, we don't do SEO. We don't build websites or apps. We don't create content. We've stuck to our, our lane, which is acquisition. We, solved that problem that everybody told me they had 20 years ago. I just need customers. That's what we deliver for our customers.
Kathleen (08:58): I love it. Mike, I got to say, you seem like the kind of person that I would really like to sit down and have a beer with because your stories are so good. What an interesting journey. Yeah, it's great. And I mean, I think I I'm so attracted to it because in some ways it's like mine, I've had an interesting career that's, it's almost like three careers in one where I started out working in international development consulting after college. And I did that for 10 years and I loved it and I was passionate about it. But then for various reasons, it didn't make sense anymore. And so I shifted gears and I opened my own marketing agency, which I had for 11 years. And then after 11 years, I sold that and now I'm working in-house as a marketer. Like they're just completely different paths and at every juncture, you know, you get excited about the next thing.
Mike (09:53): And isn't it amazing though, at the time, if you had had to draw the path forward, it would be impossible. But when you look back all the dots line up and it makes complete sense that you are where you are. It was obvious that that led to that led to that led to that, but you could never have picked it go back 20, 25 years. You could never pick where you be now and what you end up doing, but all of those things that you learn along the way, help that next jump and that next decision. And, Oh, what's this over here. That looks interesting. And it's wonderful.
Kathleen (10:27): Yep. You, and you have, you have to have done all those steps to wind up in this. It's so true. So true. So again, so let's talk about Google because this is, you know, anybody who's ever listened to this podcast knows that the question I ask at the end, which I will be asking you at the end is, you know, marketers are always saying that, that trying to keep up with the changing landscape of digital marketing is like drinking from a fire hose. And I always ask people how they do it. And I just think Google is a really interesting example of this because it is constantly changing. You know, you literally can make a full-time job out of just tracking algorithm updates and changes. And you know, and I, I'm a little obsessed with it. I, I, I heard a couple of sources that I follow for information on that.
Kathleen (11:24): But you know, it is, it is a very constantly changing landscape and yes, it's very easy to check the box and do Google ads and probably do them very poorly. But unlike when you first started, I feel like today you can be flushing a lot of money down the toilet. If you do that. Whereas if you know what you're doing there, isn't, there is an opportunity, but, but there's a lot of intricacy to it. It seems to me you know, when you and I first spoke, I know I told you, my audience is pretty sophisticated. So this conversation is not going to be Google ads, one Oh one. I'm going to assume that most people listening, know the basics about Google ads. What I want to understand is if you are somebody who is relatively proficient in Google ads, you know, what are some of the things that you're seeing that work well that really can help those people level up.
Mike (12:15): Great. Great. I love that because the fundamentals, if you haven't got those by now, you're probably not the least bit interested in getting online.
Kathleen (12:26): You get them in a 40 minute podcast.
Mike (12:30): I've, I've got a three hour course that I'm more than happy to give it to the listeners. That's what they want, but I don't think that's what we want here,
Kathleen (12:38): Which by the way, we, I can include the link to that in the show notes. So if you want, yeah. Multitask.
Mike (12:44): Yeah. So I being a pilot, I liken it to Google ads back in the day was like the cockpit of a Cessna, which if you've never been in a Cessna is a bit like being in your car, but there's even less instruments. It's basically a car that goes up and down a bit. There's, there's maybe three or four things that you need to keep an eye on. Google ads these days is like the cockpit of a 747, which none of us have been in either, but we can picture how complicated that must be with dials on the ceiling and surrounding. There was a lot of stuff going on and it really is, as you say, that last 10%, that makes all the difference. Google ads is, is pretty easy to do the first 50, maybe even 80%, it's pretty easy to get going.
Mike (13:28): And as you say, tick the box, I'm doing Google ads, but are you squeezing the most profit out of it? And it's not really your fault if you're listening and that's where you're at, because Google are making it harder and harder for you to understand where your money's going, which bits are profitable, which bits aren't, they would love you to just to focus on the average, what's the average return I'm getting from this. And I have to say we may be forced into that world, right? With the cookie pocalypse that's coming and, and our tracking isn't going to be as perfect. Not that it ever was perfect, but it isn't going to be as, as granular and detailed as it has been over the past little while, we're going to have to be marketers again, which is fabulous for us marketers. It's a little scary for the, all the people that hide behind their spreadsheets and think they can optimize absolutely everything to the nth degree and somehow be successful.
Mike (14:31): So there's that what I think we can dive into is, is incremental profit, an incremental CPA, because it's at the, at the margins where you really make the most money. So I've been thinking a lot since we first chatted a week or two ago, about how best to explain this without a whiteboard, a flip chart. So you're going to keep the numbers really, really simple, but I think it does help to have some numbers to illustrate this as we go through. So luckily you've got a really sophisticated audience, so we don't have to start with the basics. We understand what a break even point is. We understand how hard maximizing profit really can be. But we also understand that the different types of business, right, there are some businesses that absolutely need to make a profit on that very first sale. They think of marketing as a cost and they, they want to maximize the profit from that initial sale, even if they have a recurring business.
Mike (15:33): So they're not selling one-off products like garage doors or coffins that's a one-off product. If you sell those, you need to make a profit on that first sale. But many of us are in businesses where some of our customers, not all, but some of our customers will come back and buy again. They'll refer us to other people. We need to think about lifetime value. And I know that's such a loaded phrase. And what do you mean by lifetime is that lifetime is that three years is that 90 days? Are we talking revenue? Are we talking profit? But the point is smart. Marketers like your audience listening, understand investing in marketing. It's not a cost. We're not spending, we are investing. We are acquiring leads because we know that if we build it, they won't come. You know, I'm sure you saw this a lot too.
Mike (16:25): People would spend all of their money on the letterhead and the office and making everything look perfect. And then this big shiny website, and they wouldn't leave any leftover for marketing. There wouldn't be an investment left. So we need to invest to get more customers. So the way I would explain it is to say, let's take two situations, right? You've got this agency that you went to and they got you leads for $70. And he thought that seems a bit expensive to me. I'll fire them. I'll go to this other agency and they can get me leads for 30 bucks, which is best. Well, obviously we don't have enough data. We don't have enough information to make the right call yet because we don't understand what the breakeven is yet. We don't know anything about the business. What are the businesses goals? Well, okay.
Mike (17:20): If we now say that the break even point is, let's say 150 bucks. So if you're getting me leads for 70, then you're making $80. Let's just, just for the sake of argument and let's say $80 profit on each lead. And if you're getting me leads for 30 bucks, there's 120 bucks left between 30 and one 50. So now it comes down to volume. How many leads were they getting at $70? The first agency, how many leads they get you, maybe they got you 200 leads a month. And then this other month, you moved to them and said, I need it to be cheaper. I have to get my cost per lead down because I'm thinking about this as a cost, but now they can only get you 50 leads a month. They could, they, they managed to get that $30 target, but there's a lot less leads.
Mike (18:09): Well, total profit, obviously, is a combination of the two, how much profit are we making per lead? And what's the volume of leads. So without throwing more numbers at you, which I know is very difficult when you're just listening to this driving and trying to picture all these numbers in your head or working out or walking the dog picture a curve, right? So that curve starts at zero, zero on our X and Y axis. We starting at zero zero. If we don't pay anything but lead, we're not going to get any leads. So there's no profit at zero. I said, our breakeven was 150 bucks. So you can picture a curve that goes up, comes down and crosses this X axis. The X axis here is the CPA that the cost we are paying for each lead. If our average CPA is the same as our breakeven, then we're not making any money.
Mike (18:59): So at a CPA of 150, we go from making a little bit to losing a little bit of money. Is that sort of clear so far?
Kathleen (19:08): Yes. That makes sense.
Mike (19:09): Beautiful. So at some point then in between zero and 150, we must be making money. So we've got a curve. It could take any kind of shape, but let's just picture a hill in between those two points and anything higher than 150, we're losing money. It doesn't matter how many leads we get. It could be a huge volume of leads, but we're losing every money. Every time we run an ad. Now, so the game then becomes depending on what your business goals are, a smart business might choose to grow at break even because the more leads I can get through the business, the faster I can grow. You know, I get more volume of leads.
Mike (19:44): My website testing speeds up my email testing speeds up. I get more referrals. The value of my business increases. Assuming of course, that your business can handle that volume of leads. But let's back it up a bit for a second. Let's say, let's assume you do need to make a little bit of profit because most businesses do. Most businesses can't keep investing. Can't keep throwing money into their marketing with the hope that they're going to get a return on that a year down the track, or even six months down the track, they need to see that it's working. Quote, unquote. Note to self, don't drink fizzy kombucha just before jumping on podcasts.
Kathleen (20:23): That's so funny. Cause I'm a big kombucha drinker too.
Mike (20:31): It's lovely. And it's, it's cured my addiction to the other rubbish I used to drink. But.
Kathleen (20:36): Yeah.
Mike (20:38): So there's a point somewhere in between zero and 150 here where we're going to maximize our profit and the reality that, that trying to find the tippy top of that curve, that the absolute top of that Hill is actually really, really hard. And we live in a messy world. It's, it's not a nice smooth curve that we can draw and stick a pin in the map and go, yep. Okay, we'll go after that. So if we, if we chop the top of that Hill off, so if you can picture that a Hill and you chop the top off, so it's nice flat on the top. It's a plateau exactly. Tabletop mountain in Cape town. And you've now got this range and anywhere within that range. And I said, break even was 150. So let's just say for the sake of argument, $80 on the low side, $120 on the high side. They're the two edges of our plateau. Love that fact.
Mike (21:33): So anywhere in there, we're making a really good amount of profit. Maybe we didn't get right to the top of the Hill, but we got really, really close. Anywhere in there we're making money. Now, if you're still with me, well done, first of all. But if I now say to you, which would you rather, would you rather get leads for $80 or $120? Almost everybody, really smart marketers included, will say 80 bucks. And it's the wrong answer for two massive reasons. Now, remember this is the same total profit at 80 and 120. The first reason is your customer. Isn't your customer, your first customer, these days in the world we live in is not the human being on the other end of the screen. Your first customer is the Google algorithm or the Facebook algorithm. You need to make the algorithm like you and make the algorithm want to show more and more of your ads so that the human beings on the other side, even get a chance to see your ads.
Mike (22:39): Now, if you're offering 80 bucks and people in your market are offering 120, who does the machine want to give the traffic to the machine is going to take the 120 every single time. Remember it's the same total profit to your business, 80 or 120. So you must go the 120, otherwise you're just not going to get the leads. The second one is a little, so that's a bit more obvious once you, once you think about it, the second, one's a bit more counter-intuitive. And that is that if it's the same total profit, remember total profit is that, that gap, you know, the profit per lead, the gap between what we're paying 80 and the break even point, 150 multiplied by the total number of leads. So at $80, what's that gap, 70 bucks. And at 120, the gap is 30. I must be doing at least double the number, at least double the volume at 120 to end up with the same total profit, right? Ish. Yes.
Kathleen (23:46): That makes sense. I'm terrible at math, but I'm actually following. So you're doing a good job.
Mike (23:51): It sound like it would be because it just feels we've been taught that, you know, low numbers are good. High numbers are bad, it doesn't feel quite right. And yet if you draw the Hill and you chop the top off, you look at that plateau and that Hill represents profit. Then two points. There are the across the top of the plateau, it's all the same total profit. So I must be doing a lot more volume at one 20. And it's that volume. That's the kicker that speeds everything up. Assuming that your business can cope with that extra volume. All those things we've mentioned before, your website, your CRO testing, your email, split testing, the volume of referrals, the case studies and the testimonials that you're going to get the training opportunities for your team. Everything now proves your business value because you've got two, two and a half times the volume coming in. You've built the machine and that's what a lot of people buy when they buy your business. They're buying the machine that can drive more and more leads into your business like clockwork. So now everything is so much better now. Okay. Got it. Mike, maximize profit, not quite. Come down a little bit, find a plateau, find a range, pick the high end of the range.
Mike (25:05): Awesome. How the hell do I do that?
Mike (25:09): Back in the day, the only way to do that was testing. And you'd run some ads and you'd run some campaigns and you would test different CPA amounts and see what happened to volume. And yet all the time we'll hear from new prospects mate, you know, I'm getting leads for a hundred bucks, but I need them to be cheaper. To which our first answer is well, do you? Let's think about this? Let's really understand what the goal of your marketing is. Let's understand how you think about this cost or is it an investment? Let's think about what your break even point is and where you need to be. And now let's test around that. So that was the old way. Now Google has this wonderful, hidden, hardly used tool inside the Google ads machine. Now you do need to have a Google ads account running to use this, and the more data that you have, the more campaigns that you're actually running, the better. This will work, but I'm going to assume for a minute that your listener is running some Google ads, but like many agencies out there they've never heard of this tool.
Mike (26:18): It's called the performance planner. So if you go up to the there's a little wrench icon up in the top, right of Google ads. When you get back to your computer and you're going to click on tools and then under tools, you'll find a list of about 20 different things in there. One of them is called the performance planner. And this has been around for about a year for search campaigns, but they just made it available to shopping campaigns as well. It's not available for display and video yet just for search and shopping. And when you fire up this tool you'll say to the machine, basically predict what's going to happen next month for this campaign or this group of campaigns. And the machine will draw you a nice curve that goes up into the right, and it looks like the more money you spend, the better you're going to do, but what it doesn't do it doesn't talk about profit.
Mike (27:08): So we've built a little tool that will pull all of that data down out of Google, stick it into a spreadsheet for you. And now you can start playing with different scenarios and you can say what would happen if my breakeven was one 50? What if my breakeven was 200? What if my breakeven was a hundred and it will draw the profit curve for you? See Google are always going to give you that cumulative curve. It always goes up into the right. And it's very, very hard to tell from that what your incremental profits going to be, what the next bit you're going to gain is going to be. You can kind of do it. I'll give you the easy way first, which is it'll put a dot on that curve. And I'll say, here's where you are right now. But obviously we suggest you spend more money.
Mike (27:53): If you wiggle that little dot around, you'll be able to see what happens to your number. So it'll say, you know, right now you're spending 50 grand and you're making 5,000 sales. And if you roll that dot up to the next point on the curve, it will say, if you spend 60 grand, you'll make 5,003 sales or whatever those numbers are going to be. And if you're really good at mass, you can kind of do that quickly in your head. And you'll be amazed at what this thing shows you, because it will tell you your average CPA, your average cost per lead, or your average sale price is whatever it is. And when you move that little dot and you start spending more money, the average barely changes. I was looking at one the other day. And the average went from something like $72 to $73.
Mike (28:41): You go, well, that's okay. It doesn't seem like much. And yet when you do the math, you work out that those extra leads are costing you four or 500 bucks. And that probably isn't profitable. The business is aiming at 70, $80 a lead because that's profitable for the business. Maybe we can go up to a hundred, maybe 120, the four or 500 bucks a lead. You may use this tool and go, what the hell? Where are we spending all this money? And I think the reason that Google shows it this way is that if more advertisers knew about this tool and understood what it was really showing, they'd probably back off their spend a little bit. They're probably way past that, that plateau and heading down the other side of the Hill, sliding towards the big, nasty bit at the bottom, which is you are losing money.
Mike (29:33): Every time you run an ad. And Google obviously are not going to make that obvious. They don't talk about profit on this, on this tool. They don't ask you what your break even point. They just say, your average just went from 72 to 73. How bad can it be? But if you start looking at some of the points, okay, so picture a curve that sort of goes up and flattens off. Then obviously, you know, you're getting diminishing returns at this point. You're, you're getting to the point where yes, you could spend more money and the machine will happily take your money. Don't don't, you know, Google made, what was it? 135 billion last year, Meghan, to take your cash. Same as we talked about before to advertisers, one offers 120, one offers, 80 who's the machine gonna reward. But if some numpty offers the machine 250, Google's going to take their money too. And you probably have some competitors in your market like that.
Mike (30:30): Hopefully they won't be around too long. Hopefully they won't be able to run those ads all day, every day. And in a couple of months, they'll realize, Oh, we're going backwards quite quickly. We should probably stop that now. So you must, must must know your numbers, obviously all smart marketers. Do we understand lifetime value? We understand breakeven, but this, this tool makes it so easy. Now, if you know where to look to start to think about that incremental cost versus the incremental gain. And I think that's something that we all have to get better at as marketers. It used to be very, very complicated maths and very, very hard to do and a whole lot of testing. But now that this tool exists and I've spoken to the the product manager of the tool at Google, and they have absolutely no plans for this data to be available via the API.
Mike (31:23): Anytime soon, it is not on the roadmap for the next year, at least. So they're not going to make it easy. I want to make it easy to pull all of that data out of there, stick it in a Google sheet, visualize it in data studio, however you prefer to work, but at least understand if I spend an extra 10 grand, what do I get for that? And what's my incremental gain. Is it really worth that extra spend? Or could I find somewhere else to go spend that? Do I take that over to my Facebook ads? Do I Chuck it into the new shiny toy, whatever it is this month insert shiny object here, or do I save it and tip it into something else and tip it into a surprising and delighting by clients or, or training my teams or something else? Sorry, I've done a lot of talking
Kathleen (32:13): So interesting though, because I mean, you've, you're, I have a lot of thoughts that are kind of swimming around in my head right now, the first going back to the earlier part where you talked about like, if you could do it for 80 or 120 and both had the same thing, which would you do? And of course I would, I would have said 80. But then as you started talking about the, the value of volume, that was really interesting to me. And then it also got me thinking, what does, does that volume then become a springboard for growth in other channels, like referrals and word of mouth, you know, is it, is it like a snowball effect where you get more volume through your pay-per-click ads, campaigns, and that's just more customers. And as you said, assuming you're able to handle that volume and you're able to serve it well and delight your customers. Will they then not go and tell, you know, their friends and then you have the best kind of business, which is the word of mouth business, where your cost of acquisition is very, very low seeking you out. So that, that was interesting. And I've never thought about it that way before.
Mike (33:19): Well, you did right? The value of volume. I'm going to steal that phrase. Thank you. I like that. Well, it just, it sums the whole thing up. But yeah, this is just the cost of that initial lead. And when we haven't started talking about lifetime value yet, or, or 90 day return or anything like that, or even the benefit of just having all of those people on your site, I mean, the social proof of the reviews that they're going to leave, because you have a program in place to grab reviews, and whether that's on your Google, my business page, or Product Hunt, or wherever you're collecting those reviews, the testimonials, the case studies. Your remarketing lists. I mean, okay, remarketing is going to change with third party cookies going away and so on. But most businesses that we see at least a huge part of their Facebook advertising is some form of warm audience.
Mike (34:11): Whether that's an email list or a remarketing audience, if you've got two and a half, three times the volume of people coming through your website, think what that does to your remarketing. Think what that does to your Facebook traffic now, to the organic reach for your YouTube videos, because now you've got all of these people that are watching, which sends that algorithm a nice message to say, Hey, all of these people are watching this. They're finding value in it. Let's put this video in front of more people. Everything starts to, to grow. I think it was, it was Dan Kennedy that said the winner is not the business that can pay the list per customer. The winner is the business that can afford to pay the most. So if you can afford to pay one 20, if you can afford to pay one 50, you're going to win because you know, your numbers, you know, what that leads to, and you know, that ultimately you are going to be much better off for it. Now, if some businesses will, will be even a loss leader, right.
Kathleen (35:12): A lot of startups that are well-funded are like that.
Mike (35:15): Yes. Some, some somebody told me the other day that something like 40% of VC money goes into paid at 400%
Kathleen (35:22): And it was blowing my mind. I I was looking at the the SEC filings for Shopify which is, you know, a huge success story. And I think if I remember correctly, they were saying they didn't expect to be profitable anytime soon. And, and, you know its very common with startups because they're really just trying to grow as quickly as possible to, to build up a massive audience and create an ecosystem and this and that. But, you know, you do have to sort of think about at what point is trying to compete with that stop making sense.
Mike (35:57): I bet. And it feels like over the last 18 months or so, we've started to see a bit of a shift there away from, yeah, Shopify have done that. Amazon very famously didn't make a profit for a very, very long time. And when they finally did, everyone was a bit amazed. Tesla didn't make a profit for a very long time. Those story stocks though seem to be sort of padding it. People seem to be a little bit more, well, hang on a minute. Don't we need to make a profit at some point? Isn't that the sustainable business that we're trying to build here and not just burning someone else's money. So, yes, I think it's becoming more important. And I am very aware that at the same time, that we're sort of detailing out all of these numbers and drawing this curve, that, that marketing is going to get more fuzzy in the future.
Mike (36:43): We're not going to be able to measure things quite as perfectly as we've measured, but we can still think about the trend. We can still take those overall concepts of, as you said, 80 versus 120, I would've picked 80, but now that you pointed out, yeah, actually I'm much better off. And it's the same profit. That's the, you know, mindblowing bit is it's exactly the same profit. So I, I have to be making it up in volume. Oh, that volume is worth so much more. To me, I'd be crazy to go back to paying 80 bucks or what many businesses asked for is we're paying 80, but we need 50.
Kathleen (37:20): I think putting on my hat as an in-house marketer some of that is pressure from above, you know, where you're you're, if you are working for a CEO or a board that doesn't understand this concept they're looking to consistently lower CAC. And so they're going to be saying, you know, how come, how come that cost of acquisition is not coming down over time? You know, and so there's a, there's an educational element that I think is needed there from the marketer to, to the rest of leadership within the company, to understand kind of these concepts that you're talking about. But I also think what's interesting to me about this whole conversation. Is it points to kind of what you need to think about as a marketer when you enter into a relationship with an agency to do your paid ads, because so many, so many of the marketers that I know in my network don't have, full-time, in-house people that do this.
Kathleen (38:18): Cause it's, they're either at a stage of growth where they need to outsource it, or they've recognized that it's something that's pretty specialized. And so coming to that relationship with more than just, you know, I want to keep my CAC below X, or I want you to consistently bring CAC down and get me lots leads, but coming to it, understanding your pro like the overall profit margins of the business and, and understanding just those, those core financials that are maybe are not necessarily looked at as part of the paid ads strategy is super important. And then knowing to hold your outsourced team responsible for factoring that into the strategy.
Mike (38:59): Yes. Well, it comes back to it's the goal, what's the goal that you're giving your agency. And I think more and more the hybrid model is, is the right model. You know, like, as you say, it's changing so fast, do you really want, unless you're spending millions a month, do you really want somebody in house who's going to leave after 18 months running all that for you? You can't obviously outsource your marketing strategy to an agency that has to come from the CNO internally, but using those external skills in a fast changing environment. But what's the objective, what's the goal that you've given to your agency. If it's just keep reducing CAC, no matter what that isn't going to work, that's going to hit a point where, well, yes, we can get you a row as a 14, or we can get CAC down to 25, but at what cost, what does that do to volume? Because we can't triple volume and reduce CAC at the same time. We're good, but we're not magicians. What's the objective
Kathleen (39:55): Point about, you know, we were talking about startups and high-growth startups and, and you know, if you're a company that's looking to raise another round of venture capital funding, or if you're looking to get acquired, that volume is so important, they want to see, they want to see acquisition fast growth. They don't want to see, Oh, like at the end of the day, having a lower CAC is nice, but that is not as important as, you know, we tripled our customer base.
Mike (40:25): I, I, I know very little about say something like Y Combinator, but my understanding is it's, it's all down of that growth number, you know, are you growing at 10% month on month or whatever that, that number is for your business and have you sustain that? Are you improving that growth? Yeah, I'm conflicted by that. I get it. I understand why, because you've got to make a dent. You've got to get in there. You got to become something in the market. You've got to build that awareness, but at the same time, how much are you going to burn getting to that point, right. That's a different world for us.
Kathleen (40:59): I guess if you have deep VC pockets behind you, you can burn a lot. No, that's so fascinating. So, so, you know, what would your advice be to marketers if they're looking at entering into a new relationship with somebody to do their paid ads, or if they're in a relationship, but they're thinking I need to take a fresh look at this. Like, what are, what's the information that they need to gather to come into this conversation in an informed way?
Mike (41:27): That's a great question. I think at a minimum asking your agency, Hey, what happen if you know, what would happen If we allowed CAC to go up 10 bucks or 20 bucks, what would happen if we doubled our budget? What would happen if we reduced CAC? What would happen, but what would happen to what, what would happen to overall profit or first 90 day revenue? And let's be really, really clear about how we're measuring what works and defining how, what, what, what works is, sorry, I butchered that sentence, but you know what I mean? What's the definition of did this work and being really clear about that and being open to sharing all of those numbers from both sides. This is what we understand about our lifetime value. This is what we understand about our referral process. Yes, we're trying to fix this, but right now each person brings in 1.2 additional people like being really clear and transparent and sharing all of that.
Mike (42:25): And back to your point about education, I think that's really cool. So maybe it's I will put some pictures up on our, some pictures, some images on a, on a blog post around this concept on our blog so that your listener can, can come and steal those images, download them, stick them in the PowerPoint for the CEO, for the board and say, zero, that's this point down here. Break even. That's this point over here, this is the Hill that we're going to die on. Actually, we're not, we're going to die on this plateau up here. Which one do you want to pay? And basically do the 30 second version of what we've been talking about and get your board to say, is it 80 or 120? And then when they say 80 go, I knew you'd say that, which is why you don't get a lollipop. And here's why we're going to go after one 20.
Kathleen (43:11): I love that. I love that. Well, if you do this blog, I will definitely link to it in the show notes. And it's like the convince your boss letter that, you know, conferences give out, here's the letter you should give to your boss to convince them why you should go to the conference. This is the convince your boss letter for taking a different approach to your paid ads. Yeah, that's great. Well we are now at that point in the conversation where I get to ask you my two questions and I've already previewed that a little bit. So I'll ask you the first one which is, you know, the podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or an individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park with inbound marketing these days?
Mike (43:54): You know, I was thinking about this a little this morning and I, yeah, I'm going to have to say a client name, but I am I'm conflicted because I'm not meant to mention client names, but look, if you're still listening at this point, you kind of go and look and tell me who is doing it really well here. I think ButcherBox who are, have grown and grown and grown in the States over the past three, four years. They just, they care so much about their customer, but also about the farmers that they support. And that story has just resonated. We're lucky enough to help them along their journey. I know they've got a happiness, really, really smart in-house team. And then they've got, you know, external SEO agency that we chat to a bit. And we look after paid ads. So we do Facebook. I don't think we even do Facebook for them. We just did the Google side for them. And so there's lots and lots and lots of people involved, but at the core of it two guys that really, really, really care about what it is that they're doing and what it is that, that, how they're making the world a better place. And I think people are just drawn to that. I think their content is absolutely fabulous who doesn't love candied bacon, I'm Australian. I have no idea what candied bacon is, but it sounds amazing.
Kathleen (45:08): It's a uniquely American thing to, to put sugar on cured meats.
Mike (45:14): Pancakes and bacon doesn't even make sense to people outside of America.
Kathleen (45:19): It's funny that you say that. So, little story. I lived in Barcelona for a year after college. That's the thing I missed the most was pancakes. And I remember trying to explain what pancakes were to the people that I lived with. I lived with a family. And they were like crepes? And I'm like, no, that is not the same thing. There are pancakes. It's a foreign thing. All right. So butcher box, I'm now intrigued and we'll have to check them out. Second question is the one I mentioned earlier, which is how do you personally keep up to date, stay educated and stay on top of, you know, all these things that are constantly changing?
Mike (46:01): In a word, curiosity, I guess. I mean, I love the business of business. So I read all the time. I get to go to a lot of conferences. I guess I figured out really, really, really early on that that was an investment in, in me, in my education, in my team, we have a role here. So we have a learning fund. Everybody has a learning fund of five grand per head, and it's frowned upon if you don't spend that. So we also have an unlimited Amazon policy. If you want a book, then buy it. Don't ask anyone for permission to go get it. So we've got a wonderful library out here, but the deal is, if you go off to a conference, if you go into a course and learn something, you have to come back and do a lunch and learn on what you got out of it. So it's an investment and, and everybody gets better because of it. I follow some, some smart guys like Avinash Kaushik. I think he thinks about data so wonderfully. He's such a wonderful presenter too. I had the absolute privilege of sharing the stage with him in Moscow a couple of years ago, and managed to sneak back to his green room. We all had our own green room and we all had our own personal assistant.
Mike (47:13): So I asked my little personal assistant, like, could you get me into his green room? And we had the most wonderful chat about data, about parenting, about all sorts of stuff for half an hour. He was so gracious. This is before he went on stage when I'm usually a bit of a mess and I don't want to talk to anybody. And he's like, come in, have some of my free snacks. Let's chat about life. And the world is just such an entertaining, brilliant thinker. So Avinash I just saw an interview with Seth Godin the other day and just bought his new book. I haven't read it yet the practice, but I was chatting to my wife last night. She, she saw it on the counter. I mean, is he still going? I'm like, Oh yeah, she used to be in marketing. And, you know, she remembers purple cow and permission marketing. That was what, 20 years ago. And he's still wonderful.
Kathleen (47:59): Yeah. He, and every day he comes up with something new seven and a half thousand blog posts. Yeah. It's pretty invincible.
Mike (48:06): But most of all you learn by doing, I think so I learned from the team we learned from our clients where we're always trying new things. I try and invent a big new thing around Google ads every year. So that sort of forms the bulk of my, my talks back in the day where we went to conferences and gave talks. So I'm always thinking about how businesses can, can benefit, not just from Google ads, but you know, from, from marketing in general, from what's going to happen with no cookies, how are we going to track things? How does this play with this? How does paid ads play with SEO play with Facebook? How can we make it all better? My my latest little thing has been Google data studio and getting really deep into data studio and thinking of different ways to visualize the data.
Mike (48:53): So it tells a better story. So, Oh, it's, it's, it's really quite bloody annoying and fiddly in some ways, but an incredible tool and Google are tipping a lot of resources in, you know, that team is growing fast and they are pushing out improvements to that all the time. So yeah, really, it's, it's, it's by doing and just continuing to get educated every day. I probably still spend at least an hour a day on my education. And I, I love it. I love learning. And I love teaching, I guess I've discovered I'm a teacher at heart. And that for me is that the reason that you learn is so that you can teach so that you can help other people with the stuff that you learned. So it's it's fun. It's not a choice.
Kathleen (49:37): I heard a quote once and I don't know who said it, and I'm going to probably get the quote wrong, but it's something along the lines of you haven't truly learned something until you have successfully taught it. And I so believe that because the act of teaching forces you to really synthesize the information that you've taken in and, and to be able to then process it and help somebody else to understand it. That's so powerful.
Mike (50:00): Yeah. To process it, to sort it out in the, in the right order and to, to know which pieces come, where and the, the relative importance of those pieces, if you, if you can explain it. Yeah.
Kathleen (50:13): Yeah. Well, Mike, I feel like I could talk to you forever. I have to know, do you still ever fly helicopters?
Mike (50:20): You know, I have not flown in over 10 years, so I, I definitely, I'm not legal to fly anymore.
Kathleen (50:28): You probably don't have those, those hours that you need to come up.
Mike (50:30): I don't. And you probably wouldn't really want to sit next to me while I, while I read that I would definitely have to go back to school to learn that one, but I will I will fly again when my daughters are old enough after I do lots of training, I would love to to fly them around actually thinking about it. It would be lovely to go back to Hawaii and and fly around Molokai and Maui. Again, it was such a beautiful part of the world. Yeah. Yeah. I'll take that. Excuse me.
Kathleen (50:57): Awesome. Well, I love your story. I could talk to you forever. And this was a really interesting conversation. I definitely it's, I'm thinking differently about Google ads now than I was before we started, which I love, I love talking to anybody who gets me to challenge, you know, the way I think about things. So thank you. And I suspect there are going to be people listening who are going to have questions and want to dig a little deeper on this. So I will be putting some links into the show notes, but for those who are listening what's the best way for them to find you online and to learn more about WebSavvy.
Mike (51:32): The best way is probably to head to WebSavvy. So WebSavvy.com.au, because we're down here in Australia. I do have that good Twitter handle. I'm not on Twitter much, so don't try and get me there, but just send me an email. I love this stuff. I love answering questions. So, or being challenged, if you, if you think half of what I said today was garbage and you disagree. I would love to hear that too, but if you have a question, if you would like us to take a second pair of eyes over an existing Google ads account, we can do that for you too. That's Mike M I K e@websavvy.com that I, you send me an email, ask me a question would love that.
Kathleen (52:09): Fantastic. Okay. That email address is going to go in the show notes.
Mike (52:12): I will write the blog and I will send you the link in the show notes too.
Kathleen (52:16): Love it. And you're going to give me the link to your course for those who are potentially interested in learning some of the basics. So lots and lots and lots of resources from this episode. Thank you, Mike for that. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this as much as I did I would love it. If you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review, let us know what you thought. That's how others find us. And of course, if you know somebody else, who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me, Mike.
Mike (52:52): Thank you, Kathleen. It was an absolute pleasure. I've had a lot of fun.
Kathleen (52:55): Thanks. Me as well.
For B2B marketers and sales teams, LinkedIn holds tremendous potential. As a marketer, how can you help your sales team make the most of it?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Intero Advisory founder and CEO Colleen McKenna shares the strategies she's used to coach hundreds of marketing and sales leaders on getting the most out of LinkedIn.
From how to set up your profile, to using LinkedIn Navigator and encouraging sales team members to share marketing content, Colleen breaks down what is and is not working on LinkedIn today.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Intero Advisory website
- Connect with Colleen on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Colleen McKenna, who is the founder and CEO of Intero Advisory. Welcome to the podcast, Colleen.
Colleen (00:27): Thanks, Kathleen. It's great to be here.
Kathleen (00:29): I'm excited to have you here. We're going to talk about one of my favorite topics. But before we get into that, I would love it if you could introduce yourself. My listeners know I'm not a big fan of reading people's bios because I hate when people read mine and I have to listen to it. So I always ask my guests to tell a little story about themselves, how you know, what they do, how they got to the point they're at in their career, what their company does, et cetera. So I'd love it if you could share that with us.
Colleen (00:59): Absolutely. So Intero Advisory is a firm I started 10 years ago, actually 10 years ago this month. So we're celebrating all month long for 10 years and we are focused on LinkedIn for branding, business development and recruiting. So we work with clients all over the country to make sure that they're using all of LinkedIn's best practices to really create ROI and get their work, their name out there, build their brand strategically and build really strong sales pipelines.
Kathleen (01:33): I love it. I am a huge LinkedIn fan. It is definitely the social network on which I spend the most time. I just think it's, I especially have really grown to love it in the last, I would say two years. I feel like it's, it's come into its own in a new way. And, and there's so much possibility there and I feel like most people are barely scratching the surface, which is why I was so excited to talk to you. And I think what makes the conversation we're going to have today especially relevant for me is we're going to talk about how marketers can help their sales teams use LinkedIn better and more effectively. And the reason I'm excited about that is you know, I had a conversation actually yesterday that points to this. I was speaking with another head of marketing for another SaaS company.
Kathleen (02:29): And she was saying that she finds herself increasingly being pulled into doing things that relate to sales. And I was saying, I'm experiencing the exact same thing. And for everyone, there's a different reason for it. In my case, I'm at what I would still consider a startup. You know, it's a high growth company we're in the early days still, so we don't have a head of sales. So in my case, you know, I'm trying to do everything I can to help the sales team use the tools they have. For her, it's different. She's at a more mature company, but she just had the BDRs put under her as the head of marketing. And so she's all of a sudden having to manage the BDR team. So it's just interesting to me and I'm going on and on, I'm going to turn it over to you in a sec, but I, what I'm seeing as a trend is that for whatever reason, I think there's always been this concept of marketing and sales alignment, but marketers seem to be getting pulled increasingly over to the sales side of the house.
Kathleen (03:29): And I think some of that just has to do with the changing nature of how we sell the use of social media, the technology platforms that we have available to us, et cetera. So with that as the jumping off point, I would love to hear your take on this. Do you see the same trend happening of marketers being pulled over and, and working more on the sales side?
Colleen (03:50): Absolutely. you know, and I'll just as a little bit of an aside before I jumped really jump into that. When I first started Intero, I really started out as a HubSpot reseller. And then I started to really focus on LinkedIn. Intero actually is Italian for connecting. And it really, our first tagline was where marketing and sales intersect. And I had a circular logo. And I share that because, you know, I've been in sales a very, very long time with what I would say, is a minor in marketing. So, you know, I've, I've done a lot of selling. I love the sales profession, and I think that there has been an increasing move toward aligning them. But I think it often falls to the marketing department. And what I find is that very often the person that brings me into an engagement is that marketing person in order to help the sales team.
Colleen (04:52): So, you know, I think that a lot of times when I talk to a CEO, so we do a lot of work in small to midsize businesses. We have some enterprise clients, but even with the enterprise clients, they're still really trying to help the sales team figure out how to best use LinkedIn. So they're creating all the content they're really responsible for that marketing strategy and yet, and they're putting out all of that content on LinkedIn, really creating you know, great videos and case studies and all of the things that they should be creating on the content side, putting it on the right channels. And then it's a little bit like crickets. And so very often where we come in is how do we get the salespeople to really engage more? So I do find that the sales marketing team is always the group. I actually wrote a blog on this. If people don't know where to put it, let's put it under marketing. And I think that marketers are really in the position even more today than ever of being responsible for understanding all of these tools. And unless they have a lot of depth in their marketing department is really hard for every marketer to know all of the nuances and idiosyncrasies, if you will, of all of these tools to make them all effective equally.
Kathleen (06:15): Yeah, yeah. It's it is a lot. And, and the scenario you described, it's just, it really hit home because I've constantly found myself in that position of, you know, I oversee a team of people that puts a lot of time and energy into creating content, and then you put it out there and it, and there's an opportunity, you know, either you can get your team to share it, and if they do, you know, number one, it gets more eyeballs on your marketing content. So it makes your life easier as a marketer. But number two, you know, if your salespeople are using LinkedIn for anything, they, you know, it makes it should make their job easier. But it's just funny how so often it feels like pulling teeth, trying to get them to share content, you know, and in our heads it's like, Oh, I'm helping them.
Kathleen (07:03): I'm giving them stuff that they can share. And I, and I don't always know why salespeople don't share my content. That is a mystery I have, maybe you could shed light on that. But there's definitely a lost opportunity there. And I, and to me, I think part of it is honestly that a lot of salespeople and also a lot of executives don't understand the massive opportunity that there is on LinkedIn and, or they are using it completely wrong. Like there's so much horrible LinkedIn sales spam. It's unbelievable to me. And so, I don't know, I don't know what you find in terms of like how, how the world of, of sales operators plays out, you know, are they more on the I'm using it, I'm just using it wrong or are they more on the side of I'm not using it?
Colleen (07:59): I think the level of proficiency across the sales team is greater today than it ever has been. So always people who are like, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm not really using it to that power user. And, you know, my goal is always to get that, that newer user thinking and up to speed and thinking more strategically and not going down rabbit holes in LinkedIn and that power user, like what's the next way you can be more creative or you can do some things that you haven't noticed have been released on LinkedIn. But I think going back to your point about salespeople, I was working with somebody yesterday. We were doing a coaching session. It was a marketing person, and we were reviewing the content, the messaging that her sales team was using on LinkedIn. And it was, we gathered all of this messaging and what was so interesting and a little deflating was this is a company that creates absolutely stellar content, absolutely spot on, in lots of different ways, video white papers, case studies, blog posts, great imagery, very well done, not one of the messages contained a link to any of those pieces of content.
Colleen (09:21): The messaging sort of went, and if you'd be interested, I'm happy to send you some of our blog posts. Why not just send the blog post? Why just not send the link and drive them back to the website? And, and I think partly sales teams and the sort of, you know, very much a generalization, but they don't want to make a mistake. They're not really sure how to do it. They're not confident about putting, you know, an outside before someone's name or their company to get that per, that called out or how to use hashtags. They spend a lot of time explaining what hashtags are. I get that, you know, and and so I think a lot of times the salespeople don't feel grounded. So rather than make a mistake, they choose not to use that content. And they really they're thinking, Oh, I'm just supposed to like, comment or share that piece of that post, but they're then not thinking about, well, how can I spark a new conversation with somebody I just recently connected with, or I should reconnect with by using that content or personally, you know, my new favorite thing, you know, as part of the liking commenting sharing is the sending let's send something directly to a person because if we actually want them to see the content, that's probably the better way to do it.
Colleen (10:43): And imagine if each sales person was doing that 10 times in a particular week to a particular person, just the number of touches. So lots of times I feel like they just don't, they don't have the confidence, and they're not thinking about that, how that content really what its purpose is. And there's certainly salespeople that we work with who do use it really, really well and use it very strategically. However, to your point, there's lots of noise on LinkedIn right now, and lots of people who definitely do not you know, have a strategy for how they're using LinkedIn.
Kathleen (11:23): And what you said about confidence is so true because as soon as you said it, in my head, I saw one particular salesperson who I worked with in the past. And it was a woman and wonderful sales woman, wonderful person. And I did some LinkedIn training kind of for the sales team. And yet every time she had to post on LinkedIn, she would message me and say, can you get on zoom with me, I want to share my screen. I want you to watch what I'm doing. And I want you to tell me if I'm doing it right. Like she just never had that confidence. And she was so worried that she would do something wrong. And it was, I was like simultaneously very appreciative that she was putting that much care into it, but also simultaneously like, Oh my God, I'm going to spend another 20 minutes on the phone with you for one LinkedIn post. You know what I mean? But so, and I've done, I've been asked to, and I have delivered LinkedIn training to my sales teams in the past. I wouldn't say what I do is particularly phenomenal. So I would love to hear, like, how do you approach that when you're first brought in, how do you, how do you approach working with sales teams and, and getting them up to speed?
Colleen (12:38): So we always start with, I absolutely want to know what the sales process is, what the what's the strategy, lots of times there is no strategy. So ideally there's a strategy. How are we weaving LinkedIn into that sales strategy and process? If there's not, can we start with LinkedIn from there? And, and usually if we're working with a company what we're really focused on now is let's create a strategy overall, so that people who are handling recruiting, people who are in sales, people in marketing, everybody's got the same set of best practices and the same strategy. And, and that's important because very often I'll talk to a company and, you know, somebody who's, their in-house recruiter took a LinkedIn, a LinkedIn learning class, and somebody else was on an American marketing association webinar, for example, all good. Right? And somebody else read an article or watched a video on YouTube.
Colleen (13:34): So they've got all different perspectives. Let's just have one perspective in terms of best practices and how we're going to use LinkedIn. And then we start looking at profiles. So what I find also with salespeople very often when we're looking at their profiles, once again, I do believe it's a little bit of a confidence issue is there's very little on their profile or a TA it's very resume oriented, so it sets them up. But if I look at that and I see what an amazing salesperson they are, and I'm glad to know they're an amazing sales person. However, if I see that they've surpassed quota for 15 months and they made president's club, I'm probably going to feel if I'm a prospect I'm going to get sold. So I want to start to turn those profiles into marketing tools. How are we solving a problem?
Colleen (14:27): Who do we serve? What our market is, what it is. It is it that we actually do take out all those buzz words, dynamic results, oriented, strategic, creative, all of those words, right? It should be their story of who they are, why they do the work that they do. I love when that why is woven in there. And then it goes back to the Simon Sinek video, TED talk, and then have some common about the company. So lots of times people are not recognizing LinkedIn is a search engine, just like Google, Bing, you know, Amazon, Netflix. And we have to, we have to build these profiles in a way that LinkedIn can see some of these really dialed in keywords. So LinkedIn looks at the relevancy of the content on a person's profile. So building them out, even positioning them from third person to first person makes a huge difference.
Kathleen (15:19): You know, I love your point about the sales person kind of resume profile on LinkedIn, because it's so true. And I never thought about it until you just said it about the impact that, that has on the prospect. And it is, it's interesting because most people do approach LinkedIn as like, this is my online resume someday. I'll be looking for another job. So here's what my LinkedIn should say. Instead of, as you know, this is my opportunity to market the company that I work for. I mean, I think as marketers, we do that very naturally, but as salespeople, it's a totally different story. So that's really, that's really fascinating. So you start with their profile and do you find when you're working with a team do you find that the, the head of marketing should be involved in like crafting kind of boiler plate language for how they describe the company and then sending that out? How do you handle that? Because also there's that delicate balance of, I'm going to suggest you put this on your LinkedIn profile, cause you really can't tell somebody what to do there. Right. But how do you, how do you handle that?
Colleen (16:28): Yeah, it's we really have found that people are very open to this. So it used to be, we would craft the profile for the CEO and really in the last three, four years, it's the leadership team and the sales team. From there, we create a template for different functional areas of the business. I always want to work with the marketing person and that marketing team to make sure we have the most current about us and language about the company. So, you know, I can presume that what's on the website or what's on the LinkedIn company page is accurate, but I can tell you very often, people will say, Oh, where'd you get that?
Kathleen (17:07): Guilty. I've done that in the past for sure.
Colleen (17:09): Have we all have, so we definitely want to be working through this. I'd love to get the leadership team, their profiles set first because when you interview them to get the information and you talk about what their vision is for the company and for the leadership team, by the way, we really want to incorporate culture into their LinkedIn profile for the recruiting piece, because anybody that they're reaching out to or anybody that might be applying for a job is probably going to find their profile. So let's talk about the culture and let's introduce the value of people in the organization and in core values and all of that. So even with the marketing of a profile for a sales person, rather than that resume, it should always highlight them. I'll say to people, you know what? I could pick up your about section. If I can pick up your about section and put it on a hundred other people, that's not enabling you to stand out.
Colleen (18:06): So we want you to stand out and then we want the company. And most people, I can probably count on one hand how many people said I'm not doing that. And those were probably people looking for a new position anyway. And, but they appreciate that. Suddenly it's a little bit like having a, make-over getting it, you know, a brand new hair guide, like you feel good and you feel more confident about the next step. And I hear this all the time. I just had an email from a CEO a couple of weeks ago. He said, Oh my goodness, I looked so different. I get, I get what you were saying, because sometimes they'll say, okay, if you won't do anything else until you do the profile, okay, that's, you know, I'm like, we can't, I can't help you build a really great network. If people can't see who you are, you're not demonstrating, you know, your expertise. So everybody should be building their personal brand and that salesperson, especially. So we want them to seem, we know they're a salesperson. I love salespeople. I love the sales profession, but I don't want you to sell through LinkedIn in the, in the pitching sense of the word.
Kathleen (19:12): So I want to pick that apart and talk about that because this is the biggest pet peeve I have about LinkedIn right now is, Oh my God, I get connection requests. I say yes to them. And then the first thing that happens is I get a direct message trying to pitch me. And it's like, are you kidding? And I have one guy right now who must be on his 10th direct message to me. Like, you haven't answered me. How come you haven't answered me? And I'm like, well, because I'm not intending to, you know what I mean? Like it's so off putting and, and drives me bananas. But I think this, I do think a lot of salespeople, you know, look at LinkedIn and they, you know, they think, well, of course, I'm going to sell. And some, some think some are smart and do it a little bit more subtly than others, but I want to hear your take on this. So when you say you shouldn't be selling on there, like how do you advise salespeople to use it?
Colleen (20:06): So I want people to connect and build really strong strategic networks. And that's really the second piece building that network. I mean, I'm sorry, building that profile out, then looking at your first level connections, understanding who you're already connected to, and then nurturing that network and expanding your network. So we do a lot of that kind of work for our clients. So we work with a very specific process in terms of touches and cadence using LinkedIn. We're straight forward, no bait and switch. No automation, which I hope we'll talk about for a minute or so a little bit in a little bit. And, but we are trying to build credibility for our clients, whether we're coaching them or we're managing it on their behalf. So I think the goal is identifying the right people, having those people look at your profile and saying, well, I should definitely be connecting with this person.
Colleen (21:03): This person may actually be able to help me, or this person looks like they have a lot of expertise in X. I may not need that today, but I want them in my network. And then through the using of content and follow up and engaging on LinkedIn, they stay pretty visible at some point. And I'm fine with, you know, touch three or four asking for a next step, trying to spark that conversation. Absolutely. But I do not believe in, in the pitching. I mean, we are all looking for people in a ready state, however, no one, no one on their LinkedIn profile has that they're in a ready state to buy X. Yeah, exactly. So then me. Yeah, exactly. You know, I need to buy X, X and X in the next three months. So if you are one of those people that sell that, please let me know nobody's doing once again.
Colleen (21:56): One of the, the exercises we go through with all of our clients and it usually really draws kind of an aha from pretty much everybody in the group that we're working with is let's download your first level connections. Let's download them and let's break it apart. Let's sort it by position, sort it by company. You know, if you've got a thousand people or 500 people, I don't want people going line by line. I want you to find if you're calling on CFOs. You know, I worked with somebody a couple of days ago, that was his target audience. He had over 1700 connections. He only had 14 CFOs in this network. So that's an action item. Let's start there. Let's jumpstart your network with the right people. So because LinkedIn will say, Oh, you're connecting with CFOs. Here's some more of them. So we need to unlock the network.
Colleen (22:51): And I want to start to understand what's your relationship? Do you know them well enough to bring, engage? Should you know them better? Who are your centers of influence? Who are the people in your network that will introduce you? We have to have people in our network that will introduce us. And by the way, we should want to, within our own network become a center of influence. I think that's very, very important. How do you, how do you kind of catalyze that, that network in a really strong way? I mean, 95% of all of our business over the last 10 years has come through the network, our networks.
Kathleen (23:31): Now I get this question all the time and I, and I have an answer for it, but I'm really curious what your answer is. What is your advice to people about accepting LinkedIn connection requests? Should they accept all of them? Should they be really picky if they should be picky? What the criteria is? What do you tell people?
Colleen (23:51): Yeah, I'm a little bit of, I would say probably a LinkedIn purist. I like to know a lot of the people or have interacted with the people on connecting with. I do not connect with everyone for what I do, Kathleen. I probably have the smallest network in the country trainers and that's okay. My network is built a certain way. I tell CEOs, you don't have to have the largest network. You need to be connected with people who are your peers and who will, you know, you can engage with, so create the, the network that you want for the outcomes that you're trying to achieve. Recruiters, 99% of recruiters, they're going to have 10, 15, 20, 30,000 people in their network. That's the strategy, right? They're just using it as a database of when they're doing their searches. They need more people to show up in those searches.
Kathleen (24:45): Yeah.
Colleen (24:46): Salespeople. I think that they need to be really thinking about who they're connecting with in terms of, are you connected to your customers? I would say 70% of the people when we look at their network downloading it, they're not connected to their customers, missed opportunity prospects those referral sources, I probably have about 50 connection requests right now in my, in that area, in my network. On LinkedIn people reaching out saying, hi, I can help you with LinkedIn lead generation.
Kathleen (25:19): They clearly haven't looked at your profile.
Colleen (25:22): They're automated. So I'm really, I'm telling people, be careful with these automated messages, because that is absolutely going to trigger what you just talked about, which is, can I talk to you when can I talk to you? Here's the demo, you know, et cetera. What you said about people connecting and then asking for call every CEO business owner, president, everybody I talk to says the same thing. So, you know, I don't believe in, you know, if I see somebody's profile and they have 20,000 connections, that's great, but I pretty much know that they're not using their network in a really strategic way. You know, they just want a large network and that's fine, depending on what they're doing. If they're trying to just create an audience on LinkedIn and get content out there, I totally understand. But I think for salespeople, it really is time to be much more strategic with how they build their network and how they engage with that network.
Kathleen (26:21): So let's talk about that then being strategic, putting together your strategy as a sales person. I mean, as a marketer, I, you know, I'll say I have a very different approach. Mine is to have a bigger audience. And so, you know, and this is one little hack I use that maybe people will find it useful. Maybe people will find it bad? I don't know. But like my last company, for example, I was head of marketing for cybersecurity company and we were selling into the internet of things world. And I didn't have people in the internet of things world in my network because I had a bunch of marketers, but I needed to get the word out about some events we were having. And so I would send connection requests to people like IOT engineers, and I, I'm a big believer.
Kathleen (27:10): You have to customize every connection request. You don't just hit it, hit connect and let it go. And so what I would do is invite them to a free event. I'd be like, Hey, I have this, this free, you know, virtual seminar coming up that I thought might be of interest to you because you work in IOT. It's a little spammy because obviously I'm sending them something. But my thought, and you can tell me, honestly, if you think this is bad. So my thought was like, it's a free event. I'm not asking them to buy anything. I'm not asking them to take a meeting and I'm not asking them for a response other than to hit yes on my connection request. But it's interesting because that enabled me to build quite a large network in IOT, which I now have, but now I'm not selling to IOT, which is sort of funny. So that's the approach I've used. I'm just curious, like, I don't know. How do you advise people on that sort of thing?
Colleen (28:01): Well, I think it makes absolute sense. So when I talk about nurturing and network, I'm talking about really nurturing that first level, but we need to expand our network always. And so I, you know, I kind of differentiate between marketing and sales in that marketing's casting a wide net, whether from your individual LinkedIn profile or from the company page. So it is about reaching that large audience for the salesperson. It's about more one-to-one though in my opinion, and creating that, that relationship, that conversation. So I'm all about that. I mean, for many of our clients, we have them, we have probably in the last year and a half had about 200 clients in sales navigator and for those sales teams and and marketers who are working with sales teams, that's really the product to be leveraging if you want to use LinkedIn for very intentional and organized B2B business development and sales. So that's, that's more of the numbers game for sure.
Kathleen (29:08): So let's, I want to talk about that for a second, because you said not just for salespeople, but for marketers who are working with salespeople I'll admit I've, I've had sales navigator in the past, but I it's been awhile. I'm not as deeply familiar with that tool. So as a marketer who wants to be very deeply involved in sales enablement, what should I know about sales navigator?
Colleen (29:31): Just the ability, the power that it has to organize and help create more granular and better searches. There's more filters in there. There's more ability to, so for example if I'm looking at a particular company and I'm sorting and searching by by company, which is account or lead, which is a person, but I could start to build out buying communities within sales navigator and really organize that. So I might say on the average B2B the number, and it might've changed, but somewhere around 5.4 people involved in every B2B buying decision. So now within sales navigator, I can have that account and I can start to save multiple people to that account. So I think that that's helpful as marketers and sales is kind of looking at how should we approach this and what messaging I'm like send to somebody who's the economic buyer versus, you know, an influencer. And so I can get really much more granular within sales navigator. So that's, that's one piece. It also if you have the team version of sales navigator and certain CRM such as HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce, obviously Microsoft Dynamics integrates into those CRM systems. So where this is, you know, the marketing side might be more involved on this with the CRM. Suddenly now we're taking that record in the CRM and we're bringing the person in and the company. So we see a whole lot more information right from the CRM.
Kathleen (31:12): Mm that's good to know. So especially if you're, it sounds like if you're doing account based marketing, particularly this would be really important. And then, and then, so, so one thing is your profile, as you mentioned, getting that straight, and then it's all about having the strategy to expand your wallet, to, to expand your top level connections. But then as you mentioned, nurturing the connections that you have, and it sounds like that's where sharing content comes in.
Colleen (31:42): Yes.
Kathleen (31:43): I guess where I would love to begin on this, selfishly is that from the standpoint of the marketing leader, you know, I said before, like I work with teams that create a ton of content and I don't know that I've ever had a really great system for working with sales on sharing it. I I've done everything from copying the link to the company, LinkedIn post and posting it in Slack and saying, Hey, could you all please like comment and share on this? And I may or may not get a response, you know, like, I don't think I've had a good solution. So what is the best way to tackle that
Colleen (32:21): That's a $64,000 question for sure, because that is one of the most difficult things, regardless of the size of the marketing department. And, you know, LinkedIn does have a solution to that called elevate. And I don't know if you're familiar with Elevate, but it is so Elevate is for enterprise level clients in transition. It was supposed to be shuttered at the end of 2020. It's still in inaction, if you will, through, I think the first quarter of 2021, but it is an enterprise level product, it's an amplification tool, but we have some clients that use it. So it's a LinkedIn product. It has its own app. Their content goes in and basically all the sales team needs to do is go share that content or schedule it. So it's an amplification tool like buffer or Hootsuite or Sprout Social, any of those.
Colleen (33:14): And you know, I've kind of leaned lately on, can we work to build trust with the sales team that we actually use a third party amplification tool and either work with the sales team to build it in and schedule it. So they don't have to think about it in the moment, or can we as the marketing team work together to, and we're going to schedule it for you because truly there has, it feels like there has not been a lot of progress in getting people to just share it on their own because we're sending them the link.
Kathleen (33:52): I totally agree. But I've tried that too, and it's really hard for me to get people who are willing to say, yeah, go ahead, publish to my account. How do you do it?
Colleen (34:04): Yeah, I think it's I think it's a lot of collaboration that there has to be a high level of trust that I'm not just gonna put everything out. You know, you're maybe going to approve it. I mean, we work with clients on this, so we might send them something and say, you know what? These are some of your posts for this week. Just take a look at them. Are you comfortable with this? If so, we're going to schedule them for you.
Kathleen (34:27): And are you using a particular tool for that?
Colleen (34:30): We do use buffer and we've used Sprout Social in the past, but for some especially independent salespeople, we will, we'll use buffer and sometimes we're just scheduling it right through LinkedIn. You know, I think, I think there sometimes, and I've heard this from salespeople and I absolutely get this.
Colleen (34:53): I hear from them and their feedback is I don't want to just share my, all the content that's coming out of marketing. I'm like, okay, that's, that's no problem.
Kathleen (35:04): Yeah.
Colleen (35:05): Like I get that just to have that conversation with marketing and by the way, build out some of your own content. Right? Look, look it, look at industry content. So maybe you only share one or two pieces a week, or you comment on one or two pieces that comes from marketing, but how are you building your own expertise? How about giving a shout out to somebody else? And sometimes they're like, Oh, I never even thought that I could do that. Why not? So, you know, there's this, how can we have the best approach that's personalized because some people are not comfortable just sharing one type of content. I'm like, does it add value to your network?
Colleen (35:49): Yeah. This would, this comes from our industry by all means. Yeah. So it, you know, I think sometimes it goes back to finding the group of people that are going to be the most comfortable doing it within the sales team and letting them do a little bit of experimenting on their own, but say, how can I best support you on this? Because I've noticed that if I just send you something, it doesn't actually get shared. So is there a better approach? And a lot of that comes out of one-to-one coaching. We did a lot of, I do a lot of group webinars on LinkedIn training and typically the second or third part, you know the follow-up, if you will, the marketing will say, should we do another webinar? I'm like, actually, no, you know what, let, can I schedule one, two, a 30 minute one-to-one with each sales person.
Colleen (36:45): It's remarkable, Kathleen, what you'll learn. And you know, over the years I can think of clients. I can think of one just recently where pre COVID we, we did an in-person three hour training marketing was there. We had a great training session, but three weeks later, the VP of sales and the marketing director of marketing said, should we do another one? And I'm like, Nope, let's just do a one-to-one let me have a one-to-one conversation. There were five people, five business development professionals in that session. And I talked with each one of them, two of them totally got everything, you know, like they were like, right on, they were doing it. One of them wanted to know how they could then automate. They wanted to, you know, like, how do I automate this? This is awesome, but I need to automate it.
Colleen (37:39): We talked through that one person was just like, really spot on super steady. Another person, she just simply admitted like, every time I log into LinkedIn, I go down a rabbit hole, I just get lost. And, and plus, I get so distracted. And then I am like, what am I here for? And she said, I just, I feel like I never accomplished anything. And it has really good network. And then another person who has the most unbelievable network and has closed more new business in LinkedIn than anybody else on the team, subsequent to this conversation, it was as though had never been in the webinar, because she got the, all the strategy and just has an unbelievable network. Was in that group that just didn't really feel confident, pressing the buttons, but a relationship builder, like you cannot a network, just, she's probably one of the best networks I know. And, and people respond to her and she has really developed it as a referral engine. So it's so very often, just those one-to-one conversations. If I was in a marketing department, I would really kind of reach out. Now I recognize the people on this call might have marketing in marketing, might have a hundred, 200 a thousand salespeople. So you really can't manage that. But if you have a smaller sales team, could you just have a one-on-one and kind of tailor a strategy?
Kathleen (39:10): Yeah. Now, what do you, how do you advise salespeople in terms of crafting a good post? Especially if they're sharing company content, because I did do a training on this recently, and I have just personal opinions on this, but like, you know, I'm always telling people don't just paste the link. Don't just parrot what the company said in the post. Like, you have to add, you have to add some opinion, you have to add value to what you post and, and often, like longer is sometimes longer is better on LinkedIn. My posts tend to be pretty long. I often find myself having to cut them shorter to fit within LinkedIn character requirements. But I think a lot of the salespeople that I've worked with in the past, err on the side of very, very brief, almost to the point of like, you know, not typing anything with their posts. And so what do you tell people is the right way to tackle it?
Colleen (40:06): I totally agree with you. This is where they have an opportunity to stand out. I'm like, you're trying to get somebody who's looking at their LinkedIn feed to pay attention to you, to see your name, to stop, to read whatever you're sharing. This is why I'm not a big fan of just liking, but I am a big fan of commenting and sharing and even sending and put something in there. You know, obviously the number one thing to do is you have other heads who have read that article, watch that video. You know, you need to know something about what's being said and discussed so that you can put your expertise. This is where the salespeople who are really using LinkedIn well are standing out because they are adding value. There very often will be a statistic, a quote that you can pull out a point of view just to elaborate on that. And once again, it goes back to just being confident. If you make it, if you have a typo, you can go back in and edit it. Everybody makes a mistake. It's not a reason not to do it, but definitely pull it out. And as you said, LinkedIn likes longer.
Kathleen (41:15): Yeah. Although I think you can you have to use your powers for good and not evil because there is a trend on LinkedIn. Maybe you've heard of it called broetry, and it's these like super annoying long form posts and it's called broetry because it's a lot of mostly white guys and many of them are in sales positions that do it. And they don't even write full sentences. It looks, it's like little short snippets of, and oftentimes I find the topics they write about are like, I don't know. I don't know how to explain it. When I'm done reading it I say, duh. But they take, you know, paragraphs or not paragraphs because they're writing in short snippets. But like they, they fill up a long post with a lot of words that when you add it up, say nothing. And so that's my only pet peeve is like, yes, write longer, but like, really write about something where you can add value and not just to check the box and post.
Colleen (42:12): Add value please be positive, stay away from particular, ytou know, like let's not alienate people on LinkedIn. We're trying to do business on LinkedIn and stay away from buzz words. And you know, I read, we read so many posts, our team last year, sourced, you know, in that probably the last 15 months, over 130,000 LinkedIn profiles, C-level leadership profiles. And there's a, probably a pretty good percentage. Really? What does this person do? Who are they? What are they talking about? Right. You know, just let's be professionally conversational. We don't need to sound all corporate. We, we do need to put the context in because while we might know what we're saying, if the other person doesn't know what we're saying, there's no value.
Kathleen (43:02): Yeah. Now you earlier mentioned automation. Let's talk about that for a minute. Is there good automation? Is there bad automation? What should we know?
Colleen (43:16): I haven't found a great automation solution. I, you know, I wish there was really great automation. However our experience over especially the last four years is that the automation ends up diluting a person's network more than it ends up adding enhancing that network. Will people get business from that? Sure. It's a numbers game. The automation, all the automation I've seen and you know, much like you, Kathleen probably you get a number of people saying here, test this automation, right? Test this LinkedIn lead gen tool. We have the best LinkedIn lead gen tool in the world. And I mean, I've actually stopped testing them. I can't possibly, it could be a full-time job being a LinkedIn lead gen automation tester. And, but what we, what we see is that it presumes two things. It presumes LinkedIn's search algorithm is always accurate. It also presumes that what that person has on their LinkedIn profile is accurate.
Colleen (44:24): And I think they're flawed assumptions. And so there's so much nuance, especially if you're using CRM. Like we have, we have a client who uses the CRM. So when we're working with them on LinkedIn lead gen and looking and doing those searches and we're sourcing, we don't take just the first 50 or 60 people that come up in that search, we're actually hand selecting them. So we're looking at that person. Does, do they really fit the criteria? Do we think that they're going to pay attention on LinkedIn? Are there some indicators that tell us they're actually using LinkedIn and then we go into a CRM. So if you don't have a CRM, you know, it probably can, it can work better. Certainly. However, there's so many ways for it to go wrong. And I had one, you know, I mean really, I probably have 50 of them from just this week.
Colleen (45:21): I can help you with LinkedIn lead gen. Somebody actually sent me a connection request saying, Hey, you came up as somebody that might be interested in entry-level extra part-time work for data entry. When can we talk about it? I was like, Hmm, I don't know that there's anything on my profile that fits that. I'm not quite sure how that popped up. And you know, I have an example in a deck that I use for training where the keyword was president. So they're looking for presidents of companies. It went to a president, unfortunately it was the president of a student fraternity, right? So it got the right keyword. It got the right title, wrong, wrong context there. So most people, I really I think that most people are pretty aware. Especially if you keep getting these subsequent messages, if you accept that connection request that it's automated. And I get the, I get the goal of wanting to automate. Absolutely. And you know, can make a difference, but you have to think about how does it reflect on the brand? How does it reflect on the person and then make judgements from there for some people they're going to be like, it's worth it, the upsides greater than the downside for our clients who want a more personalized high touch approach to LinkedIn, it doesn't fit.
Kathleen (46:48): Also, you can run the risk of getting your account put on hold because a lot of automation tools violate LinkedIn's terms of service, and they're pretty aggressive about sniffing those out.
Colleen (46:59): Almost all of them do. So what we've noticed just in this last week is two tools that clients asked us to evaluate for them. And both of them, the limits that they're enabling through LinkedIn are much reduced, are very, you know, they're far less than they were last year because they got found out and they're trying to stay under the radar. And I, and I get that, you know, I mean, but I said, okay, this isn't really going to get you very far, very fast. So I, you know, if there was some really great automation and it's not that the tools are not good, it's just, you have to think about what the unintended consequences are.
Kathleen (47:49): Totally agree. All right. We are going to run out of time. And so I have a couple of questions for you. The first one is to sum up kind of what we've been talking about. What are your top three pieces of advice for marketing leaders regarding how they can best help sales teams do better on LinkedIn?
Colleen (48:09): The very first point I would make a point, I would mention, is for all marketers, sometimes I think they're really focused on the sales team and how they look on LinkedIn and not to forget how they as marketers look on LinkedIn too, and really build out their profile because that's an opportunity. And number two potentially have a conversation and a little bit more on the training really is to coach them through how to best feel comfortable sharing the content. And I wouldn't even say to a marketing team, can you please talk to your leadership because your leadership needs to buy into and your leadership needs to advocate and explain that this is a really important initiative for the company, but because if the leadership doesn't buy in and it's only on marketing, marketing's going to have a more difficult job. So marketing makes sure that your leadership team is bought in. It's the, one of the first things I talk about to leaders, CEOs when I'm talking about putting an engagement together.
Kathleen (49:11): Great piece of advice. All right. Now I have two questions I ask all of my guests. First one is, of course we are all about inbound marketing on this podcast. So is there a particular company or individual that you would point to that you think is a great example of inbound marketing done right?
Colleen (49:30): I love Intercom and love what Intercom is doing. I certainly, you know, always HubSpot, right. I, and, and we use Pipedrive. So I'm always sort of watching what some of these companies are doing, but I love Intercom's tool. I love their marketing. I love their kind of look and feel. And I think they have done a really, really great job. HubSpot. I love all their content. I mean, they, you know, they continue. I mean, they've just done such a great, consistent job year over year of standing out and you know, every post I, and I pay attention to quite a few of them teaches me something. So I just love the educational aspect. And so those would be, you know, really two that got a lot of them in my inbox. I tend to look at it a little bit more frequently.
Kathleen (50:25): Second question. Many of the marketers I speak to say that they, one of their biggest pain points is just trying to keep up with the changing world of digital marketing. How do you personally keep up with it all?
Colleen (50:38): Yeah, that is a work in progress. I love the Marketing Brew from Morning Brew. I love that I can pay attention to that. I do pay attention to Social Media Today. I also pay attention pretty, pretty frequently to Business to Community. I kind of like a little bit of a different lens. I love you know, I've learned a lot. I read the Wall Street Journal every day and there's usually a marketing article or two, you know, kind of woven in throughout the week. Just learn more on the business side, but like how, how companies are looking at things. And so those would probably be my, my main sources of information.
Kathleen (51:23): Great. All right. Well, we've come to the end of our time. And so my last question for you is of course, if somebody is listening and wants to connect with you online or learn more about Intero Advisory, what's the best way for them to do that?
Colleen (51:39): Absolutely. So our website is Interoadvisory.com and on LinkedIn, Colleen McKenna Intero Advisory. So those would probably be the two easiest ways. We have lots of content on our profile, on our website and our profile. So lots to learn. We write a lot about LinkedIn and so there's lots of tips.
Kathleen (52:02): And of course, as always, I will put those links in the show notes. So you can have an easy way of finding them. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, please consider heading to Apple podcasts and leaving the podcast a review. And of course, if you know somebody else who is doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Colleen.
Colleen (52:28): Thank you so great to spend time with you, Kathleen.
You've got a new product ready to launch. What's the best way to come out of the gate strong and see immediate ROI?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Mindful Marketing founder Jordan West shares the details of a gated launch strategy he's used many times to nail new product launches.
In addition to his work as an ecommerce marketing agency owner, Jordan is a serial entrepreneur who owns three successful ecommerce businesses (with plans for more in the works!). He isn't just advising other companies on how to market their businesses—he's in the trenches building his own businesses as well.
In this episode, Jordan gets into detail about what he's done to build customer communities, how he stays top of mind with his customer base, and why the concept of FOMO (fear of missing out) is a powerful tool to use in building momentum around new product launches.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Mindful Marketing website
- Get Jordan's launch checklist
- Connect with Jordan on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Jordan West, who is the founder and CEO of Mindful Marketing. Welcome to the podcast, Jordan.
Jordan (00:24): Hey Kathleen. Thank you so much for having me. I really, really appreciate it.
Kathleen (00:29): You are a fellow podcaster, which I love and it's just easier, isn't it? I don't have to tell you, you know, to silence your cell phone and things like that. Amongst many other things.
Jordan (00:44): Oh, I would have appreciated you to though because I don't think I did silence it.
Kathleen (00:48): Well, you can be forgiven just this one time. No, you're, you're a fellow podcaster. You are a marketing agency owner, which I was for 11 years. I feel like we probably could do about 10 or 20 podcasts together about any array of topics, but we're going to start with what I think is a really great one today, which is a big success that you had. Before we go into that though, can you tell my audience a little bit more about yourself as well as what mindful marketing does?
Jordan (01:20): Yeah, totally. I'm the CEO of a marketing agency. I also run three brands as well. My wife and I own and run three brands. So to me, I actually normally get introduced on that side. So it's fun to be introduced in the agency side. I don't wanna just have to slip it in at the end, you know, like I, I love that. That's, that's wonderful. Cause mostly people want founder stories when I, when I come on podcasts. So so I'd love to actually tell you the story though, of sort of how I got into business. So I was 20.
Kathleen (01:52): Four businesses! Like we, we might have to talk about like how you cope with the crazy, because that is a lot of work.
Jordan (02:00): Yeah. I mean, and we're doing two acquisitions right now, too, so.
Kathleen (02:05): Wow. Oh, okay. Yeah. So what's your story? How did you wind up doing all of this?
Jordan (02:10): So, okay. So I was 23 years old. I was a paramedic and a painter. So painting houses, being a paramedic, doing the part-time paramedic thing. And I really wanted to learn business. So my family actually had had a business. We had a, a mill and they wouldn't let me come in and learn business there. They're like, no, no, we don't want family involved. I'm like, Oh shoot. Okay. So I looked on Craigslist and I found a Mexican chain restaurant, a taco Del Mar for sale. And I'm like, Oh, okay, this is great. It was for sale for $35,000. All everything included. I'm like, Oh, this is incredible. Okay. I'm a learn business. And this like, what's the worst case scenario. I'm going to lose $35,000, like a big deal. Right. I mean, at 23 years old, actually 35,000 was a big deal.
Kathleen (03:00): Chump change when you're just starting out.
Jordan (03:02): No, totally. But I thought I'm like, okay, well that, that wouldn't be that bad. Well, the worst case scenario after five years was that we lost about $150,000. So we did not have to lose. I just remember having these lines of credit from every possible place. My father-in-law my dad, like all these places just to keep this thing afloat. We finally sold it for $25,000 at the end of it. And it was a very tough learning experience, but I'll tell you, I wouldn't be here without it. I absolutely would not be here without, I remember before my grandpa died, who was big in business. He said, he said, Jordy, you know, nobody who I respect doesn't in business. Doesn't go bankrupt. At least once I'm like, okay, good. I'll consider that my bankruptcy without actually going bankrupt, waiting those seven years, you know, for my credit to, to, to resolve. So, so that's really, that was the beginning and, and that could have been the end. You know, if I, you know, didn't actually stick to it. And so we had, this is about seven years ago now we had our first child Daphne and she we decided to try cloth diapers. We thought, Oh, this is going to be great. You know, we're going to save a bunch of money. Use cloth diapers, be good on the environment. Yeah. I mean, we were just absolutely great people.
Kathleen (04:17): I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it when I had my son.
Jordan (04:24): Well we tried for, you know, I mean about three months, but my, my wife was trying to put leggings over top of her and no leggings would fit. And so she was she came from a fashion design background and she's like, Oh, I can whip up a quick pattern, like no problem. So she put them on and she's like, huh, I wonder if anyone else is having these issues. And so she brought these leggings you know, she just bought fabric online, brought these leggings to a market and people loved them. She was already selling jewelry at the time. And so she's like, Oh, I'll just add leggings on. And the leggings started to sell out every single market. And so then we put them on Etsy. This is back in like, I think 2014, we put them on Etsy and they, they would just sell and sell and sell.
Jordan (05:01): And we're like, this is incredible. So we started a Shopify store and we started to get men home sellers around where we were. Right. So we'd, we'd actually cut out the patterns at home, in our garage. And we bring them to all of our home sewers and, and and so that was really the growth of our clothing company. And now obviously we, you know, we have manufacturers and all that sort of stuff. We're sort of like mid seven figures with that company and growing very, very rapidly now. And so the baby brand is Little and Lively and then we've got, we're actually, we're doing a huge rebrand right now, but The Kindred Clothing co is the women's line. And we also have a new pajama brand that we're launching called Pretty Laundry. Yeah. Yeah. So those are, those are kind of the fun ones on that with that core business right now.
Jordan (05:50): So throughout all of that, my wife and I realized you know, we're not awesome working together day to day. It just didn't work. And the, the one thing that I was really good at was the marketing side I could execute on, on on the paid, especially in, in paid media really, really well. And so, you know, I started doing consulting for people and I'm really like it, I'm not a Saint, but I just couldn't charge people. I just, it was just so hard for me to charge people or even charge like what I was worth to, to them at the time. So, you know, I charged like 500 bucks a month or something to run these paid media campaigns for people. And and I realized one of the lessons that I learned to talk about more was bringing in a business partner, especially a partner who does the things well that I don't do it.
Jordan (06:34): So I brought a business partner in and and since then I think that was 2017, 2018 I don't know, time, just, just blurs and you're having fun. Totally. And so since then, now I think we're a team of 15. Now we just keep hiring right now. So so yes, the team has grown. We're not, you know, a massive agency or anything, but but a really, really great team of super efficient. We work mainly with e-commerce brands. Actually, sorry, mainly we only work with e-commerce brands. Can't even imagine if a non e-commerce brand came in. So we work with, with seven and eight figure e-commerce brands, mostly running paid media that we're adding services within that vertical all the time. And then, yeah, and then on the, on the other side, I'm the kind of an acquisition mode buying up kind of one to $2 million brands that hopefully we can scale into eight figures. And it's just, that's, that's my life.
Kathleen (07:28): I love this story. And, and when I said in the beginning that we probably could do lots of podcasts on lots of different topics, cause we both owned agencies and things like that. I didn't realize that you owned your agency or you owned your businesses with your wife and I, when I had my agency for 11 years, my business partner was my husband. So we could do podcasts together on those topics.
Jordan (07:53): I feel like that's even, that'd be even harder at an agency. There's so many more people issues.
Kathleen (07:58): We were like two businesses in one. And much like you and your wife. We had to figure out how to run our business in ways that we did not overlap. So literally our offices were at the polar opposite ends of our office suites that we'd have as little in-person contact, not cause we couldn't stand each other, but because we spend the rest of our time together, right? So like when we were at work we were like, let's be far apart. And then we, we, we, I ran the digital marketing side of our business and then we actually sold promotional products, which is the side of our business that my husband ran. So they were like two businesses in one.
Jordan (08:28): Those are two totally different businesses.
Kathleen (08:30): Perfect, perfect division of labor for us. But we, I always say whenever anybody asks, that my proudest accomplishment in life is that I owned a business with my husband for 11 years. And I'm still married to him.
Jordan (08:42): That is good. That's something you should be very proud of.
Kathleen (08:44): I am. So anyway, I, that has nothing to do with what we're talking about today, but I just wanted to mention it because, you know, you don't come across people very often who've had that much experience working with a spouse and we are a small and unique and probably pretty crazy tribe.
Jordan (09:00): Yeah, totally, totally. We should probably start like a Facebook group or something, you know, just for support.
Kathleen (09:05): So one of the reasons that I was excited to talk with you was that, you know, we first met because of the world of e-commerce because in my day job my company does things that have to do with e-commerce and we started talking about e-commerce marketing and this and that, and you have had some particularly successful campaigns and things that you've run one of which was a big launch that you did that got amazing results and you have a particular strategy around that. And so that's, that's what I love sharing on this podcast is who's getting great results and how are they doing it? So let's back up and, and talk a little bit about what was the launch and what it is that you were trying to do.
Jordan (09:49): Totally. So just to be clear, this launch was for our baby and women's brand. So for Little and Lively and Kindred, so it was our fall winter launch. So we generally launch almost all of our products on one day where people can finally purchase. So we do about a two to three week lead up to that with content, letting them know sort of what we're going to be releasing over the years. And we've been around for five years now, we built up a really loyal following that we'll generally when we release something we'll purchase. So so what, what we've done though, is we've really tried to create some hype around this and real hype, right. Real hype and real what's, what's the word I'm looking for? Like feed, you know, fear of missing out yeah, all like all of that around, but without like scarcity, but not false scarcity.
Jordan (10:41): Right. We manufacture everything still in Canada. And so that's, that's very difficult to know exactly how much to manufacture, because it does cost a lot more to manufacture here. It's just one of our core values. So we're, it's not something we're going to get away from. So people know that you know, of, of items that are popular, which we have no idea until they buy them. What's going to be the most popular item. Otherwise we just make more of those. We don't know what's going to sell out and what's not going to. So generally during launches, people already know that we're going to sell out. So we've created a VIP community over the last year. So the VIP community consists of a Facebook group and an SMS list. So those are kind of intertwined together. And we call those our VIP our VIP customers.
Jordan (11:23): And they know by being on those lists, that they're going to get early access to certain sales like this. So I got this idea years ago and I only implemented it this year. I got this idea from a book by Jonah Berger called Contagious. And he talked about this fashion brand that that was really struggling and they decided to password protect their site. And then they would give the password out only once a week and then they'd sell out every single time. And I thought, you know, why don't we do that? Why don't we try that? And so they just rebranded, they were selling all the same stuff. They were struggling almost going bankrupt. And then they turned it into this massive brand because they created this hype around the brand. Right. And sort of, re-imagined what it looked like.
Jordan (12:08): And so we weren't, we were already on our way to, you know, being a hundred percent year over year then sales, but I'm like, how can we, how can we create this kind of hype around this? And so we did that exact thing for 12 hours before the before we released the product. And I remember there's no discounts, no sales anything like that. This is just new product that people were paying full price for. We password protected the site for 12 hours before, so nobody could get on people on the VIP group. You know, there's probably 50 posts that people like, Oh my gosh, I can't wait. I can't wait. And we'd have launches before that were pretty successful, but like maybe 50 grand, which is great. I mean, that's still a great launch, but we had no clue what this, what this type of launch was going to do.
Jordan (12:54): And we have replicated it since. And so we so we, you know, password protected the site, gave people right at 10:00 AM Pacific the password. And I looked on Google analytics and immediately I see like 3000 people on the website.
Kathleen (13:08): Oh, wow.
Jordan (13:09): Oh my gosh. Not like 3,500. And then we just see the sales come in. And it's like, I think in the first hour it was something like a hundred thousand dollars in the first hour of sales. And we're like, Oh my gosh, I can't like, we couldn't even imagine. So for two hours, people had to enter a password to get in. There's some incredible things that happen when when you make people want it like that. Right. First of all, there's the whole FOMO idea, right. Which is like, FOMO is not going away. Everyone has this, this fear of missing out.
Jordan (13:43): There's the idea of exclusivity, right? There's also, I think the thing that I love the most is micro-commitments right. They have now made this micro-commitment and they've, they've made I remember somebody told me this term years ago, and I just thought they were such a nerd. I love this term now. It's a Rubicon, right? It's something that you can only go through. Right. You can only go one way through and you do not want to leave. Right. You don't, as soon as you've, you've made it through that you know, through that gate, you don't want to leave that gate. And I think that's the psychology behind it. Right. So, and why the gated launches do so incredibly well. We've replicated it twice since then. And every time it's results that are, that are very similar to that, essentially, we generally just sell out of everything during the gated portion of it, which then just self-perpetuates right. People join the VIP group. People join the SMS list because they know that they want that early access.
Kathleen (14:43): So, all right. I have a lot of questions. Let's back up.
Jordan (14:47): No I've talked all about this so I'm done.
Kathleen (14:49): No, it's great. That's great. There's so to unpack here, so this sounds like a good strategy. When you have something kind of big you want to announce whether that's like a new season of clothing, or it could be a new product you're launching, or, you know, what have you, I can, I can envision lots of uses for it, but it sounds as though you started with building your list of let's call it most ardent brand enthusiasts or your brand loyalists in the VIP group. So you had that before you did this, correct?
Jordan (15:22): Yes. Yes. So we've been building that for a good year and we'd been doing launches to them, but we would just tell them early, right. We wouldn't password protect the site. We would just tell them early, or we'd give them like a special discount.
Kathleen (15:35): And how did you determine, like, how did you build that list? Was it invitations? Was it marketing of it? How did you get people onto that list?
Jordan (15:44): That brings up another great strategy or tactic that we've been using for a while now? So every new purchaser somebody who has never purchased from us before the first time, they actually get a personalized video from one of our staff that by name, thank them. They tell them what they ordered. Like, Hey, hope you enjoy your, you know, leggings in floral. If you want to learn more about the brand, do you want to ask some questions, join our VIP group. So that's where we invite people to the VIP group right there.
Kathleen (16:14): I love that you do a personalized video. That is, it's such a simple thing that is so easy to do. And I can't even imagine, it must be like a fraction of a percent of companies think to do something like that. And it has such a big impact. You must get great responses from it.
Jordan (16:33): Oh yeah. And it's really hard to actually measure the entire impact of it. Right? Like the, the brand, it's hard to measure what that brand loyalty looks like and the brand sentiment. But it's something we're going to do forever. We're not going to stop doing this. I've told some you know, on our podcast and our agency, I've talked to massive brands about this and they've just started doing it because they realize how incredible it is to, to just start doing it and start letting people know, like, people don't want to buy products anymore. Right. They want to buy from brands. They don't want to just buy some random product. I mean, go to Amazon, if you just want to, I don't know, buy toilet bowl cleaner, but if you want to buy the most incredible toilet bowl, cleaner in the world, that's surrounded by the toilet bowl. People, you know, build a brand. Right. That's, that's really what it's about, and brands have to have people involved in them. And so that's why I think that it works so well.
Kathleen (17:26): So do you have somebody who is assigned to be like your community manager?
Jordan (17:32): Yeah. So in this case we actually have so for the videos we actually use virtual assistants who we have worked with on the agency side and on the brand side awesome people. I've worked with them for ages. They're essentially just full-time employees for us. They'll just actually do the videos. We tried to get in-house staff to do the videos and they would take like five minutes on each video and be like, I don't look super good. I dunno, like, no, this isn't gonna work. So and then as far as community management, believe it or not, that's something that my wife and I do that is one place where I truly believe that it is worth us doing that on, is managing that community. I've seen communities thrive especially in the digital marketing space. So I don't know why I've talked about this a lot recently. I think it's cause I'm sad about it. But Digital, Digital Marketer like Ryan Deiss and those guys, they had an incredible community for years. I pay a hundred dollars us a month. Literally. I never went on the platform. I don't think I've been on digital marketers platform in like four years, but I was paying a hundred dollars a month just to be a part of that community. And that community is dead. Absolutely dead.
Kathleen (18:42): Do they still have their Facebook group? Cause I was a part of that.
Jordan (18:45): Yeah. It went from 12,000 people to 3000 and nobody ever posts. The posts are garbage. It's not a great community and I think they've made, you know, they had incredible people in there who went on to - Susie, I forget what her name is. She went on to work for Facebook afterwards in building communities and, and became a real expert in that. And they have just it's dead. And to me, I look at that as a, as a warning of being like, no, that, and so I stopped paying. I'm out. And that was the only reason I was here for all these years. Cause that's when I first started learning digital marketing, I became part of digitalmarketer.com and, and it's awesome. I love those guys. I've done presentations for them and stuff and but I think that they've really missed the mark on that. And so I use that as a warning to me, with our community, making sure that like that, to me, that's the $10,000 an hour stuff is, is being a part of that community.
Kathleen (19:44): Oh, I mean, and, and you certainly don't have to sell me on that. I'm a huge believer in building community. I was, I spent two years at a company called IMPACT that has a 5,000 plus member Facebook community that I was involved in growing when I was there. It is such an investment that you're making, like a long-term investment when you build community. It's an asset for your business.
Jordan (20:09): It is, it is. And it's interesting. Cause I'm looking at these two acquisitions that I'm making in the outdoor space right now. The reasons why I love them so much as they have massive communities and engaged communities, I'm like, you don't know, they don't know what they have. Right. They don't realize how to leverage those communities afterwards. Right. I think that there's ways that you can leverage your communities. Especially like, I looked through them and they're not doing some of the things that we're doing and I'm like, Oh, I see the value in this, in these communities are like 10,000 person communities, ones on Slack even, which is even bigger in my opinion than a Facebook group. So yeah.
Kathleen (20:48): Cause you, you own your platform on Slack. I totally agree with you. Yeah. Oh, this could be again, a whole nother podcast on community building. I love this. So you built your community and I liked that you used the video, the videos that you sent as a way of funneling people in and then what was the SMS component?
Jordan (21:10): What we were finding is that people at first didn't have SMS attached. We did not want to do SMS. We're like, you know, people don't want to hear from us via text. Like nobody wants to get that text from a brand, but we realized that people actually weren't seeing the notifications on Facebook, right. Because groups, I mean, groups still, I think, have the biggest reach, right? If you have a big community you're going to get the biggest reach, the biggest bang for your buck, I think within a Facebook group, still with the algorithm, but that, that may go away at some point. So we said, Hey, if you guys want to make sure that you get the benefits of being part of the VIP group, sign up for our SMS list. And so I think that's really been, that's really been the magic ticket of actually getting that direct response within the Facebook group, the rest of the community building, which you know all about.
Jordan (21:56): Right. The other portion of that too, on the Facebook group side, sorry, I'm jumping around here on the, on the Facebook group side. It's incredible to get the feedback from customers. So we'll often just ask them before we release something like, Hey, what do you guys think about this? We almost released something at Christmas that like 90% of people and who knows there could have been some groups thinking this, but like 90% of people said, no, we hate this. Like really, like we had like 200 comments on on one of the graphics that people said, no, we do not like this. And so we had to go back to the drawing board and release new graphics. And luckily we hadn't,
Kathleen (22:33): When you say graphics, is this like your ad, your ad creative, or because that's a cool idea if you're able to test things like that.
Jordan (22:41): Actual graphics on shirts. So one of the things that we do within the the baby clothing company and the women's clothing company is so we produce all the actual garments, but we'll do graphics as well. And and so luckily there wasn't something that we'd invested in. Yes. Was those graphics, but people said no. And then we showed them two more graphics and they're like, yeah, we love those. That's interesting. Yeah. Really good to get that feedback. Just, there's so many different ways that you can leverage those groups.
Kathleen (23:12): So you have the, the launch that you're planning and you've got your group that you can message and that is, am I correct? That's on Facebook.
Jordan (23:19): Yes. Yeah.
Kathleen (23:20): And then, okay. And then you have the SMS list. So how far ahead of time do you start messaging about the launch and what does that cadence look like?
Jordan (23:31): It depends. If it's a big launch, we're going to start messaging two to three weeks before. Right. Cause we're in, at that point, I mean with, with apparel, I think that most brands are probably doing something similar to we're doing. That's sales season for us. Right. So we're launching sales throughout that, like just getting rid of all that inventory. We have to carry so much inventory. And that's just part of, that's just part of apparel. So we're, we're, you know, doing sales along with showing people what the new collection is going to look like. Right. so that's about two to three weeks out and we're going to let them know if you want early access, join these groups. Right. So in our emails, we're going to include links to SMS and to the VIP group. So that's it, generally. For, for other launches, it'll be about a week before that we're going to let them know. We also don't want our sales to completely drop off before that. That just makes it a really difficult time for our staff to fulfill orders. We still do in-house fulfillment. So that does take, you know, quite a, quite a good amount of time for them to fulfill orders like that.
Kathleen (24:32): And then, so I assume you're regularly messaging folks leading up to it. How often do you hit them on SMS? Well, on SMS and in the group, like how often are you posting about the launch? Because there's, I feel like there's a fine balance, right?
Jordan (24:47): It's not a lot. It's not, we're not, we're not, we're not posting every single day about the launch. We'll do like maybe once a week, we're kind of reminding them, Hey, we're going to be doing this launch or we're doing it sort of subtly like showing them like, Hey, here's, you know, one of the things that, one of the new items that we're going to be launching that sort of thing, or we'll just make a monster post that shows them all of the different things or links to the look book. Like when we release a new collection, it's like 500 skews, right. Five between five and 600 skews. So there's a lot of different products that we're launching. So those posts get a ton of reach and a ton of action on them, especially with people clicking links to go over to a look book or whatever that is.
Jordan (25:24): So, but we're, we're not banging people over the head that I feel like would start to people would not enjoy that. And then they would stop being a part of our community. And, and also we don't like, we really don't want people to think we're just about revenue, right? We're not just about selling things to people. We genuinely want people to be happy. Like we have at all of our brands and we will continue with the, with the new brands will have return policies where we're paying for everything back and forth. We just want people to be happy because if they're not, and we, we at the, on the customer service side as well, we have this idea that even the customer's not always right, but we're always going to say yes. So we just don't say no, because it, it costs us so much more. They think that they're right, right. It doesn't, it doesn't really matter whether they're right or not. Like recently somebody, you know actually this is probably a good year ago now they sent us a picture of a ketchup stain and they said, yeah, I can't get this ketchup stain out. I want to return it right now. Just keep it, we'll send you a new one.
Kathleen (26:24): Oh wow. That's like, I feel like that's almost like the LL Bean return policy of the days of, of before where like, it was like a lifetime thing.
Jordan (26:33): And that's exactly, that's where we got the idea from right. Was from, from them. And I don't care how much it costs and if people take advantage of it, because the brand equity that we get from that is, we're so much more the, the, the not accepting those returns, that's just small thinking, right. That's this years thinking that's not 10 years from now and building a big brand thing.
Kathleen (26:57): Right now. I really want to check out your store because it sounds so awesome. So talk me through the results. It sounds like you've done this a couple of times. Talk me through the results you get when you do this kind of a strategy.
Jordan (27:12): Yeah, totally. So we just had another one. I think the last one we did was in November, December, this was actually after black Friday. So December generally is our worst month of the year at this company. And we're like, okay, we've got to figure out how we can get better December sales. So we're like, ah, okay, let's launch of our bigger promos. It's like three leggings. We call them Kindred surprise cause Kindred is our company. And so it's this three legging bundle. They don't know what they're going to get in it. And people love this promo. We only do it twice a year. And so we launched that one and I think in the first we actually just sold out. So it didn't. So we did about 150 K in the first day. And then we just sold out.
Jordan (27:55): It was an awesome promo, really helped our December out in incredible ways. And it just kind of kept the ball rolling for all of December.
Kathleen (28:04): And then, is there anything you do kind of after you run the launch to follow up on it? Or is it just really like then onto the next one?
Jordan (28:14): The great thing about a VIP group as well on Facebook in particular is that people do the promoting for you, right? What will happen? And we didn't promote this at all. People just started doing this. They started screenshotting their cart afterwards and being like, Oh my gosh, look at all this stuff I got. So there'll be like 40 posts of people talking about the different things that they got with a ton of comments on each one of them showing what, what they got, which then you know, incentivizes other people especially with, with the whole FOMO idea, being like, Oh my gosh, they got all this stuff. That's incredible. And it's, it's user generated content that we're not even promoting. Right. It's just going, like every post in our VIP group will generally reach like 3000 people. So like we're getting like 10 to 20 posts a day in a regular time that reach 3000 people that's like, and that's user generated content that has nothing to do with us. We don't promote that. Nothing.
Kathleen (29:12): So how large, can I ask how large the VIP group is?
Jordan (29:15): I think it's only 10,000 people.
Kathleen (29:17): That's pretty good. That's pretty good.
Jordan (29:20): I think so. Considering we've only been growing it for about a year and a half. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, I think it's a great community and our SMS list is about the same size too, not massive. Like these aren't huge lists that we're talking about, but I think that those customers, right, when you create loyal customers and we've been talking about this for years and actually Digital Marketer, speaking of, did an incredible job, Ryan Deiss of walking through what the customer journey looks like, right. Everyone thinks the customer journey stops at purchasing. It's goes so beyond that, right. To, to the place where like, you know, the eighth step of the customer journey is they are your brand advocate, right. When somebody posts a complaint on the VIP group, it gets flagged immediately, immediately somebody flags. And those are our advocates, right. That are like, Hey, I understand you've got an issue. They flag it. And they say, talk to customer service about this. We don't have to do any of that for us. We've got this 8,000 or eight to 10,000 person army. That's doing our promoting for us. Right. So we've actually been on, on the paid ad side. We've actually had to spend less or the money that we're putting into paid ads. We're trying to build our community and our lists even more.
Kathleen (30:25): No, I think doesn't Ryan Deiss refer to it as the Value Journey Canvas? I've seen that model before. It's really great. So cool. So you, do you also help other like online retailers to do launches? Is that part of what, how you advise them?
Jordan (30:45): It's actually part of our, at our, at our agency, it's part of the strategy portion, right? One thing that we discovered really early on, and I don't know how many B2B people are in this, but like one thing we, we really realized is that results mattered maybe like a quarter to people. Right. Whereas results are kind of like the baseline when you're working with an agency, right. You have to have results, but strategy and relationships are so important to maintaining clients long term. And so for us, we really try and break up what we charge right. Based on strategy and then also an execution. And I think that that's really important and I'm sure, you know, from, from being in the agency world but that's really important that people know, like, look, you're getting strategy along with us. And that's really part of the longterm strategy that we have with clients is like, Hey, you're not going to run a gated launch tomorrow. Not unless you've been doing all the things I've been saying, but let's get you to the point where you can run a gated launch.
Kathleen (31:47): Yeah. And I remember from my days as an agency owner, you're, you're spot on that. Like even if you have an amazing call it overarching marketing strategy, you still need to introduce new, littler strategies, like every quarter every month, what have you done to keep people excited, to keep the momentum feeling as though there's momentum? Yeah, there always has to be something new.
Jordan (32:10): We've actually, we've actually built out a whole, we use monday.com as our project management tool. Very similar to ClickUp if people out there, you know, wondering about that. So on Monday I've actually built out a strategy board that every, because I don't, I can't manage accounts. Right. Impossible. But I've, I've kind of given over that strategy to our account managers. So we have, I think it's something like 65 paid ads, strategies with loom videos of each, every single strategy so that clients can actually see. So it's a shared board that the clients and our ad account managers see so that they can then you know, on the ad account management side, it's awesome. Because sometimes you'll be like, just bang your head against the wall. Like, Hey, what am I doing? Like, am I just running dynamic product ads? Or like what, like, you know, what's working right now and now they can go and be like, Oh, okay. So Facebook, you know, a level one strategy is this. And then the clients can also see it. And it future paces clients. I mean, our churn is so low at this agency because of I think it's the future pacing along with relationships.
Kathleen (33:16): Oh, that's great. And because agency, life can be very brutal if it's not going well.
Jordan (33:22): Yeah. I mean, you can have, yeah, yeah. It can be, yeah. It can be terrible. I really prefer the product side to be honest. Yeah.
Kathleen (33:31): Yeah. I can see why. Well, that's awesome. I love that strategy. I love that you built a community in order to facilitate it. Anything, any kind of like last words of advice, things you wish you knew when you got started that you would say to somebody, if they were thinking about doing this now themselves. Yeah.
Jordan (33:51): I mean, on the gated launch side, I just say start a community right now. Right? Like as soon as you can start a community, give tons and tons of value. Especially at the beginning, like we were asking questions every single day, right. People want to give their input, especially in our space you know, moms who are struggling and, and you know, maybe first-time moms just ask questions, be involved, really be just think of your business. You're human to human, right. You're not direct to consumer. That is not what you are. You are a human selling to another human at a craft show at wherever. Just think of it like that.
Kathleen (34:27): Yeah. I love that advice. All right. Well, we have to shift gears now because before we wrap up, there's always two questions. I ask all of my guests and I want to make sure I get your answers. The first one is, of course this podcast is all around inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really like setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days?
Jordan (34:51): That's a good question. That's a good question. Did you prep me with this one? I feel like you did prep me for this.
Kathleen (35:00): That's all right. There's lots of people that I prep and they read it and then they still don't have a good answer. So you are not alone.
Jordan (35:06): You know what? I actually, it's interesting. Cause I told my sales team about to follow these people recently because I think they're doing an incredible job inbound and that's Interview Secrets. They are, I forget what their names are. The owner Margie is one of them. They have a huge podcast, like gets you onto podcast agency. And they run just the most incredible inbound strategy that I've seen because I really believe that in the, in the business to business space it's all about podcasts. These days, podcasts and YouTube shows, right? Like we've grown our agency just doing that. And so those guys that interview secrets go get into their Facebook group, they have an awesome community and they just give value all the time.
Kathleen (35:55): I will definitely have to check that out because I'm clearly drinking the podcast Kool-Aid and, and you mentioned that you have a podcast. So quickly, what is the name of your podcast?
Jordan (36:04): Yes. So ours is called Secrets to Scaling Your E-commerce Brand.
Kathleen (36:07): I love it. So if you're an e-commerce or you're, or you're e-commerce curious, just check it out. Second question that I always ask everybody is, you know, marketers are constantly saying to me that one of their biggest pain points is that trying to keep up with all the changes in the world of digital marketing, particularly things like paid ads where you really specialized, it's like drinking from a fire hose because it changes so quickly. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and up to date?
Jordan (36:34): Ooh, good question for I'm going to answer that. First of all, that, that if you focus on offer and creative, thing, don't change. They really don't. IOS 14 - big deal. You still have to have good offer and good creative you're targeting. Like for me, targeting is number five, right? It's the least important. It's the thing everyone wants to talk about. And the thing that matters the least because if you don't have any of the other stuff, it just doesn't matter. Right. so as far as where I get my advice, honestly our account managers are the ones who are doing, they're having calls every single week with their Facebook reps. That's, that's really where we're getting the most on the Facebook side. And after that, I'm just looking at my peers, like Ezra Firestone is a great example. He's got great content out there. Digital Marketer is still awesome for the content that they're putting out just in a little, but like I said, they're in a bit of a funk right now. Those would be my, my two places that I would kind of point towards.
Kathleen (37:40): Nice. I'll definitely have to check out Ezra Firestone. I know the guys at Digital Marketer and they definitely have lots of great content. So that's also a very good one. So if somebody is listening and they want to learn more about the stuff that you've been talking about, or they have a question, what is the best way for them to connect with you online?
Jordan (38:00): Totally. So we actually have a checklist that we run every sales launch that we're giving away for free. So it's mindfulmarketing.co/sales-launch-checklist. I know it's a long URL, but man, we get like 20 or 30 downloads a day. So people must actually, it must get in their brains.
Kathleen (38:20): That's right. And I will put the link in the show notes. So that will make it really easy.
Jordan (38:25): Yeah, totally. And I love to connect on LinkedIn. So most of the conversations that I have start on LinkedIn and end in us chatting. So actually they own, and generally they end other places, but the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
Kathleen (38:40): Oh, this is awesome. Jordan, thank you so much for sharing all of your tips with me and my listeners. If you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave this podcast a review so that other folks can find us as well. And of course, if you know someone else doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me, Jordan.
Jordan (39:08): Thanks so much for having me. Really nice to be on here.
ou've launched a successful B2B podcast. Now what?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Casted Founder Lindsay Tjepkema talks about why publishing your podcast is just the beginning, and how top B2B marketers are repurposing podcast content in creative ways to drive better marketing results.
We've talked about podcasting on this podcast before, but we've never covered some of the strategies Lindsay and her clients are using to turn podcasts into sales enablement tools, improve their ABM campaigns, and more.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the Casted website or view the company's Look Book for examples of how their clients are repurposing podcast content
- Following Lindsay on Twitter
- Connect with Lindsay on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:02): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And today my guest is Lindsay Tjepkema, who is the CEO and founder of Casted. Welcome to the podcast, Lindsay.
Lindsay (00:32): Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.
Kathleen (00:34): I'm really happy to have you here because we get to talk about my favorite topic, which is podcasting. The podcasting topic about podcasting.
Lindsay (00:43): It's my life. Podcasts about podcasts all day long.
Kathleen (00:46): The most meta podcasting thing ever. Before we jump into that can you take a minute and tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and your journey, how you wound up doing what you're doing now and what Casted is?
Lindsay (00:59): Of course, yes. So I'm a marketer at heart. I I've spent 15 years in, specifically in B2B marketing, specifically in the brand and content side of things. I've been on the agency side, I've been on the corporate side, I've run my own consulting thing. So I've all things. B2B marketing most recently before starting Casted I was running a brand and content team for global enterprise SaaS company. We had the strong content marketing engine that we had built that was based on, you know, a lot of, you know, social and blog and downloadable content. But we were this 20 year old SaaS company that was literally and figuratively missing a voice. And so this was 2017. When I said, you know, we need a podcast. That's where our audience is. As a lot of opportunity is, would also help unify this 900 person company around the world.
Lindsay (01:53): So let's do it. So like a lot of marketers that I now work with I I've set out to understand, okay, what does that even mean? How does starting a podcast work? What does this new medium, this new channel look like? And quickly realized a couple of things. One, it when we, when we did launch the show, I was happy that we did, because it did give our, our global team something to kind of rally around and a voice to get behind. And, and it also helped us reach our audience in a new way. They responded well. They liked hearing from our customers, liked hearing from our partners. But the, the flip side, the other thing I realized I was, was shocked. Really. I was vastly underwhelmed with the, the software that just didn't exist for, for me as a marketing leader and for my team, because we put, you know, firsthand how much, how much work it is to do a show and to do it right. What else were we going to do with it? And, and how were we going to see a return on this investment of time, money, resources, energy how we're going to use it in different ways. So we're going to measure it. And I just, I couldn't believe that there I didn't, there was no answer to that question. So that's, that's why Casted was born. We're the first and only platform that's really built for B2B marketers to harness the power of podcasting as part of their content.
Kathleen (03:08): I love that so much. And as you say, speaking from firsthand experience, I mean, I'm a marketer, that's, that's what I was trained in. I was not a trained audio engineer or audio production editor or graphic designer or any of that. But I knew I wanted to do a podcast and so I had to figure it out and I had to learn a bunch of things and I have my process down now, but like, it, it was sort of painful. And if, I think if anything, if any part of it changed now, it's like, you know, the whole thing would go crumbling down because I, I have it like set up so that I know exactly what to do at every stage. Cause I've learned specifically how to do these things for this very purpose, but I haven't learned overall like how to be a great audio editor for example.
Kathleen (03:54): Right. So it is, it's, it's complicated and I think it can be intimidating for people who are interested in starting podcasts. Yeah. you know, we've, we've talked so much about podcasting on this podcast. I've had people come on and talk about why you should podcast and like why it's great to be a guest on other people's podcasts and so many different topics. And, and, and it's funny because like, usually I'm pretty careful about not talking about the same topic too much, just because, you know, you've, you've covered at once, but this is a topic that it keeps coming up. And it's really interesting cause I'm in a lot of like Slack groups with other CMOs and, you know, private group, private communities, et cetera. And it's, it's fascinating to me how the interest in B2B podcasting just keeps gaining steam. Like just when you think it's hit it's, you know, high point it keeps going.
Kathleen (04:46): And I think COVID has only reinforced that. And so this is a really hot topic, which is why I wanted to talk about it again. And I think I love the specific angle that you and I are going to cover, which is so you've created a podcast. What next, because that's part of the problem. A lot of people go out and they think it's just all about doing the podcast when really that's just kind of scratching the surface. So assuming that that people listening are convinced of the power of podcasting and some of them may or may not have started their podcast, let's dig into what happens next. And I'm going to turn it over to you because this is what your, what you do day in and day out.
Lindsay (05:26): It's true. Yeah. And I think to your point, Kathleen, whether you've started a podcast already, maybe you've been doing one for years and years and years, or you're thinking about doing one, regardless if you are a B2B marketer and you're even considering a show, your frame of mind, shouldn't just be, Hey, let's do a podcast. It should be, how are we going to use this, this podcast, this show as part of our integrated content marketing strategy, even our integrated sales and marketing what's, how's it going to fuel everything else we're doing that that is the difference maker. Anyone can just, you know, hit play, hit, publish, and get something out into the world. It's what you do with it from there. That really makes an impact on the brand and even, even on the bottom line, even on the pipeline. Right. So what I say is, yep, go create a show and then really think about how you can harness that expert voice.
Lindsay (06:22): You know, if I'm interviewing you for my show, why would I leave it at just, you know, publishing it and maybe sharing it on social media when I could use your voice across other channels when I could use use that to fuel blog posts when I could use that to fuel sales cadences, when I could use that to provide social media content that would be more engaging. How can you really use your expert voice as the center of everything else that I'm doing to make that content richer and more engaging for my audience,
Kathleen (06:56): I love that you started with, you know, the question of like, how are you gonna use it as part of your strategy because that's, it's fascinating, you know, we're all marketers. And so we're taught to start with strategy first, but it's amazing to me, how many marketers I have seen who've gone and created podcasts almost like, because they feel like they should like, like it's a box they need to check. And they haven't really thought through what part that's going to play in their overall strategy. And I'm going to admit, I was guilty of that with my very first podcast that I had many years ago where I was kind of like, I just, I need to be podcasting and I, and I did it and, you know, I don't have any regrets because like, it taught me a lot about how to podcast and what makes for a good one.
Kathleen (07:36): But, but I quickly discovered that without having a real defined goal behind it, it, it wasn't getting any traction and it wasn't getting me any results. And so when I created this one, I thought for a very long time about like, what is it I'm hoping to really get out of this? And as a result, you know, what topics are going to help me get there? What format, you know, whether it's interview style or conversation with a co-host, et cetera, you know what format's going to help me get there. And then within the structure of the podcast, like, what do I need to cover to achieve those goals? So like, there's a lot of strategy that goes into really that very first step of creating the right kind of podcast. So assuming, assuming someone has gone down that path and they finished kind of producing their episodes and they have that asset talk me through some of the ways that you've seen that have worked really well to get it out there and repurpose it. Yeah. And I think
Lindsay (08:36): Even before getting into that, even if you have, let's say you are a marketer sitting here and you're like, Ugh, I think we're doing our podcasts for the wrong reason. Like, or it doesn't fit into anything it's okay. Like, regardless of whether your podcast is super strategic and you are just hitting it on all cylinders and it is, it is a, a solid part of your integrated strategy. Or if it's sitting over there on an and it's someone's pet project, it's okay. Regardless, like you can start today with getting more value out of it. Right. And so I think step one, I always say this, and this is, this is seemingly more for someone who's starting a podcast, but I think it really applies to anyone at any stage is who's it for, and why are you doing it? Right. So just take a minute, even if you're not going to write anything out, just take a minute and your brain to think about, okay, who, who is the show for?
Lindsay (09:20): Who is it serving and why are we doing it? Because that really there is no one size fits all. There is no checklist. There are a bunch of examples which we'll get into today, but there is no, like, first you do this, then you do this, then make sure you do this, then make sure you do this. As we all know, it depends is always the answer, especially for marketers. Like it depends on, on who your show is serving and why you're doing it. If you're doing it for, you know, to, to gain exposure for one of the thought leaders in your company and therefore credibility, you know, for them, for the brand. That's one reason that is very different from, you know, more directly generating leads. So with that in mind, think about who are you doing it for? Why are you doing it?
Lindsay (09:55): And then start to, then once you kind of at least get your head wrapped around that, maybe do it as a team. Maybe you do it just yourself. Then start to think of, okay, I've got all this content assume that I'm, I'm, I'm serving the people that I want to serve. And that I understand the why, how can I connect the dots between the interviews that are being done on this show between, you know, somebody in my company and an expert that my audience cares about and wring it out across other channels, how can I amplify that expert voice on other channels? So if you're using the the channels of like blogging and social media, like many of us are, how can you take that expert voice and say, okay, I'm not just gonna do a recap post, that's fine. Do a recap post, do show notes, but like, how can you say, if you came on my show and you're like, you know, here's, here's three things that you really need to consider about inbound marketing.
Lindsay (10:47): Here's, here's three unique perspectives or here's, here's you know, this, this really in-depth example on how you should attribute X, Y, and Z. I could dig into that. I could put my content team on that to dig so much deeper and to come up with really, really rich, possibly really keyword centric content that is not only going to rank because it's something that's naturally keyword rich, it's going to be expert first. It's a unique perspective, it's original content. But also it's, it's going to serve your audience in a unique way, because it's, it's something that started from an expert. Didn't start from some keyword research, right? So this one is, is look at that, look at every episode and think, okay, how can I bring this out? How can I take hopefully you're, you're doing a transcription for your show. How can I take that transcription and equip my content team with ways to source content they can dig deeper into and just really ring out and possibly even go combine different transcripts together to create really, really rich written content. So I think that that's that's one. So let me ask you one question,
Kathleen (11:54): Because this is something that I have had so many debates about with people over the years, which is in your opinion, what makes for great show notes, because that's the starting point, right? Like that's your first thing that you're you're absolutely. Or I think you should be doing it.
Lindsay (12:10): Yeah. Yeah, I think, okay. So I'll answer that directly and also kind of indirectly show notes should provide a recap of the episode to zoom out from that a little bit. I think that I'm really convicted that your show should live on your own website as well as, you know, absolutely use Google apps. So you absolutely use Spotify, absolutely use Apple. They are amazing megaphones to amplify the, expand the reach of your show. But when you have the opportunity to send someone, to listen to your team, to experience your content, why in the world, when she, him to your own website, right. And when they're at your website they don't really need show notes as much as they need to be able to experience that content in a way that gets, you know, if they can't listen, if they don't want to listen, what do you want them to take away from your show?
Lindsay (13:05): So we see that in a couple of different, I'm going to answer with like an it's depends again. Right. what, some of the examples that I see done really well are, if it's done on your show, on your, on your website, you have a page for your show that has like a version of the transcript. That's kind of easy to skim. It's not just copy and paste to make sure that it's accurate or do a recap of the show that will hopefully entice someone to dig in deeper, along with clips. So make sure that you're pulling clips so that if somebody doesn't have time to listen to that 30, 40, 60 minute episode, that you're giving them some of the snippets and takeaways that they can, you know, get some of those key points that especially as a marketer, you really, really want to make sure that they hear that are advancing your perspective, that that are helping to carry the torch for what your show stands for making sure that you give your audience those little snippets and then kind of fill in the blanks with, with a written synopsis too. So I guess to more directly in summary bring people to your site and give them a recap along with some clips as key takeaways.
Kathleen (14:10): I love that you mentioned the transcript, and this is something that I'm personally really, really, really passionate about. And I had to fight for it in a couple of situations, which is, I think it's so important to transcribe and to end to provide like a thorough, thorough transcript. First of all, it is a no brainer because there are so many transcription services out there that are inexpensive and incredibly accurate for the price. So I will say personally, I've used rev.com for many years. You know, they have a human transcription, which is a little bit more expensive, but I've used recently, I've started using what they call their rough draft, which is an automated transcription. And I'll tell you, it's pretty close. I definitely have to like, edit, do a little editing and clean up, cause it doesn't get everything right, but it's, it's cents on the dollar.
Kathleen (14:59): I mean, I think I can transcribe a 40 minute podcast for $10, right? So there, there certainly should be no reason financially that you shouldn't transcribe it, but the reason I'm so passionate is, is both for accessibility reasons. Like, I, I think it's very important to solve for all of your, your audience. And some of them may not be able to listen. And so being able to provide that written transcript is, is key for that. But then also, honestly, as a marketer, I just think the SEO opportunity is tremendous. Like this is a 40 to 50 minute podcast. And when it's transcribed, that's a several thousand word article. Yes. I mean, if I had to write that I'd be spending hours. So I just so passionate about it and not everybody loves transcripts. I've had certain people at certain companies I've worked at pushed back on me.
Kathleen (15:49): And I think it's because they just like to listen. And so they don't get why the transcript is important, but everybody has a different learning style and yes, some people like to listen and they can listen to your podcasts, but other people really like to be able to read and skim. I happen to be one of them funny enough, because I definitely can read faster than I can listen. And so I like to just like look through and if I see something really great, I might listen. But anyway, that is the end of my Ted talk on transcriptions, but I'm all fired up and passionate about it.
Lindsay (16:17): I'm so glad that you mentioned that because yes. I think a lot of people overlook transcripts or use them in a way, I'm not gonna call it the wrong way, but in a way that I don't think is optimal because if you're just taking a transcript from just Slack, I think that transcripts get a bad name because a lot of people, especially in past years, were taking the, the, the largely inaccurate transcript and just slapping it up on their page. I'm basically there. What is essentially a blog page for their episode and saying, this is the transcript, forgive us because it's not accurate. Well, I don't want to forgive you because it's not accurate. Like then why are you sharing it with me? You wouldn't just not even just publish a really, really rough version of a blog post, like go through and one way or another, it's either going to be, you know, a little bit time intensive.
Lindsay (17:02): If you have a person going through and making sure it's accurate, or you pay a little bit more and have it transcribed more accurate, or, you know, you said kind of a balance of both get it right and, and share it for a couple of reasons. One, you mentioned accessibility that is hugely important. Also learning styles, the way that people want to consume content, maybe somebody is sitting someday when we're all in offices, again, sitting in an office and you know, it doesn't have ear buds or something and just wants to read something or somebody wants to share something with somebody else that they know isn't going to listen to it and just wants to skim also yep. SEO and being able to search Google so that they've been indexing podcasts for years. And now we're just now starting to see those audio podcasts come up.
Lindsay (17:44): But also if you, if you're posting the transcript, that's keyword rich. And then also something that I don't think that people think about and that we've baked into Casted is searchability for yourself. So you have tons of content. You've done more than a hundred shows. You have so much content here that if you are able to go back and search through your transcripts, you can repurpose and repackage and reuse, which is another thing that you should be doing on the flip side. Like once you want to show, what else are you doing with it? How are you reusing those shows and transcripts, make it a lot easier to go back and search and resurface a content we already have.
Kathleen (18:19): So I could not agree with you more obviously, cause I'm a little biased on this. But you talked to them about, so you've got your show notes and then you talked about creating other types of content and getting your content team on it to either like dive deep and create a more in-depth article on a particular aspect that someone spoke about. Or I think you mentioned also kind of, you didn't use these words, but like doing Roundup posts where maybe you have multiple guests, who've talked about a similar topic and putting that together. Do, can you share any examples of where either you've done that or a client you've worked with has done that and what does that really look like?
Lindsay (18:54): Sure. So first thing that comes to mind is one thing that we did at Casted. It was early on. So we we did two seasons, so about 20 shows and it was largely let's see, the first season was talking to hosts. And so these are all, you know, B2B show hosts, like what their experience had been like. And then the second season was the people that, the unheard voices behind the mic, right? Like how does your strategy work? So we had a lot of great content there and what our marketing director did is she went in and again, was able to search through all those transcripts and re you know, surface content and, and pull clips and kind of write basically a, a course around strategy around like of your podcasts. Like what should your podcast strategy be like around, you know, hosting and interviewing and kind of these different topics that she didn't have to, she could have, I mean, she's a pro in the space, but she let the experts that we had on our show basically teach the curriculum by pulling the clips from the episodes that we already had.
Lindsay (19:56): So we had, you know, Jay Baer on talking about, you know, the importance of podcasting and how, and why it matters, what your strategy should be like. So she just literally pulled clips of him talking about it and kind of filled in the blanks to provide more of that, how to, and we made something called pod class that uses the reuses, the shows that we did in a different, completely different way. And that became gated content for us. So that that's something to think about is even though your show, your episode, like the episode that we had with Jay Baer was really broad. It was about, it was one of the, if it was it's one of, one of the first shows, if not the first show that we did. And so it was really broadly talking about, you know, why podcasting, how podcasting, but if you take, if you just take a look at it from a different angle, there was a lot in there that was really how to, and so, and that was a theme, kind of a crop that kind of dotted throughout our first couple of seasons. So we were able to pull that out. And I think that if you're doing a show you're able to look back and say, okay, how can we do? And we do a Roundup post or a Roundup even episode or series or gated content. That's all around this one topic that our audience would, would value, right? Again, who is it for? Why are you doing it? What do you already have that you can repackage in a way that would really be valuable for your audience?
Kathleen (21:16): Okay. If you're listening, I want to just stop and underline what you just said. That is such a great idea. I, you know, I've heard people talk a lot about roundup posts and things like that, but creating an actual course from your content is, is so genius. And I feel like courses have a ton of traction. They can be great sales enablement tools. They can be great ways to engage your community, but they're a pain in the neck to create. And I know because I've worked for education companies where I've had to create online courses and it's a lot of work, but if you already have all the content that is amazing. So that that's, I love, I love that as one way to repurpose content. So as I said, I love that tip. What else you got? What, how, what are some other ways that you or your clients have repurposed content?
Lindsay (22:08): Sure. So another example, this is what we're doing, but I promise I have lots of examples of our, of our customers and others in the, in the world are doing to one of the first things that comes to mind that, you know, obviously account based marketing, ABM is huge, has been, should be. It's great. It helps us refocus as marketers to think about how can I make this experience for an account that I'm going after, how can I make it more personal? How can I make it more relevant? How can I, how can I really go after this account in a way that will yield greater results because I'm being more appealing to this person and to their brand podcasting can, and absolutely should be a part of that equation, right? So account based podcasting, if you will we're starting to see some, some fun ideas and some creative thinking with some of our customers.
Lindsay (22:55): One thing that we are doing, I can kind of speak to in a little more detail is our SDRs or BDRs, some people call them, are creating their own little podcasts and using our, our podcasts, the Casted podcast to, you know, pull clips and pull snippets based on who they are trying to meet with and who they're trying to get in front of who they're trying to engage with and what that looks like and what it could look like for listeners to say, okay, and who's it for? Who's your audience? We all have segments within our audience, right? So there's quite often decision makers and users, right? Let's just make that assumption. There's these kind of two segments within those your decision makers are going to be coming into your conversation from a couple of different pain points, right.
Lindsay (23:43): Or a couple of different scenarios or situations, context, the same thing with your users. So what if you, let's just say you have a decision maker, audience, and a, a user audience, and then within that, let's say they each kind of have three different pain points or contexts. What if you went back through your podcast and said, okay, here are some of our customers talking about this pain point, talking about this context, talking about how perhaps we cause in podcasts sometimes, you know, when, when people are just talking openly about, especially if you're talking to your customers about how you've helped them, or how, how they were able to advance because of something that you're doing with them, if you pulled that and use that in the sales process. Right? So what you end up with is going back and using your show, looking through your show for clips and for takeaways that your sales team can share that specifically address the pain point, the problem, the context of a specific persona or segment within your audience, that you can package up into a cadence that you can really use naturally and say, Hey, Kathleen, you know, I know that we were talking the other day, you're thinking about buying our widget.
Lindsay (24:52): I just thought it would be great for you to hear from so-and-so who, you know, at such and such company that had the same problem as you. And, you know, he's a CMO just like you are. But you might want to hear it from him directly. It's content it's already been shared publicly it's it's something that can be kinda put into a different context and, you know, just think of ways that your sales team could benefit from using those little snippets and make it super easy for them to serve it up and say, Hey, here's something that you can use to either advance the conversation you're already in or start a new one.
Kathleen (25:23): So when you're doing that, do you share, are you sharing video? Are you sharing just audio? What is it that you're sharing?
Lindsay (25:31): Sure. So for us right now, our podcast is audio until literally as of the week that we're recording this, we're launching a Casted video podcast. So that's going to be a new one that we're including if you have the video use it. If you just have the audio use it I think more than anything else, what matters is that third party endorsement that, that credibility, whether it's, I mean, it doesn't even have to be a testimonial by your company. I mean, just something that's really relevant to that, to that audience segment something that really matters to them. And that will really resonate with the situation that they're in, whether it's audio or video, if you have somebody other than outside of your company that can, can really speak to them in a way that resonates.
Kathleen (26:12): That's what matters. And, and are you sending, like, let's just use an audio podcast, for example, cause that's like, what this is, are you sending the full podcast or are you just editing out a piece of it? And if you're an either way, like functionally, what does that look like? If you're putting it in an email? Like what, what, how are you inserting it?
Lindsay (26:31): Sure. So I'm a little bit biased because this works with Casted, but you can do it without Casted too. So I'll try to kind of speak both sides. Pull a clip, because otherwise you're asking - if you're not pulling a clip and serving up someone the piece of information that's really valuable to them, you're really promoting your show. Promoting your show is great. But if you have a problem and I'm trying to help solve your problem, I'm not solving your problem by asking you to do more work of listening to a 30 minute plus episode.
Kathleen (27:00): The very least I was going to say, just say to somebody fast forward to 15 minutes and 30 seconds for the answer.
Lindsay (27:07): If that's what you've got do that. If you have the ability to pull a clip, like in Casted, you just highlight over the transcript, hit create clip, and it, it gives you a unique URL that you can share. If you don't have that capability use what you've got, right. Send the person that clip or direct them to that clip that says, Hey, you know, at 15 minutes, 30 seconds, you know, you'll hear, so-and-so talk about how Casted saved them this amount of time, whatever. And then make sure you put it into a context of, you know, again, that kind of account based marketing. What does it mean for them? What's in it for them? What's the context, what a situation that's really matters to them. And how does the, how does the clip come into play? Otherwise it's just a clip. Also I would say beyond that clip, where can you send them?
Lindsay (27:49): So if you have the capability, I mean, this is in Casted. I know there's some other there's lots of ways to create a landing page to create a unique landing pages. If you have ABM tools, how can you create, can you work it into that experience to say, okay, as part of this kind of personalized, tailored approach that I'm taking with this account, how can I use this show? And, and something that, you know, different people have said on our show along the way to help advance this conversation. That's, that's the big picture and there's lots of different, tangible ways to do that. But I think far too often, because podcast content is looked at as like over on this Island and kind of a lockbox of, of audio content, people discount it and don't use it. And so I'm saying think of ways to incorporate that into your account based marketing strategy. So that, I mean the power of voice, having someone like literally being able to hear someone other than yourself you know, talk about this, how you solve this problem, or, you know, get that prospective buyer into that state of mind is so powerful.
Kathleen (28:56): So you're actually putting URL in this case, you're putting URLs into your email and directing somebody towards a landing page with a video clip on it. Correct?
Lindsay (29:04): Yeah. I mean, that's one way you could do it. Yep.
Kathleen (29:08): Yep. Okay. I like that. I like that approach. It's not something I would have thought of before, just because normally you're so focused around how are you going to host the actual episode itself that I hadn't thought about? Like taking snippets and creating ways to host that.
Lindsay (29:18): One way that we, I mean, just specifically to Casted and then I'll share how we do it. And then even if you don't have cast and maybe it'll get you thinking about ways you could do it with resources that you do have. So what our SDRs do is that they'll create an actual podcast. So they'll record something and pull clips cause we could do in Casted. So they'll have a transcript and they'll pull specific clips that they are, are really, really relevant that they really want to call out to that audience or to that prospect. And they'll include clips from our show and say, Hey, you know, listen to, okay, I keep using Jay Baer. Listen to Jay Baer talk about this, listen to, you know, so-and-so talk about this other thing. And that's all included as key takeaways or clips on the show page that they'll send people to.
Lindsay (30:02): So they'll say, Hey, I created this podcast just for you. And that podcast experience is personalized, right? So it's, it's a show that's created just for that, that audience segment with that problem. The key takeaways basically the outline of the show, the clips that you can jump to are specific and tailored to that audience, segment that persona with that problem, the related resources at the bottom of the page that are included are resources that are tailored to that audience in that problem. They can even be as tailored to say, like, this is a specific thing for this person. And it just, it makes that whole experience really customized and really, really personal.
Kathleen (30:40): So, all right, now I have more questions because your SDR is creating this. So let's use your Jay Baer example cause we're gonna, we're gonna pound that one home today and you have an episode that has Jay Baer in it. The SDR you know, didn't necessarily like host that or interview Jay Baer. So are you saying that they're creating almost like an intro and an outro for it or like an executive summary? What, what is it exactly that the SDR is creating?
Lindsay (31:08): Sure. So one way that I've, I've seen them do it is to, yeah, they'll create the intro and the outro and basically set up the context and they'll pull some clips and have our producer put them together into a show that that show would contain an intro from the SDR and algebra from the SDR maybe a couple of talking points in between and several clips from different shows that we've had, you know, over the years, but that that I'll speak to this one specific audience in one specific pain point, that is a show it's private. So we're not syndicating it out to Apple. But it's also not password protected. It's just shared, it's viewable only through a link. They'll send that link. That link goes to a page that has your show notes, that has the transcript that has clips and key takeaways. It has related resources. And so that whole experience you know, when somebody clicks on that link, it takes them to an experience that's tailored just for that audience.
Kathleen (32:07): So I assume you, you don't do this for everybody because obviously there's some work involved, but I love, I love the concept of it because if I'm understanding correctly, if I'm your target and I get this email, that's like, here, I have this for you. I open it up. And if I listen, it's a podcast where like, they're mentioning my name. Like, Hey, Kathleen, I wanted to, I know your challenge is X. And so I wanted to share with you these clips of Jay Baer saying X, Y, and Z, like, is that how it works?
Lindsay (32:33): That's, that's how it definitely could work you're right. That it would be, that would probably be more for, depending on your resources, mean if you have an audience. Yeah. It could be your tier one. If you have the time and you have the resources in-house to be able to kind of quickly, it wouldn't be that hard. I mean, if, if the rest of the show was more persona or segment specific, but just the first 10 seconds where the Hey Kathleen it would be very easy for an audio engineer to like, create that really quickly, if you don't have those resources, do it by audit by segment. Right. So if you have like you said, that tier one, maybe you do it for a few customer potential customers, or if it's a segment, you know, this is going to be for CMOs in this vertical that have this problem. Right. And maybe that's only 10 people, maybe that, that one episode goes to like 10 people. But it's really specific to that niche situation.
Kathleen (33:28): Oh, my head is spinning with so many ideas now. I never thought to really do that and, and to like take an existing podcast and then sort of sandwiched in between, you know, commentary, if you will. So that's really interesting. Have you, what kind of results have you seen from that
Lindsay (33:43): Really early? Really early on, but we've seen, we've seen great results and, and, you know, as soon as we're looking to generate meetings and to start conversations and it's been working so far and we're, we're starting to talk with customers too about like, Hey, would you, what are your thoughts? Would you do this? Should we roll it out help? And just like you, people are excited and want to learn more about how to do it. So we're, we're excited to.
Kathleen (34:05): That's great. All right. Do you have any other tricks in your bag?
Lindsay (34:10): So that's, let's see, we covered kind of digging deeper with, with blog content. We talked about what account-based podcasting and account-based marketing looks like. I think just broadly speaking is again, how take, take quick inventory, and I'm not saying spend hours spend five minutes right now, thinking about all the different channels you use depending on who's listening, what's under your umbrella, right? Like what do you have the power to do right now? Like maybe you own the podcast and the blog, right? How can you feed your blog with your podcast content? Quite often, content teams are made up by, you know, some, some more, more junior or earlier in their career content marketers that are tasked with creating really, really incredible content at a breakneck pace. Right? And I've been there. I've, I've been that person.
Lindsay (34:59): I have managed that person. I've managed that team. It's, it's a lot, and it's a lot of pressure on, on a content marketer to try to be an expert in something that somebody else has literally spent their entire career doing, just so that you can be, you know, five steps ahead and write like the thought leader and also, Oh, by the way, rank better than any other company. So think about how you can support if you own the blog, the podcast how can you fuel those other channels specifically like your blog? By saying I'm going to go out and interview experts in the space and I'm going to equip my other teams, my content team, my social media team, my sales enablement team with this content that they can use as a resource. So they can be more efficient, they can be more effective.
Lindsay (35:48): And, you know, I've, I've been that marketer trying to, trying to bridge the gap between thought leadership and product and, and say, how do these two things line up, you know, and, and trying to use my marketing expertise to also be the thought leader in that space for whatever company I was working for. If you have that expert on your show, literally that knows what the gap, how to bridge the gap between your product and your thought leadership, go interview them, turn that into a podcast. That'll be a really naturally keyword rich podcast. That'll be really engaging to your audience. Your sales team will like it because they're also trying to do the same thing and then hand it over to your content team in a way that they can access that content and turn it into equally as engaging written content that they don't have to try to break that gap on their own.
Lindsay (36:31): They can literally just be a content marketer and, and use the words of that expert to create really, really engaging content same thing for social media, same thing for web content, same thing for you're trying to put together a case study or use cases look at it that way, not only as a, as a content channel, but as the hub, right. Put it at the hub in the middle, from that fuels everything else. Even just starting to think that way will really help you start to think creatively about what you could do. And we've got lots of great examples that I can dig into. OpenView ventures. They, they do this really well, so they, they have a really great show specifically for founders like me, if they're looking for how to scale up their business. And then they, they will embed clips of that show into their blog posts that dive deeper, right. And they share clips on social media that, that engage founders like me to bring them in to experience not just the podcast, but their content in general.
Kathleen (37:33): That's a great example. I love, I love their content. And you know, and you raise a really good point. It's something that I've learned over my career and that I practice now which is that when you stop trying to put a square peg in a round hole, and by that, I mean, when you stop trying to get all of your subject matter experts to write and create content, and instead you turn to interviewing them, whether that's, you know, interviewing them and not using the audio, but then creating written content or even better, what you've suggested, which is interviewing them and actually using the audio, but then also creating the written content. It just, it removes so much friction from the content creation process and it really can, can produce some outstanding content.
Lindsay (38:19): It can. Yeah. And so another example is Drift, right? So we all know Drift, we all love Drift as a, as a brand, they've done some really incredible things. And, you know, a lot of it started with a podcast, right. And if you go back to, you know, Dave Gerhardt was their first marketing hire, if I'm not mistaken and wanted to create great content. So he just started, like you said, just started and I've done it before to interviewing Dave Cancel and just saying, Hey, how did we do this? Why did we do this? Why did you start this company? Why, how are we solving people's problems? How have, how are you leading this company? What does leadership mean to you? And in recording those conversations said, Hey, this would make a great show, turned it into a show that show was wildly successful, still is. Seeking Wisdom.
Lindsay (39:04): They now have five other shows. I think they have five or six shows. They're, they're one of our customers. So they are using the transcripts, they're using their clips and they are, they have this entire Drift Insider part of their website that is all this content saying, how, how can we equip our audience with, like you said, ways that they want to consume content, that their video content, audio podcast, content, and lots of written content. They have really rich versions of, of 10 different integrated types of media content. And it all starts with conversations. Let's go talk to the people that have the answers that our audience wants, and let's be the facilitators. You know, you don't have to be the expert in everything. As the author of whatever you're, you're creating, you just need to go tap into that.
Kathleen (39:46): Yeah, it's so funny. I feel like that could so easily become me because I, I love podcasting. It's why I've been doing it for so long. I've started a podcast at every single company that I've worked at. And, and I often think like I could easily have five or six podcasts. I could just do it full time, because for first of all, it's just fun. I mean, maybe I'm just a huge marketing nerd, but it's fun. It's fun getting to learn from people. Like when I get to talk to someone like you, I learned so much from these conversations and then the, the phenomenal by-product of that is that other people get to learn alongside me. Right. But I always say, and my listeners know, I say this all the time. I would keep podcasting even if nobody listened, because I learn so much, it's like free consulting.
Kathleen (40:31): But being able to share that is so valuable. And it's funny because there are so many different dimensions to what you can create a podcast around. You know, and I'm just early in my current company, we will definitely have a podcast. So stay tuned. I honestly could create four or five. I won't do that in the beginning because I'm not that crazy, but someday we'll get there.
Lindsay (40:56): Yeah. And see how it happens. Yeah.
Kathleen (40:58): Yeah. I love that. Well, so many great ideas. I feel like I could keep going on this forever, but we're going to run out of time. So I want to make sure I leave room to ask you the questions I always ask my guests. The first one is, of course, this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer?
Lindsay (41:17): You know, I, I knew you were gonna ask this. And so I thought, and I thought, and I have so many examples. And so I feel like I'm going to be leaving out the other, you know, everyone else, but, you know, just mentioning Drift. They are, they are constantly, I love working with them or if they're a great customer and partner to us, but even before they were, I've loved what they were doing. They, they have several shows for a reason, not just because you know, shows are great and podcasts are popular, but because as they continued having conversations, they realized that their audience was growing. And so they didn't try to cram it all into one show. They remembered who's it for why are we doing it? And so seeking wisdom stayed with that kind of more general audience of marketers, marketing leadership.
Lindsay (42:01): And then they have other shows that focus on, you know, product development and, you know, quickly scaling business. And, and, and because they've been really smart about who their audience is and what the different sub sectors of that audience look like. And, and they've also been really smart about who on their side should be the host to kind of carry on those conversations. And then, you know, this whole conversation has been like, and then what would you do with it, have these great shows, but they're also bringing them out and doing really, really great things that are generating a lot of inbound activity. I mean, of course they're, they're growing like mad. And because they're Drift, they're also making sure that they're using the, the Drift bot to engage with people as they are coming in to say, Hey, what'd you think about this? How are you, how are you consuming that maybe you'd like this other show as well? So yeah, that would be my example.
Kathleen (42:54): Great point about breaking the show up into two separate shows, because I do find that that is a huge mistake a lot of companies make as they try to be all things to all people. And that was probably one of the mistakes I made with my first podcast that I mentioned that I did for a little while, and then abandoned because I didn't have the right strategy.
Lindsay (43:09): It's easy to do.
Kathleen (43:09): Yeah. I was trying to, I was trying to speak to too many audiences. And as soon as I switched gears and for this podcast, I got much more specific. And, and it's, that's why I've been able to stick with it for so long because it's, it's, it's a clear audience with a defined need and I'm able to solve for that in each episode. So, yeah. Great. all right. Second question. One of the big pain points I hear marketers always mention is that trying to keep up with all the changes in digital marketing, it's like drinking from a fire hose. So how do you personally drink from that fire hose?
Lindsay (43:41): Okay. I'm going to be super duper obvious and cliche, but podcasts. Honestly, honestly, it truly, it's not just because of Casted. It's not because I'm biased. Even before Casted, I think probably that's one of the reasons I created Casted. It was, it's, podcasts are an incredible way to, to get information. First of all, you can consume them when you're doing anything else. And I'm sure our listeners doing lots of different things right now, doing the dishes, driving, running, doing work right. You can consume that content doing whatever it isn't. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm busy. And so I like to collect that information. And you know, I'm, I'm getting information about marketing, about, you know, raising capital about, you know, being a first time founder, like all these different things that I can consume in any basically anytime of day.
Lindsay (44:28): And I love that also studies have shown there's a really cool one by BBC that talks about the neuroscience of, of consuming content, the way that we do and that kind of passive way when you're doing something else and also actively consuming content, it sticks out, it sticks in your brain in a different way. Eventually it's a really scientific way of saying it in your brain, but your cognitive recall your, the person's affinity for the brand, it all increases because of the way your brain works when you're consuming content that way. So I highly recommend just going broad, finding a bunch of podcasts, find a couple that, that really resonate with what it is that you want to learn. Podcasts like this one that combine, you know, high-level strategy with, you know, really deep how to's. Keep on that. That's that's served me really well.
Kathleen (45:17): Yeah. My favorite times to listen to podcasts are grocery shopping, vacuuming, and yard work.
Lindsay (45:23): Right. Because it makes those tasks, you actually look forward to it, right?
New Speaker (45:26): What else can you do, right? Yeah. Like, it's not like you're, you know, you're sort of trapped. Like you can't, I don't know. You can't really do much else when you're doing those things. So yeah.
Lindsay (45:36): Mine is getting ready in the morning, when I fold laundry and like post-workout when I'm like stretching and stuff.
Kathleen (45:42): All right. Well, we have reached the top of the hour. And so before we wrap up, I want to make sure folks know how to find you and get more information. So if somebody is interested in asking you a question or learning more about this, what is the best way for them to connect with you online?
Lindsay (45:58): Sure. So Casted.us is our website. Casted dot U S slash lookbook is where you can find that information, tons of examples from what our customers are doing to really bring out that content. You can find me on Twitter at @CastedLindsay or on LinkedIn. I'm really active on both.
Kathleen (46:16): Fantastic. I will put all those links in the show notes. So head there to get access to all of those resources and to follow Lindsay. And of course, if you are listening and you enjoyed today's episode, or you're learning something new, I would really love it. If you would head to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. That's how we find new listeners like yourself. And of course, if you know somebody else doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Lindsay.
Lindsay (47:00): This was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.
Building a personal brand can be a powerful way to drive marketing results, but what's the best way to actually build your brand?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Online Profile Pros CEO and Co-Founder Claire Bahn shares the strategies she's used to help entrepreneurs and business executives strategize and create strong personal brands.
Clair is a personal branding expert who is also the founder of Claire Bahn Group where she helps entrepreneurs leverage their personal brands to develop the authority, influence and trust they need to exceed their business goals.
In this episode, Claire talks about why it's so important for executives to have strong personal brands, and she walks through the exact process she uses with her clients.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Check out clairbahn.com
- Connect with Claire on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Claire Bahn, who is the CEO and co-founder of Online Profile Pros and Claire Bahn Group. Welcome Claire.
Claire (00:25): Thank you so much for having me.
Kathleen (00:28): I'm excited to talk to you because this topic that we're going to discuss is something that I'm very, very passionate about, which is personal branding. But before we dive into it, I would love it. If you could share kind of your story what you're doing now with Online Profile Pros and Claire Bahn group, and kind of what led you into that?
Claire (00:51): Well basically I have a background in doing, working with fortune 500 companies in New York is kind of how I cut my teeth, so to speak. And I always kind of had this drive to be an actress. And you know, obviously many of us, you have to pay your bills. Right? So after college I did that with, with doing marketing and then I was like, you know, I really want to do acting, so I didn't have a ton of acting experience, but what I did have was marketing experience. So I knew how to market myself. And so I set up a website, set up all the social media channels and just really started kind of defining who I was, because I knew that if a casting director was able to see, you know, kind of how I presented myself, they'd be like, I know what part you know, I should, I should put her in or to have her come in to read for or whatever it is or for a commercial part.
Claire (01:44): And from then I was doing you know, a lot of international and national commercials and print ads and other, you know, I've done movies and that kind of thing. And so it really just helped. And I had a lot of actors coming to me after that saying, Hey, I need your help. So I kind of ballooned from there. And then I started online profile pros where I help people brand themselves for online dating and LinkedIn, which is so, so important. And then from there I had investors and you know, angel investors, venture, capitalists executives, and people coming to me saying, Hey, I really like what you're doing. I've come across your personal branding blog. And I want to kind of have you do, you know, do that for me. And that's really just kind of how it was born. It was very organic just kind of practicing what I preach and people coming to me saying, Hey, I need your help. So that's, that's how it'll happen.
Kathleen (02:42): I love this story. And you just made me realize something. Cause I, I spend a lot of time thinking about personal branding, you know, partly for myself, cause I have this podcast and there's some work I do. I like, I, I work within a company, but there's work. I do outside of that. But also because I'm, I'm such a strong that for every business, the best businesses build strong personal brands for their executives. They're thought leaders they're subject matter experts. Like that's, that's a true differentiator. And, but you just made me think of something like I had a realization as you were talking, and I don't know if anyone's ever said this to you before, but when you talked about your experience as an actor and needing the casting agents or the people that you were auditioning in front of to be able to picture you in a role, it made me think of this parallel with staging a house.
Kathleen (03:34): Like if you're in real estate and you go to sell a house that has no furniture in it, it's really hard for buyers to picture themselves living there. But it's also why they say when you stage a house, like you shouldn't, you shouldn't put any of your own personal things in like your, if you live there because they need to be able to see themselves in the house. And if they can see themselves in the house, the sale is so much easier. And, and all of a sudden it occurred to me that there's this, this is a little bit like that. Like you're, you're crafting a story, a narrative around who you are. And if somebody can see you as that person, like you you've, you've already sold yourself to them. Does that make sense?
Claire (04:13): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, as far as like the, when casting directors they have such a limited amount of time. If you think about it, they, they, they look at your thumb now. If you've ever done any casting, I mean, I've lived in Los Angeles. So we cast for stuffs, I've cast for things, commercials and things like that myself. And you literally, you go online and you see headshots. So you need to be able to look at that photo and say that I can, I can tell this person is interesting. Let me take a look. And a lot of casting directors will actually do research. They would actually look at, you know, pictures where that aren't your your headshot, because so many people do so much crazy Photoshopping. They wanted to see what you really look like. So you really ha so I kind of just being in the business, you kind of learned that you're like, wow, you really do have to do my homework.
Claire (05:00): People will dig deeper to find out, you know, do I really look like this without, you know, on my daily life? Or am I crazy Photoshop to look 10 years younger or whatever. And you start to kind of realize that, and it's so important when you go into LinkedIn and online dating as well, especially online dating because you want the, you want the picture that you see, obviously you, you're kind of, if you think about, you know, swiping right or left, you have this thumbnail and a little bit little bitty blurb. If you're kind of like thinking about Tinder and this, you have to make an impact, it has to make an impact to make you decide. Do I want to even look, do I want to dig any deeper? Do I want to learn a few more lines about what this person is about?
Claire (05:36): And if you, so you think about all the things and it goes the same way for looking for a job press wanting to do an interview with you. People are going to do their, their homework and you have seconds to have them say, I want to learn more or add next. Yeah. So it's in everything you do, really your, everything you do, it has to make an ad that makes somebody want to learn more past that, those like five seconds or whatever it is. So that's just, that's kind of what I do. I've learned it through, through, you know, my own work and I make sure that people want to learn more.
Kathleen (06:12): It's so interesting though, because I feel like there's a fine line between what I would call like clickbait. You know, I want to learn more and authenticity because as you pointed out, like, I think it's really interesting that you do personal branding for executives, but you also help people with like Tinder, because, because really when you think about it, it, yeah, somebody might want to learn more, but then when they do learn more, if they're like, well, this has nothing to do with the bill of goods I was sold. Like, that's actually the worst possible outcome. It's kind of like, you'll have lots of first, but not a lot of second dates, you know? And I feel like it's the same thing with, with business, personal branding, like the best brands that I've seen out there for executives are pretty authentically true to who that person is.
Claire (06:57): But you also have the other, the other way around is if you have a great personal brand, but your initial gut reaction from, from seeing whatever it is, website, whatever it is, and you don't want to learn more. So yeah, it's, it's when they go together, when you have that great thirties, you know, five seconds kind of thing, where you're like, I want to learn more. And then when someone does learn more, they go, okay, this person is really who they say they are. They really are an expert. So you have to have both.
Kathleen (07:22): So let's kind of pull back for a second. And obviously we're, we're not focused as much on Tinder. Although I think that would be a fascinating podcast that I would love to do at some point you know, here, it's all about like, how do we use this for marketing and for business marketing and right. The thing that I would want to start with is really why should people even care? Because I, like I said, I passionately believe in this and every company I've worked at I've, I've really kind of pushed it. But I will say I've gotten a lot of pushback from executives who are not interested in, in kind of shining the spotlight on themselves personally, like they're willing to do what needs to be done to promote the company, but they're very hesitant, not all of them, but certainly many of the ones I've worked with very, very hesitant to do anything that's perceived as promoting themselves. So maybe you could talk for a minute about like, why is this an important thing for an executive to care about and to want to participate in?
Claire (08:20): Well, I mean, I'm kind of thinking like all of the, there's so many things flying in my head, but one of the biggest things cause I do run into this when we have, you know, with my, with our personal concierge clients. If you aren't telling, you know, essentially shouting from the rooftops that you're amazing, there's somebody else that is, and that person is going to be stealing your opportunities, your next career move, whatever it is because there's somebody that, that is doing this and they probably don't even have the experience that you do. So I think that is just one of the things that we in this space that we're in right now. I think we just need to realize that we need to be, you know, our biggest champion because no one else is going to do it for us. You know, and you are number one and you need to take care of yourself.
Claire (09:09): This is really about taking care of yourself, your future, whatever it may, may happen in your future, the, you know, things won't kind of fall into place if you are not positioned well, if they just won't, you won't get the opportunities that somebody that maybe who is less qualified than you will get, because they're shouting louder than you are. So that's ultimately why it is important. Even if you are the head of a company, you know, when you want the business to do really well, people get behind, they don't want this faceless entity anymore. You know, they, especially with, when you're dealing with small and medium sized businesses, they want to get behind the CEO, the person they want to know your passion. Why did you choose to do this? What makes you tick? They want those kinds of things because they want to know. Again, like we've been talking about that you're authentic. You're not just in it to, you know, make money off them. They aren't just a number. They mean something to you. So I think that that, that really being personable and personal is really the only way to do that and showing people why you care and showing people just a little bit about you, you know, kind of that personal connection. That is what is so important.
Kathleen (10:24): I would also add in my experience that when you build a personal brand, it opens doors that otherwise wouldn't be open to you. And what I mean by that? Well, a few things. I mean, obviously when it comes to things like speaking at conferences you know many businesses want to get somebody up on a stage at a conference, ideally on the main stage, not in a breakout room. And very few conferences are going to invite a nameless, faceless, faceless executive to get up on a main stage and talk about their company because that's seen as self promotional. So you need to have some kind of larger story that's of interest that's personally compelling. Or you need to have already established your expertise through, through having a strong personal brand. And, and that in itself will bring invitations. But the other thing I found beyond that that's kind of interesting is, is that people, when you have a personal brand, it doesn't even need to be the world's strongest one.
Kathleen (11:25): People seek you out for things, you know, and, and like, I've seen this happen a little bit with me because of the podcast and because of some other things I've invested in and let me be honest. I mean, do I have a personal brand? I mean, yeah, it's, I'm not famous. It's certainly not like I would say I'm, I have a personal brand in a tiny little niche space, but, but people have come to me for advice, for introductions, for all kinds of things. And, and I'm a big believer in there's an author named Adam Grant and he has a book called give and take. And I've always said that that's like the most powerful business book anybody should read. And it's not a business book. It's basically about how the most successful people in the world, both from a professional standpoint and personally are those who give first, who are, who have a give before you take mentality, because, because the very act of giving is what will at some point come back and allow you to receive, right?
Kathleen (12:21): And so when people seek you out, whether that's for advice or for introductions or for what have you, it opens the door to our relationship and it opens the door to it, the type of a relationship that eventually will, will pay dividends for you. And I don't mean like it positions you to ask for a quid pro quo, cause that's not the spirit in which you should do it, but it just, it positions you to be someone who, who has the opportunity to give, which naturally will produce wonderful opportunities that you may not have even asked for, but that will be presented to you. That sounded very philosophical.
Claire (12:55): Oh, I, I believe it. Yeah. I I teach a masterclass and that's one of the things that I, that I talk about is that you know, a lot of people are using their personal brand for their business to sell a product or service or whatever it is. And if you're constantly like buy this, do this, click this, do that. You never just like here's information that I just want to impart to you. Because I'm sharing my expertise, which like you said, is, is going to make people believe that you are who you say you are, that you, and if they go, when they try one of the tips that you give, you gave them, you just gave them a gift. And like you're saying, some people will just take the gift and be like, wow, awesome. But maybe they're going to go, you know what, that Claire, I did this masterclass, I'm going to tell a friend, so you get referrals, you get and maybe they'll, they'll turn into an, a customer, but yeah, I always say 80% give 20% ask because yeah.
Claire (13:49): Otherwise, I mean, if you think about it, I mean, I w did Ben in the influencer space, like on Instagram and things like that. And I just kind of think of some of them that are just like, buy this, buy this, buy this, click this. And I'm just like unfollow. I can't handle this. And you see businesses, it's all with time. It's just, Oh, it's just icky. I don't, it doesn't give you a really good feeling and it doesn't make you trust them. It doesn't make you think that they're an expert. Yeah. And if you think about someone that you're going to go back to over and over like your podcast, it's because you're giving great information for someone to keep coming back and listening to it. You know, whatever it is, your YouTube channel, whatever the stuff that you're doing, the stuff that you're presenting, you need to make sure that it's actually really good information so that you get the email and you get people to come back to you.
Claire (14:35): So, yeah, that's, that's kind of like both ways, but yeah, I, we have clients all the time and, and that's one of the biggest things that we talk about it. You can do your personal brand in line with PR, but it, you know, when someone's doing their research on you and you don't have a strong personal brand, they're not going to have you come in to be an expert, to be a speaker or anything like that. And more often than not, when your personal brand is outstanding and you are out there sharing content and giving, giving, giving, giving people are going to come across your content, because they're going to do a Google search on personal brand. They're going to find something and they're going to go, this is a piece of content. Oh, I love it. You know, and, and that is ideally, that's, that's kind of one of the things that I always talk and I always teach is that ideally, when someone is doing a search on your L your area of expertise, you want your piece of content to, you know, be as front and center in front of them. And they're like, Oh, aha. I love this person. I'm going to follow. I'm going to subscribe. I'm going to subscribe to their email list and I want to be connected. And you know, that's what, that's what you want.
Kathleen (15:39): Well, and that is actually really what inbound marketing is all about. It's about educating first and naturally attracting the right audience to you. So thank you for setting that stage so nicely and tying it back to the topic test. All right. So, I mean, there are so many good reasons to do this. Are there ever people that you come across where you say you shouldn't, you shouldn't like you're just not the right fit for building your personal brand? I don't know. Maybe the answer is no, but I mean,
Claire (16:10): One of the things that I mean, sometimes there's some, there are some people that need a lot of media training. They need a lot of help to feel comfortable talking. They'll comfortable speaking and things like that. And, and maybe they're not right for certain things, but it doesn't mean you can't brand yourself. It doesn't mean you can't present your ideas and maybe it's not, maybe video is not your format or things like that, but you can present it in a blog and things like that. I think it's still so important to make sure that especially when you're dealing with inbound marketing, you have to, you have to give, you have to give content. You have, people have to know why they should trust you. And that I have had people that are very reluctant to, to give away their information, because they think that if they do it, they're never going to get a customer.
Claire (16:55): They're like, if I give someone that, you know, the secret sauce, right. Yes. And I, and I remember, like I was dealing with, with somebody who is, you know, in my masterclass. And I was like, it's kind of hard. Cause you kind of sometimes want to see, you know, constructive criticism, but essentially nothing about what she said she did. And she had great credentials was, was in her personal brand and would make me trust that she was the one that I should go with. And that's a big problem. So, you know, you have to give the information so that someone can say, you know what, this is good information. I use your, your you know, tidbit of information and I, this happened and thank you so much. I now know you're an expert. That's just really the thing. I mean, cause a lot of times people are going to compare experts. And if you're the one that has like the great information they're to keep you, they're going to stick to you. But I think that's the biggest thing that I, I did a video on like, you know why you need a freebie, why you need to give stuff away. It's because no, one's going to trust you.
Kathleen (18:00): Yeah. Well, and the story I always come back to when I'm on this topic, because people do say like, we can't give out the secret sauce and I love saying, you know, who really has secret sauce? That would be, what is it is a burger King or is it McDonald's right?
Claire (18:20): Here in LA we have In and Out Burger.
Kathleen (18:21): They literally have secret sauce. They call it secret sauce. And McDonald's Canada actually built a website called your questions are answers or something like that, where you can ask them anything and people ask them things like, you know, is the pink slime real? What do you make your nuggets out of? And P many people have asked, what is the recipe for your secret sauce? And they literally have the recipe on there. They have a video of their chef making it so that you can make it at home. Like they give away the secret sauce. And they've done this for years. And I always like to say to people like, have you seen burger King selling secret sauce? The recipes out there? Like they're not doing it. No, because you know, that's not, what's going to get them ahead. Like so often our secret sauce really. Isn't what we think it is. I mean, yes, there's a difference between like intellectual property when you talk to technology companies. But most of us don't truly have secret sauce. We don't.
Claire (19:15): Yeah. I mean a lot of people, yeah. There's a lot of the same kind of stuff out there in the world. It's just how, how you present it or yeah. I, I really think that what draws people to you, which is why the personal part of your personal brand is so important and obviously video and things like that is that people really will connect to your story the way you present an idea. You know, sometimes like I have, I've had people that were really connected with way I've said said something. They're like, Oh my God, I loved that thing. And I'm like, I don't even know what I said. Cause I just was like speak, you know, I was just speaking from the heart and like, I think, I think that's what it is. You know, there's so many, so many competitors in, in any space that I think there's probably enough to go around. Right? You have business. But you just, you need to speak from the heart. You need to be personal and personable to have the people that are your, you know, your champions, the ones that really love what you do, they'll come to you, there'll be magnetized to you. So, all right. So let's move down to tax here. Yeah.
Kathleen (20:21): Somebody is convinced that they need to build their personal brand. They come to you, someone's listening to this podcast and they're thinking, I need to do this. Let's let's talk about how you do it. Like how do you start with your clients? Walk me through it.
Claire (20:38): I think one of the biggest things that people first need to do is you need to, do, you need to know what's out there about you. You can't do unless you know where you're starting from. So it's either going to be something or it's going to be nothing. So if there's there's stuff that you don't want out there, figure out maybe how you can get, get rid of it. But you need to know where you're starting from. And then from there, it's really about owning your name and you, I mean, if someone does a, if someone does a Google search on you, you need to be like, you need to own that first page. You need to own it. You need to have lots of content, lots of information, lots of what you want. You want there, like you were talking about, you need to own the narrative on your name.
Kathleen (21:23): So I have a story around that I have to share. So my married name, Kathleen Booth, you know, it's not the most unique name on the planet. And, but I have a lot of content. So I have a bunch of like first page Google results, but it turns out that there is a really famous computer scientist, Kathleen Booth, who's responsible for inventing a certain programming language and she's, I think she's no longer alive. But you know, Google has the, the information panel where it has on the right side of the, of the search engine results pages. And for a while there, it was putting my picture next to her biography.
Claire (22:05): Oh, wow.
Kathleen (22:07): She wouldn't be like 120 or something right now. And it was just so funny because there, I have a Google alert on my name. So every time I've mentioned in an article or something, I get an email about it. And I discovered this because I got an email. And then, and then there was actually a tweet that followed it, that a publication had written an article about the talk women in computing. And I was like named as one of the top 10. And they had tagged me on Twitter and they'd included my picture. And I was like, I had to reach out and be like, you guys, that woman is no longer alive and would probably be 120 years old. If she was so much as I love this accolade, like you need to take it down. And it just, it was just so funny because I think it weirdly, it's easier said than done, like getting your picture disassociated with with a, it's like an AI result in Google.
Kathleen (22:58): Like it's not something that somebody enters in, it's them pulling information out of the information graph. So I guess that leads me to my question, which is, you know, it's one thing to say, you need to own your name. It's entirely another thing to do it. And yes, you can create a lot of content, but, you know, do you have certain strategies if, for people in situations like mine where there's a famous historical figure with my name or somebody who, whose name is like John Smith, which is super generic how do you stand out in those situations?
Claire (23:29): You, I mean, you definitely just need to make sure that you're kind of the one that's shouting the loudest, if your, your, your, any of your content, your name, anything like that is associated with this wrong person, make sure you fix that. We haven't, we have a client that this has happened to he there's somebody else in Singapore who is, is like, has done a lot in I think also the competing space and we're just like, Nope, separate clients. And so we're always on it to make sure that they're separate or it's. Yeah. And so I just think that's basically it, but you ha you have to create that content that is going to kind of get some most you know, so constantly share it on social media. You've got to have people linking to it so that it's, it's all about back links and the shares and that sort of thing. And so when you have that content and that's what will get you, you know, you to own that first page of your name, but yes, it's, it's work if you're kind of working against somebody else that has a lot of backlinks success essentially, and a lot of activity on their social media. So yes, you, you need to be there doing the same thing and you need to probably do it a lot louder than they are
Kathleen (24:39): In the entertainment world. There's this thing where like, you can't have two people at the exact same name, right? So this is why you have people who have assumed names and this and that. What are your feelings about, like in the business world about incorporating your middle name or like
Claire (24:55): I was gonna, I was gonna mention that. Yeah, you can always use your, your middle name, middle name, middle initial to make sure that people find you and not that other person, especially if it's an uphill battle that you're really fighting against somebody else that is creating great content as well. That's it? It will be a pedal. And so if you just wanted to kind of not deal with the battle again, if you have a married thing that you can use, use your married name. Yeah. You might have to just kind of decide where you want to go. But if, if you are really dealing with a huge battle, because your name is very common, then you switch it up, go by that name professionally. Essentially,
Kathleen (25:34): I have a good friend who also has previously been a podcast guest on this podcast. George B. Thomas, who has done exactly that he's made the middle initial B like just a part of his name, like his friends, everybody who knows him, like people, it's George B. Thomas. It's never George Thomas ever. He's been really good about consistently using that. And so if you ever search online for George B. Thomas, it's easy to find him, but if you searched for George Thomas, I don't know. I don't know if it would be as visible.
Claire (26:03): Yeah. Well, and, and, you know, obviously if you use a middle initial or you kind of switch it up a little bit, it's going to be easier to get the domain name, your, all the social media handles and everything like that. So yes, you need to figure out what name you can get and then own it across everything. So if you have a very common name yeah. Just, just using middle initial or you can, I mean, yeah, you have, essentially, you may have to come up with a stage name, like you were saying, like an actor would have to because you really want to make sure that you're standing out.
Kathleen (26:34): So your goal number one is to own your name. And I think you've, you've taught, you've mentioned a few things that could help with that. One is creating content sharing that content. Another, you talked about getting a domain, like how important is it to have a website?
Claire (26:49): Very, very important, because it's what you own. You don't own your Instagram handle your YouTube. So you can't, yeah, you can't be, if you do something that violates their terms, you may not have even knowingly done something. And all of a sudden they turn off your account. You need to have somewhere that people where you actually own your domain. And so it's all about driving people back to what you which is your domain, your content and that sort of thing. So make sure that it is one home and hopefully get people's email addresses so that you can continue to contact them because that's all you own. Really.
Kathleen (27:26): Yeah. Now, I mean, obviously we can, we can talk for hours about the digital side of this and I, and I do want to talk more about it, but I'm really curious what your take is on. If somebody is building a personal brand, like how far into the different aspects of their life should the tentacles of that brand reach. And I'll give you an example of what I mean by that question. Another woman I know who is a published author has a personal brand as a female entrepreneur. And hold on, I'll just mention her name, Danielle Tate. And she published a book called the elegant entrepreneur and the book on the book cover, she's wearing a red dress and the colors are like black and white and red. And she literally, her wardrobe is black and white and red. That those are the only colors she wears, which I thought was so interesting. And it had never occurred to me before I met her. That like that somehow your, the color choices of your clothes could be a part of your brand. Like, so I'm, I'd love to just hear your take on, on how much does the brand need to permeate the different aspects of your life beyond just your digital presence.
Claire (28:35): Interesting. I'm glad you explained that because I actually thought of it from a different perspective. So I'm glad that you, that you explain that I think it's whatever you're really, really comfortable with, but if you really, if you think about a brand that everyone is, you know, you think about the new, the Doritos ads where they just literally have the chip, right. And you're supposed to know that that's Doritos. That's why the brand is so important. So if your color is so important, you always wear a red blazer or whatever it is. I'm not wearing anything now, now, but purple is my color. Like a deep purple.
Kathleen (29:07): Wait let's clarify, you are wearing something. You're just not wearing a particular color because you said I'm not wearing anything right now.
Claire (29:12): Oh yeah, no, no. I'm not wearing the PR that's a whole nother brand. But yeah, a lot of times I will wear purple without even really realizing it just because it's something that I always gravitate to. So it's, it's what I have in my, in my logo. So I think that you just need to figure out where, how far you want to go with it. But I think that's a very, I love that idea of the fact that she's always wearing those same colors, because if you think about it, if you, you know if you just kind of see her in a distance, you know, and she's wearing that color, you're like, Oh, there she is. I picked her up.
Kathleen (29:47): Well, it's like Steve jobs wearing the black guy. That was just so you, so associate that outfit choice with him. Yes. All right. So, so somebody comes to you and they have to own their name, but like walk me through what,
Claire (30:04): So you were talking about how far do you want it to permeate into your life? And I one of the things that I really, I really always talk about is privacy. You need to know, you need to know how far you're willing to go in that aspect of your life, whether you're willing to share personal information about, about your background, your, your, you know, wherever it is, your spouse, your boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever it is your children, you need to know kind of how far you want to get personal with that. And that is a, that is a very important choice. So that originally, that's what I thought you were talking about for how deep you want to go. And a lot of people don't want to go down that path. So I feel like you can be, you can share personal details about yourself, but you don't, you can make, I mean, for me, I never, I never talked about my family.
Claire (30:54): I just don't, I, I it's, they didn't choose to kind of be the one that's front and center I did. So I don't, I don't, I very rarely will show my husband and things like that. And I just, that's how I feel comfortable. So you that's, that's something that you needed to decide. And if you change your mind, you can always change your mind. But a lot, I know that most of my clients are very concerned with their privacy and their family, and they want to keep them separate. And so we can find ways to, to bring in aspects of their life and their, you know, personality without talking about their family.
Kathleen (31:25): Yeah. I talk about my husband a lot because he's in marketing and he doesn't care, but I don't talk about my children. Not only because I don't think I should, but they would probably kill me if I did.
Claire (31:39): I talk about my dogs a lot.
Claire (31:42): You see a lot of dogs in my feed.
Kathleen (31:44): Yeah. Interesting. So when I think about building a personal brand, I, one of the things I always think about is like that old quote, the, your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. Like, so it's like Claire Bahn is what, what comes after that, or Kathleen Booth is what, so obviously with building a brand, you, what you're trying to do in part is shape that narrative. So in my mind, I always think about like, what do I want to be known for? What do I want to be known as I imagine you must have similar conversations with your clients. And I would love to understand how you work through that process, because I think it's surprisingly more difficult than it would seem that it should be. And, and I imagine, I know for me, at least how I answered that question evolved over time, which I also think is interesting. So like, I'm curious to get your take on how set in stone is that, or does that evolve? So I, that's kind of a big topic and not exactly a question, but I'd love to hear
Claire (32:52): We do have this happen a lot because a lot of our clients are multifaceted and have, you know, amazing credentials and things that they've done in their life and things that they're experts on. We really kind of do a deep dive and figure out what we can own first, what are the keywords we can own first? And those are the ones we attack first, because again, you're going after backlinks, you're going after shares and all this sort of stuff. So if you really own this space, and then you add to it, Google is going to say, okay, well, they'll give you more juice for the, for the stuff that maybe you have a lot more competition on if you actually own. And you're having a ton of, you have a ton of content on something else, especially if they're related. And so that's essentially what we, what we do. So it's okay.
Kathleen (33:39): Very much a kind of a classic SEO approach. Yes, yes. Done through the lens of personal branding, which you know, these days, if you're doing SEO, it means you're creating content. And you've already talked about that in the beginning. Lots of, of executives that I know are very reluctant content creators and you kind of touched on like, you know, you don't necessarily need to be on video or this or that. Can you talk a little bit about how you figure out what is the right kind of content for somebody to create and do they always create it themselves, or do you pair them with someone who helps them or who ghost writes or who, you know, like how do you get the content out of their brain and out into the world?
Claire (34:21): Right. Well, so when someone comes on and they're in our concierge program that we have essentially again, we figure out what keywords we're going to tackle first. And then we create content. We do that with blogs. So long form blogs. We do have writers in-house that, that write all the blogs. And most of our clients from there, we also do kind of Q and A's. And we kind of, they do video Q and A's tackling a particular question, or it might relate to what we've covered in a blog, but yeah, we basically make sure that they always kind of are, again, are shaping that narrative and either through a blog or through a video, but when we do create the long form blogs, obviously you're thinking 2000 plus words, you need to make sure that you have them in there. So we asked for like a, either give me a video of yourself, just literally on your iPhone, tell me how you're feeling on this topic, and then we'll expand from there. So we always make sure that we get what they're feeling on every aspect of whatever we decide to cover.
Kathleen (35:25): Now, you know, obviously there are lots of ingredients that go into building the brand, but then there's the, okay. You have built your brand. Like you are a brand to what end, what then do you find that many of the executives you work with have certain goals in mind, whether it's to speak at a conference or to publish a book? Like what, what's the end game for most of them?
Claire (35:50): I mean, it's, it's all, it's basically what you said. So yes. Speaking engagements it's when we have investors, we have angel investors that work with us and they want deal flow. So they want the deals to come directly to them instead of them having to seek all these great things. Right. So, yeah, it's, it's opportunities deal flow belonging to certain organizations being asked to join certain syndicates, obviously, if they're an angel investor, there's angel investor in syndicates. So our clients have been invited to join these groups rather than them seeking them out. People seek them out. So it's, it's really about opportunities, press industry recognition, getting the opportunity to speak. So yeah, all of those things, those are usually what our clients want. Maybe it's to write a book, but again, you're going to have people coming to you saying, Hey, I have this, this idea.
Claire (36:42): I'd love to help you with this book. You know? So those things will come to you, especially if you're constantly sharing your expertise and your ideas and all of that will come to you. Because I, one of the things that I always say is you don't want to just be another choice. You want to be, be only choice in your market. And that's only going to be there by constantly sharing your expertise and showing why you are the only choice. Why, why someone should want to work with you. And again, it goes back to the, what I said before, because you, people are going to connect with certain people that are going to connect with me. I, you know, my background is in New York, I'm a straight shooter. I don't, you know, but sometimes my, my, the way I work, it doesn't people don't like it, but a lot of people do. So that's, who's going to be magnetized to me. If someone else is just like really laid back, you know, they're like San Diego, they're like brah, you know, they're going to love that person. They're not going to love me. Cause I am not that person, a lot of those around here.
Kathleen (37:43): Now, do you ever work with clients who come to you because they want to build a brand so that they can monetize it? Like they want to be a professional speaker or, you know, basically be paid essentially to go out and talk to groups and things like that.
Claire (37:58): Most of the, most of the time it's so not necessarily to be paid, but yes. I mean, obviously to have something that will, I like being part of a syndicate being part of an angel investing group being asked to be a limited partner. So again, they'll get payment from it, but it's not like a specific thing. Right. It's, it's kind of all, and a lot of times it's many it's ideas and then things just kind of start coming and then we get other ideas for new content and new ways to new directions for them to go to. And things like that based on the opportunities that are coming their way
Kathleen (38:31): That's. So I know saying that you work with so many investors, it's not, that's not a category that I would have thought of as one that would invest so much in personal brand building. But as I hear you explain it, it makes a ton of sense.
Claire (38:41): Well, what was interesting is for online profile pros and we're going out for investment. So I was in San Francisco a lot. It was doing a lot of networking events here in LA and I met an investor. And I did a Google search because if you've ever done investor, you've ever gone through investment, you know, you need to give a lot of details. You're given every bit of detail about your business. So I'm like, why should I trust this person again, going back to the know, like, and trust, why should I trust this person with all the details about my business? Who is this person? And that was one of the biggest things. Yeah. And so basically he became our first client actually, so that it just kind of came organically because he knew there was a missing link for him as well, because he didn't have the opportunities that he felt that he should.
Claire (39:26): And now he does. So I love it. Yeah, that's, that's kind of how it happened because it, it really is important for everybody. Even if you are somebody that's helping somebody else, the other person still has a decision. Do they go with this investor? Do they keep looking for another investor because you have to give a lot of information. And you, you know, a lot of personal details, business details, you have to do a lot of work. Sometimes you're like, is it worth it? If this person really is not who they say they are. And if you've gone down the investment bank, you know exactly what I'm talking about with the amount of time and effort and meetings and all the things you have to do. So you want to make sure that they actually are who they say they are.
Kathleen (40:10): Well, and I'm sure it works the other way too, because if they're going to put all their money behind you, they're going to want to know who you are.
Claire (40:14): Exactly. So it's both. So yeah, so we work with founders and we worked with an investor, so it just kind of happened just because again, I was in that space talking to people, meeting people, and then they saw kind of what I did. They saw this initial investor and they were like, how do you, how do you have this amazing personal brand? Well, Claire helped me. So it's been a lot of referrals based on again, just doing, doing really good solid work. Yeah.
Kathleen (40:39): Well, I could talk about this for hours, but we're going to shift gears because we're running out of time. So there's two questions. I always ask all my guests. And first one is the podcast being all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that, that comes to mind when you think of, you know, the gold standard for inbound marketing?
Claire (41:02): I mean, I, you know, I, I always think of, like, I think for marketing people, I often there are two, I know that you have two questions. I feel like my answers are probably for both is the same, but I, I always look at Gary V and Neil Patel because I look to them for a lot of guidance on what's hot, what's working, what you should be doing. You know, you think of Gary V talking about like, don't be perfect. That's like one of the biggest things you tell your clients, you're never going to be perfect. Just don't seek it out. It's going to be the enemy of good. Yes. So I think that I love what they're doing. Cause they're, they're especially gravy, very, very authentic, very real and personable.
Kathleen (41:48): Then maybe we already know the answer to my second question, which is digital marketers already saying it's really hard to keep up with all the changes in the industry. How do you stay educated? I'm assuming you subscribe to those two blocks?
Claire (41:59): Yes. Well, definitely, definitely. Neil. I we've done, I've done some programs with him and worked with him in the past and yeah, always, always really, you know, put his money where his mouth is like, he's, you know, you've seen it, any of the challenges he's done or he said, Hey, I'm willing to do this. You know, I'm going to get this many followers in this period of time and I'm going to do this thing to see if it works based on what I, what I'm doing. And I really liked that because you can kind of see the stuff that he's constantly doing. He's got a huge team. They're always thinking of new ideas. So yeah those are two that I always look for.
Kathleen (42:33): Awesome. All right. Well, if someone's listening and they're interested in connecting with you online, or they want to learn more about the kind of work you do, what's the best way for them to find you?
Claire (42:46): Clairebahn.com. I own my name and that's B A H N and yes. So Claire C L A I R E B A H N.com.
Kathleen (42:57): Awesome. And I will put a link to your site in the show notes. So if you're listening head there and you'll be able to find information on how to connect with Claire and thank you so much for joining me, this is a fun conversation. I love your background and how it started in acting. I think that's so interesting and it really gives you kind of a different perspective on this topic. And if you are listening and you enjoyed this episode as always, I would really appreciate it if you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. That is what helps us get found by other listeners. And if you know someone else doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me, Claire.
Claire (43:43): Thank you so much for having me.
With so many marketing software tools available, it can be hard to pinpoint the ones that can really move the marketing needle without breaking the bank.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Voy Media founder Kevin Urrutia talks about three lesser known marketing tools that have made a big difference for his business.
A self-taught marketer who studied computer science, Kevin loves discovering new tools that can save him time and give him access to information he can use to improve his marketing results.
In this episode, he explains how he's using Visual Ping, Phantom Buster and Zapier to get big results on a small budget.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Voy Media website
- Follow Kevin on Twitter
- Contact Kevin by email at Kevin@VoyMedia.com
Transcript Kathleen (00:00):Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And today my guest is Kevin Urrutia, who is the founder of Voy Media. Welcome Kevin.
Kevin (00:37): Hey, thanks for having me. Super excited to be here.
Kathleen (00:39): I'm really excited to talk with you. I think we have kind of a fun topic. But before we get into our topic of the day, can you tell my listeners a little bit more about yourself and your journey and what you're doing now and what Voy Media is?
Kevin (00:55): Yeah. So my name is Kevin Urrutia and my background to the part of make more sense throughout the conversation is I went to college for computer science. So I always was into programming, doing software, software design, and really my, when I was doing computer science, it's a lot of like C plus plus Java, but really what I gravitated towards too was more of the front end stuff. So like JavaScript, HTML, and a lot of that was also to do with the graphic design. So I also did study graphic design in college as well. So that's sort of like visual slash programming aspect was always what I was drawn to.
Kathleen (01:29): That's an interesting combination.
Kevin (01:32): So like I love computer stuff, but I knew that I didn't want to do like the backend stuff because I was like, no, one's going to see that. I want to build stuff and see stuff that people will see and can be like, Oh, that looks cool. So that's really where I did that. And then after college I went to San Francisco. So I was living there for four or five years. I would tell people like I'm from New York, San Francisco was like the Mecca, like this was like seven years ago. And when I got a job there, I was like, yes, like I needed to go there. I'd never once traveled there, like growing up. But like I knew, like from just reading stuff reading these like tech articles, reading these tech founders, I was like, there's gotta be something in Silicon Valley that I need to go and figure out how I can get there.
Kathleen (02:18): You felt the gravitational pull.
New Speaker (02:20): I had to. Yeah. And I was just like, even for me, like I, so I'm in New York and I got a job offer at ESPN and I tell people all the time, like great place to go at that time in my life, I was like dating this girl. And she also got a job. She also got like she was always going to UConn and she was like, this is perfect for us. But in my mind, I was just like, Oh man, like this is going to be a tough decision. Like I'm like I told her, like, I don't want to go to Yukon like this. I don't want to go to Connecticut. Essentially. I don't. I think this is like, my dream has been to go to Silicon Valley and I'm gonna see, I'm gonna keep applying for jobs.
Kevin (02:57): They're going to make me there. And obviously we didn't stay together because big sort of shifted like what your goals were. But at least for me, when I went to Silicon Valley, it was everything I imagined it was what I wanted and what I wanted to do. And it really kind of like made me want to do more entrepreneurship, more startup stuff, because everybody there wasn't like me and it made sense. That kind of led me to do startups and they're doing competitions, they're just building stuff. And then I kind of came back to New York cause after five years I was like, Hey, I want to move back on to build my own thing. And then there, I built a section in my first company, which was a first like real company in between there. I was like building stuff. But in there I was building a cleaning company called Maid Sellers. And we did a lot of like home cleanings. And then I did e-commerce and then now what I do as concept before I do Voy media, which we help other brands, e-commerce companies or info products advertise online. So that's kind of like the journey of getting from like programming to when I do marketing now.
Kathleen (03:56): I love that. I, I it's, it's really interesting because I've spoken to a lot of marketers over the past three years hosting this podcast. I mean, I think I'm almost on episode 180 and you know, you start to see patterns emerge when you talk to that many people. And one of the patterns that I've seen is that many times the, some of the best marketers that I interview are not trained as marketers. They have studied other things. And I think I have this theory about it and it's, and, and my theory is that it has to do with the best marketers, regardless of their educational background, they might be trained as marketers, or they might not be, but the best ones are people who are just really avid students of the human mind. Like how do people think, how do people make decisions? What gets them ticking, right? Because that makes you so good at marketing. If you're fascinated with people and, and, and what motivates them, you can be a good marketer. So I just think that's interesting that you come from that kind of a background.
Kevin (04:57): Yeah. And I think that too, for me too, like I had that same thought too with sort of, at least for me with like any sort of thing that requires like programming. Right. For example, I did programming a lot in Silicon Valley and I was working with some really smart programmers and I would ask them like, Hey, what's your background? Like, Oh, I went to college for like design or writing, but they're so good at programming. And I was just like, wow, it's like crazy. Like, you're just like really good at this. Cause you get it. And it's like, I would look at their code. My roommate is an example. Like he would, we would talk about a problem and the way he would break it down and be like, well, there's something in your mind that like, I just, like, I can't think of programs like that.
Kevin (05:39): Because you just get that sort of way of thinking. And for me marketing was that when I was in marketing, I was like, Oh, I get like how people are thinking like, this is why I gravitate towards more marketing. Because even though it's Silicon Valley, I was like training programming in my mind. I was just like, wow, I'm never going to be the best programmer I needed to like, figure out what I'm good at, because I know that like I'm talking to other people, I'm just like, Oh my God, you're so much better than me. Like I just need to find something different. Right. So
Kathleen (06:07): Well, and the other thing I think is great about you. And one of the reasons I'm excited to chat with you is that you do have this like computer science background because marketing has evolved so much in the last two decades and today, like, I don't think it's an over-exaggeration to say that, you know, every marketer needs to have some degree of ability to work with code. Like I always joke, I know enough CSS to be dangerous, right. Like I can get in there and I can manipulate the code and I can spot problems in code I'm by no means a programmer. But like, you have to know these things these days. And that's probably why you're so good at some of the stuff we're going to talk about today. Which is cool tools that you might not be using. And for those listening I love this topic because nothing gets me more excited than when I discover some obscure software tool that does something that, that previously here to for has been like a manual slog for me, or I didn't think was possible.
Kathleen (07:16): And like, there's just something that gets you so excited about knowing, Oh my God, this is the easy button right here. And then it also can open up all kinds of possibilities for different things that you can do with your marketing that you maybe couldn't do before. And there's, I have a ton of tools that I've discovered that have gotten me excited, but I thought it was really fun listening to you talk about some of the tools you're using. So today we're going to dig into that and we're going to hear about some of the awesome, like hacks and shortcuts you've discovered with tools.
Kathleen (07:49): What's the first tool that you want to highlight?
Kevin (07:52): Yes. So the first tool I really, I love using and we still use to this day is called Visual Ping. There's also another alternative to this one that you can do is called Phantom Buster. But Visual Ping is a really great, easy to easy tool to use and what it is, it's essentially a screenshot tool. And basically the tool go out there to any website, let's say google.com and every single day that's at 9:00 AM. I'll take a screenshot of the, the homepage and what makes, so that sounds basic, but what's cool about the tool is that let's say today is, you know, Friday, Saturday, Google updates, maybe a button, the tool, then email you saying, Hey, there's been a change on that website. And it will actually highlight what the changes are. Cause they'll do like a comparison or a difference between yesterday and today and the next day.
Kevin (08:41): And that sounds so basic, but really it's kinda like support it's like once you sort of understand like, Oh, that's interesting that it basic track changes. And now the way, the way we've used it here and made sellers was we compete with, for cleaning local businesses. So what we did was we had the tool just sort of track competitor's pricing pages. And when we would see that their pricing pages would change, we would then get notified of it. And that's a great thing about what you said before. It's like, you can check it every day, but like after checking maybe five days, you'll probably be like, eh, they're not going to change and you kind of forget, right. It's like, ah, it's like, nothing's going to happen. Right. It's like, it's that same like thing, but you don't see any changes. You kind of just like, Oh, I'll check it like next month.
Kevin (09:21): And then next month you forget, you got busy. But like what this tool, you'll just get an email saying, Hey this company has changed our pricing or something has changed. Right. They will change the pricing. Exactly. And then you can go and see and maybe update your internal spreadsheets because we also have a spreadsheet of every price, every competitor that we have, that will be nowhere where we sit in the market. But yeah, that's sort of like one aspect of using Visual Ping, another way that we use it. And the way I like using it the most is I like to track Google search results with this tool. So you type in your keyword in Google, you put in like, you know, for, for example, for cleaning maid services NYC, I like to see who's the top three and where we shift in those rankings because Google rankings change every day.
Kevin (10:03): So you're probably gonna get an email every day, but at least for me, I'm like, I'd like to know like, how are you, you're moving up and down, especially when Google has these massive updates where you went up and down and just track little changes the competitor doing. I think people know when you go to Google, you see like the blue title, like the header, and then you see like the description, those are super helpful with ranking. So it's interesting to see what the top two companies are doing. So then maybe you can change it on your website. So Visual Ping, great tool. I love that one. It's, it's free not really free for like certain amount of usage, like any tool, but then if you could pay more for credits and really, if you think about difference tracking that's really good one.
Kevin (10:42): And the reason why this tool came to mind to me was because then coding, there's a website called GitHub and whenever you push a change, they'll show you like, Hey, this is the code that was before, this was a code that is now. And that's so useful to see like when something breaks. So you think about it like as your website as well. If something's changing, maybe somebody, someone, your team changed something if you're working in a big marketing team, like let's see how landing pages are changing for yourself or, or something converting drops. So those are that's one way to think about that tool is when you want to track differences.
Kathleen (11:11): I, so this was really interesting to me because I feel like in all the groups I'm in, there's a lot of conversation about like, Ooh, what competitive analysis software should we be using? And there's lots of big players in that market and that software is not inexpensive. And one of the things that people use it for is exactly this use case. They use it to track how their competitors are updating their websites. And I love the fact that this is a way to do it for like almost no money because not everybody can afford to spend. I don't even know how much some of those platforms cost, but I think it's like over a thousand dollars a month, let's say that's a major investment major. And unless you're doing something with that information to really, you know, drive tremendous ROI, it's not worth it. And so here's a situation where you can be scrappy. You can still do that same kind of competitive analysis, but you can just do it with Visual Ping. And I mean, I feel like my brain is firing, cause there's probably a thousand other ways to use this. But I particularly love tracking the pricing pages or like really any pages on competitor websites for changes in messaging you know, looking at product pages to see how they update the language on their product. If you have a competing product, those are all,
Kevin (12:30): Yeah, exactly. There's so many like ways to do it, but yeah, that's exactly why I found the tool useful because I want the competitor analysis software, but a lot of times it's super, super expensive and you just want like one feature out of like the 30 features they have. And you're just like, I'm not going to pay 5k for this. Like, let me pay 30 bucks a month. Then it's a little bit of manual work, but it's like the scrappy way to do it. And once you can do this now, it's like, you're, you're, you're kind of limitless with like the ideas that you have sometimes. And then that makes you think like, why are these softwares charging you so much? Like, this is an easy, that's like, that's what I think about it. I'm like, this is an easy tool. Like it's so extensive. Yeah.
Kathleen (13:06): Yeah. Now earlier, when you were talking about Visual Ping, you mentioned that there was another tool called Phantom Buster that could do the same thing. Phantom Buster I had been aware of. And that was one of those ones where I found it and I was like, this is the coolest thing. Cause it does a lot. It does a lot of stuff beyond what Visual Ping does. So, so let's start talking about Phantom Buster. I'm curious how you're using it.
Kevin (13:31): Yeah. So yeah. So Phantom Buster is think about as visual, Visual Ping as does the screenshots. This is just one feature of Phantom Buster. Phantom Buster is like the way to describe it is like anything that you can do with like on a computer, they, with a web browser, they can automate it all for you. And some ideas that you can think about like, yeah, fan ambassador.com. It's a great website, but basically let's say at least for one way that we're using it here at boy is we do a lot of Facebook ads with Phantom Buster. The tool will actually like it's called like a headless browser. We're basically like behind the scenes, we'll log in, in their system, right? Wherever they're using you input your Facebook credentials, he'll log into your Facebook account and then you can give it a list of Facebook pages.
Kevin (14:19): Remember Facebook pages could be, your competitors could be your own your own, your own ads. Let's say you're hired to work with the agency. You can say, Hey, like I want to see what ads they're making up. And then it'll go to the ad library, at least for us. Cause that's an important part of, of, of the page. And then it'll take a screenshot again, of all their ads that you're running. And then you can actually save those in an Excel sheet. So visual sorry, Phantom Buster is like this automation chain. So like I'll take a log, you in, take a screenshot and then it'll say like, Hey, let me say all those URLs in an Excel sheet. And then in your Excel sheet again with Excel has macros. Now you could do a bunch of other stuff too. And like, say like what's the text on it.
Kevin (15:01): But basically that's kind of like the core of Phantom Buster, where, and again, this is just one thing in Phantom Buster, you can do so much more. Another thing that we've seen, we've seen well, brick wall before too, is I was telling you, it's like, let's say you have an email list of people that you want to contact. You can actually put those first names and emails into an Excel sheet. Phantom Buster will then read that data. And potentially let's say you want to find them on LinkedIn elk. We're trying to find their LinkedIn profile and then put in that profile into your URL. So then now if you're doing cold outreach, you can then send them a message on LinkedIn. So basically you see all that process of kind of like, like SDR work can be automated. So Phantom Buster helps that.
Kevin (15:39): So like the way I think about it's like if you're doing a task over and over again, try to see if Phantom Buster can do that for you. And there's a lot of these built in automation essentially, but you can code it as well. And that's an expandable of powerful. It's like you can code all the stuff. And the reason why I think like this is so important is because people probably know when you're doing all this sort of scraping essentially right. Scraping the data. You can sometimes get paralyzed by like, let's say LinkedIn by Phantom. Buster has like proxies that allow you to sort of like limitations and throttles throttles you so that you're, you can do like a hundred at a time, but it won't do like in the next minute, it'll say like, okay, let's wait five minutes. That will, you're not like getting banned. So Phantom Buster is smart enough to know this and really wants to work with you to get your tests done. So that's one way we think about it, at least for us the tracking the Facebook that's so important. Like again, it's competitive research. We want to know what ads other companies are doing, how they're doing it. If somebody looks different, we will then go in and be like, okay, let's maybe copy that ad and see why they're, why they're doing that change.
Kathleen (16:43): There's definitely a, an aspect to Phantom Buster that's like, use your powers for good and not evil. Because I've heard a lot of people talk about using it with reference to LinkedIn, for example, like, and one of the use cases that that I have heard is, you know, if, if for example, if you're if there's a certain LinkedIn group and you're like, everybody in that group is an awesome qualified prospect or everybody with X job title is a great prospect for me, you can scrape the profiles, get all the email addresses. And, but then it's like what you do with it. That's really kind of the question, right? And I mean, to me, you could do audience match ads. That to me is, you know, on other platforms potentially. You know, what I wouldn't want to do is like cold outreach email, all of them or you could come up with a list for your SDR to reach out to that. And it's just a quicker way of creating that list of targets, but it is so interesting and there's so many different ways to use it. So have you used it in any other ways besides those?
Kevin (17:45): So other ways that we use it are obviously the screenshots, other ways that we use it too, a big one that we used to do before, it was probably kind of like what used to be four it's like Instagram automation was a big one on, on Phantom Buster
Kathleen (17:57): In what way?
Kevin (18:00): So basically what you can do with it, same thing with like, before you can log into your Instagram account, and then you could potentially just kind of like, if you like hashtags, you can, it will go in and sort of like posts in that. And then that would help you sort of at least show up in the algorithm more. And then people would say like, Oh, who's Kevin liking all my posts. Let me go his content. Interesting. Let me go, like, let me go follow him back. So there's a way to sort of like automate that like kind of like process of like people knowing who you are because you will, you like their stuff. Stuff like this doesn't really kind of used to before. It doesn't really work well anymore. Instagram has kind of like said like, no, like we can detect this type of stuff. So it used to work really well. I remember four years ago Instagram didn't have like a limit on how many people you could follow. So people were finding like thousands of people at like a minute and it's just like, Oh my God. Oh, the followers.
Kathleen (18:50): And that's, those are examples of like marketers ruin everything, right. Just because you can, does not mean you should.
Kevin (18:57): Like, that's what I said, Phantom Buster is, there's all these stuff that you can use, but it's, it's kinda like anything. It's how you use it. If you want to do natural way, you could do it. But again, if you go crazy, you're just gonna get abandoned. Then what's the point of using these tools if you're only gonna last for like a month, right. It's like anything. Right,
Kathleen (19:13): Right. All right, so we've got Visual Ping. We got Phantom Buster. What else do you have in your back pocket?
Kevin (19:20): So another, another one that we really like used to use is this one's like kind of a mix of two things. Zapier. People know Zapier. Zapier is kind of, think about Zapier is kind of like the non visual way of Phantom Buster. With Zapier, the companies actually need to like develop an API or application programming interface to work with each other. And so Zapier allows this. And the thing about Zapier, it's kind of like, it's more safe because you're not like kind of scraping Zapier saying, Hey, no, these companies that have been on our platform because they're allowed to be on here. So Zapier is kind of like a safe card that way. But how we, how we've done, how we use Zapier here, many ways like, like my zap is like crazy. Like I think I wouldn't charge like 500 a month because I have so many zaps.
Kevin (20:10): So a few ways I've used it for my cleaning company. So we so basically we here in New York, we only clean certain zip codes. So in Zapier, when we get a new booking or a new cleaning in Zapier, the booking will go through Zapier, Zapier will then scrape that sort of API does zip code. And then we'll still do like a pattern matching in Zapier. And we'll say, Hey, if this is, if this zip code isn't in our target service area, then send our customer service a message saying, Hey, this customer just booked a cleaning, but they're not our service area called them. So they can cancel the booking that way. It's like a better, instead of like the customer service rep, reading, every booking that comes in and just, or specific ones, and that's helps us with like customer service productivity, because now we know too. And the reason why this was useful for us is because we wouldn't recognize these sort of booking until like, let's say the day up and the customer be. It's like, Hey, why don't you tell us? So it's like, you see how, like, some of this stuff is because of you just need a solution. So that's one way we use it.
Kathleen (21:11): So this reminds me, this reminds me so much of an interview I did. My gosh. I don't remember when it was a long time ago with a guy named Connor Malloy from Chi City Legal. It's a law firm in Chicago and it's him and just his partner. It's two lawyers. They don't have any staff or anything. And he, it was such a great interview because he basically has automated his entire business using Zapier. And it's super impressive what he was able to do with it. And I just, I've always loved that episode. And I talk about it a lot because it's a great example of you do not need a big team or a big budget or fancy software to do really cool stuff. And this is the same thing. Like, you know, you don't have to have like a very sophisticated marketing automation platform or a lot of money to spend on your tech stack. Like, I think you're, you're talking about a lot of similar things to what Connor did. And, and I, that gets me excited because I love solutions that are accessible to anybody.
Kevin (22:11): That's why Zapier, I think is so powerful because once you it's so funny, because once we did some, a few automations in the company and like other team members started looking at it, they're like, they're trying to automate everything. I'm like, all right. Let's like, relax, like relax. Because then you realize like, basically you realize, Oh, I don't do, I don't have to do any work.
Kathleen (22:30): Robots are running my business. And then you have those nightmares about Zapier breaking down and your whole business coming to a crashing point, right.
Kevin (22:37): For us, that's like, that's, that's what our nightmare, because even like, kinda what you said before. So we have our booking platform for the cleaning company. And we just said like, Hey, we don't need any more emails because of puzzled emails, because all the bookings go through Zapier and Zapier. We have another Slack that says, anytime there's a booking, it'll go through Zapier. And so basically another, another zap that we did with Zapier was that similar to what I said before, protecting the zip code, we can also detect the address. And then we'll put the address into like we're in New York city street easy. And then we'll just have a link automatically we'll link to the StreetEasy address. And then the customer service rep can go and see, Hey, does this booking size match the actual home? And if it does great, we don't do anything.
Kevin (23:19): If it doesn't, we have to call a customer service customer and say, Hey, look, we booked the one bedroom, but your house is a pretty bedroom. What exactly are you looking for? Is it like one room or an Airbnb? And then that helps us with that stuff. So like I said, it's pretty cool. Yeah. So like, all this stuff was like stuff that we're doing automatically. We're like manually. It's like, okay, like Zapier, if you just give us the link and then we just click and then open. So that's the great thing about Zapier. Other ways that we've used it for us too, is, is for kind of like when people contact us, at least for boy media is Zapier has this thing called lead scoring. It's powered by another software called Mad Kudu. So Mad Kudu is super expensive. And it's kind of like a lead scoring platform.
Kevin (24:01): A lot of big companies use it, but they have a partnership with Zapier that they power. Zapier's free tool called lead score in behind the scenes. And you get a hundred free users a month. And basically the lead scoring is really cool because let's say someone contacts you through Zapier, you get three Emil email address, and then you pass it to the lead scoring tool, the lead scoring tool. Then come back with like this like profile of that email what business they work, how big is their business. It'll give you like a lead quality. They'll be like low, medium high. So basically that's kind of like super interesting for you. If you're doing like Lee qualifying low, medium high, that's a great way for you to pass it internally to your sales rep. Hi, I usually get them like, Hey, this is a great lead.
Kevin (24:41): I'll talk to them medium, the second best sales, a third. Okay. The people that were kind of training or testing new programs, because we don't care. Like if we don't close them. Right. And that's the way that, and then that just automatically then distributes to your internal Slack channel of sales and then says, Hey, Kevin, you had a new lead go talk to them or, Hey, John, you have a new lead, go talk to them. And then we know who goes and talks to me versus like us manually saying like, okay, like this looks like your lead. Right. So. Stuff like that.
Kathleen (25:10): That's awesome. Yeah. I did not realize that Zapier had lead scoring.
Kevin (25:15): Yeah, it's, it's really good. I think it's probably one of their most like under used features and they have a lot of these like, like internal zap tools. They have another one like called like one-off emails where you can like send yourself an email. So when something happens in their tool and that's free as well. So of course it's like interesting. Cause that integrates, if you want to Zapier pretty much integrates like almost anything you've ever used them. Like, they're crazy how like big, they they've grown. It's like every tool wants to be on Zapier.
Kathleen (25:45): Well, they're solving a huge problem for not just marketers.
Kevin (25:50): This is business owners. It's like really the cutaways to before. It's like automating your business people all the reason why Zapier is so great because all these integrations before you have to get a developer to make it for you, and you have to find a way to like, sort of like hack the API, but vape you're saying, Hey, look, people want this thing. You guys should make your websites available, programmatically. That way people can use your software more efficiently. And it's crazy. At least for me with my software background, I'm looking at new software, get built. Like if you look at any software request, board number one thing is once the Zapier information
Kathleen (26:23): Coming out and it's like crazy,
Kevin (26:25): Like how people want to just do like Zapier for everything, because they know that like once you pipe into their system, it can go to like 20 different places. And I think for people listening, it's that concept is like, Hey, like you bring it into Zapier. Now you can go anywhere and anywhere it could be kind of, how do you automate that? How do you make it easier for your internal team? How do you make it easy for everybody? Because there's lot of stuff that you probably do that is really just logic. Like, Hey, if this happens, do this and Zapier can do that versus like you doing it yourself.
Kathleen (26:55): Yeah. So the question that comes to my mind when I listened to you talk about all this is you have a degree in computer science engineering. So if somebody is listening, most of my listeners are marketers who don't have that kind of a degree myself included, like, what do you, how skilled you need to be to do these things? Like, do you need to have programming skills?
Kevin (27:20): No. And that's, that's why I love something like Zapier, for example, they make it super easy and you don't have to do any program. It's literally just like a user interface that says like, Hey, we know you want to connect to the service. Here's what the output will be like. And I'll give you like a test sort of like output. And it says like, name, email, last name, zip code, and says, Hey, this is what you would get. If you were to actually do the call, how do you want to process this now? And then it'll go to like hey now connect to the second tool. And this is where it's going to happen. So Zapier has made it super easy to do this for anybody, because exactly they're solving that exact problem. You said it's like, not everybody knows programming. But they want to make it as a way for you to sort of be able to transfer this data.
Kevin (28:03): So that's what I love Zapier. Like they've done out of all the companies. Like I think they've done a really good job of making it super friendly for marketers to do, to do things. And I think that's probably why they've grown so big because it's just like, your possibilities are endless once you, I thought we were like, just do one and try it. And sometimes it's sometimes like anything, you know, it's like, you just get overwhelmed by thinking how hard it could be. But once you do one, I'm like, you'll, you'll go nuts and you'll realize, Oh my God, I'm running. Like I have so many zaps. Like, it's like, that's a little of how it was at my company.
Kathleen (28:33): Now what about Phantom Buster and Visual Ping? Do you need to know any of that?
Kevin (28:36): Yeah. So visual, so Visual Ping is very easy. That's probably the easiest one. It's like, Hey, input, a URL track. That's it. You don't need to do anything. Phantom Buster is a little bit more complicated. I think Phantom Buster out of all of them is the most complicated one because it's like, kind of like the raw version of like Zapier it's, how would you do it? And of course there's built in ones too, but to really make it do a lot of work, you need to like learn about like, how do you integrate with your like Google sheets? And it's like, it makes you kind of like import your cookies. It imports your, your hidden encrypted passwords, all this stuff. That's a little bit more complicated. But it's a lot more powerful because Zapier the ability for you to do zaps, you can only use what's on their platform. Whereas Phantom Buster it's like, if there's no zap, you can go to Phantom Buster and scrape your own sort of data the way and pass it to let's say a Google sheet and then do something else with it. So a Phantom Buster is probably the most complicated one, but not super complicated. It's only gets complicated when you want to do like super customized, customized stuff.
Kathleen (29:42): Wow. So I feel like this has been so much. Fun by the way, I feel like this needs to be a regular kind of topic in the podcast where we talk about cool tools. Cause we haven't really done this before. Unless it's come up as part of a different part of an interview. So I actually want to throw a challenge out to anybody who's listening, which is that we only covered really like three tools here. If you have a really cool tool that you're using that you think people don't know about, but they should tweet me at work, mommy work. And I will come up with a list and I may have another one of these, but I will share the tools out for sure. So tweet me at @workmommywork with the best tools, you know, that are under appreciated or unheard of, and we'll get the word out about them. Or if you have a cool tool that you think more people need to know about. All right, switching gears, Kevin. I always ask my guests two questions and I want to know what you have to say. The first one is obviously the podcast is about inbound marketing. Can you talk a little bit about, is there a person or a company today that you think is really setting the bar for what it means to be a great inbound marketer?
Kevin (30:54): For me, the company would probably have to be Zapier. I think their inbound marketing is probably some of the best. When I talk about in marketing, I'm talking about some of their internal traffic through SEO. They are growing their brand so much by doing reviews of tools, such as let's say Phantom Buster reviews. They rank pretty highly for that, but also they're really smart by all the permutations that they can do. So let's say you can do like Zapier with MailChimp. Zapier with Drip. All that stuff is just getting them so much inbound traffic. And they do great comparisons of like what their tools can do with all of the software. And they're just super smart about it. And if you look at their like SEO growth, it's like crazy. I'm just like, and the thing about the, what I love about them is because every year there's new marketing tech coming out. So they're like limitless with how much they can grow because there's so much, and I'm just like, wow, this company is so smart. I love Zapier.
Kathleen (31:51): That's awesome. I'll check that out. And then, you know, the other thing I hear a lot from my listeners is that as a marketer, it's really challenging to stay up to date with all of this. Like even just the stuff you're talking about. Like it changes so quickly, as you say, new tools are coming out all the time. How do you personally stay up to date on the changing landscape of digital marketing and how do you keep yourself educated?
Kevin (32:12): So for me, the biggest, I love using twitter.com. I think it's like my favorite platform ever. I'm addicted to Twitter. So I just follow marketers on Twitter. Like obviously there's, I'm really big into SEO, for example. I really love following Rand Fishkin. I think he's pretty smart guy.
Kathleen (32:30): He was a guest.
Kevin (32:31): Oh yeah, no, I love Rand. Yeah. He like Moz, like was where I learned almost everything from in the beginning. I tell people like, it's crazy, like just long ago, but yeah, like Rand I just follow, like I try to follow people that I think are like, I try to follow like marketing leaders from like, let's say Zapier. I'm like, okay, who's running their SEO. Like this guy's gotta be smart or right. So I gotta, like, I look for these like really smart marketing for these brands.
Kevin (32:55): Another good brand that I really like is a buffer. So I follow their marketing people from buffer. I think their SEO is great. So I'm like, okay, who are the guys running? The buffer SEO. But for me the way I think what a two it's like, for example, buffer a big company now. But what I like to do is think about, go to LinkedIn and find out who was working for buffer during that growth stage, because maybe they're not there, but these guys have probably, maybe wrote about it, something and think about it. So that's kind of what I think of what it's like a lot of the Buffer's massive now, but the guys that grew it probably aren't there anymore. I need to find those guys.
Kathleen (33:31): Yeah. Well, I have I have some hot tips for you on people to follow on Twitter then if you're into SEO. So one of them, like you said, you like to look at whose running SEO at companies that are really, really good at it. So one of the top SEO guys at HubSpot who's, who does not have a high profile, but who is brilliant is a guy named Victor Pan. So follow him for sure. And he does little rants once a week on certain SEO topics. And the marketing nerd in me is completely obsessed with him cause he gets really specific. And then the other one is Barry Schwartz whose handle is Rusty Brick. He's like, I think if you're not following him for SEO, you you're not following anybody.
Kevin (34:18): Barry somehow knows everything about SEO, any news, like he's up to date he's so yeah.
Kathleen (34:23): Well, whenever I find like anomalies online, I just screenshot them and I tweet them to him and he figures out the answer in like five minutes.
Kevin (34:30): He's really good. Yeah. He runs like Rusty Brick in upstate New York and yeah.
Kathleen (34:34): And he's, I think doesn't he right? Is it search engine land or search engine journal?
Kevin (34:38): I think he owns both. Me neither. I'm like, okay. One of them is crazy how they're similar, but I think he runs two. Yeah. It's like he has like two blogs or something I'm like,
Kathleen (34:51): And he has that direct line into John Mueller at Google.
Kevin (34:55): Well, yeah. I mean, at least for me like, like I do, like, it's kind of kind funny to talk about SEO. Like for Voy we do paid, but like SEO is like where I learned like everything like these guys are doing SEO, like they think different, so yeah.
Kathleen (35:08): Oh, it's fascinating. It's so fascinating. All right. Well, if somebody wants to learn more about Voy Media or wants to connect with you and has a question, what's the best way for them to connect with you online?
Kevin (35:18): So you can always stay with me on Twitter. So my Twitter handle is @Danest. I've had that since I was like, when Twitter first came out.
Kathleen (35:28): That's why I'm @workmommywork.
Kevin (35:32): I'm never going to change that one. People are like, is your name Dan? And I'm like, no, it's not that.
Kathleen (35:36): I got my Twitter when my son was born which was a long time ago.
Kevin (35:41): Never changed that name. It's like my favorite like username. Cause it's also short if you're like, I want a short name. I was like, okay, you're not getting mine though. So another way is just Kevin@Voymedia and that's the V O Y media.com. So, but yeah, that's, that's where you can find.
Kathleen (35:56): Awesome. All right. Well, I'll put those links in the show notes. So if you want to ask Kevin questions about any of his cool tools or anything having to do with Voy Media you can find his information there. And as always, if you're listening, I would really love it. If you would head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast a review so that other people can find and discover us that's all we have for this week. Thank you so much for joining me, Kevin. This was a lot of fun.
Kevin (36:22): Thank you for having me.
When COVID-19 hit, PFL was forced to shift its approach to marketing. Here's how the changes they made were a big marketing win.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, PFL Chief Evangelist Marne Reed explains how the company shifted its approach to marketing in response to the COVId-19 pandemic and why the changes they made have fueled impressive growth during this challenging time.
PFL has productized its solution for programmatic direct mail and now any company can use its software to integrate direct and dimensional mail into its overall marketing strategy.
In this episode, Marne talks about many of the use cases for programmatic direct mail, from account-based marketing to event promotions.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the PFL website
- Follow Marne on LinkedIn
- Contact Marne by email at marne@pfl.com
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Marne Reed, who is the chief evangelist at PFL welcome to the podcast Marne.
Marne (00:27): Thank you, Kathleen. I'm excited to be here today.
Kathleen (00:30): Yeah, I have to confess. I'm so interested in interviewing you because you have one of the most interesting career paths of anybody I've ever spoken to. You're a currently chief evangelist at PFL, but in your 18 year history with the company, which also we are going to talk about. Cause that's amazing. You have held leadership roles in HR, accounting software slash product. I mean you name it, you've done it. I think it's just so interesting. I don't think I've ever met anybody. Who's done software and accounting and HR before, but you're my hero. I think. So maybe start out by having you talk a little bit about your background and who you are and how you came to be doing what you are today, as well as what PFL does.
Marne (01:20): Yeah, absolutely. There's times that I feel a little insecure about my background. When you look at my resume, I think could Lord, if I ever needed to find another job, what in the world would I actually apply for? Because it has been all over the place. I actually started my career in human resources. And so starting off as a recruiter for a couple of different companies and then moved over here to PFL. I love working with people. I think if they ended the day, it's kind of what drives me. It's what motivates me is, is trying to understand people and their stories and what makes them successful. My other thing that I absolutely am driven by is just helping my employees be successful in their roles. And so that's kind of where it's driven me into all of these different departments that I've run and I love building machines.
Marne (02:09): And so, you know, when I started off in human resources, it's like, I'm a very competitive person. So I love making something that's going to be sustainable and that will grow. And at the end of the day, I also need stimulation. And so oftentimes I would go into my CEO and say, okay, you know, I've got this department humming, I need a new challenge. And I can remember the day that I walked into his office and I said, I'm looking for a new challenge. And I was thinking maybe like adding training and development potentially to my resume. And he said, how about you go run the software development team
Kathleen (02:44): Because that's a natural, right? No, I don't think so.
Marne (02:49): Oh no, no, that's not good. I don't know anything about it. He goes, no, you're going to go run the software developers. And it was a four year stint that I wouldn't at all, but it also helps me open my eyes to the level of technical detail that is required to run developers. And there were so many times where they'd say, Hey, Marne, you know, Hey, look at this code. You know, I want you to take a look at the software architecture of this code. And I thought, Oh Lord, this is not good. And love the people I loved helping them grow in their careers, but it was definitely, it stretched, stretched me to the point where I said, this is not the, the direction I want to take my, my career. And at that point, Andrew just said, we'll find your replacement.
Marne (03:35): And so I hired very gratefully my CTO now Casey Bartz who actually came over from Oracle is now running our software developer team. And I'm just, I like every day I just check in with him. How do you feel about your job? Is there anything I can do to help you remove your barriers? Because if he left, I would be crying crying many times, but after, you know, it was kind of a leap of faith for me because I thought, well, what am I going to do if I do hire my replacement? And Andrew just said, we'll figure something out. And at that time is when we actually started creating our new category, which is called tactile marketing automation. Historically all of our software development had been very internally focused to help with efficiencies and scale. We had come across this opportunity in our own marketing, where we were really struggling with getting our marketing dollars to be effective.
Marne (04:27): And we were trying to figure out how do we leverage all of our marketing channels using, you know, all of the data that we have acquired. And we have collected and have it be kind of a seamless flow. And so that's where we came up with this category of tactile marketing, where it was making sure that both your digital marketing channels and your offline channels, like your direct mail are actually working in harmony with each other. And that's the birth of that category that we created. And so at that point, Andrew said, well, we need someone to really help evangelize this because it's so different. It's not something that is out there currently. And that's where the chief evangelist role came in. And then there was other departments that kind of fell underneath me across different points of time.
Marne (05:16): And it was just something that I love leading teams. And, and so, you know, as an opportunity would present itself, Andrew would just kind of drop that department in underneath me. And I think the beauty of it is it has opened my eyes to so many different facets of the business, you know? So when I'm having conversations with our customers or our partners out there, I'm able to speak to so many different views of what's going on in someone's business. And it's been like a crash course of just learning every component of a business. So it's been fun.
Kathleen (05:52): I was just going to say, I, it listening to you talk about it. It really does make clear why having somebody who's had their hand in so many different facets of the business is perfect for a role like the one you're in now, because you really can kind of cover it from every angle. The other thing that resonated with me is it sounds like Andrew is just a great CEO to work for.
Marne (06:13): The challenges you, I tell you that he's, he's been I've learned more at my time at PFL than any college or any other role that I've ever been in, just because it's he definitely, he pushes you. He pushes you to learn and, and really be excellent in everything that you do. So it's sometimes exhausting,
Kathleen (06:35): But it must be good because you've been there for 18 years and it's so rare these days to find somebody who stays in one company for that long. And so I think it really speaks to the place that that has been built up there
Marne (06:48): It is. It's I absolutely believe in what we're doing. And I think, you know, what keeps all of our employees just, you know, moving forward is just watching what our customers are doing, watching what our partners are doing, seeing the success that we're helping them generate is a huge motivator for us. I think that makes, you know, any long days or obstacles that you come across in your role worth it is when you see customers that are just knocking it out of the ballpark. So it's, it's pretty motivating.
Kathleen (07:17): That's awesome. Well, one of the reasons I was really looking forward to speaking with you is that, and, and we didn't talk about this when we first spoke, but I owned an agency for 11 years. I sold it in 2017 and part of that business we had, we were digital agency, but we also sold promotional products. And, and we did some what we called at the time dimensional mailing and it was very manual, you know, we would, if we needed it. And it was the thing that kind of bridged the gap between the two sides of our business. So if we had a digital campaign on the one hand and we wanted to engage some of the leads that a client had gotten, we would put together really great custom boxes with promotional products, with messaging that tied in with the product and, you know, create a box with a custom wrap on it and send it out with a die cut, kind of foam insert for things to sit in.
Kathleen (08:09): And it was really cool and, and they always got amazing results. And in fact, some some of our best case studies came out of doing that because the response rates were so high to people receiving like packages in the mail as opposed to flat mail. And for that reason, I I'm so intrigued by the way, it's evolved since I got out of the game. And, and I love hearing you talk about tactile marketing automation and that now it has become this more automated process. So let's just start by having you explain what tactile marketing automation is.
Marne (08:42): Absolutely. And you described it really well which is, it's just the ability to have direct mail, be a channel, just like all of your other digital channels within your marketing campaigns. I remember when we first started this category, I would walk into, you know, one of our partners is Marqueto now owned by Adobe. And they, I walked into their marketing department and what I saw was just, it, it just made you want to cry a little bit, because what you saw was these brilliant marketers opening up a closet, pulling out swag, and then actually doing all of the packaging and the shipping of those items versus what they should be doing, which is marketing. And so the ability to have a direct mail piece just as an action step within your campaign makes all of that go away so that marketers can focus on being marketers.
Marne (09:35): And so very simply it's apps that we have created in many of them, different marketing automation platforms, where as you're building out your campaign flow, you can drag and drop an action to send a direct mail piece. And it makes the communication just seamless out to your prospects because you're sending an email you're sending in any kind of digital outreach. And if they're not engaging, maybe that's the time to send them a direct mail piece and it's all automated, and it's all leveraging the beautiful data that you're collecting within your marketing automation platform to influence what the messaging is, the personalization of that. And then even down to the imagery that you're having, so that you're really connecting with that end prospect with that physical piece, because you're right, it's, it's something that creates a lot of engagement, but it's also going to be the most expensive piece of your marketing campaign. So you want to make sure that it's going to knock it out of the ballpark and actually get the response rates that you're looking for.
Kathleen (10:28): I just, I have to laugh when I hear you talk about marketers packing things up, because true, true story, true story around the holidays, we did a lot of holiday gifting for our clients, and this was my, this is when my company was pretty small. And just about every Christmas, there would be at least one, if not, you know, four or five nights leading up to Christmas where we would have boxes piled to the ceiling in our house and our dining room table covered in cardboard, where we would turn it into essentially a fulfillment center. And, you know, we would have like boxes of crinkle and, and, you know, packing tape and all of it, like, and that's what we did because we were a small business and it had to get done and we would stand around and my husband and I would be cursing at each other over a bottle of wine. Like, why do we do this every year?
Marne (11:21): Yeah. So now, I mean, the, the, the application that we've built, it's very simple, you know, you're just creating a audience list within your marketing automation platform. So these are all your top tier accounts that you want to send out your holiday gifts to, and then you just trigger this end. All of those orders come into our fulfillment center. So we are the ones that are doing the work.
Marne (11:45): There's glitter everywhere. And like you said, crinkle, but yeah, so we're taking that burden off of marketers laps in order to automate that and really make it, you know, make it seamless and make it flow. And then the, I think the other cool part about it is it really gives you some great metrics and analytics on what's performing, and what's not performing in the past. If you did a direct mail campaign, like a batch and blast, you really don't know if it's successful or not, because it's really hard to track it. Where if you actually have it integrated into your marketing automation campaigns, then you have the ability to actually see what's creating a lift and what's not creating a lift.
Kathleen (12:19): Yeah. Now the key word, I think in what you've been talking about is automation and the ability to just like drag it into your workflows and hit, you know, hit a button and off it goes. So you mentioned that you have a partnership with Marqueto. Are there any other marketing automation platforms that you integrate with?
Marne (12:36): Yes. so right now we are partnered up with Salesforce CRM Salesforce marketing cloud and then Marqueto, and then Oracle Eloqua or the marketing automation platforms that we are integrated with.
Kathleen (12:50): That's great. And so if somebody is not using one of those platforms, can they still like take advantage of this as a standalone product? Does it have its own interface or app?
Marne (13:02): We do. So there's a couple of different ways that we're helping serve our customers. You know, I would say the vast majority of our customers at least have Salesforce CRM and say, you can trigger campaigns within the Salesforce CRM, but you also have the sales enablement component where you can enable your Salesforce to actually easily trigger this end of a one-off package. But we have many customers who are not using our technology and they're just using us as the print and fulfillment center. And so we certainly have many customers like LinkedIn and Oracle who are not leveraging the technology, but we're still being able to, you know, able to do those campaigns for them. I would say we also have some standalone solutions that people can use. You know, I always encourage people to use all of the data that they currently have. And so if you're using a standalone, you're not really leveraging all of the really great data that you're collecting.
Kathleen (13:49): Yeah, absolutely. Now what, talk me through just a few of the use cases for this. So how do you see marketers or sales teams using this kind of triggered automation of direct mail?
Marne (14:03): Well, right now it's super critical. I, I don't know if last time we talked, if I had mentioned that I had read a recent report and actually they just published a new one where the numbers are even worse. So HubSpot pushed out a report recently that said since the pandemic has hit the sales and marketing emails have actually increased the original report, which was back in June by 67% off of the baseline, which the baseline, you know, it was already horrific. And I think it jumped up to like 123% was their most recent one. And so what marketers are doing right now is they're just activating more email campaigns, just like, man, I'm not getting the numbers I want. So I'm just going to keep pushing this activation button. And I'm just going to hit Kathleen up with more emails to see if I might be able to get her attention.
Marne (14:47): And so, you know, I think marketers need to put, pause on what they're doing and really look at what's going to drive the engagement that they're looking for for their prospects. And so all of our customers are looking at it from every stage of the funnel and saying, okay, where do I need people to engage? And how do I get that engagement with them? I would say one of the use cases that really resonates with a lot of marketers is like an ABM strategy. And I know you recently interviewed Peter from Demandbase. Demandbase is one of our awesome customers and partners and they just, they've got it down. They are so good at understanding how do they engage with their audience in a way that is really going to help them drive their success metrics. And so taking a look at an APM approach, understanding who is your target accounts that you're going after, what are their personas within those target accounts?
Marne (15:37): And then making sure that you're sending a relevant message to those personas. And so if I'm talking to make maybe a marketing ops person, I might be focusing a little bit more on how do we help make their job easier. Versus if I'm talking at the C level, I might be speaking a little bit more to, how do I actually help you hit your revenue targets? And so being able to really understand who it is that you're marketing to, and then sending a piece to them that is going to resonate with them. And, you know, we always talk about, it's not about the church and the box. Everyone loves to get something that's branded. I get it. I think it's great too. You need to make sure that all of the messaging that you're putting within that package is actually helping provide some type of value to the individual that you're marketing to because you know, our customers are not going to get bribed into spending $60,000 on a software just because you said yes, exactly. In fact, I had a situation happen before, you know, when we were actually in the office where someone sent me this awesome Yeti mug absolutely loved it. It was not branded, there was no messaging around it. And it was just a wasted, it was a wasted expense on that person's part because they didn't hit, they didn't hit me up with any problem that I might be currently experiencing in order for me to want to have a conversation with them. So I think that messaging is super critical to really get that nailed down.
Kathleen (17:00): Yeah. And I love what you said earlier about needing to build off of data. Because when I think about this approach, it's, it's different than direct flat mail for a variety of reasons. One of which is that it is more expensive, right? If to me, if you're going to take this approach, you should invest in like really quality stuff to put in the box, like the cha-cha and the box, as you said you know, not just that the box itself, like there's, it's an investment that you're making. And the, the, there is somewhat of a correlation between putting, putting in a good amount of spend and getting a nice result. And, and so to me, like, there's that aspect of, of being picky and choosy about who you're going to send this to, because you know that this is your opportunity to the scales.
Kathleen (17:50): And because you're sending it to fewer people, you can invest more and really like knock their socks off with what you send, not just as you say, because you're sending a really cool product, but I've always found like the most effective campaigns to be the ones where there's a really strong tie in between the messaging and the actual items. So I'll share a cute story about one that did really well for us. My, and my husband, who at the time was my business partner, was the person who did all the creative behind the, so I give him full credit. And we were, we were working with one of the largest valet parking companies in the country, and they were trying to get meetings with the the, I guess it would be like the general managers of top, top hotels, like the four seasons, think of it, very hard person to get in front of.
Kathleen (18:39): And so we did a, it was like a four-part mailing to the, the small list of people. And one of them was where it was the kind of step in the campaign where we were sharing a social proof. And the thing that we sent was a, it was a plastic pitcher, like a drink, a drink where pitcher with the client's logo on it, or the, yeah, the client's logo and packets of Kool-Aid mix, which seems really cheap. But the messaging was, you know, here are all of our other clients that are already drinking the Kool-Aid for this company. And then it listed like all their success stories and the testimonials and this and that. And it was just clever. And we got such a great response to it, you know? And there were three other steps in the campaign, but I guess that's just an example of what I mean by like, it's, it's quality products, it's tying the messaging in, as you say, it's adding value and having something there to say, that's going to convince people. And to me, that all comes back to, like you said, that, that point of the data and knowing your audience really well and getting the right thing to the right person, which I guess is marketing one Oh one, but it's amazing how often people don't do it.
Marne (19:47): It is. It's true. I think people get really caught up in the, you know, I've got a task list that I need to check off, and sometimes you forget to actually look at it from the perspective of, is this actually going to drive the results that I'm looking at? And you know, most recently we did a, we partnered with demand gen report. They had their B2B SMX event recently, and we had such a blast partnering with them because one of the challenges that I think a lot of people are facing right now is because everything has gone virtual, we're all competing for that same slot, you know, that our webinar or that, that virtual event now. And so how do we actually engage with the people who have registered, but they're, you know, frankly, a lot of our customers, and we've even seen it a little bit ourselves where, you know, you have a lot of registrants, actually a higher number of registered, but you have a lower number of attendees because people will register for more things, but they find they get distracted in their day.
Marne (20:41): They're getting overwhelmed with their emails. And so, or they might think, well, I'll just catch the on-demand version. And so one of the things that we did with demand gen report is we actually created a kit to send out prior to the event. And it was really about, it was kind of like a booth in the box or event in the box. And it helped create that engagement of having people actually attend the event. Because one of the things that we did is we put in there and, and like you said, sometimes it can be a little cheesy, but it's fun. So it was a it was a coloring book. They actually had the agenda on there, but it also had notes section. So if you're a doodler, you know, you can be attending these sessions and doodle and then take a couple of notes on there. But in addition to that, we actually had almost like a treasure hunt form for them where they could attend these different sessions, find out what the key word is. And if they collected enough of these key words in the different sessions and attending some of the sponsors virtual booths they got nominated into win prizes. And so again, just kind of thinking of ways of how do you keep these, everybody who's virtual now, how do you keep them engaged during the event itself?
Kathleen (21:51): Well, fun fact, I got one of those. Did you need? Yeah, I got one of those boxes and it was great. And I remember because I have been in the business, I was opening it in my kitchen and my husband was there and I was like, I need to take a picture of this before we take it apart. Cause I love saving examples of really great mailings like that. And I did, I think it was really nice. You guys did a great job on
Marne (22:11): That. Thank you. It was fun. It was great.
Kathleen (22:13): So when you, I mean, you've obviously as a company, you drink your own champagne, you know, you do that sort of mailing all the time, but when you and I were talking, I thought it was interesting to hear how you needed to really pivot a little bit when COVID hit. Can you talk about that?
Marne (22:31): Absolutely. Yeah. We and I, I haven't talked to a single marketer that didn't have the same, like, Oh my gosh, everything just fell apart. Everything that I had planned this year is gone. You know, even our marketing team, we, we made t-shirts for our team members that had the list of all of the different in-person events that we were going to sponsor that year and, you know, March hit. And it was like, Holy crap. Now what? And even for us, it's like, you know, I think it was middle of March, everybody just scattered from the office and took their computers and went home. And the shock for us is if you think about it, where do I send a direct mail piece to at this point in time, I used to know that you were in your office, but now I don't know where you are.
Marne (23:18): And so we had about a two week period where it was just stop all of our direct mail campaigns. You know, we took out that step within our campaigns and we just froze basically. And one of the things that we found is, is, you know, our, all of our numbers just like went right in the toilet. Our email response rate dropped to a 9.7%. Our meeting booked rate went to a 0.9%. I mean, that's not sustainable for any business. And after a few weeks it was like, you know, we have to take a leap of faith and just, and just assume that we can make this work. And so one of the things that we did and eventually we productize this for our customers is we would actually put in our BDR outbound sequences, Hey, you know, this is what's going on.
Marne (24:07): And I know early on everybody mentioned the pandemic in coven. We kind of stripped that out because I think people were getting fatigued of hearing that. But we said, Hey, Kathleen, we'd love to still engage with you. It looks like you've been checking out some of these pieces of content. We'd love to send some more information to you. Is this your preferred mailing address? And so we would actually, I mean, to be able to get people's residential addresses, it's actually very easy. And so we would proactively say, is this a, is this an acceptable address for us to send you some information? After we did that, our email response rates actually jumped up to, it was a 21% reply rate on our emails. And then we had a over 10% meeting book tray. So, I mean, that's a pretty big leap up and for the people that actually confirmed their addresses, it jumped to a 22% meeting book trade.
Marne (24:57): And so it just showed that in the early phases, I think people were a little like uncertain. Do I really want to mix my personal life and my business life at this point in time though, Kathleen people like this is this personal life is your business is, you know, my, I have a desk in my bedroom. And so it's one of those things that at a certain point in my day, it's like, okay, this is office Marni and I was not bedroom Marne. And so you just keep going with it. And so it's something that we have actually launched a new product called preferred address capture, where we can help our customers actually collect those addresses. And I think, you know, you're, you're smart about the language that you use on the landing page that you're collecting the address, which is what is your preferred address versus what's your home address?
Marne (25:43): I think makes people feel comfortable. And then the other thing that we have coached our customers too, is, you know, once you've used that address, you can say, we'll only use this once and then we won't store it. And so we actually run scripts in our own CRM system that we'll delete that address out once we have collected it and used it that one time. So this is kind of business as usual at this point in time, you know, our customers are seeing great response rates with it. They can continue to engage and, and really like I said, hit those metrics that they're, they need to hit because our goals haven't changed. You know, everything else has changed in the world, but we still have our business goals that we have to hit.
Kathleen (26:20): So you're you say you have a product to help companies capture these addresses? What exactly does it do?
Marne (26:25): It's? so there's a couple ways that we coach our customers to do this one is they can create a simple web form within their campaign that will actually collect that address. And the other way is as if our customers do not feel comfortable actually collecting that address, then we actually are the one who are hosting the web forms so that they can still put it into their campaign or their outbound sequences. We collect the address, it comes into PFL secure database, and we are the ones who are actually running a script to delete that once we have done the mailing.
Kathleen (26:55): Got it. Okay. So, so you made the shift and it really had some great results for you. How do you see your clients taking a new approach in response to COVID? Has it, is it just about asking for addresses in a different way or the types of use cases evolving as well?
Marne (27:17): I think I don't know that the use cases are evolving too much other than the fact of, like I said, you're no longer doing in-person events and say you don't have a booth with a bunch of chops sitting there. A lot of our customers have repurposed what they were going to be using at their in-person events to actually package those up and put those out in their sequences. I think the booth in the box that I had mentioned earlier is a key component for people. You have to figure out how to keep your audience engaged in your virtual events. Demandbase, I know, like I said, you interviewed them earlier, they're just, they've done this virtual wine tasting that we are actually the ones who are fulfilling all of those bottles of wine and the branded glasses and stuff.
Marne (27:59): You know, I think it gives people an opportunity to just be a little bit more empathetic in your marketing and realize that people are tired, you know, and how do you still have the engagement that you're looking for, but also have that empathetic approach where it's like, let's just take a breather and have a glass of wine together. Some of the things that we're seeing our customers do is they're, they're segmenting their office audience a little bit to be smaller and more hyper-targeted and a little bit more of a VIP experience versus I'm going to reach out to 3000 people in this campaign and see if I can engage with them. So even at PFL, we're doing the same thing. We've been hosting a CMO book club where it's, let's learn from each other. So a little bit more round table sessions, VIP experiences. I think we'll see a shift to customers. And PFL in addition to that, doing more workshops where it's, hands-on smaller audiences again. But it's not just listening to, you know, listening to a webinar. I think that's people are getting a little worn out from that.
Kathleen (29:00): So if somebody came to you and said that they were interested in doing something like this, whether it's a booth in a box or, you know, a targeted mailer to a segment of their database talk me through how you all kind of guide and advise your customers on putting together a phenomenal experience in a box, because that's really what it is. It's not just, we're sticking a mug in a box and shipping it off. It's truly like a, a curated experience. So how do you approach that?
Marne (29:34): I think the first step that we take with our customers is just understanding what are the metrics that they're trying to shift, because that can really influence even the piece that you're sending. So if you're sitting at the top of the funnel, you're not going to be sending the 60 to $80 package to an individual, but you can still send really engaging, like you said, flat mailers, but they still, we do these things called infinity folds or even a reveal where it's still something that someone would engage with, but it's got a really nice amount of real estate on there to be able to put information that your prospect can read. But again, first step for us is to just understanding what are your KPIs and then how do we actually create something that's going to give you the return on the investment of the spend. And so at that point, once we have identified where in the funnel are you trying to influence what is a good ROI look like for you? And then at that point we engage, we have a, an entire consulting team that works with our customers to understand what are the different physical pieces that we can actually create for you. That's going to be on brand on message. And cost-effective, and get the return that you're looking for.
Kathleen (30:42): And does your team also work with clients on, on designing, like wraps for boxes and, and 'cause the thing that I always find sort of challenging is, you know, I can pick out great products. I can even create messaging that ties in with that product, but it's the whole, like putting it together. And how does it fit within the box in a way that looks really great. And how do you incorporate flat pieces within the box and the packing materials and the wrap and like just that whole branded coming together, I think is the tricky part where I, I would think that a team like yours that has done it a lot, it would be super helpful.
Marne (31:20): Absolutely. And so we have an entire product team. That's exactly what they do. We have both software products, but we also have, you know, the physical products that we need to look at for our customers. And so, you know, you had mentioned earlier the die cut foam insert that has the tray where, you know, you have the mug sitting in there and it's not going to move around. You know, we, we have done some of the most interesting R and D with just on her own where we wanted to figure out are these things gonna ship in a way that they're not going to get banged up? You know? So if you're spending a lot of money on a Yeti mug, you don't want it to get scuffed because it's not really from in the package. And so we have, in my opinion, some of the most brilliant people on our team that they're just, they're kind of like print geeks and print and packaging geeks, where they will actually sit there and do we'll ship packages to our other team members, just to see what it looks like on the other end. So we have fun with that. That's something that we have a great deal of experience with. So yes, we do a lot of consulting on that one.
Kathleen (32:19): I'm just picturing in my head, like you guys have a team of people in some room somewhere where they're packing things up in boxes and then throwing the box at the wall or dropping it off of the way for like, you know, when you had to do the, keep your egg alive in school, that is sort of what I'm imagining.
Marne (32:35): It's. I would say it's pretty darn close if, and you know, we're human, we've our own failures one year. This is, this was when we first started. So keep that in mind, we've gotten better, but we decided to send a holiday package to our customers and partners, and it was Montana honey with a little honey jar and, you know, it had messaging around it. And there was a couple instances where unfortunately, the honey did not make it intact. And so you would end up with a package that was stuck to someone's desk because, Oh, no
Kathleen (33:07): Tarred and feathered or something,
Marne (33:09): The point where we're like, okay, we need to really get good at this because we can't have our customers go through the same thing that we just went through where it's like, kind of embarrassed. Where are you going to go?
Kathleen (33:19): Yeah. Now, I don't know if you can share this, but are there any particular examples of things that you've seen that either PFL has sent out or that some of your customers have sent out that you thought are really cool and then have gotten a great response?
Marne (33:34): Oh, wow. There is so many
Kathleen (33:37): Other than the honey, of course the honey,
Marne (33:40): It was a fail on our part, but we learned from it. Salesforce does a really great job. They're a customer of ours and actually there's so many, I can't even, I don't even know if I could pick one out. One of the things I love about what Salesforce is doing is they're really into educating their customers and their prospects. And so, you know, it's educating, but it's also like they create evangelists out of their own ecosystem, you know? So they have a thing called trailblazers where they're really encouraging their audience to engage with their learning center, where they can take and get badges and certificates, but then they also send them, you know, like the Salesforce branded hoodie, but then they also send like badges of things that they like, the sort of certifications in the badges that they have gotten. And it's like, people just are a walking advertisement for them. But then their industry, like industry specific newspapers or not newspapers, but industry specific catalogs that they have are really great because it really resonates again with their audience. So Demandbase always does such a great job.
Kathleen (34:51): Do you all, now, you said you work with Salesforce, do you know offhand? They have a book. And, and a few years ago we got a mailing with their book and it had a belly band around it and had a bookmark in it was that you guys that did that, I'm pretty sure that was us. Yeah, it was so good. I took pictures of that too.
Marne (35:10): And it's simple, you know, it's, it's simple stuff like the belly band that you've talked about. That's just such a great way to make someone feel special because you're having to slide it off. Like again, that engagement factory unwrapping a present. It is, it is. Yeah. And one loves opening packages. I mean, I buy stuff from Amazon all the time and I know I've bought it and then it shows
Kathleen (35:31): You're like myself.
Marne (35:33): I know. So it just, I think it goes just to show that really, you know, it does make you feel special to open something and if something's even in an envelope but I've gotten mail to my house, I still open it and look at it and it really creates kind of a, a good brand experience.
Kathleen (35:50): Yeah, that's so true. So last question, and then we'll shift gears for a minute which is really, if somebody is listening and they're like, this sounds great. I want to incorporate this into my marketing. Are there volumes below? Which it doesn't make sense? Like if somebody, if someone's going to come to you and say, I want to work with PFL, what's the minimum quantity of things that they would be sending out.
Marne (36:14): Yeah. I, and I do think there's a minimum. I don't really have a specific number in mind, but if someone says, I want to enable my sales team and we're probably going to send, you know, five to 10 pieces a month, I would say it doesn't make sense to, to purchase a software at that point. You know, you want it to be something that's really going to be ingrained both in your marketing and your sales culture where you will be sending out, you know, at least, you know, maybe a couple of hundred pieces a month. It would be some of the threshold I'd look at, but again, like Salesforce sent out, they sent out four packages and these packages were $800 packages to these very strategic C-level people in one organization in order to get a really big like brand boom. But in that case, that was just kind of like a one off scent that they did versus something that's really systematic within their marketing campaigns. And so that would be a couple of things that we had talked to our customers about is again, what's how do we develop that ROI? And if we can develop the ROI by doing, you know, 20 cents a month, that's great. But more than likely, you're probably looking, we have customers they're sending like hundreds and thousands of pieces a year. Oh yeah.
Kathleen (37:28): That's so fascinating. I mean, I think it would be just so much fun to be a fly on the wall in your production room, just watching all this stuff get put together. But that's the nerd in me from my former fulfillment days.
Marne (37:39): It's good. Well, and we even have, so one of our, our companies that we're working with is a very large medical supply organization. And we do all of their supply, their medical supply fulfillment. And so a great example, and this is the first division that we worked with. And so here's one that we'll kind of make your eyes pop a little bit. So they have a very large incontinence program. And so, you know, their objective for a medical supply company is it's, whoever gets a sample out to an individual or to a medical facility first they've done studies that have shown that they're going to be the one that the, the company selects. And so with their incontinence program, we have roughly about 7,000 square feet of adult diapers in our facility that we have shrink, wrapped into a two pack with a little note card that says, you know, dear Marne, this is the you've gone and selected the, you know, the size and the here's the PR you know, the, the perks of the product and stuff like that. So, I mean, just the, the use cases as you had mentioned were they're all over the place. It's really interesting.
Kathleen (38:45): That's so fascinating. Well, I would love to dig into that more because I'm sure there's literally thousands of those great stories sitting in your facility somewhere. But we're going to run out of time. So I want to change over and ask you the two questions. I always ask all my guests. The first one is we always talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast because it's the inbound success podcast. So is there a particular company or individual that you think is really nailing it when it comes to inbound marketing these days?
Marne (39:16): I'll mention, I'll mention one person that has just actually, there's two people that I'll mentioned, and these are two young ladies that I'm so proud of in their marketing, you know, they're up and comers. I, they have no ceiling ahead of them, which is very exciting. Delaney Coatesville from Demandbase she's phenomenal. She is someone that I absolutely love getting on the phone with and listening to the marketing strategy, the execution that she does, she's just she's. She is like on fire. The other person I would mentioned is Katie Kelly. She actually was formerly with blinking where she was formerly with she's with you, to me right now, and dynamic signals who she was West. She's another one that I just I'm so impressed by these young ladies who just, you never see a boundary, you never see an obstacle. They just, they, they own it. They're super talented. And then I love watching my partners. I mean, Marquetto Oracle, I mean, Oracle had kind of I didn't see them do a huge marketing push, but it seems like, like just in the last year, they've really been more focused on their marketing and their messaging and being more personable. And then Salesforce just always blows it out of the park.
Kathleen (40:37): I love that. A couple of examples that everybody's heard of, and a couple of examples that probably a lot of people haven't, so something new to check out there. The second question is digital marketing is always changing so quickly. This year is the greatest example of, you know, just how lightening fast the change can be. How do you personally educate yourself and stay up to date on that whole landscape?
Marne (41:00): I think the best way to stay up to bait up-to-date is just listening to our customers. We have, our customers are all marketers. And so, you know, to have all of these at our fingertips to listen what their challenges are and what they're doing to solve those challenges. To me, that's, that's more than reading you know, a website out there that's educating, it's listening to the people who are like feet on the street, the people who are actually to their elbows in it and had hearing what's going on in their world. So we have such amazing customers that are willing to share all of that information with us and share what's working and what's not working. And then we are able to then take that information and educate our other customers and educate ourselves on that.
Kathleen (41:51): Great. All right. Well, if somebody is listening and wants some more information about what you've talked about, or they have a question and want to connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Marne (42:03): Oh, I would love for them just to reach out on email and just have a conversation. You know, I love to hear where people stuck points are and see if PFL could potentially help unstick those stuck points. You know, it's we can learn so much from each other and I love things I love when we have the opportunity just to be an open book and share information with each other. So certainly happily I'll share my email address and just reach out and have a conversation.
Kathleen (42:30): Awesome. All right. What's the email, I'll put it in the show notes.
Marne (42:33): Awesome. It's Marne, M a R N e@pfl.com.
Kathleen (42:38): I love it. And of course had to pfl.com. You can learn more about the company and the software, and I'm sure see some examples of things. Cause you guys have so many cool ones. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode or you learn something new, I would love it. If you would head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast a review, that's how other people discover us. And of course, if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Marne. This was a lot of fun.
Marne (43:12): Thanks, Kathleen. I definitely enjoyed it today.
How would your marketing results change if you could achieve 90% open rates and 60% reply rates to your emails?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, 7 Figure Millennials podcast host Brandon Fong talks about the email marketing strategies he used to help SuperHuman Academy hit its ambitious growth goals, and how he's built on that experience to create the "Magic Connection Method" of email outreach.
Through his podcast and consulting services, Brandon is on a mission to change what success means for an entire generation of young entrepreneurs—and he's using all the marketing lessons he learned in his own career to help others achieve their goals.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit BFo.ng/inbound to get a free copy of Brandon's training program on the Magic Connection Method
- Learn more about the Magic Connection Method (and use promo code 7FM to get $500 off the package)
- Connect with Brandon on LinkedIn
- Listen to the 7 Figure Millennials Podcast
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Brandon Fong, who is the host of the seven figure millennials podcast. Welcome to the podcast, Brandon.
Brandon (00:26): Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Kathleen (00:29): I would love it if you could tell people your story, because I think you have such an interesting journey in terms of where you've worked and what you're doing now. So maybe you could talk a little bit about your background and then explain about seven figure millennials and some of the things that you've got kind of that you're working on at the moment.
Brandon (00:46): Yeah, absolutely would love that. So I always like to start my story at Wisconsin Hills middle school. So I know it was a little earlier than most people would start, but that's where my story started. And I remember very specifically, I'd be sitting in the classroom and the lunch bell would ring. And like, if you remember from when you're in middle school, if you're listening to this right now, you know, whatever the environment of a middle school is with all the obnoxious sixth graders flooding into the hallways and stuff like that. And if you look closely, you'd see, I always carry this picture on my desk. So if you're listening as you can't hear it, but I have a picture of little nerdy Brandon.
Kathleen (01:17): As you're, as you're saying this, I'm actually going to screenshot it so that somebody is listening, then they can go to the show notes and see the picture of little Brandon. So here we go. All right, got it.
Brandon (01:29): Well, if you're listening, I had this big bugs bunny gap in my teeth. I had a, the, the, you know, these cute little glasses that I didn't really like that much, but so if you look closely at the halls of my middle school, you'd see little nerdy, Brandon hanging out behind everybody else, kind of procrastinating on his way to lunch. And you may be wondering why the heck would any sixth grader procrastinate on like the one time of freedom that they have during their day. Right. And the reason why is because when I would go through the lunch checkout line, I'd have my plastic tray with the curly fries or the chicken nuggets or whatever was on sale for the day. I put it down next to the lunch lady, I type in my student ID. And then up on the screen, it would show the words, Brandon Fong, $0 and 0 cents.
Brandon (02:05): And the reason why it showed that is because I qualified for the free lunch program. And I was just so embarrassed. Like some days I would even hide out in the bathroom and try to distract my friends, or I would try to make some jokes. So they wouldn't see the screen or something like that. And I was super frustrated back then because I wished I had more resources. I wish I had more money. Right. But what my incredible parents taught me from a very early age is that if you, if you want to be successful, it's not about the resources. It's about learning how to be resourceful. And so one of the number one things that they taught me from a very early age was the power of connection. And so they would actually let me skip school when I was 16 years old and go to local networking events.
Brandon (02:40): So I would be this 16 year old would probably be like oversized you know, dress clothes that didn't really fit me in that kind of stuff, but I'd be learning how to talk with these kinds of people. And so if you fast forward five years, I kind of kept practicing the skill of connection and learning how to connect with people. And so my senior year of college, I ended up reaching out to a really successful entrepreneur. His name was Jonathan Levy. He was the host of the superhuman Academy podcast. And I just reached out to him and that turned into an incredible, it kind of felt like David versus Goliath though, you know, it was like, who was I, some college kid reaching out to the successful entrepreneur, but that turned into an incredible relationship where I ran his marketing for over three years helped I was on the team where we added over a hundred thousand students through the online courses, a 1.5 million downloads added to his podcast or his YouTube channel.
Brandon (03:26): And on top of that, Jonathan got into this really high level group called genius network. And if you're not familiar with it, it's a high end mastermind. It cost $25,000 a year to attend. You need to make at least seven figures to be in there. And Jonathan got accepted into this group and I got to go along with Jonathan and participate and engage with those meetings with people at incredibly high levels. So it was crazy. Cause it's like here I was this little kid just wanting more money. And then I got catapulted. I was the youngest person in the room at genius network at age 22. And I had this opportunity to learn directly from some of the world's most successful people. And so all that to say, there's really two main things I'd like to share about why share that story. One. I learned the power of connection.
Brandon (04:05): I learned that you were just one connection away and it's been very true in my life that whenever I went to the next level, it's always been because of a connection with somebody. And so that's the key key lesson number one and key lesson. Number two is like, again, like I said, I had the opportunity to catapult into and see what success looked like. And if I went on the path I was on, I saw that there were incredibly successful people that seem like they approach success a little bit differently than other people. They like, they prioritize their happiness, their health and their relationships, and they're still incredibly successful. But at the same time, Kathleen, you and I have both heard stories of entrepreneurs or people that are incredibly financially successful, but they're like miserable on the inside still. And so that, that was the inspiration behind the seven figure millennials brand is to inspire millennial entrepreneurs, to prioritize their happiness, health and relationships while achieving their biggest entrepreneurial and financial goals.
Brandon (04:54): So I'm on a mission right now to change the global conversation around what success means for an entire generation of entrepreneurs. Because I don't think that we can call someone successful if if they are still working on, you know, I mean, obviously there's, there's some elements to it, but I, I think that the true definition of success should definitely include the happiness perspective of it. So that's how I got my whole start and this whole stuff I've been working on some beer millennials since the I think it was September of this year. So it's all new I've, I've, I'm on my own since leaving Jonathan's company as a may of this year. So just over six months now. So it's been an incredible journey and I'm excited for diving into any aspect of that that you want to dive into.
Kathleen (05:30): Well, I just have to say that I wish I had half of your energy and enthusiasm when I was your age. My life would probably look completely different right now, but that's awesome. I love like just your hustle and your, you know, the drive you're putting into doing what you're doing. I was really interested when you and I first connected in some of the things that you were able to accomplish at superhuman. As you said, you, during your time there, which was just a couple of years, you enrolled more than a hundred thousand students into the programs. There you increase podcast downloads by 1.5 million. You grew the YouTube channel by 15,000 subscribers through the Facebook community to more than 32,000 people, et cetera. And you were also primarily responsible for managing an email list that had more than a hundred thousand people on it.
Kathleen (06:20): And email I know was a key part of, of how you all accomplished what you did. So I wanted to just start by digging into the topic of email because we all do it. It's not going anywhere. Despite everybody always constantly, again and again, saying emails, dead emails, dead. It's not dead. I don't know that it's going to die anytime soon. And so it's definitely a skill that I think we all need to master. So let's, let's sort of break it down. Like what, talk to me a little bit about what you did at superhuman, the approach you took.
Brandon (06:50): So when it comes to email marketing, I think that it's really, I actually, with any marketing topic, it's really easy to go super complex and you want to do all this fancy pants, automations and that kind of stuff, but like sometimes automations can get in the way of you actually making money and helping people, right? If you make things too complicated. So I think at the end of the day, simplicity is really key. And so I was really focused on lots of like the, the content that was going out on a weekly basis, how to send engaging content, get people to engage with those emails, make sure our deliverability was high, that, that people were responding and, you know, increasing our engagement score on those platforms. And I think that, you know, just at a high level, some really important things to talk about here.
Brandon (07:29): And I know you have some very advanced listeners, but I think for me, it's always been crazy to think about, you know, the fundamentals, like what are the fundamentals, the things that are always true that will continue to be true. And then how can we make sure that we're not forgetting that in, in, in all this crazy stuff that we're going on? So whenever I was creating an email automation or a broadcast email, I think it's really hard. Or it's really easy to think, Oh, I'm writing to a hundred thousand people right now. Right? But like, to me, whenever I would sit down to write an email, it's always about how am I writing to one person? Cause it's like, your language is entirely different if you're trying to talk to masses and then nobody actually responds to it. So I think in our world today with marketing, with lots of rooftop marketing is what I, what I've been calling it lately where people are just kind of screaming from a rooftop, but like how can you create engaging content that get people to lean in and make them really interested in engaging with what you're doing?
Brandon (08:15): So we can, we can talk a little bit more about that. We can also talk about, I think there's another interesting topic where it's like, people think that they have to create either content or promotions and they view them as two completely separate things. But there's some other ways that you can make sure that you're doing hybrids, that you're, you're, you're engaging people and also moving them forward through your funnel and that kind of stuff. So however you want to take it or we can dive into anything else. I said that before, too.
Kathleen (08:36): I'm really happy that you talked about writing as though you're writing to one person because that's, I so strongly believe in that that's something that I do. I think in, in the email marketing world, they call that the rule of one, like you should have one person in your head and you're writing that email to that one person. So talk me through like how that plays out as you're putting your email together.
Brandon (08:56): It's funny. Cause like, you know, sometimes I'll even go into Gmail and I'll write my email on Gmail, just because it's like, when you're sitting inside of your, you know, your ESP or your, you know, active campaign, you know, whatever you're using, it's like, it's easy to like kind of lose sight of what you're doing. So sometimes if I'm stuck, if I'm like this doesn't sound right, I'll literally just pretend I'm writing an email inside of a Gmail. So I mean, I, I, I can take that in many ways. I mean, for me I'm a huge copy nerd, so I'm always studying copy. So like I'm always looking at creating what Joe Sugarman calls, the slippery slide effect where it's like, you read the first word and then you can't help or you read the first sentence, you can't help but read the next sentence.
Brandon (09:33): And then it leads to the next sentence and the, before the end, you pop out and you, you know, you're at the call to action or whatever it is. So for me, it's always about short, concise sentences. It's about very seeing, seeing, I'll usually write an email and then I'm like, what can I subtract here? How can I say this more concise? How can I cut out the fluff? And how can I really just get to the heart of the matter? Maybe there's some, you know, explanations or things that just didn't belong there. So I'm always reading my emails out loud. I'm always you know, like I said, checking to see how I can make it more concise. And I'm looking at creating that, that slippery slide so that people pop out at the end and are really interested in engaging with whatever content was being sent.
Kathleen (10:09): I would love to get your take on subject lines because obviously with email marketing, it all starts there. If you can't get somebody to open your email, you're dead in the water. I have, I have certain opinions about this. And it, and it relates to this topic of writing. Like you're writing to a singular person because marketing subject lines are really, really different than the subject lines we write when we're just writing to connections or friends. You know, oftentimes when we write to connections and friends, like we don't, we're not using title case in our subject lines, for example you know, in fact it may all be lowercase and we're not necessarily telling them like what what's in the email. It could be something simple like FYI, I thought you might be interested. I dunno, like how do you, how do you handle that? Because there's a certain school of thought that like your subject line with marketing emails should, should tell people what they're going to find in the email. And then there's another school of thought that's like, no, it should just literally be something that grabs their attention and gets them to open it.
Brandon (11:10): It's a great question. Sometimes when I'm stuck with subject lines, like I studied lots of viral headlines. Like I have a spreadsheet that like I've went and I've researched like bunch of content that has done really, really well. So I'm always modeling what's working in this space. And another thing that I'll do is like, I have an email where I'm subscribed to dozens, hundreds. I don't even know maybe at this point, thousands of different newsletters. And so sometimes I will scroll through and I can say, okay, if my email was competing with all these other emails and it was in this inbox right now, would I be compelled to click on it? And so those are some of the small tests that I do. I mean, there's, it's interesting. Cause you brought up like the difference between sending a marketing email and an email to a friend because something that I do sometimes depending on the kind of engage, the automation that I'm running right now, but sometimes I will create an email that will look like it's an outreach.
Brandon (12:04): So like some, like it just has to do with the formatting too. So it's like, I'll create an email that will look like it's actually coming from somebody that's not in the marketing world. So I'll make sure that it's not centered. I'll make sure that, that it's, it's kind of like, I test it to make sure that if I want to open in Gmail, it actually looks like it's being sent by somebody. So there's different things that you can do. There's this concept of a nine word email by Dean Jackson which I don't know if you've ever experimented with that personally, but like we found that to work really, really well when we were at superhuman and the concept of a nine word email is basically the fact that it's just, it's just, it's exactly what it is. It's a nine word email.
Brandon (12:39): So it's like you send the message and it's simply a question like, are you, are you in, are you interested in whatever the outcome that your company is working on right now? And that's it, it's just a question. And then it's kind of a strange thing to get in your email inbox because people are used to these really long emails, but then you get this nine word email, and it's just a question. It looks like it's coming directly from the person and you can get incredible responses from that and then take that opportunity of those responses to engage with them and enroll them, or, you know, figure out a resource that you can provide them. But that's another thing that I've been really obsessed with now especially in today's world where we want real connection with people is how can I get people to reply to the email? And then how can I just leverage customer service or, you know, another opportunity to just engage with them and really make them feel like they have a relationship with the brand. Because like I said, it's like, we feel like we're being yelled at all the time. At least sometimes I feel like that way. So it's just like, how can you get people to lean in and actually respond and engage and train, train that behavior of like somebody's actually interacting with you as if they would interact with somebody else.
Kathleen (13:39): So what is working for you to get people to engage?
Brandon (13:41): I think the easiest thing too, is like when, when you were sending an email that is designed to get somebody to engage, you have to make it easy for them to respond to it. So like you think about these two questions reply yes. To this email, you know, it's like easy for someone to copy it, copy and paste the word. Yes. Or tell me what the number one goal is that you're focused on right now. And there's a time and a place for both. But if you're looking at simply just getting somebody to respond and open the door to a conversation, you want to make it super easy. So sometimes I found that to work where you just give them a prompt, like just say, Hey, respond with this specific phrase and then we can go. So like, those are obviously easier to get people to respond if you have something very specific like that. But if you, if you're looking at a different kind of engagement where you're wanting people to signal and say, for example, you're validating a new product offer or something, you know, like you, you wouldn't want people as as many responses, but you'd be more interested in the quality of responses and people self segmenting based on their interest. Right. So then you could ask a more specific question that will lead to a less, a lower reply rate, but most likely higher qualified leads.
Kathleen (14:42): Yeah. That's, that's really interesting. What about, I mean, the other topic I'm always fascinated with, with email is just kind of list management, right? Like email it's so easy to abuse, email and send too much too frequently. Also keep people on your list who maybe aren't engaged. So it's kind of a big topic, but what's your approach to that?
Brandon (15:10): Huh? This is something that I was kind of learning a little bit more on the tail end of superhuman. It's like, how can you make sure that you're cleaning up your list appropriately? How can you make sure that you're unsubscribing people that aren't engaged? So I mean, I guess I can kind of distill a little bit of, of, of what I've kind of taken as my approach, but I mean, right now it's like, I want to make sure that people are engaging with me and if they're not engaging with a certain amount, I have like automations that will track. If they've engaged within a certain amount of time, lots of ESPs will have standard automations to determine with tagging how often they are engaging with your content. And then if they're, if they've been moved to the disengaged tag, which could be, you know, up to 90 days plus of disengagement, then you move them to a separate list, which you can then try to re-engage them.
Brandon (15:55): But another thing that I've been experimenting with that maybe this is kind of like a newer topic, but it's like, how can you completely move them from your ESP and move them to a different ESP because you're ruining your sender score if you're sending to unengaged people, but at the same time, they haven't told you that they didn't want to hear from you. And so there's a chance they might re-engage. So that's something that I, I I'll just be completely transparent. Like I haven't really experimented with this as much, but like something I'm really excited to do potentially is moving to a different ESP, still continuing to send the, the content. And then when they re-engage moving them back to my primary ESP so that I can keep the engagement score high. So that was kind of just a riff, but hopefully I can,
Kathleen (16:31): It's really interesting that you bring that up because I always struggle with that. Like, and maybe I'm just an internal optimist, but I don't, I don't want to ever completely write off my disengaged people, but you're right there. There's such you risk a lot by constantly emailing them. So you do have to be very selective in how you choose to send things to those people. And that's an interesting approach that you just mentioned.
Brandon (16:54): Yeah. And I, Oh, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say too, I think something that I've, I've studied from and I've seen work really well too, is like, I think I mentioned it at a high level before. It's like, people will think that you have to do content and promotions and you view them as two kind of separate things at once. But something that I've learned recently, I saw it being done in genius network. I saw it being done. I'm learning from this guy named Dan Kechele right now. And he uses this a lot right now, but there's this, there's this thing called the super PS. And so what, you may have the right offer, but it might not be the right timing, right. It may even be the right target market, but it's like, it's just not the right time for them.
Brandon (17:31): And so the number one thing you can do is make sure that you're giving more offered more frequently so that when it is the right timing, they're ready to move forward. So that's another thing that was kind of a switch for me recently. It's like, okay, I don't have to view this as, Oh, I'm only sending value based content. I'm only sending a promotion right now. How can I, my podcast content or a YouTube video or any other kind of con content I'm creating. And then in the PS say, Hey, what PS, whenever you're ready, here are three ways that I can help add value to your business or, you know, whatever the topic is. And then it's like linked to the podcast link to a front end product, you know, or whatever, based on tagging. If you want to go more dance, you could or, you know, subscribe or check out other pieces of content. So that's a, that's a way that you can easily add value to people while simultaneously providing them with next steps to move forward in the next step of the value letter and not view it as something that's completely separate from each other, but rather working together at the same time.
Kathleen (18:26): I am a huge fan of the PS. So I'm really glad that you mentioned it. I think it's, it's very underused by marketers and I've actually seen really good results. So that's interesting that you brought that up. Another question. So before you mentioned setting, sending emails that look as though they came from somebody's personal Gmail, another thing that I love that when do you use that approach versus when do you use like a more formatted email stuff?
Brandon (18:54): Good question. So I, I am taking the approach right now with my email list is I'm kind of starting fresh and have the opportunity to relearn from, from what I experienced with managing the email list with a hundred thousand people. So it's like when I'm starting a relationship with someone, I want to set the tone right away that I am just a human that they can respond to and interact with. And so in those initial automations, I try to make it look more like it's coming from me. And, and so it'll be formatted more like a Gmail and asking them to reply to things frequently I'll even like follow up on an email that I sent. That's something that people don't do that much when it comes to sending, setting an email automation, but it's like, I'll send the first, you know, whatever they subscribed with and then I'll wait a day and then if they didn't open or apply to that, then I'll, I'll follow up and say, Hey, I'm just bumping this to the top of your email inbox.
Brandon (19:41): Like I copied and paste the message. Sometimes things get lost in cyberspace because especially when you're sending the first email you're dealing with, you know, the spam, spam, spam filters, and if you're getting lost in the, the promotions tab and that kind of stuff. So that's, I mean, that's a really high level response to that is that in the initial automations, I'll be sending stuff that, that makes more look like I'm sending from them. If I'm sending out a podcast, maybe I make it, I make it more centered and it's kind of more of a broadcast email, but I kind of switch it up. You know, I, I just, I don't want people to get used to one particular thing. So I'm always looking at like making it interesting and engaging. And depending on the context, if I want them to reply more, or if I want them to simply just click on something, then it might depend I'll switch the format. I think.
Kathleen (22:10): I'm glad you brought up that you resend things to people who haven't opened your emails, because I've always thought that that was a big missed opportunity also for marketers where, you know, you pour all this energy into creating a, what you think is a great email. You could send it out to potentially a very large list and then some percentage, usually a fairly large percentage, because let's be honest, open rates, generally average somewhere between let's call it 12 and 25%. So 75% plus of your recipients don't even open it. A lot of marketers just sort of like say, Oh, well, right. But I like that approach. Or do you change your subject line when you do that? Like, how do you, what do you do to see if you can get somebody to open it when they didn't do it the first time?
Brandon (22:58): Yeah, you can switch the subject line around. That's like a really simple way of doing it, but I guess this doesn't directly answer your question, but another thing I'm really excited about right now that I've been experimenting with is this concept of trigger emails. And basically what that is. It's like when somebody clicks or replies to an email, you can set up an automation that sends an email, the second that they opened or clicked. Cause you know, that they're in their email inbox already. And so say for example, you were sending out a piece of content that was related to a product that you have out, and it's just a piece of content. So you could send that out and then they, if they clicked on it, obviously they're interested on that topic. And then that can trigger an automation to go out, to send another email. That would be like, Hey, I saw you're interested in this topic. Here's, you know, maybe a front end value ladder thing that you could add a that's more like a cheaper product, or maybe it's a book to a phone call. If you're, if you're doing that, that kind of another interesting thing that I'm like, how can you create an automation where they're, you know, they're already engaged because they just clicked on it or they just replied to it. And then you toss in the automation to follow up on the back.
Kathleen (24:08): Yeah. I love, I love that triggered sequence. That's really cool. I guess you have to have like a decent email platform or marketing automation platform in order to trigger it though. Right?
Brandon (24:17): I actually, you know what, I haven't experimented with different ESP. I'm an active campaign fan. So I know you can do an active campaign, but I know it's fairly common that inside of an ESP, you can click it and tag someone based on a click or tag someone based on a reply. And then typically on other ESPs, you can send another automation based on a tag being added or based on a click in an email. So those are some standard ways, but yeah, I wouldn't be able to comment on how to do that within different ESPs, outside of active campaign. Yeah.
Kathleen (24:47): So shifting gears for a second, you, you spent a lot of time at superhuman, really, you know, sharpening your email skills and now you've left and you're out on your own and you're refining kind of some new approaches to emailing. And I know you have one, you call the magic connection method and right now it's your number one marketing strategy. So I would love it if you could break down what that is and explain kind of how it works and how it's getting you such great results.
Brandon (25:15): Yeah. And I know we're talking about inbound here, so I want to make sure that this has relevance to the conversation here. So it's like, you know, if you're in SEO, you're getting back links. If you want to create YouTube, grow your YouTube channel for more inbound leads like you want to have partnerships, same with a podcast, you need to get gasser. If you want to get featured on podcasts, you need to outreach. So like that's where or strategic partnerships for that, for that matter for any kind of content creation, that's where the magic connection method really comes into play because it is, it is a cold email process that I'm using right now. That's getting about 90% open rates, about 50% reply rates and, and, and opening the doors to incredible conversations that lead to relationships that can help, you know, any in any marketing activity for that matter.
Brandon (25:56): So I'd love to walk through the three steps, the three steps that people can use. Okay. So it's pretty simple. I'll give a high level overview. So there's three steps. The first part is the hook. The second part is the irresistible offer. And the third part is the no oriented question. And I will say before I dive into those three things, the whole goal of this magic connection method process is simply to get them to respond to the email. That's it. And I see this like being an issue a lot in the marketing space, it's like, you'll send an email to develop a partnership relationship. And it's like, people will ask for a call right away, or they'll try to send to, you know, a website and say, get back to me or something like that. I just want to make it as simple as possible for someone to respond to my email so that then I can engage in the relationship and, and figure out if it's even a right fit.
Brandon (26:41): If there's a way that we can go else elsewhere. So that's the whole goal is to get them to respond. So the first part is this part that I call the hook and the biggest mistake that people make with the opening lines of an email. And you've seen this Kathleen and they make it all about them, right? Like, hi, my name is Brandon Fong, and I've done blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've worked at this company and I own this cool thing. And you're kind of just like, Whoa, like, I don't like, I'm sorry, but I don't really care at this point, you know, or, or your email inbox, your LinkedIn inbox is a perfect example.
Kathleen (27:08): Oh God, don't get me started
Brandon (27:11): Like, Hey, you're a human. And we're both wearing a blue colored shirt. Like let's connect them
Kathleen (27:15): Or even worse. It's Hey, you're a human. I would like to sell you my SEO services proposal. How come you haven't called me back yet.
Brandon (27:24): Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, so how can we stand out from the noise? It's very simple. It's just that we just have to show that we care about the person that we're reaching out to. Right? So the very first part, it's not something that you can copy and paste because you have to actually do the research on somebody to reach out to them. So some of the most powerful things that you can use in this first part is if you have a mutual connection, that's like the strongest one. Otherwise if you've consumed their content and enjoy their content or got results from their content, you can share a compliment on that if you like their experience on a company. So this, it depends on your ability to do research on the person that you're reaching out to. And I, somebody asked me the day when you use a magic connection method, email versus a non other kind of email, and I'm like, I'm sorry, it's black or white for me.
Brandon (28:06): It's either, I'm going to take the time to research somebody and like, actually make sure I'm developing a relationship or I'm not going to send the message at all. So, so that's kind of the first part. It's one to three sentences show that you are actually took the research time and time to research them. The other comments I'll make here. And I don't think this is, as you know, maybe this isn't something that as irrelevant to your audience, but it's like, it's, it's one to three sentences. Sometimes I see people like they go from one to three sentences to like creeper and stalker status where it's like the way a book on you. And it's like, no, that's, that's getting weird. Let's just keep it to like one to three sentences show that you, you, you know, short, concise sentences that we cared about them.
Brandon (28:41): So that's, that's the hook. The next part is the irresistible offer. So I'll usually transition by saying something along the lines of like, besides wanting to share that with you. I do have a quick question for you and the irresistible offer. There's a big difference between a normal offer and an irresistible offer. And so the example that I actually heard, somebody brought it up the other day and I've been using this as an example, Kathleen, have you seen those companies that are doing mattress sales online, they're selling mattresses online. So I love this as an example for an irresistible offer, because it's like, think about the traditional way that you would buy a mattress before these online retailers is that you would have to go into a store. You would kind of awkwardly lay on this mattress in the middle of a department store with like your jacket on.
Brandon (29:24): And it's just like, you don't know if that's actually would be comfortable at night and then you have to make this decision, this purchase decision for something that you're gonna sleep on for however many years, are you gonna own that mattress? Right? So that's kind of a terrible, terrible user experience, I guess. So these online retailers, what they've done is they've created an irresistible offer and they say, Hey, Kathleen, what we'll do is you take our quiz and we will ship you the mattress. You can try it for 100 nights, sleep it in your own home, your comfy, PJ's tested out drool on the pillow, what I say, you know, whatever you do at night, make sure it's a good fit for you. And then if you don't like it, you can send it back for a hundred percent money back guarantee. So that's an example of an irresistible offer. You make it very easy for, for that person to say yes to it. You made it very they had a lot to gain from it and you minimize the risk right? The time and money risk is like you showed. So those are some of the keys of creating an irresistible offer.
Kathleen (30:13): I have to interrupt you for one second, because when you were describing the mattress buying experience, all I can think of in my head was what if we like put on our pajamas and went to the mattress store in our PJ's with blankets and pillows to try to mostly as possible experience.
Brandon (30:33): Yeah. Can I take a nap here?
Kathleen (30:36): No, I, that, that picture just came into my head really, really clearly. So I definitely think that the irresistible offer is much better.
Brandon (30:42): Yeah, yeah. I would say so. Yeah. And there's a, there's a quote by Dean Jackson and he was the guy that I mentioned earlier with a nine word email, incredible marketer. But he has this quote where it's like a compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. So how can we create more compelling offers that get people to lean in instead of trying to argue with them, you know? And so like, that's, that's the point of this irresistible offer? And I will say like the very first irresistible offer I ever created was the email that I sent to Jonathan that opened the door to that relationship with working with superhuman is because I had been listening to his podcast. I had been subscribed to his email newsletter. I had been following his content and I've been taking meticulous notes for months. And so I sent him a message and I was like, Hey, I've been following all this stuff.
Brandon (31:22): And I identified all these areas that I think could be improved. I have some suggestions for you. Here you go. Here they are. And if you want help implementing them, I'd be happy to do that a hundred percent for free. I don't want to be paid for it. And if you don't like my work, you can just, you know, no harm, no foul. We can just part our own ways. And like, we can go off. So like that was my first year resistible offer that I ever made that opened the door to that relationship. There was no money risk. There was no, I mean, maybe some supervision, risks, I guess that's the risk you take when you bring on somebody like that position it. So he had a lot to gain and I made it easy for him to say yes, and that opened the door to that incredible relationship.
Brandon (31:54): So how can you create, what is the irresistible offer if you're listening right now in your, you know, whatever, whoever you're trying to outreach and I'll, I'll go, I want to share two specific things that I I've, I've said a lot that I found to work really, really well for that irresistible offer is if there's some kind of a component that you show that you did the work ahead of time for them, that's really important that, that you can show them that like, Oh, they've already invested in this that made it really easy. And so I like to also do it with something very tangible, like a Google doc or a video, like, Hey, I put together a video for you that has this. Or I put together a Google doc that explains this irresistible offer that I've created. And so like, I like to reference that in the irresistible offer. So it shows that I've invested time and energy into it. So I've been going for a while. Is there any, anything you wanted? Yeah, I know. It's just,
Kathleen (32:40): I think it makes complete sense because like, if you are a student of some of the more like classical marketing texts, there's like CLD news persuasion where he talks about the concept of reciprocity. And I think that that has a lot to do with what you're talking about, where if you've done that work ahead of time and you've invested in getting to know the person and done your research on them, there's, there's a there what you're doing is you're showing that you've already put the time in. So I think it does make someone feel so they need to at least give you a little of their time. And then it also reminds me of I don't know if you've ever read the book. I think it's called give and take by Adam Grant grant. Yeah. Oh, it's such a great book. And I mean, it's just like, everybody should read it regardless, like just for life, but it's an awesome book for marketers to read about, you know, you really need to give first. And so I think your examples are really fantastic illustrations of,
Brandon (33:32): Thank you. Yeah. I, you know, I've studied Joe Polish a lot from genius network and he has this quote life gives to the giver and takes from the taker. So, you know, how can you show up as somebody that's constantly looking at adding value and supporting somebody and again, even if they replied and if it didn't make sense for my irresistible offer, like I'd be looking for ways that I could connect them with resources or people that I could help them. So it's like, I just, I love to just open doors to, to relationships and keep them in my lexicon of database of people that I can connect them to. So if you just take that approach and it's just like, Hey, even if it doesn't work out, like I have some connections potentially that could work out for you. Like, you know, somebody's going to respond just because they see that you're, you're genuinely invested and you want to care about the relationship that you're reaching out for.
Brandon (34:09): So, so anyways, so, so now we've, we've covered two of the three steps. So we've, we've got the hook, we've showed them, he cared about them. We showed that we have something incredibly valuable for them that that shows that they have a lot to gain. They, we did a work ahead of time for them, and it's very simple, tangible, tangible, like a Google doc or a video is what I've tested to work. The last part is now we just got to get them to respond to say, okay, let's let me tell, tell me more about this. So in the past I tested yes questions. Like I would say, are you interested or something along those lines and those work, that's fine. But then I read this book, one of my favorite books of all time never split the difference by Chris Voss. And for those of you listening that I've never heard of it.
Brandon (34:49): Chris is an ex FBI hostage negotiator. So this is the guy that's on the phone when there's some lunatic in a basement of a bank with millions of dollars and 10 hostages. And he's about to blow up the place. Like, what do you say on the phone to make that the, you know, the, the, an unsub or I've been watching lots of criminal minds, like the unsung, what do you make him not, you know, not blow up the place. And so one of the things that he teaches is this concept of a no oriented question. And the way I like to explain it is that every single day we have a finite amount of yeses that we can give, right? Because whenever you say yes, what does that mean? It means you're giving what your time. It means you're giving away your money. It means you're giving away your energy.
Brandon (35:29): You're giving away something, whenever you say yes to something. And so if you compare that to the exact opposite, it's a lot easier and a safer if we say no to something, right? Cause whenever you say, no, you feel like you're not being pressured. You feel like you're in control. And so the no oriented question is simply taking what would be a yes oriented question and just making it so that their response to do it is no. So that means starting your question with, would it be a bad idea if dot.dot, or would it be ridiculous if dot.dot? So like, if we're going back to our example, show that we cared about them, we created this Google doc, would it be a bad idea if I sent this over for you to check out? So like that, that would be an example where now the person's got reaction is not you know, no, I'm not interested in it.
Brandon (36:15): Don't tell me more about it. It's more of like, no, it's not a bad idea. Let me know. I'd be curious to find out more information about it. So there's no worries. The questions are very, very powerful. You can use this. Not only here. I mean, Chris boss teaches it. I use it the other day. I was at actually I won't even go there, but like Chris boss's book is really, really good if you want to, if you want to go there. But so, so that's important. And I would experiment with no oriented questions in other areas as well. Because as an example, if somebody is not responding to your email after they've replied to you and you're supposed to work on a project together, the question that Chris teaches in the book, that's so good is like, have you given up on this?
Brandon (36:51): Like, and so now that person is like, Oh no, I haven't given up on this. Or another way that you could reach out to is like, are you not the right person to talk to about this? Because if they're not responding, they get that email. They read it and they're like, Oh, I am the right person. No, I am the right person. I will, I will respond to this. I'll tell you. Or if they actually weren't the right person, they'll say, no, here's my colleague that is responsible for this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there's plenty of ways that you can toss in no oriented questions. I would, I would just encourage people listening though. It's like I had, I gave this presentation once and somebody responded with a magic connection method, email. Cause you know, it's always cool that when people take, take what I teach and they apply it, but somebody respondents, would it be inappropriate for me to blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I don't like the word inappropriate. Cause it's like, it's just like not I'm a copywriter. So it's like, it just didn't, it didn't land. Right. It's like inappropriate.
Kathleen (37:38): It has such a negative connotation.
Brandon (37:41): Exactly. So, so let's just put like some, some, some like bumpers up, like, you know, start with, would it be a bad idea? If, would it be ridiculous? If, and it's funny because my wife and I, even when we're grocery shopping, like Leah will be like, well, would it be a bad idea if? Because I use them all the time.
Kathleen (37:56): Would it be a bad idea if I bought this really great bottle of wine right now?
Brandon (38:01): So that's it, that's it, it's, it's very simple. The hook, the irresistible offer, and the no oriented question, opens the doors to these incredible relationships. And and then you can leverage that to form incredible friendships, strategic partnerships, collaborations for content, you know, whatever it is that you're looking at accomplishing it's, it's kind of a copy and pasting that you can use.
Kathleen (38:21): And tell me more about the results you've been getting from this. You mentioned it earlier, but I just wanted to like, come back to that for a second.
Brandon (38:27): Yeah, of course. So like, I mean, I'm seeing 90% open rates and I will say as an asterisk to that, the first email that when I ever send it usually gets about a 30 to 40% open rate, but I follow up like two to three times afterwards. So like that initial email that gets sent over time, it will get about a 90% open rate if you're doing things the right way. And then I'm typically getting about 50% of people to reply to these emails. And then, you know, you can engage, engage the relationship even more you know, you can send them, I'm, I'm talking with somebody right now. Who's, who's interested in, in leveraging this model to create individual workshops for companies to do sales and marketing training. And so, like, that's, that's something that we were using this kind of process where it's like getting them to respond, to attend this, this you know, education-based event. And so that's another context of that it's being used.
Kathleen (39:14): So you're getting 90% open rates. Do you have a particular subject line you use?
Brandon (39:19): Ah, great question. So so this is, again, it's actually funny, cause you mentioned Cialdini before he has another book called Pre-Suasion and it just, I'll be completely honest. I actually haven't read the book, but it's just like, I understand the topic, cause it's really important to understand what people are experiencing before they experience your content or your email or whatever it is. And so some people will use a subject line, like quick question or something like that, but it's not a good pre-frame because it's like it could be click baity, you know, people are using that kind of thing all the time, you know? So in the subject line, I'm usually what I do is I take a condensed version of the irresistible offer so I can show them that they have something that they can expect to gain as, as a result of opening this email. So that's usually how I suggest people to do it. It's nothing that you can, you can't steal the ones that I've been using. Cause it's like, it's, it's an irresistible offer that I'm creating for someone. So whenever you're
Kathleen (40:06): On the spot, but like what would be an example of that?
Brandon (40:09): Well, would it be okay if I, I mean, I'll be completely honest. Like I got on this podcast cause every time.
Kathleen (40:13): No, I was going to say, even if you didn't, you totally use this on me and it worked, so yeah, let's do it.
Brandon (40:18): Yes. So I think, I think the subject line for when I reach out to you is like the inbound success podcast, number one episode or something like that. And I referred to an episode that I listened to and then I also re referred to, you know, a bunch of topics that I think would be valuable to your audience. And I told you, I put together the document that, that showed all the different things that I could add to the audience. So that's an example of, of the subject line I was working for me.
Kathleen (40:40): Yeah, no, I mean, and I will give you kudos because you did very few people take the time to send me pitches and I get a lot of pitches. I probably get five a week. Very few people take the time to like say, Oh, I listened to this episode or that episode. And here's what I liked. In fact, very few people take the time to actually figure out what the podcast is about, which is my first filter. Like if they pitched me on some topic having to do with sales or, you know, like starting your own business, I'm like, this is not what my podcast is about. So those are the obvious ones, but like people who've actually listened and can, can speak to what the podcast is about. That gets my attention. And then you did you put together, it was like a three page Google doc with long descriptions of like, here are some different things I could talk about. And I was like, wow, he really did his homework. Thank you. So it, it for sure worked. Yeah.
Brandon (41:30): Well thank you so much. And I think it's important to think too, like the person that you're reaching to, there's a concept in copywriting. It's like enter the conversation that's already happening in your prospect's mind. And so it's like when you're reaching out to them, that's another kind of filter. I always put it through. It's like before I send an email, how would I feel if I was receiving this thing? Like, if I'm a podcaster, what are the things that I'm looking for? I like, like me as a podcast or now it's like, I want good guests that can provide valuable content to my audience. And so like thinking about from the perspective of the person you're reaching out to like, what is valuable to them and how can you help assist and provide them with resources or connections or anything that can help support what they're looking for inherently. And if you, if you hit that correctly, then that's when you're really going to develop these relationships.
Kathleen (42:11): Yeah, for sure. Well, I could probably talk to you all day about email. We're coming up on the end of our time. So I want to change shift gears for a minute and ask you the two questions. I always ask all my guests. The first one is we obviously talk a lot about inbound marketing on the podcast. So is there a particular company or individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park when it comes to inbound these days?
Brandon (42:32): You know so I was thinking about this and I feel like there's like, there's probably people that you come up to that are being referenced all the time. But for me, one of my favorite inbound marketers, or just marketers in general is Russell Brunson and ClickFunnels. Like the content that they create is so phenomenal, the ecosystem that they have developed. I mean, like it's, I'm a perfect example of me finally converting on Russell Brunson stuff after years, like I had been consuming as podcast. I wasn't a user until like four years after I'd been already getting value from the stuff that he was sharing. And so, but he just kept showing up, kept adding value. And so I love the content that he creates in the ecosystem he's built on, on just getting people results. And then he's just the natural by-product of wanting to work with him because he's done such a good job.
Kathleen (43:15): It's a great one. So how do you stay up to date? Like how do you keep yourself educated and stay ahead of the curve when it comes to like all the things that are changing so quickly with digital marketing?
Brandon (43:26): No, I think I'm going to give kind of a non-traditional answer here and then I'll give more of a traditional answer. Cause it's like somebody asked me the day, it's like, how did you learn about marketing? How'd you learn about entrepreneurship? And I think that the best lessons come from simply observation of day to day experiences, because it's like, when you can understand the first principles of human behavior, what makes people do what they do? What makes, you know, it could be even a conversation where like I was having, what was the, I'm just a copy nerd. So I was talking to somebody of the day and they're like I have this goal and it's interesting to me, but it's just like, I wants to make sure that my family is proud of what I do. And like when he said that I'm like, Oh, that's good copy.
Brandon (44:00): Because it's like that, that, that tied into what he was doing. Like what motivated him fundamentally. So it's like, I'm always observing conversations. It could be a billboard, it could be, you know, a sign in the grocery store. I think that's really where my best marketing knowledge comes from is just like observing and understanding what's working. But for a more, you know like applicable thing that for a source of information, my best information always comes from conversations with people like high, high level people that are in, that are doing stuff in the marketing world, because like they have their fingers on the pulse. So, you know, anytime you can connect with like a high level mastermind or a strategic partnership group, I'm an incredible group right now called tribe for leaders. And they do these, these pod, they put you in a pod with three to four other marketers and entrepreneurs and they just facilitate conversations. And there's this, there's this quote by Joe Polish. Again, it's like, you can't read the label from inside the jar, but everybody's sitting inside of a jar. Right? And so it's like you have this incredible opportunity to learn from other people and what's working in their industries. And so that's super valuable for me. And how I kind of stay up to date is just like learning. What's working from other people that are doing stuff on a day-to-day basis in their particular industry.
Kathleen (45:05): That's such a great quote about the jar and the label because we are, we all are in our little bubbles and getting out of your bubble is like the best thing you could possibly do. So it's funny. My podcast is my mastermind. Yeah, that's how I get to talk to so many interesting people like yourself. So if somebody is listening to this episode and they want to learn more about the magic connection method, or they want to listen to your podcast or connect with you and ask a question, what is the best way for them to get in touch with you online?
Brandon (45:33): Yeah, thanks so much. So I actually put together a special link for you guys if that's, if that's okay. I can share that. So I always like to explain beforehand, cause it's a short link that people aren't kind of like, they're like, I've never heard of this short and like it's cause I created it. I bought a Nigerian domain to make it happen and I'll explain. So my name is Brandon Fong. So I wanted the short link B F O dot N G. So that's what I, it's the.ng is Nigeria. So that's the short link B F O dot N G slash inbound. And that will take you guys to some more goodies that you can get. If you want a training on how to leverage the magic connection method, more specifically, a hundred percent free. And I thought also what's the most valuable thing I could give to you guys.
Brandon (46:09): And I figured, well, what if I just gave you messages that have worked for me that you could just copy and paste? So, so that, so that's something that you guys can grab on there if you go to BFO dot N G slash inbound. And I give some of my automatic emails that I call. So you can just kind of model off of what's worked on there. And then on there as well, also share my podcast, but, but you can check that out right now. It's at the seven figure millennials podcast. And like I said, that's all about entrepreneurs who are prioritizing their happiness, health and relationships well pursuing their biggest entrepreneurial and financial goals. But also just as a, as a final thing, if you want to get the magic connection method, you can just go to magic connection, method.com.
Brandon (46:44): And then the coupon code I give to my podcast listeners is seven FM. So I'll just give that here as well. You can use that coupon code and I'll unlock an extra $500 with the bonuses. So I do an interview with Joe Polish. I do an interview with Wayne Breitbart, who is one of the foremost experts on LinkedIn. He shows how to get a connection and then leverage that connection to connect with other people. So there's a whole bunch of other goodies that I added in there. So that's the coupon code seven FM. If you use that now unlock those extra bonuses.
Kathleen (47:11): All right, well there you have it. I will put all those links as always in the show notes. So head there, if you want to check out any of those resources or connect with Brandon and if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, I would love it. If you would head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast or review that's how other folks find out about us. And if you know somebody doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me, Brandon.
Brandon (47:40): Thanks so much. I had a blast.
How do the podcasting pros get the most mileage out of their podcast guest appearances?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Command Your Brand CEO Jeremy Slate shares his strategies for podcast public relations.
Jeremy is a podcasting pro who hosts the Create Your Own Life podcast and is an active podcast guest.
In this episode, he talks about the specific tactics he uses to market his own podcast guest appearances and help his clients get the most mileage out of theirs.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the CommandYourBrand website
- Visit commandyourbrand.com/7reasons to get Jeremy's white paper on how to get booked on more podcasts
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Jeremy Slate. Jeremy is the founder of Create Your Own Life podcast and the co-founder of Command Your Brand Media. Welcome Jeremy.
Jeremy (00:26): Hey, thank you so much for having me, Kathleen. And I'm stoked to get a chance to hang out with you today.
Kathleen (00:30): You know, I always love talking about podcasting. It's very meta because of course we're on a podcast about a podcast.
Jeremy (00:38): Exactly.
Kathleen (00:39): And I've had a lot of guests who've talked about podcasts, but you're, I think you and I settled on a really interesting sort of spin on that topic, which we haven't talked about yet on the inbound success podcast, which is podcast PR. So I'm really excited to chat with you about that. But before we get into that, you have a very interesting background with podcasting specifically, and I think that's, that's a big part of your journey. So for those who are listening and may not be familiar with your story, could you talk a little bit about your background and how you came to be doing what you're doing now?
Jeremy (01:15): It's like kind of like a Beatles song. It's like a long and winding road because like, it's weird. Like I went to school to be a college professor. That's like what I wanted to do. So I have a undergrad degree in world religion and Torah. And then I studied literature at New College Oxford and then got my masters in early Roman empire propaganda, not a very applicable skill and like the world of like getting a job other than like working at a library.
Kathleen (01:35): I want to go back to school and study what you studied though. It all sounds so interesting.
Jeremy (01:40): I was, I'm like the world's biggest nerd too. And I'm like, I'm a former competitive powerlifter too. So I was always the guy in the front of class, like sitting there, like answering all the questions, you know, like sitting there big and muscly, but answering all the questions. So you know, that's kinda like where life started out for me. And then when I was 24 I was two years into teaching high school and my mom ended up having a really bad stroke and it made me look at a lot of things in my life really, really differently. So I was like, okay, well, I'm going to try and do something differently. And my wife was presented a network marketing opportunity. I didn't know what that was. So I thought I was gonna be like a millionaire in like three days. It didn't work like that.
Kathleen (02:13): Don't, we all, like we hear about those.
Jeremy (02:16): It didn't work. I did spend two years of my life, like full-time, you know, trying to make it go right. And then from there I went to selling life insurance. I was really good at it. I hated telling people they were going to die. So I just kinda couldn't do that every day and went from there to private labeling and selling products on Amazon. And I left the, get my product for $1 promo code in my listing. And I lost all 200 of my products and made no money. So I very quickly put myself in a very rough situation. I'm like, Oh man, I can't do this anymore. So I actually ended up working for a friend's web design firm. I had taught myself how to, how to code reading blogs and watching YouTube videos. So I was writing HTML and CSS and all that kind of stuff. And I've been a podcast listener since 2006 when they were still like a lot of audio books and then one podcast I listen to this, to this day called the no agenda show. They like make fun of the news for three hours twice a week. It's great.
Kathleen (03:04): It's so easy to do now.
Jeremy (03:06): It's especially easy now. So like that was kind of where I was at and I was like, all right, well, what am I going to do for myself? So I started creating your own life in 2015 and we had 10,000 listens in our first 30 days. Which is, you know, not normal. It took off very quickly. I got to talk to lots and lots of amazing people that I admired and very quickly people started saying like, Hey, can you do this for me? I'm like, okay. So we started a company called Slate Media Productions, where we did like a done for you podcast model. And I found it a lot more, went into it than I expected, and a lot more work was involved in it. And I'd never hired anybody, anybody before or anything like that. So my wife was my co-founder in that company.
Jeremy (03:43): And part of what we did is we got clients on podcasts before they launched their own. And our clients were like, Hey, I love having my own podcast. But to me it makes a lot more sense to, to go on shows. So we dropped everything else we were doing. And we just really focused on, you know, being the PR firm for the podcast space. And we've grown substantially since 2016, we were started to now we're up to 14 people on our team. And you know, we've booked thousands of podcasts for lots of incredible clients.
Kathleen (04:09): So side note, before we keep going for those listening, if there's a dull roar in the background, it's because there's a crazy storm going. So if you're wondering what that sound is now you know.
Jeremy (04:20): I thought maybe we were filming for a Carpenters song.
Kathleen (04:22): Yeah.
Jeremy (04:23): Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.
Kathleen (04:25): It is definitely a rainy day on a Monday. So I think it's really, it's really fascinating to hear your story because it kind of parallels the crazy trajectory that podcasts in general have had, you know, they've been around for a very, very long time. Like I want to say since the nineties, technically I think at one point, but they've really, really taken off in the last five years or so. And hearing you tell your story about, you know, people wanting to create their own, but then realizing that guesting on podcasts is a huge opportunity and the whole PR opportunity around that tracks very much with what I've seen as a marketer, who I am a marketer who both hosts my own podcast. And for during, in my day job, I actually have as part of my budget guesting for my CEO. So he goes on podcasts all the time.
Kathleen (05:21): I'm going to start doing it soon. So I'm totally 100% bought in, but I want to, you know, it's one thing to, to be a guest or to host a podcast is entirely another. Then what you do with that media asset, because it's a little bit of that whole tree fell in the forest scenario where I think there's a lot of people who spend money on podcasting hosting or guesting, and then it doesn't produce results for them because they don't then know what to do with it. So that's what I want to talk to you about today. Okay.
Jeremy (05:51): Just add to that too, because I think like not, not knowing what to do with is one thing, but I think also they go into it with, I guess not the right expectations, not the right understanding as well. So I think that's also really, really important going into it is having the right expectations and understanding too
Kathleen (06:04): Well. Let's actually talk about that for a second because I've had this debate on this podcast before, and I'm really curious about your take on it. I've had people say podcasting is not something you should do for lead generation. And then I've had people say, absolutely podcasting is something you should do for lead generation. So like when you talk with people about podcasting hosting or guesting, what is your advice in that regard? Like what is a good use of podcasting as part of the marketing mix?
Jeremy (06:34): I want to say that part of that too, like part of the, the expectations as well as also knowing like what audience you're helping and how you're helping them, because every person out there wants to go on Tim Ferris and Lewis Howes and Joe Rogan. And the thing you have to look at, like, is that going to help my brand and help what I'm doing or is that a vanity thing? And a lot of people want these vanity metrics and they want stuff like that. So I just wanted to kind of like add that because it's really important too. But in terms of like expectations, like I primarily called appearing on podcasts, a PR action or a public relations action. Now, the thing that's beautiful about it is you've married PR and direct response marketing because there is a lot you can do with that.
Jeremy (07:08): So in the way of, you know, you're getting seen, you're getting known, you're creating trust, which is really important, but whereas on a traditional radio show or TV or something like that, you can't really retarget listeners. You can do that with a podcast. And that's, what's really interesting because you can actually, you know, set up the right Facebook ads to retarget people. You can set up the right landing pages to go back and retarget people, there's email capture software that you can use. So there's a lot you can do with it. But I don't want to say it's primary, primarily a lead gen action. It's a creating trust, creating a piece you can use, but then also making sure that you're retargeting, continuing the relationship with the people you're speaking to. So that's, that's really the thing I always tell people.
Kathleen (07:46): Yeah. And I think there's, I mean, there's a huge brand awareness play in general. That's that's, to me, one of the greatest values of it, like one of the reasons we're using it at my company that I work at now is we have a new product we're introducing and it's, it's targeted at an audience we've never sold to before. Right. And so, you know, we're using it to kind of warm the audience up and make them just even aware of our brand name. You know, we're still in private beta, but I think the more they hear our name, the more there's like, Oh yeah, yeah. I heard about that. Then when we're ready to start selling, it's going to be a much easier. So I think there's that aspect of it as well. So, so let's talk about this, I guess, guesting in particular you go on a podcast, you you're a guest, you get interviewed, the interview gets published. Then what, like talk me through how you talk with your clients about
Jeremy (08:39): Yes. Well, I'll tell them first and foremost, before they go on an interview, like the thing you have to have down is your differentiator, like what makes you different and interesting and special and unique because a lot of people will and like we've had clients go on the same podcast. One client has an incredible experience, gets lots of leads and exposure from it. We've had another one and say, you know, that wasn't a great show for me. So I will say first and foremost, how you show up is super vital to how the experience is going to be in the results you actually create from that. So you need to be different and you need to also show up to serve. So that's vital as well. I find so many times like I've had guests on where I haven't published the show because they'll direct me to a YouTube video or a page or a course or a product rather than actually like being the expert and explaining for that period of time.
Jeremy (09:19): So it's really, really, really important to do that. And then also like in terms of that also how you talk on that, it's really important to we, we look at every interview is having essentially three parts to it. That being story, message, and call to action into your personal story creates trust. It shows people, you can actually make the transformation, whether it's for yourself or a client you've worked with, or you know, the, the, then the message is what you're actually going to teach people to do, you know, how you're going to actually teach them step-by-step to do something. So that's really, really important as well. And then the call to action, which kind of brings us back to kind of where you'd started. The question is, what do you want people to do at the end? And we find that usually it's going to be something that helps people apply what you just taught, because there's two parts of the learning, right?
Jeremy (09:59): There's the actual theory of it. And the actual application of it. When you have those two, somebody can learn something. And that doesn't mean they're going to go out and they're going to like, you know, start a marketing firm, or they're going to like, you know, start this crazy program, but it creates this idea in their mind that they won with you. So, like for example, one of the things that we give away is we give away a white paper that teaches people, the things they need to know about basic PR actions. So they can actually get results in their business from that. So it needs to be something that aligns with what you taught and aligned to their mission, aligns your company. Now, once you give that away the landing page, you're going to send people to I, we recommend really do it this specific way.
Jeremy (10:32): So, you know, like for us, it's like commandyourbrand.com/. I find it to be pretty easy. And the one thing I've heard from somebody else that we've had book launch clients do because it gets good results is to buy like a like a URL that you can swap things in and out of. You know what I mean? Like a www go to meet.com or something like that. Like you buy like a, a vanity URL, and then when you're releasing new products, you can actually swap it out. So that's a really good thought process too. I like having it on your own site and in that way, just because I find that it's easier. So then when you have that landing page, you want to have a Facebook pixel on that landing page. And then what you're actually going to do is set up 30, 60, and 90 day audiences.
Jeremy (11:10): And then you can retarget those audiences at a dollar a day budget, because then if you're going on lots and lots and lots of podcasts, you know, you're spending 30 bucks a month for one podcast, and then you're spending 30 on another, another, another. So you actually have these podcasts working for you and retargeting a lot of the people that you've been on, a lot of shows that you've been on. And then in terms of what happens once somebody gets that opt in, we actually have somebody to go through a seven day email sequence, you know, the first day being like, Hey, here's the freebie. I promised you, thank you so much for grabbing that. Then you want to go to your hero's journey. Like, you know, why is this important then the the third day email, what we actually tell people to do is tell stories around what your biggest objections are.
Jeremy (11:49): You know, like, Oh, this doesn't work or, you know, marketing is hard or whatever it is. And in that seven days, you're actually educating somebody that if they weren't ready to buy, when they heard you on the show, cause your freebie, they're going to come back around and want to have a conversation with you. And then after day seven, we said, okay, it's fine. And now have this person in like a broadcast sequence. Follow-Up. So that's kind of what you're going to do from there. The other thing we do on that landing page, which is something we've been doing since January of this year, and it's been really, really good it's called get emails.com and get emails.com has a massive database of like, people have already opted in for stuff. So this is totally like, you know, white hat, like not a problem.
Jeremy (12:25): And it's because we all know people sell our information online. So when you go, when, when somebody that is in that email system goes to your landing page, they recognize it and they then opt the person into your email list. So then we actually have a seven day sequence set up for that too, because if somebody opts in, they want to know how they got there. Cause how many things do you opt in for? And you forget that you did it at a site. So it really brings somebody through that journey as well. So that's kind of like what we're doing when somebody goes to a landing page because I call it the leaky bucket. Right. you want to keep looking at where are the holes in this bucket and where else can I patch them? So I'm not missing anybody that does go there and maybe didn't jump in right away or may want to work with me in the future or may need an area to continue this relationship.
Kathleen (13:09): All right. I have a lot of questions.
Jeremy (13:13): I tend to talk a lot. I'm from Jersey guy.
Kathleen (13:15): I love it. You're out. You're here to talk. That's why I invited you in. First question. I want to go back to, you said there's three parts to going on a podcast. It's your story. What you're going to teach and then your offer. Yeah. So the, the teach part is the one that I'm interested in talking about for a minute, because I totally agree with you. And when I look for guests for my podcast, it's all about like, what can they teach my audience? And, and I talk specifically in, you know, in, in all of the information about the podcast, about how this is not a podcast, necessarily focused on getting you in and inspiring you. I love for you to be inspired. It's more about making things actionable.
Kathleen (13:59): Like I want people to leave and feel like, okay, I have things I can immediately do to make my marketing better. So it is all about teaching at least this podcast. And there are other podcasts that are different. Like maybe Tim Ferriss is a good one. You talked about. So when it comes to teaching, though, what I've found is that there are definitely some people who are very good subject matter experts who want to go on podcasts, but then they feel like, well, I can't give up the secret sauce because it's the secret sauce, right? Like, so I can't, I can't teach them my proprietary method. That gets great results because that's how I'm going to get them to convert, like so that they fill out the form to get that. But then, and so I've definitely found myself with some guests where I'm like, all right, we're not getting there's no, there, there, like you're doing the inspiration, but you're not doing the actionable. And so how do you counsel your clients about like, what's the balance to, on that?
Jeremy (14:52): I call those barrier people. They're just the same people that want to know. Like, so how many dollars do you have in your bank account before you fill out this application? Cause I want to see if we're a fit. No, my job is to convince you, you need what I have, whether you have the money or not. So I think you, you don't want to be the barrier guy. Right? And, and we had a client who's actually our very first client back in 2016. And he literally would get on, he was in the real estate space and he would tell people everything they needed to know and they got on and like, Oh my God, this guy's brilliant. And I can't do all that. I need to work with him. He made half a million dollars off podcasts off the 16 shows we put them on.
Jeremy (15:25): As I said, he's brilliant. He did a lot of remarketing too. We can't take credit for all of that. But when you show up to really, really teach people and really show them that you can help them, they just need to know you're the expert, like 99% of people like aren't going to do it are going to try it themselves and be like, dang, this is too hard. I need to come back to you. Like we had somebody that had heard me on a podcast, had a conversation with my sales team about a month ago, said, okay, we're going to have my team try and do this. They came back two weeks ago and said, it's hard. We need to work with you. And, and that's what you really need to look at is if you're the expert in, you're confident in what you're doing.
Jeremy (15:59): Like, you know what I mean? Like you don't have people sign an NDA before you a sales call. It's the same type of thing. People want to know that, you know what you're talking about and that you can get them results. But if you don't show up to teach everything, why are they going to listen to you? Right? Like there needs to be a reason why they're going to listen to that podcast. Like some of my favorite podcasts that I've listened to on the business side are like things where people get really granular with stuff. Because then I'm like, okay, well I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can't do this part. That's why I need this person. And I think that's where, where you really create trust. And you really create this ability for somebody to want to work with you.
Kathleen (16:31): Amen. And, and I think the thing that I've noticed is that the DIYers are going to be DIYers. They don't have money. Anyway, the secrets are not like, they are just, they are DIYers by nature. And they're, you know, if, if you don't tell them how to do it, they're going to find somebody else who will and do it themselves. Like it's not taking business away from you.
Jeremy (16:54): Like we've had people buy like one of our courses teach somebody how to do what we do for yourself. We've had people buy those courses with larger companies just to see how it works when they hire us to know what they're getting. Like, you know what I mean? Like if you're really willing to show up and educate, then people are gonna wanna work with you.
Kathleen (17:07): Yeah, absolutely. So, so assuming somebody has something worthwhile that they can teach about the offer and what is a good offer for podcasts?
Jeremy (17:19): I find that eBooks just kind of stink because everybody and their brother has an ebook and somebody doesn't want it.
Kathleen (17:24): Everybody thinks that eBooks are going to suck whether they do or not.
Jeremy (17:29): They just, I'm just not excited. Oh my gosh, another ebook. I find that really good and to the point white papers are good. Like if you let somebody know like, Hey, this is one or two pages is everything you need to know. And it's really good. Like our white paper the seven reasons you're not getting books in your favorite podcast does really well. Because the name is also important too. Like that's also good. I find worksheets are good. I find quizzes are good. Like things that somebody can use as a tool and get some sort of an instant win. You know what I mean? Like I just find eBooks, just take too much concentration. You know what I mean? Everybody's got one and they're 50 to a hundred pages and people don't want another thing to read. You know what I mean?
Kathleen (18:02): And it's amazing how 99% of the time, it's 50 to 100 pages of really general, non-actionable stuff, which is why people think that your ebooks are going to suck.
Jeremy (18:15): I'm going to give you twenty-Five pages of fluff. And at the end, this is how you buy something. Right.
Kathleen (18:18): TLDR, I could have told you the whole story in a paragraph. So the, okay, so, so assuming you have a good offer, then the other thing I want to ask you, and this is also back to like when you're on the podcast, what's the natural way to make that offer, because I think you don't want to come across as being spammy or too salesy.
Jeremy (18:39): It's story selling. You know what I mean? Like it's like, Hey, you know, this took me two years to figure out and I don't want anybody to have to go through what I had to figure out in order to do it and make the same mistakes I made because I made some really bad ones. So I actually want to cut that learning curve for you. So if you want to grab that totally free, no obligation. You can go to xyz dot com. Like you want to tie it back to a story, even if it's a quick one. Because you know, once again, stories create human connection and that's what really connect people to what you're talking about. So stories are really important. Like I I'm sure you've had guests before they give you like 27 different places. They can find you online. And like, that's really hard because a lot of times people, you have to think of their modality, right? They're in a car they're at the gym. They're hopefully listening to you at their desk, but still working. So you want to think they're always doing something else. You want to make it easy, send them one place and tie it to story. Don't send them 50 places.
Kathleen (19:27): Yeah. And I like the idea of having kind of a call it like a single offer that can be reused for many things. And I've noticed that with some of my better guests that are really well organized, they have a landing page, as you said, it's either on their site at a simple, like my url.com/you know, offer or whatever
Jeremy (19:49): We use ClickFunnels, but we just set up sub-domain, which is really nice, because then it's still your URL, it's training dot command your brand.
Kathleen (19:56): But I also love like getting a vanity URL. And it's funny when you were talking about doing that, the first person that came to mind was somebody I've interviewed before on the podcast. Christopher Penn. He has the best vanity URL ever when he speaks at conferences and I'm probably going to get it wrong, but you'll get the gist of it. When he speaks at conferences, he has the URL, where can I get the slides dot com. Isn't that genius? I was like, man, I can't believe you have that. And so like, that's his landing for every talk, it's just go to where can I get the slides dot com and you'll find the slides.
Jeremy (20:30): I can't take credit for that idea either. I got that from George Bryant, who has mindofgeorge.com which is smart because then every time he has a new offer, they just change the vanity URL that, you know, where it directs. And it's just because you're basically changing your offer on every podcast you've ever been on. Like how great of an idea is that.
Kathleen (20:45): Yeah. It's so smart. So you direct people to these URLs. Now talk me through, I want to get a little bit more granular on the re-targeting because are you suggesting that you have like one URL and you're going on, let's call it a podcast a week. And then every one of those podcasts, you're sending people to the same URL and then you're, and they're enrolling in the same retargeting campaign or are these separate URLs with separate retargeting campaigns?
Jeremy (21:09): So it depends cause most podcasts I'm going to go on are going to be about the guesting side and about like the marketing and PR side of things. So like typically I'm going to have the same offer for that. If I'm going on like more like stuff geared to my podcasts, I'm going to direct people to another landing page that I have built towards podcast content. So it's, we really have two offers pretty much for that. You know, the other, one's like a quick course in like starting a podcast, cause it's like a little bit more aligned with that other audience. So I just really have to two offers and then on that we're we're running retargeting campaigns.
Kathleen (21:42): Okay. And then go, let's go back to what you were saying about having different audiences. That's important. So break that down a little bit more for me.
Jeremy (21:50): So if people want to hear more about this, the person I got it from is Dennis Yu from Blitzmetrics. So Dennis is brilliant. He has a lot more training on that, but the basics of it is in your Facebook ads manager, you can set up audiences, right? So you set up the pixel first and I'm sure your audience is aware of like what a Facebook pixel is, right? The piece of code you place on a site and it captures identities. So what you can actually do then is when you go into the pixel settings in Facebook ads, you can actually create audiences, meaning like audience one is everybody that has seen your website in the last 30 days. Audience two is everybody that has seen your website in the last 60 days. And audience three is everybody has seen your website in the last 90 days.
Kathleen (22:31): Is it everybody who's seen your website in the last 60 days minus the ones on list one?
Jeremy (22:35): No, it's usually just, it just spreads them out. It adds them all together. So 90 days would be all would be the other two. I tend to use the 90 day one more because it's got a larger audience size because it's got the other two combined. But that's what you're going to want to do. And then you set up like ads at a dollar a day to retarget those people because it's not gonna be a huge audience. So a dollar is going to get you a ton of reach and you're doing it for every podcast you've been on. So that's a lot of ads running every single month, but it's not a huge like out-of-pocket thing. And then what you're going to actually learn based on podcasts you've been on is actually which ones are more of your audience because you're going to see who's taking action. You're going to see what really happens with that podcast. So you're gonna get to know your audience even better too. So you can create a lot of ton of insights on the backend of Facebook ads.
Kathleen (23:17): So this may be a dumb question. But, okay. So let's just take your example. So sort of half the podcasts you're going on, it's about guesting, which is what we're talking about.
Jeremy (23:26): I'd say 70%.
Kathleen (23:28): So look, I mean, my listeners are smart. They know that you're going to have an offer for them. They're going to go to your site. Correct. We're going to get re-targeted. So, but the way it sounds from what you're describing is let's say you do another podcast next week on guesting as well. Those same people are going to that same site getting put into that same campaign. So you don't have, you don't have like different ads per podcast ads per campaign.
Jeremy (23:54): Yeah. Per campaign. So it's not crazy. So like, but I do have two different types of retargeting. We run at them one being like, Hey, you missed the offer. Here it is. You forgot to download it. You forgot to read it, whatever it is or another one being here's our webinar. And I have a really good webinar that like, cause I hate webinars that you get on and be like, Oh my God, I just wasted an hour of my life. I, Oh my gosh. Like I feel like I've created processes because of things I hate. So like we actually have a training that walks people through a lot of the basics of getting us off on podcasts. So then that retargeting webinars actually been really good for us. And at the end of that, we sell a call. But then they also go into another email sequence on that. So like we're really making sure we can find every single hole in the bucket. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Kathleen (24:37): So what, what types of, so you have the two, you have the, you got the offer or you didn't get the offer, correct?Like, what are those next step campaigns look like? What are you trying to encourage them to do?
Jeremy (24:48): So if they miss the offer we just have a short one, which is like more education based on like things they may have missed in the first one. Cause remember we have that original seven day sequence they get when they opt in, I find that if they didn't grab the offer, they didn't read the six emails after that. So we tend to reuse the emails that we see have the highest open rate by a lot of our other readers in that sequence. So we know that at least they're good enough. Like one of my favorite is radio versus podcasting. Because people, until they actually understood how radio stats work, they try to hold podcasting to that same thing. And they're like, Oh my God, that's what I find radio stats. So like we use our most successful ones from that campaign and this like smaller mini campaign.
Jeremy (25:25): It's like three days after that for the webinar, that's more really about like, why haven't they booked a call yet? So like, Hey, you know, we would love to spend some time with you. Like, Hey, this is a client success story. This is one of our clients and, you know, the actual income they created from it and it's towards booking a call. Or since they're now in that retargeting, if they didn't even watch the webinar, they get sent the webinar again. So it's, we have a lot of email sequences as you can see.
Kathleen (25:50): So, and, and they get an email every day for seven days
Jeremy (25:54): For seven days for the, for the opt-in one and for the webinar one, but we only do three days for if they've already opted in for, for the for the, like the freebie, because they've already gotten seven days. I don't want to hammer them a full seven days again.
Kathleen (26:08): Okay. And I'm assuming you have rules set up in the background around taking people out of all these sequences and campaigns, if they finally convert.
Jeremy (26:15): Yeah. We use Active Campaign for that. Because I found that's really, really, really good in terms of like like the different tags. You can add the different actions you can add. It's like, at least from all the ones I've used as the one that seems to give me like the most things I can change.
Kathleen (26:28): Got it. And what kinds of conversion rates do you see and do both with your own marketing and with your clients' marketing?
Jeremy (26:36): With clients it's hard because not every person at the same, like I said, we had one client that had like huge numbers. We've had other ones that had those. So it's just really hard to give a, it's not something we're usually watching for clients. So I can say on our, on our side you know, we're having a really good rate of people coming and hearing us on a podcast and coming to work with us. Now those numbers, aren't huge in comparison. Like I'd say it's probably like 10%. So in the grand scheme of things, it's not huge, but if you're on a lot of podcasts, you're continually growing that number, growing that number, growing that number. And we had a lot of people that have said, Hey, I've heard you on a podcast. I learned a lot about it. And I was like, Hey, I need you guys to help me with this.
Kathleen (27:13): No, I think that's actually really good because in my experience, you know, even if you hire a podcast booking agent, it's not that expensive. Correct. So if you're, you know, if you're getting that number of clients, the ROI is pretty huge. I mean, it takes like one client. I don't know. It depends on what your average order value is, but yeah, I would say for us, it, it, one client every few months would pay for the podcast guesting service.
Jeremy (27:36): And that's the thing I have to think about too, is like, what's the value of a client for you versus what you're doing there as well. I think that's really important. That's why we've really, for, for us, like I said, we've really focused on just teaching our clients how to do the backend stuff, not really doing that for them, because that just became a huddle, a whole nother rigmarole. And we're not, we're not a marketing agency, we're a PR agency, but we do take responsibility to make sure they know what they're doing, you know, after the fact.
Kathleen (27:57): So beyond retargeting the listeners of the podcast and, you know, enrolling them in follow up email sequences. Is there any other podcast promotion or outreach that you're doing once the episode airs?
Jeremy (28:13): So we're creating snippets and stuff too. So we use Headliner. Its a really good one. The thing that we've been doing a lot more now is actually, since I'm doing a lot of my podcasts on zoom and on video, we're actually using those to make like viral style videos. So those have been doing pretty well. And LinkedIn's kind of been our big place to do that. So we do a lot of long form content on LinkedIn, meaning that you get like 1300 characters. So your first line has to be something that's like decently shocking or attention grabbing, because if you've seen a LinkedIn post, it's like, you got three lines and this is see more. Yeah. So you want to grab somebody's attention in that first one to two lines, and then you're actually telling a narrative story about the podcast or about what you taught on that to kind of bring them back in.
Jeremy (28:53): And then we always have people with the link in the first comment, because any posts, whether it's on Facebook or whether it's on LinkedIn. Twitter, not so much because there's not really another place you can put a link. But on Facebook and LinkedIn, they actually down rank a post. So if you put a link in the actual post, so you put in the comments, you need to know it's in the comments. So we're doing a lot of like content marketing around that stuff too. Video is not doing as well as it was on LinkedIn. So we're actually focusing mainly on long-form posts right now, but we're doing a lot of viral style videos as well. And we're keeping them under 60 seconds too, which is really important.
Kathleen (29:24): Yeah, it's interesting because I've really seen that evolve with LinkedIn about a year and a half ago, video was doing extremely
Jeremy (29:32): Well. It's crazy. The view numbers were nuts. I could like reshare a goal cast video and get a hundred thousand views on it.
Kathleen (29:37): Yeah. I was, I was doing like three videos a week for myself on LinkedIn back that point. And I've completely stopped now. That's a long form content. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So are you posting that content as yourself individually? Or are you doing any of it out of a company account?
Jeremy (29:55): So I'm usually doing it on my own account. I find, you know, company accounts just don't do as well on any platform. I know LinkedIn, they're doing a little bit better because you'll just, you just get followers. So we do have somebody on our team that'll post some of that content to the, to that page because it just kind of grows on its own Facebook, unless you're giving them money. Like I just had an, I find Facebook unless you're running an ad to just be kind of worthless anymore. Linkedin for us is where we spent most of our time and it's not personal accounts.
Kathleen (30:19): Yeah. I found the same thing with Facebook. Like as far as organic posts, like I just post there to keep the lights on so that if anybody happens to look, they're like, Oh, they're still there.
Jeremy (30:30): The reach is pathetic because even like paid reach, if you like, re-targeted the fans of your own page, you're only gonna get one to 3% anyway. So what does it matter?
Kathleen (30:36): Yeah, it's terrible. Interesting. And, and, you know, in terms of visits from the types of podcasts that you're going on, like, what numbers do you see of people coming back to your site and converting?
Jeremy (30:51): So we do run some Google ads, but our biggest traffic source is really podcasts. So like in terms of that, we're seeing, you know, anywhere from 250 to 500 people hitting our site a day. Now as I say, we're running Google ads too. We don't run a huge budget. I spend like maybe 500 to a thousand dollars a month in Google ads. So you can kind of figure there that the, the other percentage of it are coming from podcasts, but I've been going on three to five podcasts a week for, Oh gosh, how many years now? Like five years. So like, wow, that's a, that's a, a lot of people that continue to come back to evergreen content. You know what I mean? Like,
Kathleen (31:27): Can you, like, at some point you run out of podcasts to do.
Jeremy (31:30): So there's 1.7 million podcasts out there right now. And you know, kind of new ones are starting all the time and, you know, some fade away as well. So it's like, yeah, there's always kind of new places to talk as long as you're kind of willing to show up and help, you know?
Kathleen (31:44): Yeah, that's great. I love that strategy. And if, if somebody is listening and they're like, okay, you got me, I'm interested in doing podcasting. Like what's the best way for them to get started with podcast guesting?
Jeremy (31:57): So I would honestly, I always recommend this recommendation people, I would say, start with going on shows before you start your own, because you at least learn both sides of the mic and you get a little more comfortable with it. But in terms of like starting guesting, start with smaller shows, that's meaning less than 20 episodes, you know, less than 20 reviews because they are a lot newer. You're kind of both getting your feet wet at the same time and it's going to be a more attainable show to get on, you know what I mean? And, and so that's kind of the, it's the same strategy I talk about with getting PR, like start local and then kind of move up bigger as you get up there. So like, I would start with smaller shows and then as you're going up, you can start looking at shows that have over 50 reviews, over a hundred reviews, over 200 reviews, but you really want to build a portfolio of stuff first.
Jeremy (32:37): And at the same time, like, feel like you're really getting good with telling your story and teaching as well. Because if you get on a big show, but you blow it, like, it doesn't really matter. Like I went on EO fire four years ago now at this point, I honestly think like had I went on that and we had some good results. Like we had a couple of hundred people opt into our list from that. But like had I went on that podcast now I would have gotten better results than I didn't, you know, the end of 2016, because I'm a lot more versed and a lot more, you know, able to converse on that. So the thing I always tell people as well, like, even if it's somebody on your staff having practice interviewing you, like, even if it's just on zoom or whatever it is, because you want to get comfortable with that too way back and forth, and that's going to really help you be able to show up and be able to really help.
Kathleen (33:19): Yeah. And you can get to the point where you can do it in your sleep. And that's how it feels to me. I'm like episode 171 and somebody the other day asked me what I do to prep. And I was like, maybe this is terrible, but I do nothing. Like I just make sure I know. I make sure I know what we're talking about and I know your name and I know your title, and then I have pronounced your name. And then beyond that, it's like, all right, let's go and see where the conversation takes us.
Jeremy (33:40): The type of show you run. That really makes sense because it's very much geared around teaching. Cause like then when I do like with my own show, like I do have to prep a lot for that. Cause I'm talking about life stories. So like if I don't know stuff, it's kind of weird, but like when you're in a teaching show, like you are that you can totally do that. It's amazing. Yeah.
Kathleen (33:55): Yeah. And it's subject matter I know pretty well because I used to host another podcast for a company I worked for that was in cybersecurity, which is a topic I don't know as well as marketing. And that, that one I had to do a little bit more homework, not to sound like an idiot. Well this has been so fun. And before we wrap up, I want to ask you the two questions I always ask all of my guests. The first one is, this podcast of course is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you can point to that you think is really kind of setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer?
Jeremy (34:26): Ooh, well I mentioned him earlier, so I would say George Bryant he's helped to create several unicorn businesses. So he's, he's a big fish when it comes to that. And he's actually doing a lot of stuff around email marketing now. So I would check out George Bryant.
Kathleen (34:39): And second question. All the marketers I talk to say that one of their biggest pain points is keeping up with everything that's changing in the world of digital marketing. They, you know, I often hear it described as drinking from a fire hose. So how do you drink a drink from the fire hose? How do you keep yourself educated and up-to-date.
Jeremy (34:58): There's an old, weird album movie from the early nineties called UHF where he starts an underground TV station. And one of the things they do they do in every show is drink from the fire hose. Every time somebody says that I think of you get to drink from the fire hose. But one of the things that I do, there's a few people I'm reading. One is Neil Patel because everything he puts out is just great. Which is pretty awesome. Copyblogger's another one I'm looking at as well, because this is when, whenever you can learn to write while it's good. And I'd say those are the two biggest ones I'm looking at. Like other stuff, it just kind of I'll pick and choose like I'm on Twitter a lot. So like I tend to see things that catch my eye. I'll go that way. But you know, it's either Neil Patel or Copyblogger.
Kathleen (35:34): Awesome. Well, those are two good ones for, to check out. Last question for you is if somebody is listening and they're interested in learning more about you or about your podcast or your business, what's the best way for them to connect with you online?
Jeremy (35:48): Absolutely. I feel lame doing this now, since we already talked about it, but like, people don't want to make this thing. If people don't want to make the same mistakes I had because you know what, let me tell you, like I was on a bunch of podcasts. In the beginning I'm like, why is nothing happening? We talked about EO fire before. Like I didn't, I got some action, but I didn't get up to the type of business I want to get up because I wasn't ready. So people don't want to make those same mistakes. I put put together an awesome white paper. It's two pages long. It's called the seven reasons. You're not getting booked on your favorite podcast. And it's going to teach you everything, you know, about the real basics of PR and how that marries with direct response marketing. So you can get that over at command, your brand.com/seven reasons and the word seven or the number seven work for that.
Kathleen (36:22): Nice. All right, there you go. He's drinking his own champagne. I don't like the phrase eating your own dog food.
Jeremy (36:30): So a dog would be jealous anyway. Yeah. You got to walk the walk.
Kathleen (36:32): I love it. So for the white paper, I will also put that link in the show notes. So if you're listening and you are in your car and you forget that link, just head to the show notes for this episode and that will be there and you can connect with Jeremy. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode or you liked what you heard, please consider taking a minute and heading to Apple podcasts and leaving the podcast a review. That is how we get found by other listeners. And if you know someone else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Jeremy. This was a lot of fun.
Jeremy (37:10): Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
Accurately reporting on marketing attribution has historically been one of the biggest challenges facing marketers. Here's how one expert solved it.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Dreamdata founder Steffen Hedebrandt spent years working as a marketer trying to accurately measure the ROI of his marketing campaigns and investments. After struggling to find a software tool that could do it for him, he finally built one for himself.
Today, Dreamdata helps marketers process data from multiple platforms to make sense of what's working, and which marketing efforts are driving results for the business.
In this episode, he shares some of the key lessons he's learned, and what marketers need to know about marketing attribution reporting.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Dreamdata website
- Read the Dreamdata blog
- Connect with Steffen on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Steffen Hedebrant who is the co-founder of Dreamdata. Welcome Steffen.
Steffen (00:22): Thank you so much, Kathleen. I'm happy to be on a show that is about my, one of my very favorite topics as a marketer.
Kathleen (00:31): I am excited to talk with you because we're going to talk all things, data, and my listeners know that I am a huge marketing nerd and I love to nerd out on really specific marketing topics like this and data is, is one of my favorites. So before we get into it, I would love it. If you would tell my listeners a little bit about yourself, your story how you came to be a co-founder of Dreamdata and what Dreamdata itself does.
Steffen (01:01): Thank you very much, Kathleen. So ever since I left university I've been working with all things growth. You can see where it kind of, basically I started out doing doing a lot of SEO, then moved into more like regular business development that then like then I became a marketing leader and now I'm a co-founder of a company. So I've been doing a lot of different stuff that needed to grow. All of it has been B2B though. So when I'm, when I'm talking here today all of my experiences based out of a B2B world and not at the B2C world. So I think that's always important to, to know today. I'm a, I'm a, co-founder at at Dreamdata and we make a, a B2B revenue attribution platform. And we so this is kind of a big thing for us.
Steffen (02:01): We first of all, we do B2B attribution. You can say, and, you know, B2B is quite a lot more complex to track than, than the B2C scenario. You have multiple stakeholders and a deal. The deal takes three, six, 12 months. The deal is closed by a team effort from marketing to sales, to maybe customer success as well. So there's a ton of touches involved in this, and that's why we call ourselves a revenue attribution platform, because we heavily believe that all touches matter and not just the marketing touches here, like doing only marketing attribution would be seeing that the effort of the sales people was not important in the B2B deal. And we want to give the holistic picture, not just the contribution of marketing to it. So if I take a step back and why I find this really interesting, I was a marketing leader at a company called Airteam, which does school screen-sharing devices for schools and businesses.
Steffen (03:11): And I joined when there was like 15 people and left around a hundred and from zero ad spend to $150,000 a month. Initially I knew every time I pushed a button, I knew the effect on the other side, but as you go and you've picked all the low hanging fruits and that you're running on all channels, it gets pretty muddy, whether it makes sense to add in another 10,000 euros or 20,000 euros to the monthly ad spend. And that's because of this problem that does maybe three or four people involved in making a decision. So you might make your marketing investment on getting one person to your website. And then another person comes to validate the product. And then a third person comes to pay for the product. Then you can only see that you spent your money on like getting the new step to sign up or the demo call where in fact, all three people were actually part of the same journey. And that's why you want to kind of, you want to be able to actually match the spend you had on the first person with the revenue you make with the, on the last person who comes with the credit card.
Kathleen (04:20): This is so interesting. And, and the timing of this conversation is perfect because I was just having a debate with somebody on LinkedIn about marketing attribution. And he was rightfully saying that, you know, while everybody loves when marketing can report on like marketing sourced leads, like, Oh, we brought this person in, you know, there's also marketing influenced leads and, and, and marketing influence pipeline. And we were talking about how, at least in my experience, most C-suite people don't really care about marketing influenced pipeline because it seems like a vanity metric to them. Like, and I think it's because of a lack of really good data. I think they just think it's like a made up thing. Like, what do you mean you've influenced this pipeline? And there's also this natural tension between sales and marketing of like, who gets credit. And I feel like, I feel like so much of that almost like toxic attitude is, is, comes because we don't have really clear visibility into what's really happening.
Kathleen (05:36): It's like, you know, it's like marketing saying, okay, this lead, I get a hundred percent credit for, because I sourced it and sales saying, well, I get a hundred percent credit for this one because I sourced it. And there's like, it's very binary. There's no in-between. And, and that's precisely because of what, like you're describing, we don't have that crystal ball into like, what are all the touches, the journey with all the different people in the mix. And so I'm so interested in, in what you do, because it seems to me that that having that kind of data would open the door to maybe changing the conversation that happens around attribution within companies.
Steffen (06:15): Yeah. I have so many comments but you can say, so how I fundamental approach to attribution is let's get all the touches there before we talk about anything else, which means if you have this sales and marketing alignment conversation, then the first thing you can see is, look, this is all the touches that we have on this account. Then after that, you can then discuss, you can have an opinion about what was the important part that magazine actually started the journey or that sales finished the journey, but you got to have all the touches there. And I think what, what most B2B companies are struggling with is that they are the CRM system is dictating dictating what's going on or what, what, what is perceived as the true, if you can say. And the problem about that is that I think a lot of them have this original source field and that original source field can be modified constantly by whoever wants to know, move us this webinar.
Steffen (07:24): Or I met him at this event and kind of then like just the fact that you can constantly change it, according to your opinion is a big problem, but it's also a very narrow field into a, kind of a less, it's kind of a less touch before you converted the the person. But what goes ahead is all the kind of anonymous behavior until that you actually convert them into the first time, you know, what person. So that's kind of also what we, the way we approached this, this, that we, we give our clients, the, each we put on the website and that script starts to assign everybody who comes to the website with an anonymous ID. And then we record everything that the anonymous ID is doing. And then at the point of time where they identified himself, we get the consent to go back and look at the anonymous ID. So it's not just the last touch. He came from this retargeting thing. Then the first time we heard about him was this original source in the CRM.
Kathleen (08:22): And you're pulling data in from a lot of different platforms, correct? I mean, you're sitting outside of kind of the rest of the tech stack and, and aggregating all of that.
Steffen (08:34): Yeah. And this is where I probably couldn't, we, we could need your advice as well because we, we feel like it's kind of, we're kind of trying to make a new category where we kind of want to be the center to check in the middle. So we basically built data pipes to every tool that you would use. So sales would have their CRM marketing, some automation, customer success, a tool, maybe just a BDR tool that's as well. So you basically, we integrate all the data over to us. And then instead of Kathleen being five Kathleen's in each system, we would organize you to be one person that are present and have touched us in all the tools. And then we map you to the account. So every person, or we basically build a timeline. So if there's Kathleen and then Steffen from the same account, we'll just put every time there's a touch, we'll put it into the timeline.
Kathleen (09:24): So how are you, I mean, in principle, that sounds great, but I imagine that the potential for like duplication at the, at the individual contact level is there, I imagine trying to somehow, like the biggest nightmare I have in my many systems is trying to associate all the various contacts with the parent account and like capturing all of that. So how, how do you handle that across so many different systems?
Steffen (09:55): Yes. That's some of what you you pay us to run our algorithms to fix, we can fix it inside of whatever tool, but we will fix it on our end. So like, we will identify duplicates on persons, on accounts, et cetera. And then we have like a hierarchy of like rules that kind of run through and then fix this, these things done in this way.
Kathleen (10:24): And how does that work? Is it bi-directional so like when you clean it up I, you know, I assume like, let's say I have HubSpot and Salesforce and outreach and all these different tools then desk. And I have like my messes in each of those platforms. And then it goes into your platform, you clean it up, is there, do you then have a function where you can sort of like push it back out and correct.
Steffen (10:52): Right now we don't push it back out, but we, like, we fix the we, we fixed it within our, you can say data model and we also expose the data model to the client. So if they want to like use it to, to push back, then they can they can do that.
Kathleen (11:08): So what would be, obviously people are using your system for attribution, but I imagine they're also using it for other things, because it sounds like if you had insight into what's happening at an account level with all of your contacts in my head immediately goes to, this is so great for account based marketing. I could, I could do account level scoring. I could use it to run ad campaigns. What are all the different ways that people are using this?
Steffen (11:40): Yeah, so I can think are like main main users right now are the marketing, the attribution, and it's also the customer journey to get an insight of all the touches, but I use it myself when I do business development to sort of see, okay, now that account that I had been targeting, he actually came back to our website. Now it's a good time to reach out. And what I mean by that is that it's a great way to, for your reps to know who to work with and what to do, because you can see now that account is active in some sort of system, would you, and you can see what they've done. So you can kind of also figure out what you want to do next.
Steffen (12:27): Does that make sense? It can also be kind of figuring out your, your channel mix more like on a, like a leadership level because we, and if we do attribution all the way down to a specific campaign, but we also aggregate it up per channel and some channels play very, very, very different yeah. Roles. And if you look inside of Google analytics, you would only see kind of less touches, but there's actually a lot of channels that work well, if you're able to track from, like, where did they start campaigns that don't start campaigns? What would be some examples of that? Oh, that's a lot. But like, for like, let's say digital businesses, it's very typically a Google ads, for example, a search ads. I've never, I have to confess, I've never been able to make Google ads, looks profit, look profitable inside of Google ads.
Steffen (13:24): And the problem is that if, when we go back to the example that I gave you before, is that you do your investment on some sort of persona that has some sort of intent, but then some person comes with a credit card afterwards, which is to touch. You would see in the Google analytics and those sorts, but the spend was made at another place. So the spend actually starts a ton of journeys, but it's the first touch. It's not the last touch. That's so incredibly important to understand, because if there's a 10 X difference in revenue from first to last touch, then Europe probably heavily investing in a source. I'll give you another example. In my old company I, I had the beginning of 2018 or so I went to the CEO and said like, now we need to really heavily bet on content.
Steffen (14:17): And we went out and hired two writers, a designer, eh, a videographer, and then a manager for the team and for the first nine months or so, the only thing we had to show was, Hey, look, organic traffic is going off in Google analytics. And it's like, yeah, but you can't really pay salary with organic traffic increasing in in Google analytics. And that was actually the point of time when at the end of 2018 met my two co-founders who had just left their old jobs to, to build this company. And basically because we'd been using Segment, I don't know if you're familiar with that.
Kathleen (15:04): I haven't used it. I've heard of it, but I have not used it.
Steffen (15:09): It's a customer data platform. And because we had been using that, we were able to replay our data from like all the visitors from the website and what they've done, and whether they, they ended up becoming deals. And so, and what I could suddenly see is that basically with that technology that now co-founder of it, we were able to prove that the content actually started a ton of journeys, but it was not the last touch on those journeys to become a revenue. And then we started seeing specific clusters of content that were super valuable, but completely impossible to see inside of Google analytics.
Kathleen (15:54): And why is it so hard to see that in Google analytics?
Steffen (15:58): It's because this thing, as the example I gave before, like it's very, it's very rarely at the person with the credit card that does the research and what Google analytics shows you is like they came in from this source or this source, and they did this and this, and then, then your direct channel will be the channel with all the money. And that's a, you can't really scale that somebody comes directly to your website, they give, give you money. You need to kind of understand that full journey in order to sort of do more of what works and do less of what not doesn't work. And let's see if I can let's let's go on to just talk a little bit about concept then, because I think what I've, what I've seen is really that it's so important that you look at what you do, content that has a strong intent versus a big volume.
Steffen (16:54): When I look across all our B2B customers here at Dreamdata, all those articles that they've done, where they've done keyword research, and they have a lot of traffic on the keywords. So rarely that there's any revenue on those those articles, but very narrow articles with a lot of intent, like searching for an alternative to a competing product or that those sorts, they drive so much revenue out of very small chunks of traffic. And I think that's a mistake I've made so many times because you get so fascinated by this large amount of searches, but when did it arrive on your website? There's several intent behind it.
Kathleen (17:38): I'm so glad you said that because this is something that I have been preaching for a while. You know, and it was funny at the last company, I was, we made a very niche product and we, there was like almost no search traffic for it. It's a tiny, tiny amount of search traffic. And I think most people, had they done keyword research would have been like, it's totally not worth creating any content around this. But, you know, my thing is the 20 to 30 people who searched this every month are like the 20 to 30 people who will buy from us. And, Oh, by the way, at that company, we were selling to government. And so one sale could be like millions of dollars. So we did this whole content strategy, like a whole pillar content and topic, cluster strategy around this like extremely tiny, tiny niche topic.
Kathleen (18:35): And we, the great thing is we were very quickly able to own it. And Google, like we had all the top search results. In fact, we'd beat the national security agency and we beat Wikipedia for one of the topics and it worked. So I totally agree with you. Like, it's just funny to me that people do, they, they, they try to, like, as somebody once said, like eat the elephant in one bite, when, you know, there's just an easier way to do things. And it's to go after those tiny, tiny topics, when, you know, the intent is so good. So I love that you have data to back that up.
Steffen (19:09): That means also kind of, when you then pull them to your website, you don't pull a big audience that you have to pay a ton of money to retarget, but you know that the people who then come you'll want to pay a lot of money to, to get in front of it.
Kathleen (19:22): Yeah. It's worth it to spend a lot more, you know, per impression or per click, if you know that that's the right person. And it's funny because I had the same conversation. This is like making me think of a bunch of things. I had the same conversation recently. I was doing some training for my team on how to use LinkedIn really well. And we were talking about hashtags on LinkedIn and people, a lot of people don't even realize like how useful they can be. And one of the questions I got was yeah, but how much search volume do those hashtags have? And I was like, I don't even care if they're super relevant to us, even if there's like a tiny number of people searching, like those are the people that we want to see. So it's just, I I'm so on the same page with you about this,
Steffen (20:08): But it is kind of also when you compete for the big things, like you also most likely competing with some extremely powerful players that you can kind of, you can forget about outspending them because they have a ton more money than you have. So you want to go around those big guys in there and find the topics where, where they're weak.
Kathleen (20:27): That's exactly right. So now I want to know all the other cool things that you've discovered looking across your customer's data, because that's really interesting that you're able to surface those insights.
Steffen (20:39): I think yeah, it's also, you know, I'm a marketing leader by background myself. So being able to peek into these different kinds of machines, it's it's very interesting. One component that I would like to stress as well is it's a metric. We call it time to revenue, which means from the first person from an account who was anonymously on your website until the account is close to one, how long does that take? And it's significantly longer than most of our customers expect. So, so what companies don't do really, really well is that from the point of time where an account hands over an email, then the typical CRM sales machine, they know exactly how each stage, how long that takes. But they forget to actually add all the research time where customers are anonymous and actually like still trying to understand what you do. And it's part of the same journey. I think that's my point,
Kathleen (21:39): Right? That famous statistic, everybody cites that people get 75% of the way through their buying journey before they want to speak to a sales person or whatever that number is.
Steffen (21:48): Yeah. And so like the reason why this is so important is that a mistake I made a ton of times in my, in my old job was I was trying to judge my ad spend in the same month that I made the investment. Even though I know that the average journey is maybe six months or so, but it was all I had kind of say, okay, I spent this money and we made this money this month, but it's, it's a ridiculous thing to do because the number you pull up is vanity. So what were you able to prove with this is that we can help people actually understand when they can judge an experiment. If the average journey is like, let's say 160 days, you cannot do the confusion after 60 days or, or, or the sorts of that. And also kind of for us, marketing people the CEO cannot come in November and say, Hey, you need to impact the budget this year, because I actually know my time to revenue is 160 days or so. So if you want me to impact this year, we need to start that investment a lot earlier.
Kathleen (22:53): Oh, that's so interesting because that is a mistake I see people making a lot is trying pay-per-click ads and deciding within 30 days that they're not working. I can't tell you how many times. I used to own an agency. So I I've seen a lot of different companies, I've been, you know, in a lot of companies Google analytics. I'm now in house myself. But so often I see people try it for just a short amount of time, 30, 60 days. And then they conclude pay-per-click advertising doesn't work for me, you know?
Steffen (23:27): The problem as well to that is that it's not going to hurt the first month because you've sort of stuffed the funnel then like three months go by and you realize, Hey, we're not getting any SQLs now because it takes 90 days to become an SQL. For example.
Kathleen (23:46): You've got to know that it is so important to know what your leading indicators are for pipeline. And I mean, I feel like in sales that's a little bit easier cause I used to be in sales also. And, and I knew, for example, when I was in sales, that if I didn't do a certain number of like initial, we call them exploratory calls. If I didn't have enough exploratory calls in a given week two to three months later, I wasn't going to hit my target for closed one deals in marketing. We do a much poorer job of that. And I think because it's less straightforward and you know, harder to measure. So I think it's really interesting that you you're able to pinpoint that time to revenue and give marketers a better sense of like what they need to do now. And if they're not doing it, what the effect is going to be in that future timeframe.
Steffen (24:35): And if there's another thing to preach around, this is also that the granularity matters when you're looking at your pipeline, meaning that it's kind of vanity. Let's say you're judged on delivering a hundred MQLs per month. Then you don't just want to increase that a hundred MQLs to 150 MQLs. You want to look at who actually moved on and become, became a sales qualified lead. And then you want to granularly understand each of those, let's say 25 journeys. Where did they come from? Was it specific ads, specific content or something else? And then you want to focus on increasing the amount of SQLs or basically the accounts that kind of go all the way through your pipeline. You want to repeat the success of those campaigns and the new one is stop everything else almost because that's wasting your own money. And it's wasting also the salespeople's time,
Kathleen (25:37): For sure, like knowing which types of leads are the best and then turning up the dial on those.
Steffen (25:43): It's kind of, I think most sales people like say sales leaders and CEOs are saying, they look at the spreadsheet and say we had 50 SQLs. Give me 50 more. And then, then you just scale your whole spend to try to hit that overall number, but you just waste so much money if you have no, if you don't understand the kind of granularity that is driving the specific SQLs.
Kathleen (26:09): Well, and I think part of the problem, I was just talking about this with somebody. Part of the problem is that so many marketers are judged by the number of MQLs they're able to deliver. When in reality they should be judged on the same thing sales is, which is revenue at the end of the day. Revenue growth. Because the incentive, if you're judging marketing on MQLs, is for marketing to send over everything. And half of it could be garbage. I was having this conversation and we were talking about like, sometimes you, you know, marketing will send over a lead that's like, Oh, this person downloaded an ebook. Well, that is not a person who's ready to be called by sales. Like not at all. If you're being judged on revenue, you're more likely as a marketer to say, okay, this person only downloaded an ebook. Let's hold off. Let's make sure we're nurturing them really well and push them to become a hand raiser. And then once they've raised their hand, let's send them over. But absolutely reverse incentive in place the way I think a lot of companies incent marketers.
Steffen (27:15): Very much agree. I'd like to see, I think we will see, I would rephrase it. The thing I think we should see marketing wanting to go to SQL focus or like later stage pipeline focus. Of course there are some parts of the deals that they are not in control of, but you want to be tracking them onwards from MQL to like, are they actually really quality leads? The ones you sent through?
Kathleen (27:42): Yeah, for sure. And it's funny because we started this conversation talking about like sales and marketing, kind of sometimes being adversarial and wanting to take credit for things. And I think this, this almost comes full circle and brings us back to that because sales and marketing are both being judged based on revenue, as opposed to MQLs, SQLs, all of that. And if I also sort of believe that like compensation for both should be tied to revenue, if everybody's being judged on the same metric, then all of a sudden there's no need for anybody to claim credit. Everybody's getting credit based on the same number. So you, you row together as a team, right?
Steffen (28:24): Actually I have a few customers who trust our data so much that they're starting to assign compensation to the marketers based on the attribution models, like are marketing actually starting journeys that ended up converting like three months later. So that's radical, but they are judged on whether they actually just have these first touches on the deals that actually end up becoming like actual signed deals.
Kathleen (28:50): That's interesting. What about influence? Are they compensated on their influenced revenue too?
Steffen (28:56): Not that I think, but they're also pretty radical in the thinking, but I like that it's kind of the they're so data-driven that they want to reward the market system that sense.
Kathleen (29:06): See, it goes back to what I said in the beginning, which is that nobody in the C-suite cares about marketing influenced revenue. I just haven't found anybody yet. Marketers love it, but leaders don't.
Steffen (29:18): And I think this is also kind of, if you want to be taken seriously as a marketer, as a marketer, you want to, you need to have the narrative, you need to be able to explain why, what you do becomes revenue, because then it's, it's a lot harder to let you go during a pandemic. If you're actually delivering, like, let's say 70% of all deals marketing touched or something like that.
Kathleen (29:45): Well, I love that point that because heads of marketing, CMOs, VPs of marketing, have the shortest tenure of any position in the C-suite. And so anything that can help us justify our existence and keep us around longer is a good thing.
Steffen (30:03): So incredibly complex to be a marketing leader, because one day they're shouting leads and then your day it's like, we need to new have a new branding, a new position or something like that.
Kathleen (30:15): Everybody thinks they're a marketer, right?
Steffen (30:20): So also super different kind of, I think my strong side. So the more like numbers serving my marketing, which makes me struggle sometimes when it's about like communication and positioning and those sorts of things. So I guess did the challenges too. I can now I'm the, I'm the founder, but for markets this out that they really need to be explicit about what they're good at and what the CEOs can expect when they hire you as a marketing leader. Like I'm not going to do the perfect branding campaign. I'm looking to do stuff that drives revenue or, or the opposite,
Kathleen (30:56): Right. Or, or if I'm weak in this area, we're going to have to be ready to hire somebody. Good to support me. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we're going to switch gears for a minute here cause we're coming up on our time and I want to make sure I have a chance to ask you a couple of questions that I always ask all of my guests. So the first one is, you know, this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really setting the gold standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days?
Steffen (31:29): So now by me being Danish I think I can throw a company out there that you haven't heard of before. Normally I would say like Intercom or Segment or something like that who do superior content, but there's a Danish company called Sleeknote where I'm a huge fan of their continent, their CMO is called Emil. And they've produced kind of the thorough content that like makes you feel bad about to continue to do it yourself. So precise and so like dense and rich and yeah. Check out their blog. I think that's fantastic.
Kathleen (32:09): I'll definitely check that out. And I always love when I get answers to that question and it's a company I haven't heard of before. So thank you for bringing Sleeknote to my attention. Second question is, digital marketing changes so quickly and I always hear marketers saying that one of their biggest challenges, it's so hard to keep up with everything. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and, and stay on the cutting edge of everything with digital marketing?
Steffen (32:37): I think for me, it's the, the newsletter from growthhackers.com, which is kind of a weekly digest of the top posts in there. I think nowadays, it's the five best posts that they share. It's Monday evening when it comes out. And I think that's the most kind of cutting edge stuff that I see. And I think I've reached, I don't read many blog posts anymore because I've reached the kind of an experience level where I know that the basic tactics of most of the stuff, but in there I still like get "Oh, that I haven't seen before. And I want to implement that ASAP."
Kathleen (33:18): Yeah. I'm going to have to take a look at that. I have, I switched roles recently. And so my email changed and I haven't been getting the growth hackers emails, but it is good stuff. And you're right. Like when you reach a certain point in your career, it becomes harder to find content that makes you go like, wow, that's really cool. I didn't know that.
Steffen (33:37): So I've also like recently switched from like being a marketing leader to like marketing and sales leader. So like now I'm back to reading books, like High Quality Prospecting, Predictable Revenue and all that kind of stuff. So within sales, I feel I still have a lot, a lot of stuff to catch on. So there I'm actually willing to, to open the books again, but within marketing, I feel pretty comfortable about a bunch of stuff.
Kathleen (34:04): That's great. Well, growth hackers is a good one. All right. If somebody is listening and they want to learn more about Dreamdata or they want to connect with you online, they might have a question, what's the best way for them to do that?
Steffen (34:16): I think LinkedIn is where I'm the most active. I read everything on Twitter, but just reach out on LinkedIn. That's, that's a good spot. And the marketing innovation that we do, you can read on the Dreamdata.io blog to follow that I put out pieces there once in a while as well.
Kathleen (34:35): Fantastic. And I'll put links to all of that in the show notes. So head there if you want to check out the Dreamdata website and blog, or if you want to connect with Steffen on LinkedIn. And if you're listening and you learned something new or you enjoyed this episode, consider heading to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice and leaving the podcast a review, that's how other people hear about us. And if you know somebody who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. Thank you so much Steffen. This was a lot of fun.
Steffen (35:11): It was a big pleasure to be here. Thank you, Kathleen.
How is ABM software provider Demandbase beating its own growth projections despite uncertainty relating to COVID?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Demandbase CMO Peter Isaacson shares the story of the company's growth, from the creation of the account-based marketing category, to how they're pivoting during COVID. He explains how his team shifted gears when the COVID pandemic hit and why the changes they've made have them beating their own growth projections.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Demandbase website
- Connect with Peter on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Peter Isaacson, who is the CMO at Demandbase. Welcome to the podcast, Peter.
Peter (00:25): Thanks, Kathleen. Thrilled to be here.
Kathleen (00:27): Yeah. I'm excited to talk with you. You guys have had a phenomenal year and Demandbase has had a pretty impressive growth trajectory in general. So I'm, I'm looking forward to digging into what the the secret sauce is behind your success there. But before we do that maybe you could take a minute and for my guests who might not be very familiar with other you or Demandbase, just talk, talk a little bit about your story, who you are, how you got to where you are today and what the company does.
Peter (00:55): Sounds good. So buckle in, I'm assuming I've got 40, 45 minutes to tell this story that a long career now I've, so I got my start in advertising, did that for several years in New York, moved out number of years at Adobe put together enough kind of areas of responsibility there that it gave me the ability to step up and become a head of marketing. And I've held a few different CMO positions. Most recently I was COO at a dot com healthcare IT company called Castlight Health. We were actually customers of Demandbase about seven years ago. That got me introduced to Chris Gola, who was the founder and at the time CEO of Demandbase. Got to talking to Chris, just love the space that they were in love, the market opportunity and, and, you know, as important as anything else, maybe more important, like got along famously with Chris and decided to make the move over to become CMO with Demandbase. That was a little over six and a half years ago. Been a phenomenal ride. We're the leaders in account-based marketing. Probably one of the high points in my career was helping identify ABM as a category that we wanted to fully develop and, and getting that off the ground. And now Demandbase really offers a comprehensive platform for all aspects of account based marketing from identifying the right accounts to go after, to engaging with them and measuring the results all the way through your programs.
Kathleen (02:37): I love your story. And I, because I always love hearing when somebody has been a customer of a SaaS product, and then, and then they go on to be, you know, the head of marketing. I've had one or two other guests that have come into their roles that way. And I always just think that's such a great testament to, you know, the actual quality of the product itself, because it really does take a lot as a customer to say, I want to go work for that company and help them grow. So that's,
Peter (03:03): Yeah, it was, it was a great, it was a great transition. And as you said, it was part of my go-to narrative during the first couple of years of you know, meeting customers and prospects and stuff, just talking to them about the fact that I was a customer to one.
Kathleen (03:17): Yeah. There's no better testament to the quality of it than, than that really. So you said something that also really struck me and that was one of the highlights of your career was really getting to create the category of account-based marketing. And while this whole interview is not going to surround category creation, it certainly could. But I did want to just say that I that's so, so interesting to me and that that's how you and I originally connected cause I was picking your brain on category creation because so many marketers talk about doing it. And so few have actually done it. And, and I do want to ask you a few things about that. Cause I think I would be remiss if we didn't, if we didn't touch on that as part of this interview when did that process start? When did you realize you thought you had a new category?
Peter (04:06): Well, it wasn't so much. We thought we had a new category. The process started when we decided that we needed a new category. And really the basis for it was when I, when I joined Demandbase and talked to Chris and it wasn't some, you know, individual epiphany that Peter Isaacson alone had. Chris was, you know, thinking about this before I joined. But I think the recognition was that we had a really interesting you know, technology offering that took about three or four minutes to explain. And the reason it took three or four minutes to explain was there was no context for it. It was kind of a it's demand gen, but it, you know, focuses on the byte accounts. And we were able to identify the accounts and debit and you know, for the early adopters, that was great.
Peter (04:57): Like they were on the edge of their seats and wow, I can't do this any place else. And they were excited about it, but we knew absolutely that a three or four minute pitch was about three and a half minutes too long. And we needed to give context and categories, give companies and marketers individual's context that helps them frame what your offering is. And that's what led us to understand that we really needed, there was no category we could attach ourselves to necessarily that would be appropriate. So we needed to create our own. Once we decided that we started looking around at, you know, do we invent some, you know, new name, you know that no one's ever heard of. And we decided, you know, there was you know, ITSMA gets credit for this, but there was this term account-based marketing that had been developed really back in 2003 or so. But it was, it was pretty narrowly focused. Not many people used it, not many people talk about it, but we latched onto that and really attach meaning to it, defined it in the way that made sense for us. And, you know, then it just completely took off. And in ways that I'm happy to talk about that. I'll leave that to you on, on where you want the conversation to go.
Kathleen (06:20): When did, when did you first have that aha moment about the category?
Peter (06:24): You know, it's interesting. I I went and presented at a conference called Predict, which I think was in the late summer of 2014 and Doug Campbell John who was the CEO of a predictive company. And I'm drawing a blank on it right now, but he was his company. It was probably 60 or 70 people, a hundred people. And they put on a conference called Predict. I went and did a presentation that was focused on account-based marketing. And the, the reaction from the hundred people that were in the audience was so immediate and overwhelming. I literally went back into the office and ABM was kind of a pillar that we were talking about. I was like, look no further. We have our category and we are going to double, triple and quadruple down on this. And that was really what got it going kind of this recognition that there was a spark there that as long as we fan the flames was going to develop into something. Now you also, you got to convince analysts that it's important. You got to convince the press that, you know, they should write about it. And you got to get a little lucky and have competitors come in and, and fight over it. And all of those things.
Kathleen (07:43): That's amazing. So when you got home, you said we've got to double, triple down on it. What did that look like? I mean, is that you guys just creating a lot of content around what ABM is using the terminology consistently? Were there events, how did you, how did you move forward from there?
Peter (08:00): Yeah, I mean, I, you know, when I say that, you know, you need analysts to cover it, journalists, to write about it customers to want it competitors to compete over it. Those are kind of the four legs of category creation. As I look at it, you really need to figure out how you generate all four of those. Right? So we specifically built out our content, which included pitch decks and other things, and started going out to analysts and selling them on the idea of an account-based approach. And account-based marketing as the category that was going to transform kind of old-school demand gen that had existed for the last 10 or 15 years. They knew that, you know, demand gen had, as it was executed, had some fundamental flaws, which were starting to show over time. So they were buying into it. We went out and pitched the story to press, they started taking it in. And then as you said, thought leadership kind of, we started actually creating kind of, this is how you ABM content. I, and really kind of getting out there and saying, this is what ABM is. Here's how you define it. Here's why it's important. And here's how you execute it.
Kathleen (09:14): Great. And, and so fast forward that started in 2014. And I think, you know, it's interesting because I owned a marketing agency around that time. And I remember the first time I heard somebody use the term account based marketing and it was, it was on a sales call. I was talking to a prospect who was from a B2B technology company and they were looking at hiring us to help them with, it was an inbound marketing agency. And so you know, we were talking about demand gen just as you might think. And, and the question was, well, how does this fit in with an account-based marketing approach? And I'm literally on the call going, Oh, I've got to Google that right now to that question. And then it was just funny. Cause it was like, as soon as I heard that term for the very first time, then I just started hearing it all the time everywhere. It was weird. It was like, it came out of nowhere. And I think that was around 2015, 2016. If I recall, so it's just, it's funny from, from my perspective, I guess, being in the, in the audience for it, how it, like, it seemed to be something you never heard of it. And then it was like all over the place over there.
Peter (10:22): Yeah. Once the bottle came on with the, you know, the top came off the bottle, it, it just exploded. It really was amazing how quickly it caught fire. And again, it takes a certain amount of luck and timing for category creation. Don't let anyone, don't let someone's outside ego tell you that, you know, it was all just, you know, hard work and, you know anything else that like anything, it takes a little bit of luck and our timing was perfect. We preceded by about a year or so Terminus coming into the market and starting to talk about themselves as an account-based platform. Engagio came in at around the same time. Eventually a couple of other players and suddenly everything like we, at one point were tracking 60 companies that were using ABM as the way they were positioning their company, whether they had actual ABM technology or not 60 companies at one time were positioning themselves as ABM providers. It was just incredible how quickly it came.
Kathleen (11:22): I mean, and, and side note, that's so crazy that those companies weren't all around like five, six years ago, it doesn't seem like that long ago. And so much has changed in the market. That's wild. As soon as you said the year, I was like, wait, that all wasn't that wasn't a thing back then, but it wasn't, that's nuts. Well, what I really want to talk to you about is the last year or two at Demandbase, because you obviously, it's been, it's been an interesting kind of past five or six years since you've arrived. You had the category, it really took off. But then, you know, as a marketer, I always think like this when the sexy stuff is, is sort of the boxes checked on that there's the real meat and potatoes of the marketing work and you still have to achieve really strong growth for a company, especially if you're a venture backed. If you, you know, if you're in the kind of space you're in. So talk to me a little bit about what you've been doing at demand-based in the last year, year and a half to really continue to fuel your growth.
Peter (12:26): Yeah, so I mean like any company as you're growing, you hit different stages of growth. And you know, we hit 2021 was set up to be a very difficult stage for everyone, including us you know, once the pandemic hit and like for a lot of reasons which I can go into I just 20, 21 has turned out to be a phenomenal year for Demandbase, I think culturally we've kind of pivoted a bit and become kind of far more aggressive you know, put, you know holding each other a little bit more accountable than than we had in the past. And, and, and some things like that, but also pivoting pretty quickly to kind of address the new reality that existed within the macro economy and the micro economy as it related to, to Demandbase in our business.
Kathleen (13:31): And, and how big is your marketing team now?
Peter (13:35): We've got about 23 folks on it, 23, 24.
Kathleen (13:39): Okay. And what does that, how does that break out in terms of areas of focus?
Peter (13:44): So we've got, you know, it's pretty traditional, it goes across it goes across corporate communications digital marketing demand, gen customer marketing into marketing ops and product marketing now actually with the Engagio acquisition product marketing now technically reports into through John Miller and the product team. But they've always been aligned with marketing and, and still kind of share a, kind of a close relationship with us on that.
Kathleen (14:24): So, and you mentioned that the pandemic, you know, none of us could have foreseen that that was coming. And I, I don't know if you're anything like me. I had funny enough just joined a new company last January, and I think it was like, I joined January 13th and by January, by February 10th, I had come up with like my 30, 60, 90 day marketing plan. And then I remember within like three weeks of that, I had to just toss it all out the window because I, it was a very small startup, it's a different company and and all of their leads were coming in through events. And so until we could get a real good inbound engine going, we had a lot of events we were focused on and then it was like, okay, we're not doing that anymore. So I'm, I'm, I'd love to hear from you. What were you all planning prior to the pandemic? And then how did you make that shift? Because it's obviously, you've obviously managed to make lemonade out of lemons.
Peter (15:18): Yeah. So, I mean, we had gone through our planning process. We were kind of executing the plan and you know, going along happily hearing about this thing called COVID-19, but you know, it wasn't it wasn't a big issue. And certainly in late January, early February our big event each year is the ABM innovation summit which was really the, the only big ABM focused event that was out on the market. And we typically had, you know, over a thousand marketers and sales folks attending. And it was for this year for 2020 was scheduled for, I think March 13th, March 13th and 14th, or March 12th and 13th. We were a week and a half away from it. Which means that, you know, 90%, 95% of the work had already been done everything, you know, we were doing the final kind of prep for it and, you know, slides and stuff like that.
Peter (16:17): And we made the gut wrenching decision that we were going to have to cancel it. I'll never forget it. We made the decision, I think, on a Friday and it was a serious toss up. We weren't sure we were doing the right thing, but we decided to go ahead and cancel it. And I'm thinking kind of, you know, questioning ourselves for the next 24 hours within 48 or 72 hours. It was so clear that there was no way we were going to hold a conference and events that just kind of unfolded that quickly. As you probably remember, it was just went from like a, Hey, I think we could still do an event and pull this off to, Oh my God, there's no way, we're no way we're doing this. And it w it was, it was, you know, a gut punch to the, to the marketing team.
Peter (17:10): And I, you know, I don't think I've ever been prouder of the marketing team when kind of collectively everyone did this disappointed, exhale, like, ah, we're not going to be able to put on our event that we've been working so hard on for the last four or five months to okay, what's next. And the pivot that I think Demandbase made, but also a lot of other companies was just extraordinary kind of identifying like, okay, we're, you know, it's going to be a hundred percent digital are, may, you know, some of our main tactics like events are off the table, our field events, our activities, our dinners, things like are gone. What's going to make up the, you know, fill the gaps. So we started doing everything from you know, doubling down on our own advertising investment which we were already investing heavily in, but put more money into, and then you know, webinars, true virtual events converted the ABM innovation summit to to a virtual road show. And then started doing things like you know, converting our direct mail and things that we had done like virtual or excuse me field events into virtual wine tastings, right? Sending out a bottle of wine to 50 prospects and customers and doing virtual tasting. So things just happened so quickly that it was extraordinary and the results were fabulous. I mean, we really especially during those early days, we just didn't skip a beat.
Kathleen (18:45): Wow. I mean, kudos to your marketing team because a little over a year ago I was working at another company where we put on an annual conference. And so I've definitely I experienced firsthand how grueling it is to, to do that. And the work that goes in and just the, especially in the last few months leading up to it and to have to make that decision so close to the date of it. I, I can't even imagine. But it absolutely sounds like it was the right decision to make.
Peter (19:19): It was the right decision to make, but as, as you know putting these on Kathleen, like about a week and a half before, you're at that point where you're wondering yourself, is this all worth it? And it's the payoff of the event itself where you're totally energized and it's a company event at, at your process. Everyone loves it. And so, you know, inevitably it's like the highlight of the year and, and you know, that that's coming, like, that's what gets you through. And the fact that like you stopped just before and you don't get the pay off is what's really kind of just general.
Kathleen (19:54): Yeah. I've always felt like events were a little bit like that time period. You described as a little bit like the last few weeks of being pregnant when you're like any day now, any day, now it could be over and then you have your baby and you're thrilled and happy, and it's wonderful. And you forget that the last few weeks of being pregnant are not any fun at all. So
Peter (20:17): Literally my so sorry, we don't go. I have to go down to too far down the pregnancy path. I've never been pregnant myself obviously, but I did quote something that my wife said after her as she was heading in with her second our second kid was the, you have to be so uncomfortable by eight and a half months pregnant to want to go knowing what you're going to go through to want to go through that just for it to end. So it's kind of like I, yeah. Okay. Yep.
Kathleen (20:49): Yep. And then much like pregnancy events is the same way you say, Oh, I never want to do that again. That was so much work. And then your brain has a magical way of wiping all the hard parts away and making you think, do it again next year or whatever.
Peter (21:02): So, so true. But
Kathleen (21:03): As you say, like, I won't, I won't belabor ha no pun intended the pregnancy analogy, but yeah, that's amazing. One of the things I'm dying to ask you is have you continue doing those sorts of virtual events and virtual, what would have been field events and have you seen any change in in participation in the results you're getting? Because I hear so many marketing leaders talk about the fatigue that's kind of started to set in with virtual events.
Peter (21:34): Yeah. it absolutely has without a doubt. So it's just, it's funny how just digressing for a moment, like how many things have changed so quickly during this COVID period. It just seems like everything has been compressed and trends that usually, you know, evolve over a couple of years have happened like in, in seemingly a couple of weeks. Right. And, and just as a digression, I think, think back to the, during the very first days of the pandemic, every, you know, every marketer was telling the rest of the HR team and sales team, like you've got to show empathy, like don't just jump into a sales kind of thing. And, you know, boom, I want to sell you this. Every marketer, you know, was saying like, you've got to show empathy, you've got to address the situation like in these unprecedented times that, that, that, that, that we're all like, yeah, well, you know, Hey, I understand that the times are tough. And there was like two sentences of like empathy. And after about two and a half weeks, people were thinking like, if someone begins an email with these are unprecedented times, I'm going to scream. And like, we immediately pivoted as like, stop trying to show fake empathy. Like those things
Kathleen (22:54): That became the punchline.
Peter (22:56): It became the punchline, but it happened in like a matter of a couple of weeks. It seemed, it was just, it was just amazing. So anyway, getting back to your question. Yeah, there absolutely was fatigue in a way that, you know, usually develops over a couple of years, happened in a couple of months, like suddenly at first and during the pandemic, we were blowing away all numbers for webinars and virtual events and things like that. Just like, I think a lot of companies were, as people suddenly found themselves with a little bit of extra free time, they were looking for opportunities for professional development. They were looking for opportunities to replay some of the events and conferences that they had been to that provided them an outlet for professional development and things like, and, you know, the numbers were just extraordinary. And then, you know, by August it was kind of like, wow, the numbers just started falling off a cliff.
Peter (23:55): And so we've definitely seen it. What's, you know, what's now required is you've just got to get much better about what your, the content that you're providing, the length of time you're providing it, the, you know, the combination of, you know, tape versus live, things like that. You've just got to get much more creative in terms of what you're doing and how you're doing it. So what are you finding is working right now? So we've, we've gone to fewer webinars, right? We were kind of loading up on them at the beginning and now we're kind of really dialing back on what we're, what we're looking at is really doing kind of more tent pole events that have high value, great content outside speakers with some things that, you know, folks want to hear and trying to mix it up live and and recorded so that it feels a little bit more spontaneous and aligning our message around that rather than a lot of little things or, and making sure that the big things aren't like full day sieges where, you know you're, you're hoping that people will spend eight hours looking at a zoom and, you know, that's not happening anymore.
Kathleen (25:16): No way. I mean, I can only speak from my personal experience that I, I sign up for lots of those things, but if you ask me how many I actually go to it's the zero I, I look at the wall of, of you know, things on my calendar, like of virtual sessions. I just think who has time to say, I mean, the only reason it works in person is because you're literally physically removed from your office. And even then I think people sit in conference halls and they're checking their work email, and they're on their laptops and they're multitasking anyway. But, but the difference is there's an expectation that changes when you're physically gone that isn't present, I think when you're attending something virtually. So,
Peter (25:59): Yeah, I agree. I think I totally agree. And that's, that's just made it more and more challenging. I think. So what we saw were quite honestly, this is, it worked at the beginning, but it's working probably even better now is high value kind of curated smaller opportunities. And I mentioned virtual wine tasting that has, that's been a home run for us just because it's something special. It's something at the end of the day, it involves alcohol in any way. Everyone's using that more and more as a crush these days, that through challenging times but it also provides kind of some fun networking opportunities. And, you know, it's not something that works with a crowd of 200 or 300, but it works super well with a crowd of 50 when you can, you know, do some breakouts, meet some new people, kind of over a glass of wine, talk about, and then come back together, share your experiences and do stuff like that. Those types of more curated high value experiences have proven to have some staying power and are the things that folks are still willing to invest time in.
Kathleen (27:15): And of course the question I always hear from marketers, when we talk about things like that is, you know, how are you handling the fact that when you send, for example, that wine to your participant, that you're sending it to their home address in many cases like that's one of the interesting things that I've seen really change about ABM in the last year was it used to be, you know, great, we'll do like a dimensional mailing with something really cool to invite somebody to the event or what have you. And we can always send it to their office. And and you know, it's, it's just not the case anymore. So how is your team handling that?
Peter (27:49): Yeah, I mean, again, for high value you know opportunities folks are, you know, more than willing to give their their home address, kind of understanding that if you send something to my office, I'm probably not going to get it until next March. There are also you know, Sendoso, PFL, those guys have, you know, they recognize that the stuff that the office is just not working, so they've been building their database and providing kind of opportunities to kind of get the home addresses and provide that. So we've relied partly on our own outreach and partly you know, on vendors that are that have platforms.
Kathleen (28:32): Nice. And then as you think about your, your 2021 planning, I mean, obviously none of us has a crystal ball. We have no idea when, you know, when, or if the world will ever return to what we used to think of as normal. But how are you applying kind of the experience you've had this year and the lessons learned to what's in your 2021 plan?
Peter (28:54): Yeah, I mean, our one, our going in assumption is that that we're not going back to where it was anytime soon. I mean, even with the vaccine coming in, you know, Q1 midway through, you know, and getting through the population mid Q2 I'm not sure the CDC thinks in quarters like we do, but that's how I'm thinking about it. But we just don't think any of that's going to return for, you know, not in 2021, maybe not in 2022. So everything that we're doing is, is virtual. I think what's benefited Demandbase quite frankly is, is two things really the reason that we've done quite well this year one account-based marketing just makes intuitive intellectual sense when you're dealing with scarce resources, because it's all about focusing your dollars on the stuff that's really going to move the needle and, and drive your business forward.
Peter (29:54): So there's been a lot of like, yes, I need to focus and account-based marketing as a way to focus. The other thing that's happened is the CEO of of Microsoft kind of now famously earlier in the summer said two years of digital transformation have now taken place in the, in the last two months. And all these companies that we're talking about, digital transformation have accelerated it. And at the beginning, I had all kinds of conversations about what Demandbase offered, but also just about digital transformation, writ large with with customers. So, you know, some, some, especially some very large companies that were really focused on, on digital transformation have made that switch. So right now our 21, 2021 planning is all about taking advantage of that digital transformation about like having, you know, companies and engaging with them on now that your digital first enterprise or mid-market company, how you actually, you know, execute that in a way that's going to be very focused around your account. So you know, our, our account-based advertising plays a huge role in that the ability to personalize your website plays a huge role in that, and then how you align your sales and marketing teams around kind of data and insights that they can both act on is the other part of that. And that's what we're really focused on promoting
Kathleen (31:25): And that approach to kind of that go to market approach. What is that something that's really only accessible for larger companies, or can any company take that approach and maybe do it in a more scrappy way? Like, where's that where's that cutoff line?
Peter (31:41): Well, I see account based marketing as a, as a strategy is accessible to every company, right? No matter how small you are even if you're 10 folks, like it's probably even more important to actually focus on the accounts that are really going to start establishing the beachhead in your business. That doesn't mean that you need a platform like Demandbase, you don't, and we wouldn't sell it to a company that had 10 people because you just wouldn't take advantage of all there was to offer. But account-based marketing as a strategy is accessible to all it's the companies that, you know, start reaching a hundred employees and, you know, maybe 25, 30 million and in revenue where kind of really developing or investing in an account-based platform starts to really make sense for them. And they can start really getting kind of full value from it.
Kathleen (32:38): Great. Well, it'll, it, it will be interesting next year to see what happens with events. I mean, I've heard a lot of back and forth from some people saying in person events are coming back and my my personal take on it is even if they do, I think a lot of people are going to have PTSD honestly, and, and be too afraid to, you know, I think even when some people are vaccinated, it's going to be, it's going to be a muscle. We haven't flexed in a long time. And so I certainly don't see virtual events going anywhere. I think the challenge is going to be, how do we keep it engaging? How do we you know, continue to innovate in a way that people show up and participate. And it sounds like those smaller format events are, are definitely the way to go. I was interested that you said that your wine tasting is that you have like 50 people there, because that even almost seemed large to me. So how do you, how do you make an event, a virtual event with 50 people still seem intimate?
Peter (33:33): You so you do breakouts. You basically come together. So we've kind of got the formula down now where we've we come together, there's a host, right? So sometimes it's me, sometimes it's someone on my team. Sometimes it's a a sales leader, but there's a host that welcomes everyone kind of gets the ball rolling. Usually tees up a topic or two that we'd like to kind of cover. And we also mix it in with kind of a couple of, you know, icebreaker types of things like, you know you know, what are you binge watching now? And some things like that, but we usually do kind of three breakouts where we get into breakout rooms of five people, or so four people, we do that for like seven minutes and we come back as a group and then we just invite, you know, Hey, what do people say about binge-watching? What did what's, you know, the best superpower that you heard, things like that. And some people are on chat. Some people are, you know, very vocal and, you know, expressing, and it becomes a bit of a free for all, but a fun free for all,
Kathleen (34:39): For a few drinks,
Peter (34:40): A couple of glasses of wine, everyone's feeling pretty good and everything. So the key is kind of breaking it out, just like, you know, if you've done, you know, bigger planning meetings, things like that, you've got to break out, come back together, break out, come back together. That format has worked super well.
Kathleen (34:58): And do you generally find, I mean, let me rephrase that in my experience, when I've gone to those kinds of events, the ones that I've enjoyed the most have had very small amounts of like presenting slash selling and very large amounts of more just social time. How do you generally kind of land on that balance?
Peter (35:17): So it's a slide free environment, 100%. So we, don't kind of, Hey, now that you've got your wine, settle back in and now, you know, let me drone on about like seven pitch deck slides that I want to take you through. So we never do that. It's usually just, you know, an, a two sentence opening, like, you know, we got a lot of customers got a lot of prospects that anyway, just a level set, like Demandbase, here's what we do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then usually it's teeing up kind of one, or maybe two areas to discuss around account based marketing. And it's, you know, let's talk about the biggest challenges you have with sales and marketing alignment, right? So it's not about Demandbase. It's more about your challenges as marketer that you're facing and let's have a conversation about that. And, you know, if Demandbase comes up in that fine, if it doesn't, that's fine too. We were really just kind of teeing up challenges that that sales and marketing folks have.
Kathleen (36:16): I love that then all these questions are totally selfish because I'm going to be doing some events like that next year or so I may or may not be taking a lot of notes as you talk. No, that's great. Thank you for sharing all that detail. I mean, I could ask you questions about this all day, but we don't have all day. So I want to shift gears for a minute and there's two questions I always ask my guests. And I'm very curious to hear what you have to say. The first one is, you know, the podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really kind of setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer?
Peter (36:53): Yeah, I mean, I, so when I think of inbound, I'm going to transition it to demand gen, which transitions to ABM. So I think about it as like an account-based marker. So I'm going to, I'm going to change the frame of reference if you, if you're okay with that. You know what, I've I've been blessed to work with three outstanding heads of what we call demand gen or growth marketing, but they're really kind of focused on ABM. And the first one that I worked with at Demandbase, Sherry Johnson, she's gone on and and is now a consultant doing great work. Second was Lisa Ames. She's gone on and is doing unbelievable things. And Brian Finnerty is our current who has been phenomenal in his role. All three of those are absolute pros and, and know so much about about account-based marketing. Probably the person that knows most about it was actually co-authored the book that I wrote and did a lot of the heavy lifting. And that's Jessica Fewless who is now working at Inverta partners as a consultant. So these folks have gone on and are now kind of teaching other people how to, how to do ABM.
Kathleen (38:05): Those are all new names for me. So I'm definitely looking forward to checking them out. And, and for anyone listening, I'll make sure to put links to their LinkedIn profiles in the show notes. Second question. A lot of the marketers I talk to say that their biggest challenge is just keeping pace with how quickly the world of digital marketing changes and staying on top of all of that. How do you personally stay educated?
Peter (38:28): But it's a great question because, you know, going to conferences, you kind of, you know, absorbed through your you know, what was going on and, and things like that. And you were always able to pop into different things. Right now, what has been most helpful to me have been the CMO kind of zoom networking things that I'm able to engage in. You know, you and I are part of Revenue Collective you know, but other other folks through nicer has put on some CMO networking things. And there have been others that I've participated in across this past year in particular. Those have been the most useful for me. I mean, I'm, I'm paying attention to tech crunch and Diginomica and, you know, things like that. And they're always useful for kind of what's going on with product launches and M&A, and things like that, but what marketers are doing, I get the most out of my CMO networks.
Kathleen (39:29): It's interesting. I feel the same way. I used to listen to a lot of podcasts and now that I'm not commuting anymore, I've, I've really reduced that dramatically. And, and similarly, my kind of networks of other marketing leaders have replaced that. So that is, I wonder if there's like a more macro trend going on with the emergence of, of closed groups. I mean, there always have been close groups, but I wonder if it's really kind of like you described earlier, how trends have accelerated dramatically this year. I wonder if that's one of them.
Peter (39:58): Yeah. Yeah. I, I agree. I, yeah, I used to be much more in tune with podcasts now and that I'm not commuting. It's just, I don't have any time during the day, and it's very difficult for me to, you know, go through 10 hours or 11 hours and then say, I want to hop on a, you know, B2B podcasts.
Kathleen (40:17): That does not sound like my idea of weekend fun.
Kathleen (40:22): Well, great. So if somebody is listening and they want to learn more about Demandbase, or they have a question for you, what is the best way for them to connect with you online?
Peter (40:32): Sure. So you know certainly our website is great. But if you want to connect with me personally find me on LinkedIn. Love to chat with you that way.
Kathleen (40:45): And again, I'll put those links in the show notes. So if you want to learn more about Peter or about Demandbase, head to the show notes, and you can hit those links. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, or you learned something new head over to Apple podcasts, or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. That's how other folks find out about us. And of course, if you know somebody else doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Peter.
Peter (41:18): Thank you, Kathleen. This was fun.
CMOs have the shortest tenure of any C-suite leadership role. Christina Del Villar says that's because they don't take the time to build a marketing map of influence.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Christina Del Villar talks about why it's so important for marketing leaders to be effective internal communicators within their own companies and how building a 'marketing map of influence' can be a game changer when it comes to getting things done and increasing tenure.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And my guest today is Christina Del Villar, who is a Silicon Valley marketing expert with 25 years of experience. She's an author, she's a board advisor, she teaches. I'm sure she does 20 other things, but we're going to have her tell us in her own words. Welcome Christina.
Christina (00:50): Thank you. Thank you, Kathleen. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. So I have been a marketing executive in Silicon Valley for the past 25 years, mostly focused on go to market strategy and overall marketing strategy. And in my past, my career has mostly been focused on B2B organizations in that space. And I've worked with about 30 startups over the years, including Bill.com, which went public last year just about this time, as well as some really established companies like Oracle and Autodesk and Wells Fargo. And basically, you know, I was lucky enough to be in Silicon Valley, but one of the things that, that I learned right away was that I'm not that big idea person. I'm not the person that's going to come up with the next big thing or this huge paradigm shifting type product, but where my strengths were.
Christina (01:38): And this is what I realized was in developing that strategy, the processes, the programs, the teams, everything that's needed to execute and implement their go-to-market strategy. So that was kind of a learning lesson for me, really understanding where I fit in. And I've really embraced that over the years and really like it. The other thing that came to that I came to understand really quickly was that marketing in general is just, it's a very misunderstood I'm sure you've experienced this many times where people really don't know what it is that we do, what we bring to the table. A lot of people just think we, you know, make t-shirts and touch keys and tweet and have fun all day long and they don't really get the concept of, of the marketing strategy, both inbound and outbound. And, and so it was this really hard as a marketer and working on strategy to help people understand both externally my executives leaders outside boards that we discuss things with and internally to my own teams.
Christina (02:35): And, and what I found was that we're just, we're kind of, kind of bad at marketing ourselves, right? And we're supposed to market the marketer and we're just not, not very good at that. So over the years, what I did was basically created a framework and a methodology that would help marketing professionals work smarter and more efficiently all while having greater impact, but taking that a step further, I really wanted them to be able to articulate the value, add that they have not just in a marketing organization or their team, but to the overall corporate strategy as well. And so that was really key to what I'm, what I basically spent the last six months doing is developing writing the book that talks about this and developing some courses that will help people do that. And then over my career, I've just sort of been doing it ad hoc, not really recognizing it as a framework or putting it in, in that kind of a framework that's easy to understand and implement.
Christina (03:22): And so that's basically what, what I've been doing. And I think it's really important for people to understand that you, you can, you can build a great strategy. You can have a great plan, you can execute seamlessly, but if you then don't take those results and share them in such a way that are meaningful to your audience. And that kind of gets back to the market, the market, the marketing person then it's just kind of, it's meaningless, right? Like a CEO really doesn't care. How many MQLs do you bring in, but they want to know is how much revenue you brought in. So it's really just a matter of taking all that information and figuring out what those results look like, and then sharing those results again, in such a way that are meaningful for your board or the CEO, or even your manager or even like the sales team or product teams, because they're thinking about things differently, they have different goals. So again, that's why I wrote the book. And hopefully my goal is to help others avoid some of the pitfalls that I've experienced, or I've seen a lot of my colleagues and my teams go through over the years.
Kathleen (04:25): I love this topic. I need to, I have been accused over the years of picking my podcast guests for selfish reasons. And I admit it, I do, I, I pick topics based on what I want to learn more about. And this one is such a good one, in my opinion, for a couple of reasons, one, there's a ton of data that the average tenure of like a CMO it's under two years or something crazy like that. The shortest of the C-suite, it's the shortest tenure of any C suite position. And what you said about marketers being terrible at marketing themselves is so spot on. So just to share a little personal anecdote, I just, this past week published my personal website, which I have been working on for two years. And it wasn't like it was hard to build the site.
Kathleen (05:22): I just, like, the thought of writing copy about myself and like finding video and pictures of myself, it was just, it was not fun at all, but whatever I did it, it finally happened, but it was painful. And, you know, I definitely realized through that process, like marketers are horrible at marketing themselves and I'm, I'm, you know, example number one of that. But what you really said that I think struck home to me was about marketers, not communicating well internally in the organization, what they do and the results they're getting. And I will fully admit that I'm guilty of that. You know, I'm a serial startup marketer. And I don't know that this is unique to us, but I can certainly speak to it. Like we're doing 50 things at once at all times. And, you know, you're when you're the head of marketing at a startup, you're strategizing, you're reporting and you're executing. And sometimes it's very easy to fall into the trap of spending a lot of your time executing and some strategizing and not a whole lot reporting on what you're doing and write about it. So I am, so that is all very long way of saying I'm excited to talk about this topic.
Christina (06:30): I love talking about it. I love writing about it. So I'm excited that other people, and again, I think it really does. It hits home for a lot of people and there's often been times, and I'm sure you've experienced this in some of your listeners where they're like, look, I know I have to share my results, but I just need to get it done right now. It's only my focus on is just getting it done. And by doing that, it's great because you're getting it done. But then at the end of the day, nobody knows what you did.
Kathleen (06:55): Right. And like, so what I think that sometimes people think marketing is a whole lot of like, woo. Nice pictures, and...
Christina (07:10): We do, we make really nice graphics .But it was interesting. I was in a board meeting one time. And one, one when the sales person got up, he was talking about this amazing deal that had just closed. And it was one of the deals. It was a huge, one of our biggest deals ever. And it closed in under a month and everybody's like, yay. Sales is amazing. And I was like, Oh, you know, actually, let me tell you a little bit about that sale. We just made in a month that actually took eight months to get to where it was so that we could actually sell it. It was like some, you know, a junior person in the organization that saw this at a trade show, they signed up for the trial and then it kind of, they started, you know, internally you know, championing this product of ours and then somebody else got wind of it. And then they started getting more information. They came to webinars, they did all this, that was an eight month process. But what happened was the person who actually purchased it a month earlier, went and finally saw a webinar sign up for a trial and then told his team to buy it. And so I was like, you know, this, it wasn't a month. It was eight months. And it was eight months of marketing's really hard work and nurturing that got us here. And, and everybody looked at me like I was crazy.
Christina (08:18): They're like, no, sales made that. And I'm like, no, no, no. So again, we just really have to learn how to show all of that. Then again, what you were getting into a little bit about these touch points that I talk about, but help people understand how to identify these touch points. And then again, explain to everyone all throughout the organization, along that customer journey, all the different areas that marketing impacts.
Kathleen (08:41): So let's start out by kind of laying a foundation here of, of shared understanding in terms of like terminology, because you talked about a marketing map of influence. Can you explain what you mean by that?
Christina (08:56): So that was my own terminology. And basically what I did was I wanted to personally understand how I could have more influence and build more trust within an organization and then help my team understand how they could do that both internally with our marketing organization and then externally to the rest of the company. And then even beyond that becoming thought leaders in the industry. And so what I did was I literally, and I have a picture of my map of influence and basically what it is is it's looking at what, again, I'll call touch points and I'll define those in a second, but all the different touch points that marketing has and how we can either get better at identifying which ones we can have more influence over. And then how do you share those results with the rest of the organization? Because again, that's, what's missing, it's not just the executives that don't understand what we do.
Christina (09:47): And a lot of people within an organization don't don't understand what it is that we do. So the map of influence that I build out basically goes along the entire customer journey. So starting with product development, going through the area that marketing definitely owns lead, you know, the lead life cycle and then looking at it from the buyer perspective and the component that sales is working through all the way through to customer engagement and how people are onboarding and adopting. And I mean, it was their turn, that sort of thing. There's all of these tiny little areas that marketing touches every single day. And we might not recognize it as, you know, something marketing does or not necessarily you know, part of our, our daily responsibilities, but, but it's in there. So for example, if you're thinking about, you know, the product team, the product team is developing products that marketing can influence what is being developed.
Christina (10:40): They, because we understand you know, what features or functionalities we might be able to actually, you know, sell, sell for sale separately and have a different pricing structure around it, that sort of thing. We might be able to help product keep on, on brand with whatever it is that they're developing. Sometimes they come up with these, you know, features and it's totally different color and the logos are wrong or it's not there at all. And so really these are areas that we can influence. So the product is just doing a better job, but the marketing is definitely involved in that, that piece of it the life cycle, that's all of our programs and the webinars, all the different inbound and outbound programs we already have. But even within that, are there ways that we can think about them differently and have more influence over what we're doing, looking at it from the standpoint of the go-to market strategy, right?
Christina (11:27): So we can definitely, we can do a ton of events, but if events aren't bringing in the right kinds of leads that we're looking for over the next 12 months then, is that something we should be focusing on or should we be focusing on something that's going to bring in less leads, but more quality leads and qualified leads. And so there's just some things that we could be thinking about a little smarter. And again, there's plenty of things we can, we can help with sales, we can help them write scripts. We can basically help them identify which you know, prioritization of leads that they follow up on. So, and we do this stuff every single day. We just don't think about it as part of our marketing job or part of how we're influencing again, the overall success of the company.
Christina (12:07): And then from a customer engagement standpoint, there's a lot of things we can do. We can help with, you know, how to videos to get. We just wanna make sure that they're being that the customers are being onboarded and adopting properly. So, you know, can we produce a best practices webinar, or, you know, can we somehow build out some reports that would be useful for customers? And again, we, we do these things already. We just don't think about them. Again, as ways that in ways that we can use them and leverage them to have more influence. So those are, again, those are kind of some of the touch points and that's kind of how I build my map with influence. It really does go along the entire customer journey in the lines of the go to market strategy and the overall company performance that we're looking for and ultimately helps guide me in terms of which things I want to prioritize. Cause I know, you know, everyone in marketing meet me, get interrupted every day with all these tiny little things, right? Like, Hey, I'm going into a meeting. Can you pull a report for me? Or I've got a presentation tomorrow. Can you build a graphic for me? Or, you know, I have some customers coming in. Can I get some t-shirts all of these things that we do on a daily basis are part of our jobs and it's, but we just need to think about them a little smarter and, and actually prioritize those.
Kathleen (13:20): So you talked about how kind of step one is identifying all the areas that marketing might touch or have influence on. And you just kind of, I feel like you gave a really nice overview of that. And as I was listening to you talk, what was going through my head is, is, you know, that's, that's a lot, and I know this from my experience, like that's what I experienced now. I mean, I'm not even in that big of a company, but really it's almost like every piece of the company, there's something that marketing can touch, whether that's the employee, the employer brand customer marketing, lead gen you know, product development, there's truly, you could have your hands in everything. And so I guess this is a two-part question, really, which part one is what is the best way to have a voice in those things for two is what is the best way to do that in a way that like doesn't become completely overwhelmed and eliminate your ability to focus on, you know, the things that are going to move the needle from a revenue standpoint.
Christina (14:23): Oh, right, right. No, and that's a, that's a great question. And in my mind, and this is a little bit controversial, but I really feel like marketing should own the go-to market strategy because we literally do. We are the foundation of everything that's happening. Again, along that customer journey, what kinds of products are being built and developed and how they're getting sold and how much they're being sold for them, what they look like, all of that, you know, are things that we, we do have a hand in. But, but to your point, we can't do everything. You know, I'd like to think that I could, but I can't. And, and we have limited resources and limited personnel. So what I generally do is when I, when I build my map of influence, I look at all of the touch points and, and again, there's, you know what I mean?
Christina (15:04): There's probably like a thousand. I might be exaggerating, but probably pretty close to that. And then what I want to do is I want to prioritize those and I always want to prioritize those based on a couple of things. One thing is our overall corporate goals. Like what, what is our overall objective? What is the revenue objective that even beyond the revenue objective is the objective to get more logos or more recognizable logos. Like you really need to kind of understand what this go to market strategy looks like. And so I want to map it to those and anything that's going to help me with that or things that I want to focus on. The other areas are looking at things that are important to the customer, right. Because, you know, while it's great that, you know, we have a plan is this going to align with what the customer is looking for and what the customer's needs are?
Christina (15:48): I've been in many, many product meeting where, you know, they're discussing what features and functionalities to develop. And some of them are just amazing, right. But is this what the customer needs, or even, you know, wants or anything like, are they willing to pay for it? Because if not, then we need to think about, you know, should we be developing this, if it's something that they don't even want, then, then, you know, we just need to kind of consider that. The other area that I want to look at is the expertise of my team. Like what who's on my team and what works, what skills do they have? What skills gaps do we have and what can we can we easily do? Like, what are some of the low hanging fruit things that we can, we can do easily? So I want to look at that and if, if I'm missing some skills on the team, is there a way to either train them?
Christina (16:31): If it's, you know, if this is a really critical thing that I want to focus on or do we need to potentially hire in or bring in some contractors. And then the final thing really is, you know, sort of what are the levers that I can easily pull, or my team can easily cool, right? Because again, we don't want them doing everything and we, we do want them to be laser focused, but we want them to just sort of think about things a little differently, right? So you know, again, this has been aligned with what our corporate goals are and what the customer's needs are, and it's something that we can do easily. And we have we have the means the technology tools, resources to, to put in place. Then those are the types of things that, that's how I would basically prioritize those.
Kathleen (17:08): So there's a couple of things you just said that, that stuck with me. One was when you talked about it being sometimes controversial, that marketing owns the go to market strategy, and then you also talked about like, we're, we have all these potential features for our product. And do we know if people will really pay for it? That one struck me because we literally had this conversation last week at my company. And I am in the middle of doing pricing interviews with customers and I'm having them force rank features, which is a fascinating exercise to go through. But again, those, both of those kinds of comments allude to the fact that we're talking about collaboration across departments, about who should own the go to market strategy. Is it marketing, sales? The question of what features should we build in our product? Is it, is it your engineering slash product team or is it marketing or sales, right? A little bit about just internal communication and how you handle that. Because I do think that very often when we go into these conversations, at least because of historic perceptions about marketing, we don't necessarily, we're not necessarily thought of as having the same kind of not, I don't want to say power, but, but influence in those conversations perhaps.
Christina (18:29): Right. So.
Kathleen (18:31): I don't know. I'd love to get your thoughts on that.
Christina (18:33): Great question. And that really is what the map of influence is supposed to help you do. Right? So for example, if you are if you're a little more focused on, on the product side of things, or you have the you know, you have a really good understanding of what customers are looking for and you want to have influence on what features and functionalities are being built out then looking at all of those touch points that we talked about earlier that you have you basically, you know, you take a couple of those and you kind of test the water with it, right? So for example, if you, if they're coming up with this amazing feature, but it's not within it, you know, sort of the brand or, or what your core mission for your company is, then it's really easy to go and talk to somebody and say, Hey, you know what?
Christina (19:21): I know you guys were looking at this feature. You know, here's some, here's some data and here's some interesting anecdotal information that I have about that kind of a feature and why it might not be the best feature for us to, to focus on right now. So you're, you know, you're not saying this is what we need to do and, you know, don't, don't do that feature or that feature you're, you're going in. And you're saying, you know, I I've done some background. I recognize what our customers are looking for. And it just at least opens up the door to start having, having some conversations. I'll give you an example. When I when I was working at, at Autodesk, there was a, there was a feature that I needed to be built out and have it ready within a year.
Christina (20:02): And what it was going to do is going to exponentially increase our revenue. But you know, a year later, if I'm going to a, you know, an engineering team or product team and saying, I need this feature developed now, so that it's ready in a year, it's really hard for them to say, Oh, sure, let's just reprioritize our entire roadmap for you. Right. So, so basically what I did was I had it mapped out to say, if we do this feature, you know, by the time that it's ready, and this is a year, these are the programs are going to do, and the campaigns are going to have to promote it. And this is actually going, it was really going to exponentially increase our revenue. It's going to increase our revenue by like 25%, which would net out. Let's just say I'm making up numbers, but like $30 million.
Christina (20:41): Right. And so I was talking to the head of engineering about it and he was like, wait, are you telling me that, that my team, by doing this feature for you could help our company bring in $30 million? And I'm like, yes, exactly athlete. So it really is. So he was like, Oh my God. And he like, starts telling his team's like, Oh my God, we, you know, we can bring in revenue if we do. So it was this really helping them understand. So, you know, not only that I needed this and then I had a plan to execute it and that it was going to be successful. And if it's successful, this is what it was going to bring in. It really helped. It gave them context for why they should want to reprioritize. And I think that again, context is missing from a lot of our conversations. You know, you can collaborate, but if you're not helping people understand why it's significant then, then that's a problem. And you really do need to have, sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead. No, no. I was just going to say, you really do need to have a clear understanding of what you think the results will be for some of these things so that you can articulate that to, to folks so that they buy into what it is that you're doing.
Kathleen (21:47): So that's actually the perfect segue. You mentioned that you went to the head of engineering with kind of a map. You had things mapped out. You had a plan. What if somebody is listening and they're thinking, in principle, this sounds great. Like, how do I actually do this? Like, what are the components of, of this type of map or plan?
Christina (22:10): So the, at the end of the day, and again, it kind of goes back to marketing owning the go to market strategy and really beyond that, truly owning revenue. I mean, oftentimes sometimes, sometimes I've given a revenue target and sometimes I'm not. But at the end of the day marketing again, especially if it's sort of a foundation across the entire customer journey ultimately has whether they're responsible for it or not. They should have a huge revenue target that they're trying to, they're trying to reach. And, and some of the programs that you're focused on are going to work backwards from that revenue and, and, you know, how are you going to get to this revenue? So, and in some cases you don't know, you don't know how much truly, I don't know that it was going to bring in 30 million or whatever number I had there.
Christina (22:58): But at least I have a starting point in a, any point of conversation. And, and I think that that's, you know, really key. It's just helping, you need to understand why you're doing this program, how it aligns with the strategy and what you think the outcome will be before you kind of go into some of these other, other conversations. And in some cases, it's, it can be hard, some cases you don't. I mean, there've been times when I have zero data, so I'm just like going on my gut or past experience. In some cases you have the data, you know, how much you know, a similar feature functionality might bring in, for example, from a revenue standpoint. So you might have some, you know, some data, and this is, again, this is a, it's a process. You, you, you know, you haven't mapped with influence, but you're not going to implement it all at once.
Christina (23:43): And it's going to take, you know, months or years to actually get to the point where you're kind of have full coverage of that map. But again, it's really important to understand those end goals and kind of work backwards from back. And again, I think the context is, is, is important for people to understand. I think this happens with events. A lot of people are like, why do you, why are you even doing an event? Because, you know, we get bad leads and they go nowhere. And, and so you have to help them understand that, that it's it's a longer sales cycle, you know, you're trying to weed out the quality leads, but there's also a component of, you know, branding and messaging and some other things that you're trying to, to you know, get across, you have other objective objectives for that. And just helping people understand what those objectives are sort of helps them again, align with you, or at least again, open up the conversation so that you can figure out how you can collaborate or, or make some compromises as well.
Kathleen (24:38): So what does this mean for you? Especially somebody who's coming in. A lot of my listeners are either the senior, most marketer in their company, or darn close to it, or they own a certain component of marketing. What does this mean for how that person should approach a relationship building with the leaders of the other parts of the organization?
Christina (25:00): Yes. I think that there's a couple of things for those, for those folks. And I've, I've done this with my teams as well for those folks, their peers are the ones that they need to influence and collaborate with. Right. But I think it's also really important for the folks underneath them to start building those relationships. So generally what I'll do with my team is I literally assign you know, somebody, you know, you, you need to build a relationship with somebody in sales and product and you know, customer success and I'll even, I will even assign these people. And sometimes it's a known relationship like, Hey, you know, product, you know, head of product, I'd love for my team to be more engaged with yours. So I'd like to pair up some of our folks together so that they can collaborate and, you know, they can just start going out and having some coffee and that kind of thing.
Christina (25:45): And just, again, just, it builds the relationship, but it also builds empathy as well. And I think that that's really critical. So I do that with with all levels of my organization, with all the other organizations. And then again, I think that the, it goes back to the results as well, because the results aren't just there, they're not just marketing, they're not just sales results. People need to understand that they also were involved in that, in having that impact on the company and the company performance as well. And so, and again, there's, there's a difference between like giving credit to somebody like, Hey, you know, sales made that great sale, right? That's, that's nice, but it's not getting to the point where, you know, the, this, this revenue came in because, you know, product builds the product or feature that we needed. Marketing did an amazing job of building campaigns to bring in qualified leads. And sales did an awesome job of shortening the sales cycle by nurturing their leads a little bit better. And then the onboarding was executed seamlessly by customer success. And that's why we have the successful revenue that we, that we reached. And so it really is just a matter of helping people understand the impact that they're having along that customer journey that you're building out and the go to market strategy as well.
Kathleen (26:58): So let's break down that topic of, of communicating and reporting. I'm, I'm, I'd love to know, just sort of from all different angles, like how often are you reporting? What are you reporting on? Who's it going to, what format does it take?
Christina (27:13): That is a great question .So in terms of that, the sort of peer to peer relationship building that I have my team do basically I want to make sure that at least once a month, they're getting together, not on a work-related project and just like, you know, building, building that relationship and friendship. And again, it could just be like half hour coffee or zoom call or whatever, whatever it is that we're doing in this day and age. So sort of, sort of starts with that in terms of then engaging I often will, it's hard to integrate or sort of embed yourself in some of these other organizations. Right. but I like to get to a point where we're invited to their meetings, but I initially do that by having my own meetings, my own Brown bags.
Christina (28:07): So let me think about it, you know, there's four weeks in a month. Each week, I'll do a Brown bag with one of those different organizations and just kind of get them engaged and understanding what it is we're doing in terms of the programs we have. And again, helping them understand context for them. At one point I used to have these big open Brown bag meetings, and then, you know, engineers would be falling asleep cause I'm talking about programs. And so I'm like, ah, that's not going to work. So now I do that individually.
Kathleen (28:35): Yes, a full belly and a brown bag talk is not a good combination.
Christina (28:38): It's amazing. But, so I started doing them with the individual organizations and they did one with an engineering team once. And it was interesting because, you know, they were actually, they were told to go to the Brown bag, which is fine. So so they were at the Brown bag and they, they were kind of, you know, they were just, aren't sure why they were there or, you know, what this meant. And they were a little bit disengaged. But at one point I started talking about like how important it was to truly understand the data behind, you know, the customers on the back end of things. What were our customers experiencing? You know, when did, was there like a peak, like we knew that like Fridays were, you know, the biggest day for customers to sign in or whatever, whatever it was.
Christina (29:22): I was looking for information so that I could you know, go back and get writes the best practices or, you know, understand like what a good case study might look like. And an ROI might look like, and this guy who I literally felt was checked out, he looks at me and he goes, he goes, wow. You know, we have industry data for the last 10 years on all of our and it shows their usage numbers. And and a bunch of other things it's like, would that be helpful for you? I was like, Oh my God, that would be amazing. And then everybody else started getting engaged at like, Oh we can totally pull that and we can do this. And, and so I started to tell him like, this is why we do case studies, and this is why we do these best practices.
Christina (30:03): And this is what an ROI means to our customers. And so they took all of those definitions and sort of some of the content programs that we're developing. And they're like, you know, this is great. We're going to go back and discuss this because we think we have a lot of data that we can interject into your reports and your case studies. And so we're gonna, we're going to go think about it and then we'll get back to you on how we can help. And so just like that engineering has completely engaged. They, they have a much better understanding of what it is that we do. They feel like they're part of this entire program of marketing and selling and really making the company successful. And so that the, those monthly, or however, however, it works for you, Brown bags make sense, but I would recommend you do them by the individual department or organization you're looking at because they're, they're looking for, for different things.
Christina (30:51): And then in terms of the reporting, the results I usually do a monthly report out in terms of, again, what it is that we've done and why we did it. And I try to keep them, you know, I don't want to write 15 different reports to make everybody happy and make everybody in their own sort of you know, mindset, understand what it is that we're doing. So about 80% of it is a pretty standard report. And then 20% of it is specific to whoever that organization is. So, so we do things like that. One thing that was interesting when I, when I worked at intact, we would have these monthly sales calls. And the point was to say like, this is what we did this month. And this is, these are the results we have. This is how many MQL, this is kind of going on down the funnel.
Christina (31:39): And then to set the stage for what was coming in the next month, so we could get help from them. And over time, like I was there for like a couple months when I realized that the sales team is just completely checked out. Like, again, they're told to be at this meeting, they were not enjoying it. They're not getting anything out of it. And they would rather be, you know, grocery shopping at Costco for all I know. But what I did was I recognize that they're what they were interested in most was understanding the pipeline and how much revenue. And so if you think about a funnel, that's like the very last slide we had. So what I told my team to tell him, like, I literally am like reverse the slides. I'm like, I might just change the order. I'm like, literally take the last one and put it first and just go, like, literally just flip the entire, flip your entire presentation.
Christina (32:25): So they started with like, this is how much revenue we brought in, and this is the pipeline we brought in. And that was as far as we got, we never even got to the rest of the slide. So then everybody wanted to have conversations and they had questions. They wanted to know like, this is great. Was there something we did differently? You know, can repeat this. And so just starting to have those conversations and understanding how they want to understand the data that you're bringing to them and what's meaningful to them really, really helps a lot.
Kathleen (32:51): Well, and you've said a few times I've noticed that marketers should be more focused on like revenue results than MQL calls or leads. And that I just could not agree more with because I feel like very often we're pushed to report on the lead gen. But what happens is when you, when you get stuck in that rut of being measured, having your value measured by leads, you're no longer strategic to the organization. And that is why we wind up being pushed into the back seat behind the sales team
Christina (33:25): Or whoever.
Kathleen (33:26): You know, because we're, we're commoditizing ourselves.
Christina (33:30): Absolutely. And, and that's, and it's an, it's a known, it's a known factor to them. So they get it like, okay, you brought in leads, but they still don't really even know what that means. Right. Like I, you know, I did a Salesforce Dreamforce conference and we brought in 1200 leads, but only 200 of them were qualified enough to send a sale. So this feels like, well, what happens to the other thousand leads? I'm like, Oh, why I can give them to your sales team? They're just going to hate me. So I'm not going to send those.
Kathleen (33:57): I think if we report on leads, we are kind of cheating because it is a backdoor way of absolving ourselves for any responsibility or elite quality. And honestly, for building good collaborative relationships with sales teams and supporting them in the way they need to be supported. And I could rant on this for a very long time. I've actually worked in a sales role before, which I've always say, I think every marketer should do at some point in their career. And it's, it's certainly changed, you know, my attitude and approach for how I should work with sales teams. And I just, I think there still are a lot of marketers out there who are like, well, you know, I just delivered the leads. No. What sales did with them going home for the day . And they think about like SLA plays as like, I fulfilled my part of the bargain. Now it's your turn. Just like, it really breeds this very antagonistic relationship.
Christina (34:59): Right. And I think that when you if you're just, if you're just passing them off as well, and again, I'm not saying you need to explain every single lead, if you're just passing off a bunch of leads without an explanation it doesn't help the sales. It doesn't enable them to do their job well, because you can say again, I have 200 leads, but just recognize that these are from a trade show. So they're going to take longer for both of us to nurture. And we also know that at the end of the day, they are a smaller sales. So maybe we should look at your seek list and rearrange it so that, you know, we know that these more leads that are coming from the webinars are people who are sending up for trials. You'll have an opportunity to engage with them or fully sooner rather than later, you know, because you don't want to, if you're calling like webinar leads for, you know, 500 webinar leads that that might not be the most effective use of your time.
Christina (35:53): And we have, we in marketing, we have details like that. We understand how long these leads are going to take me know what that, again, what that path looks like, how many times we have to touch them before they actually become more engaged or ready to go. Are there times and I've set this up in our sales force instances before where if somebody comes to our website and then and it could be gone for a while, or they can sort of have, you know, a little bit of interest over time. But if suddenly there's a lot more activity on the website and then multiple people from the same company have multiple, you know, more and more activity on the website. Then I know that that company is at the point where they're, they are looking at us, right. They've gathered a committee or a team together, and they're looking at it and the folks who just went to our website. So I'm going to tell my sales person again, automatically via Salesforce to go reach out to those people. Now's a great time to reach out. They just had five people on our website yesterday. Like, go, go, go get them. And those are things that are gonna help the sales person and that's our job, right? Our job is to help enable the sales team to sell better, faster, and, and with with bigger deals. And so any insight we can help them with is just gonna help them significantly.
Kathleen (37:07): Well. And I think also the corollary to that is that not caring about lead quality or, or, or allowing yourself to be measured by lead numbers can backfire on you as a marketer in the sense that I'll give you a great example. I was, I am sort of new in my role and I'm lucky that in the company I'm with now, I am very well aligned with the sales team on what does constitute a good lead in the sense that like, if somebody just downloads an ebook, the last thing I want is for myself to call that person. And I have worked in places where that is exactly what happens. Any, anybody with a pulse gets a phone call and that's terrible. There's no faster way to turn somebody off and to damage your brand. And so if you're a marketer who's being judged on lead numbers, you're incented to pass every one of those very, very top of the funnel leads on when they really shouldn't be passed to sales yet, versus you're a marketer who's judged by revenue. You're more likely to only pass on the hand raisers and to be motivated, to find more hand raisers. So, you know, and, and then that aligns you better with your sales team on the followup action.
Christina (38:19): And, and I think, you know, to take that, I totally agree. I think that just a step beyond that, it's important to educate everybody on that you're going to get fewer leads, but they're going to be higher quality leads, right? So, so it's funny. I have a chapter in my book and there's a story in there and it's called 17,000 leads please. And this is a true story. I was in a board meeting and I had this beautiful presentation. It'd be met all of our goals. It met our lead goals, our revenue goals. And I was super excited to tell the board about it. And this guy just stands up. Like I barely started talking because 17,000 leads, that's what we need. And I was like I'm, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, what? He's like 17,000 leads. You need to go get 17,000 leads.
Christina (39:05): And I was like, what is that? I'm like, did you just pull that number out of like, what is 17,000 leads? Why not a hundred thousand? And then I'm like, you know, I can, I can get you 17,000 leads in about two minutes. I can go buy them from, you know, D&B, not a problem. But the question is what, what is the objective and where do you think 17,000 leads is going to get us? Because that's what I want to understand. What are your expectations from those 17,000 leads? And then let me go figure out how to meet your expectations. And it's not going to be 17,000 random weird leads.
Kathleen (39:41): Exactly. Oh my God. I feel like there's a thousand stories that if you talk to any marketers out there but we are getting close to our time. So I want to make sure that I shift gears now, because I always ask all of my guests the same two questions, and I want to hear what you have to say about this. The first one is, you know, we're all about inbound marketing on this podcast. And I feel like the conversation we just had is like, so related to that, like, it's not about spamming. It's not about calling everybody. It's about educating your audience and, and then following up with the right people. So is there a particular company or an individual that you think is really kind of exemplary for what it means to be a great inbound marketer?
Christina (40:25): That's a, that's a great question. I feel like I work a lot in the B2B space, but there's a bunch in the, in the D2C space as well. For me, HubSpot has always done an amazing job. And even when they first started off, I don't know if you remember before they had their platform and it was built out, they were just this amazing plethora of content for marketing people. And I was like, this is amazing. I love this. And I was eating it up. And like, in the back of my head, I'm like, why are we doing this exactly. And call from a sales guy? And that's exactly what happened. They came out with a platform, but by then, they'd already had like, you know, millions of marketing people you know, downloading their information. So they were familiar with you know, with your name and everything.
Christina (41:09): And they did it by educating us and giving us and helping us be better marketers. So they built up this trust over time. So I thought they did an amazing job with that. There's a company, they do video hosting called Wistia, and they're doing a great job right now. They're, you know, with, with COVID and everything and everything, just a little bit crazy. What they started doing was they they have their employees just doing random videos from their home or walking a dog or whatever, and they're posting those on Instagram. And so it's just kind of getting real and trying to get, build relationships with people and show empathy and just be like, this is, this is where we are. We're walking our dogs with masks and, you know, we're going to have Thanksgiving dinner by herself, so whatever, but, and maybe that's okay.
Christina (41:55): But you know, it's just one of those things where I think they're doing a good job of is kind of making it real if you will. And then from a, from a, you know, direct to consumer standpoint, which I don't necessarily focus on as much. I think Chobani yogurt has done an amazing job from day one. They have been thinking about, you know, even if it meant losing revenue, how they can help how they can help people who aren't, who are less fortunate during these times. You know, whether it's just, you know, throwing up a pop-up stand with yogurt or making sure that, you know, kids that were in school that were on the school meal programs are getting food. They've done a lot of things around that. And to me, that's just, it's always, really, I think, you know, it's I think often companies kind of get away from what their mission is or really understanding their customers. And, and I think that you know, in, in times of in times, like I'm in the middle pandemics it really helps people remember like why we're here and, and how, how we can be innovative and, and stretch our thinking so that we can, we can help others, but still be profitable. That's okay too.
Kathleen (43:02): I love those examples. I, and I followed Wistia for years, but I have to admit, I haven't been taking as close a look at them in the last few months. So you've given me a good reason to go back and check out their Instagram. It's pretty funny. Second question. Digital marketing changes so quickly. And I always hear marketers saying like, Oh my God, I can't keep up with it. So how do you personally stay educated and keep up with it?
Christina (43:26): Yes. And for me again, I've been doing this for 25 years, so it's changed dramatically, you know, from a spreadsheet to these amazing, you know, automated tools to AI that's out there now. But some of the things that I follow. Rand Fishkin, who I know you had on your, on your show, both you know, Moz is amazing and his new company SparkToro is pretty, pretty fascinating. So I like to see what he's coming out with. And he does a newsletter. I think it comes out weekly or every other week. And then the other folks that I really like are Neil Patel and Eric Siu's Marketing School podcast. Basically what they do is they just take a ton of questions and, and that's why it's like real it's up-to-date information because people are asking like, what is this tool and how do I do this?
Christina (44:09): And, you know, what does it mean to, you know, when your budget's completely gone? What are some options that I have? So they spend a lot of time answering you know, sort of ask me anything type style podcast where they're answering questions about strategy and tools and the technology that's out there. And it's just, it's really, it's really useful. And they're, they the tape it I think like every Friday, and then they have these little, like seven minutes, seven to 10 minute podcasts that they release every day and they're always really useful.
Kathleen (44:38): Fun fact. I've had two of the, three of those people on the podcast. Not just Rand, Eric Siu was my guest. It was my first episode, I think, of 2018.
Christina (44:49): Oh, that's awesome.
Kathleen (44:52): I haven't head Neil Patel on yet. So maybe...
Christina (44:54): You should definitely, for sure.
Kathleen (45:00): Hey Neil. Come onto the podcast.
Kathleen (45:01): Awesome. Well, this has been so much fun. If somebody wants to learn more about, you know, the stuff that you've written about and talked about today, or they want to connect with you or ask a question, what's the best way for them to, to get connected with you online?
Christina (45:16): Best way is you can find me on LinkedIn. Christina Dell Villar. And hopefully we can spell that out for you. And then also my website is Christinadellvillar.com. And then in about early 20, 21, my course will come out that will help people. It basically teaches people how to build a map of influence. And then I have a book coming out in summer of 2021 called Sway.
Kathleen (45:42): You have been busy. Congratulations on all the upcoming releases.
Kathleen (45:49): And I will put links to all of those things in the show notes so that everybody can find them really easily. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, or you learned something new, please consider heading to Apple podcasts and leaving the podcast a review. That's how more folks find out about us and get to hear our great guests like Christina. So thank you so much, Christina. This was a lot of fun. I appreciate you coming on.
Christina (46:12): Thank you so much.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit Christina's personal website
- Connect with Christina on LinkedIn
Do you really know where your ad campaigns are running, and what do your ad placements mean for your brand?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, brand safety expert Nandini Jammi talks about why it's so important for brands that are running programmatic advertising campaigns to know exactly where their ads are running.
As the co-founder of Sleeping Giants, Nandini made national headlines for her brand safety activism. Today, she works closely with brands through her company Check My Ads to ensure their ads run only on websites that align with their mission and core values.
As Nandini explains, maintaining careful control over where your ads run isn't just important for your brand's reputation, it's good business because it will increase the ROI of your ad campaigns.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Check My Ads website
- Follow Nandini on Twitter
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I am your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Darrell Amy, who is the author of the Revenue Growth Engine. Welcome Darrell.
Darrell (00:24): Kathleen. It's great to be here. This is going to be a lot of fun.
Kathleen (00:28): I'm excited to dig into this with you because we have a hot topic that I think marketers have have struggled with for a long, long time. But before we jump in could you please tell my audience a little bit about yourself and what the Revenue Growth Engine is?
Darrell (00:47): Absolutely. So I am a sales and marketing junkie. I started as straight out of college with a marketing degree in my hip pocket, started in a sales B2B dog eat dog aggressive sales environment, was a sales rep, sales manager, worked with a Japanese company, helping them recruit and train resellers. And then I got the idea in 2004 to start my own business and my very first client, I trained his sales team. And when we got done training the sales team, he said, Darrell, everything you taught my team is fantastic, but my website doesn't say anything about it. Now, keep in mind, this was 16, 17 years ago, way back in 2004. And he said, do you build websites and being as it was my first client, Kathleen, you know what the answer was? Yes, sir. We built websites.
Darrell (01:38): I'd actually built one for a nonprofit and for my church as well, but I pulled my marketing degree out and, you know, with now close to a decade of, of sales experience and started down this journey of developing salespeople and have had the opportunity to train thousands of salespeople for companies in the fortune 500, all the way down to great, fantastic locally owned, small businesses. And the same time started on this journey in 2004 of web search, social inbound, account-based marketing.
And it's been so much fun having a foot in both the sales and the marketing world all this time, but also feeling that tension back and forth about, you know, this, this perennial topic of sales and marketing alignment and how do we work together? So that's what brought the Revenue Growth Engine together. I wanted to put together a model of best practice to be able to align marketing and sales, to drive what we're all about, whether you're in sales or marketing, which is revenue growth.
Kathleen (02:43): I love that. And it's, it's the perfect segue because as you say sales and marketing alignment has been a topic that marketers have talked about for a long time.
Certainly as long as I've been in marketing and they've even come up with names, like I think HubSpot called it smarketing. And we, one of the companies I used to work at, we joked, we didn't like the word smarketing. So we called it smalignment. But like, literally it's why is this so hard? Why?
Darrell (03:21): Well, it, it, you know, having, having a stake in both worlds here now for almost two decades I think it's hard because there's so many different reasons.
One we, we tend to get focused on, on even though we're, we're heading in the same direction, we're talking different language, you know, if, if you think about the language of marketing, which you know, is fascinating journey here, you know, as it continues to evolve and the platforms and the data and the you know, all of, all of the different words and verbiage we use in marketing and then the world of sales, which, you know, in some ways has changed in a lot of ways, hasn't changed that much.
And so I think there's, there's misalignment communication. And that's why, you know, to me, the, the, the moment the light bulb came on for me was I was getting ready to speak at a conference.
Darrell (04:16): And so it was a growth conference and all these businesses were there. They wanted to grow. There were, there were marketing people in the room and you could tell they were in the front rows, they were ready to roll. They were excited about all the new gadgets and all of the new you know, the new tools out there. And it's an incredibly exciting time for marketing right behind them.
You could see the sales managers, the sales managers are in the room, you know, if they were either, they were either on their phones trying to, you know, close a deal or get something moving forward. And, but you could kind of see the thought bubbles above the sales manager's heads, right? Like, why are we here? This is a waste of time. We could be out selling something and where, why don't I, why aren't you giving me better leads?
Darrell (05:00): And then in the back of the room where the business owners and they're back there, I can see a couple of them drinking their coffee. And they're like, you know, looking out over this, you could just see them going, why can't y'all get along and figure this out. And as I was preparing for this conference, that's when I realized that this isn't about marketing. This isn't about sales. As much as I love either both of the professions, what it's about is growing revenue.
And if you boil it all down to the most basic level, Kathleen I've determined, there's really only two ways to grow revenue. We get more net, new customers, or we sell more to our current clients. Those are the two ways to grow revenue. And so rather than talk about sales and marketing, I say, we shift the conversation to driving net new business and cross selling more to our current clients, and then let's get together and figure out how to do that.
Kathleen (05:55): All right. So how do we do that? Because you have this, I don't know why this is so difficult to solve. Like it's, it's, I would think that this would be something that would have been fixed by now. So, so I would love to hear your take on, on what the best way is to approach it
Darrell (06:12): Well, so here's the, here's the first place to start is just to look at your business and ask the question. If there's only two ways to grow revenue, getting net new clients, or selling more to your current clients, which of those two are you good at? And which are you maybe not so good at where's your core strength?
And what I find is, Oh, I'll illustrate this with a story. We went to do a growth strategy workshop. I get involved in a lot of these, this was pre COVID. So it was on the airplane, down into West Palm beach, working with a great technology company down there.
And we've got the owner of the company in the room, say VP of sales, marketing director, a couple other folks in the room, and they're there to put together a strategic growth plan. And so we get to the beginning of the conference and you know, we're just North of Miami, we're drinking cafecitos that great.
Darrell (07:04): Oh man, it's so good Cuban coffees. We're having a great time. We get ready to start the conference. And like all, you know, all workshops. I say, you know, what are your goals? We said, going around the room and the owner of the company goes, I want more net new business. And everyone goes, , we want more net new business. So I write on the board net new. So what's your goal?
And they said, well, 10%, if we can get 10% year over year net new, you know, we'll be happy. Is that okay? That sounds modest and reasonable or write down 10%. So what did you do last year? Oh, and I'm expecting like 2%, maybe we went backwards, you know, something like that. And he goes, well, we did 9.8% net new growth last year. That's what I did. I started laughing. I was like, well, congratulations.
Darrell (07:52): You know, we should write a case study. This is great. But then I said, what about cross sell the other driver of revenue growth? And this company had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in personnel partnerships training on this new services initiative. That was a great fit for their current client base.
How's that going? And the owner's eyes roll back. Right. And he's like, Darrell, we're struggling with this. So here's, here's why I tell this story sales and marketing. You know, rather than having this battle back and forth, which we can talk about, I've got some thoughts on that as well, but rather than have the battle look at the two drivers of revenue growth, find the one you're not good at and then get together and say, how can we solve this problem?
And in the case of this company, you know, they said, how can we solve this problem of cross selling?
Darrell (08:44): Well, say, you know, the obvious answer from sales is we need to develop a regular cadence of meeting with our ideal clients to review business and keep up to date.
So they started a periodic business program and got their reps trained and managed around that to support that marketing started a consistent client communication program and backed it up in this case with a client loyalty program, which gave the reps a good excuse to go in and have their first what they ended up being quarterly business review.
And so now, you know, that it wasn't about, you know, marketing, we need more leads. These leads aren't good enough, you know, that kind of stuff, instead of was saying, okay, we've got a real business problem here.
We need more cross sell revenue. Let's get together in the same room, put our creative hats on together and figure out how to do it. And as a result, you know, now they're beginning to cross sell people into that new business area. And when you start doing that, revenue starts accelerating.
Kathleen (09:42): So you talked about getting marketing and sales together and as step number one. And I think there, there are different levels at which you can on what you can really kind of look at sales and marketing alignment. There's a very like theoretical level of, of psychological alignment and that sort of thing.
But then there's the very practical level of when do we put these people in the same room, how often, you know, and for what purposes, so maybe we could start there and can you talk me through kind of your perspective on, on, you know, these are generally two different departments within a company, and so what, is there a meeting cadence that you are a fan of for them?
Darrell (10:25): Absolutely. And, and so there's so many different ways we could talk about this. I think there should be a regular meeting cadence and whatever that cadence is, then the question goes, well, what's the topic of the meetings that we're going to have when we're working with clients to implement a revenue growth strategy, we'll have a quarterly sales and marketing strategy meeting where they'll look at core initiatives for a stage of the client experience that they want to work on together or a particular problem such as cross selling they want to solve. And then that group will set some, some goals for that business quarter.
And they'll meet together weekly in a sale, a weekly sales and marketing or marketing and sales alignment meeting. And so in that meeting now, they've got specified projects that they're working on. You know, some are more marketing focused, some are more sales focus, but they're working together and building out that infrastructure for those projects.
Darrell (11:24): And they're both giving input on them. So we get to the end of the quarter and the projects are done. It's not, you know, one of the biggest problems with sales and marketing alignment is marketing creates something, launches it. I was talking to a sales rep out in Los Angeles and a great rep works in financial services. And he's like Darrell.
I went to meet with one of my clients today and they pulled out something from our marketing department and put it in front of me and ask me a question I'd never it before in my life. So, so let's get marketing and sales together on some type of regular cadence. I think weekly to have an alignment meeting where where we're solving problems together and we're creating things together, whether it's collateral or campaigns or whatever that is so that, you know, we're cross pollinating and getting input and buy-in throughout the, throughout the process.
Darrell (12:17): The other thing that you can do there's two other things, very practically for sales and marketing alignment related to meetings. One is to set a cadence of deal analysis. And I talk about this and the Revenue Growth Engine book, where maybe once a month you say, you know what, we're going to get together for an hour, or we're going to get together for lunch, or we're going to do something once a month with some sales leaders and some marketing leaders in the room.
And we're going to take a deal. We won the deal we lost and a deal that went to no decision, and we're going to tear it apart together, and we're going to figure it out and we're going to figure out why we're winning, why we're losing and why, you know, why we're getting no decision deals. And now sales and marketing in the room together are able to process that you might invite in your sales reps from time to time.
Darrell (13:06): You might even invite in the client and go, why did we win? You know, this is this is helpful. And, and doing those, those deal analysis meetings, those usually just happen in the sales department. If you have a great sales leader, they'll already be doing deal analysis. It's kind of like Monday at LA.
You know, it's like Monday after the football game, we all watched the tape, right. Here, I think companies shouldn't do that as a sales and marketing team and maybe even operations together to figure out why are we winning? And that's going to make the marketing better. It's going to make sell sales better and it's going to help align.
Kathleen (13:43): I love that. I'm, I'm curious about one thing, cause so I've worked in sales I've I obviously work in marketing now. And I've run a lot of sales and marketing alignment meetings and, and what I found in my experience and maybe I'm running them wrong, but I found that that a lot of times they veer into becoming a time for sales to, to ask marketing for things.
And I will say at marketing's behest, like when I have these meetings, I'll be like, what can we do to help you sell better? You know, what are questions you're hearing from, from prospects? What are, what are things you need to close deals faster? And I think those are all things that need to be talked about, right?
Like, because marketing has a really important role in sales enablement, but sometimes I feel like these meetings veer into the territory of just become like adding to marketing's to do list without kind of the reverse, which is, you know, really looking closely at marketing hand sales leads, what's happening with them and what is sales doing on their side? And this is totally my biased opinion because I spend more in these meetings as a marketer than I ever did as a sales person.
But what is your experience been? Because sometimes that, that to me can get frustrating where I'm like, okay, this, this meeting should not all just be about adding to my to-do list. It needs to be a two-way street where, you know, the sales team gets held accountable for using the marketing materials and doing certain things. I dunno, I dunno. Have you seen anything work really well?
Darrell (15:16): Well, I think that when you do start creating things together, so you start with strategy, you know, and rather than start at the tactical level, which tends to happen, right? What do you guys need? Oh, I need a brochure or, you know, whatever. I, you know, if you start start a lot of times those meetings start there.
The other thing to do is I want to talk about leads for a minute. Cause this is one of the biggest places of tension between marketing and sales sales says he don't give me enough leads. And when you do get leads, sales said, these leads are garbage. And then the marketing people say never close the leads. So and I work primarily in the B2B space. So the answer I'm going to give here is in the business to business space and in the business to business space.
Darrell (16:04): Most of the companies that I work with in most companies in the business to business space have a defined target market. In fact we recommend that you dial it down even more to what we call ideal clients, which is not a new term, but the idea is who are the clients that can buy everything that you sell and are a good fit.
They align with your company values and you know, the types of clients you want to work with once you know who your ideal clients are, you've got the profile you've marked your current ideal clients because not all of your current clients are ideal by the way. And maybe it's a usually 80-20 rule then go out in the marketplace and go, okay, let's get the data on our ideal clients. Once that happens. Now, the sales and marketing lead thing is over.
Darrell (16:57): I say, if you know who your ideal clients are, you don't need leads. You already know who your leads are, what you need is engagement and intelligence. So a lot of this back and forth of, you know, Hey, you're not giving me enough leads. What we need instead is we need, we know who our ideal prospects are.
Let's now put a plan together from a sales standpoint and a marketing standpoint to make sure we have what I call a hundred percent coverage of these ideal prospects. So from a sales standpoint, you know, the sales leader goes, Hey, here's IRA. Our ideal prospects. We've agreed on a cadence to call on the three most important decision makers, influencers, or marketing speak personas in those accounts on a quarterly basis. So you can call on anyone you want to, but absolutely hundred percent. We call on these ideal prospects.
Darrell (17:52): We engage with them and if you don't want to do it totally fine, we'll give it to somebody else. So you put a target account program in place. Marketing's the same thing. Now this requires a different thought pattern in marketing.
Cause usually with marketing, we've kind of been like, we're going to throw, you want to throw the nets out, throw the lures out and hope we snag something. But with an ideal client profile in mind and it lists of ideal prospects. Now it becomes incumbent upon marketing to say, we're going to use every possible effort to get the company in front of these prospects with a value proposition.
And we're going to aim for 100% coverage, meaning that every decision maker and influencer hears from our company and engages with our company in some way on a regular basis. Now, are we ever going to get to a hundred percent?
Darrell (18:45): No, but you know, now from marketing rather than becoming tactical campaign focused, we're gonna run an email campaign and we're going to do this. Now we're getting in the room and we're going, okay, we've got these prospects. What can we do to engage with them?
And this is more of an account-based marketing mindset. You know, an account-based marketing is a fantastic model. That's been pioneered at the enterprise level in the technology world. But regardless of what you hear in the enterprise level or technology world, this mindset of saying, Hey, we know who our target, our ideal prospects are. Let's figure out how to get in front of them and let's use our best, most creative minds and all of the tools and tactics at our disposal to make sure that happens.
So now we're not talking the stuff that's going back and forth between marketing and sales now is about engagement with these ideal prospects and clients rather than, Hey, I got somebody that gave us an email address from somewhere in the world that might possibly be a human being, right? So a little bit, little bit different mindset. When we look at ideal clients, they're, I'll get off my soap box.
Kathleen (19:58): No, I love all of this. ABM is definitely can be a really powerful strategy if, if executed well. So my question, as I listened to you talking about all of this is what advice do you give to marketing and sales leaders about how they forge a relationship with each other? Because it seems to me that this would all need to start there with the head of marketing and the head of sales becoming one another's best friends.
Darrell (20:32): Yes. And you know, relationships happen with common quills, like happened with time, spent together. You know, they happen when both both parties are rewarded for success.
You there's, there's so many different dynamics there, but at a minimum, you know, I would say start spending time together a lot of time together and, you know, marketing people, one of the, one of the best things that, that I think we can do as marketing people is it used to say, get out in the field.
What that means now is get on the zoom calls, right? It'd be there. On the zoom calls set up, set a cadence where you go, you know what? I'm going to spend a certain amount of time every week with salespeople on calls with prospects and clients, because what's going to happen is in the process, you're going to forge a relationship.
Darrell (21:27): You're but you're also going to get that valuable information, which is what's important to our clients and prospects right now. And maybe even more specifically, what are the actual words that they're using? Because right now, and this may be, you know, there's so many times we've been saying recently, this is more important than ever, but here's one thing I want to say.
And I'm a firm believer that when it comes to the message, which, you know, marketing owns the message when it comes to the message, we've got to always remember that buyers don't buy products. They buy the outcomes, those products and services deliver good old Theodore Levitt walked into his Harvard business school class. And the first day of marketing class holding up the old drill bit says, you know, nobody ever buys a drill bit. They buy the whole course set, Seth Godin would say, go South.
Darrell (22:17): We'd say they didn't buy the hole. They bought the ability to hang the plaque on the wall. Right. And I always laugh because then Donald Miller stands right behind and says, well, they didn't actually buy it. The plaque, they bought the ability to look good to their friends.
So they didn't get isolated weighted and eaten by a lion, you know, whatever the motivation is, you know, buyers buy outcomes, right. And what's so critical right now. And this is why I think marketing and sales need to be working together and meeting with clients and prospects together is the outcomes shift or continuing to shift.
They shifted with COVID when the crisis happens. So I think we all know that, but I mean, if you think about know, for example, right after about six or eight weeks after the crisis started this, this year Gartner went out and did some research in the tech space and they said, what outcomes do you want?
Darrell (23:08): Well, last year it was all about scalability. And how do we, you know, accelerate growth and do all these things this year or after the crisis, the outcomes changed resiliency, redundancy, remote working, enabled that same product, same service, different outcomes, which means different message.
And I think that message is going to continue to shift as we move through the different stages of economic recovery, whatever that looks like. And so in this time, it's really critical that is marketing people. We get out there with the sales team and we know participate or lurk in video and zoom meetings and listen in really pay attention to what the specific top of mind outcomes, the problems and aspirations that our prospects and clients have.
And that is aligning that. And then after those meetings sitting down with their sales team and debriefing and going, okay, what do we hear here? So we can make sure that the message that we're delivering from a marketing perspective that also gets repeated by salespeople is laser focused on what the clients and prospects actually want right now,
Kathleen (24:20): Do you ever find that marketing gets pushed back from sales on that participation? Because it's interesting. You know, I've, I've seen various levels of receptivity to this. I worked in one company where the sales team was highly receptive to marketing, kind of being a fly on the wall.
Then I spent some time in the cybersecurity sector and nobody wants any flies on the wall, whether that's a marketing person or like now there's all this great technology like gong and chorus and you know, where you can record calls, but in B2B cyber it's, it's like next to impossible to do any of that.
And, and then I've worked in companies where, you know, they, the sales team just says, well, we don't want to bring a clown car into a meeting. Like we want to keep it small. And so I'm wondering what you've seen and what, whether you've seen that pushback and if so, how you've addressed it.
Darrell (25:17): Well, certainly I think that's a sales leadership issue and you know, and obviously not withstanding highly regulated industries and, you know, different things like that. I mean, there's, there's certainly a lot of different challenging circumstances, but the reality of all of it is marketing can't, we can't as marketers deliver a clear focused message unless we're able to be in front of buyers.
You know, there's only so much that internet research is going to do. It's actually hearing the words that they're using. Another way to go about if you can't get involved in the meetings.
One thing that I think marketers should do and should always have at the top of their priority list, it's usually at the bottom, but at the top of their priority list is case studies, success, stories, client interviews, whatever you want to call it. So and I, this was, this comes from just a, a 32 second rant from running a marketing agency now for 17 years, right?
Darrell (26:17): Hey, Darrell, we need you know, to redo our marketing. Great. Okay. So we come back with, you know, website and all the different things. And then underneath all on that red list of recommendations is to put together a set of case studies because we always ask, do you have any case studies?
Well, no, we hadn't ever gotten around to it. Okay. So now, you know, now it's like, Hey, we need a new website. We need corporate brochure, some videos, all this. And then we say, well, what about case studies? Well, we'll get around to that when we're done with that. So I got to the point where, and you know, now the answer is, look, we're not going to build a website for you.
We're not going to build a corporate brochure. We're not going to do anything for you until we write three case studies for your current clients, because then you'll see, we'll see together what the actual outcomes those people want and what they value from your company.
Darrell (27:12): And I've just always makes me laugh. Kathleen, I get asked I've had the opportunity over the years to write many, many case studies. And when I do, I'll always interview the sales rep first, and this is such a great point of marketing and sales alignment.
So I'll interview the sales rep and say, Hey, tell me about this client that give me the backstory. Why did they buy Oh, well it's because we saved them money. Or we gave them a positive ROI, which is sales speak for save the money. Okay. Great. Any other reason? No, no. It was mainly because of my good looks and we saved them money.
Okay. So then we'll interview the client and you know, we'll get down to the benefits section. What were the challenges, what did this company do for you or how have you benefited? And the client will start rattling things off.
Darrell (27:58): We like this, we love this. This is really helped our organization. It solved this problem. And in most of those conversations, I ended up having to say, Oh, by the way, are you tracking the ROI, trying to bring the money thing into it somehow. And most of the time the clients go, well, not really, but we like this, this, this, and this.
So then I go back to the sales rep and go, Hey, do you want to know why your client actually is buying from you? And do you want to know how much money you left on the table by discounting this instead of charging a little bit more than what they were currently spending to get all these additional benefits.
And so case study conversations, you know, I would say as, as marketing, you know, I would challenge you to set a cadence to say, I'm going to do one of these a month, or if you don't have a library of them one a week and really get that that going, it's going to help fuel your message.
So you're able to create better content, but we'll also give you tons of stuff to go back to the sales team and begin to add value and forge those relationships.
Kathleen (29:00): That's a really good point. And I don't know how many marketers really do that, but I love that notion of, you know, so often as marketers, we're going to sales and asking them to tell us things, but if we can interview customers and, and bring intelligence back to sales, that's really powerful.
Darrell (29:22): It is, and you know, the market research is good and we should be doing that. And we should be, you know, doing industry trends and seeing what's going on, but none of that can replace the actual conversations and words with our ideal clients. And that's where, you know, it gets down I'm Canadian. So I like maple syrup. I write about maple syrup a lot in Revenue Growth Engine. Just because
Kathleen (29:49): You would get along with my husband really well because he not kidding says all the time that maple syrup is the, the universe's most perfect food. He puts it in his coffee.
Darrell (30:01): Does he drink it straight?
Kathleen (30:03): I don't know if he would admit he did.
Darrell (30:07): And I don't know if I would admit on live radio, I drink it straight up that may or may not happen, but what's great about maple syrup is we take a substance that, you know, is sweet. It's okay. You know, SAP comes out of a tree, but then it gets distilled down. It takes 40 gallons of SAP to make a gallon of maple syrup. And that's where having these conversations with clients.
And then also if possible participating in sales meetings, that's where you get it boiled down to the really good stuff. And that's where we create messaging that is really effective. And that can't happen until we get in front of clients as marketers and cooperating with sales. And that is one good way to start to build those relationships.
Kathleen (30:49): So I'm curious about one thing, which is, do you think that the way marketing and sales leaders are compensated feeds into this divide between marketing and sales, like is there, is the incentive structure part of the problem or the, I shouldn't say the incentive structure itself, but it's the fact that they very often have two different incentive structures or in some cases marketers have no incentive structure, right. You pay, like, I wonder if that, if that lends itself to deepening the divide between marketing and sales.
Darrell (31:27): Maybe I think so. And I'm thinking from two different angles, one is just in terms of overall results. You know, when, when the team wins, everybody should win and you know, I'm not a compensation expert by any stretch, but just that principle of saying when the team wins, everybody should win. And we all know in today's buying environment that there is no buyer that doesn't touch the company's marketing at some point before, during and after the sales process.
Right. I mean, it's just, it's the reality of today's world. So I think there should be an incentive there, especially, and I would, I would say, especially around landing ideal clients, like that's where you should really have the high fives, but the other place that I think a lot of companies miss it, even if they've got a structure that does align marketing compensation with results is usually sales compensation is aligned to net new business and not cross selling more to current clients.
Darrell (32:33): And you know, this, this is when we look at companies, if you grow net new business by 10% great, you know, it's going to take you, the investment analysts have a rule of 72. You take the number 72, you divide it by the return on investment. It tells you how long it takes to double your investment. We can use that in the sales and marketing world. If we growing 10% year over year 72 divided by 10%, it's going to take you 7.2 years to double the revenue of that business.
Now, if I can cross sell, do net new and cross sell at the same time, I can cut the time to double the business in less by 50% and some even more cause the exponential nature of it. So now instead of seven years, I can double the business and say three. So I think companies would be smart to compensate marketing and sales, not just on net new, but also on cross sell revenue to current clients.
And to really focus on that. And most companies we go in overall, it's not a, it's probably a general rule that that's just not happening and there's a great opportunity to align marketing and sales by getting the comp right around cross selling.
Kathleen (33:47): I would agree with you. And I just, the whole thing really does make me wonder if marketers were given the exact same incentive structure as the sales teams with whom they work, how would that change things? And I was thinking, as you were talking, I was actually thinking through it, if it were true for me, which it's not right now.
And if, if I was being comped exactly as my sales counterpart was, I suspect and shame on me for not doing this already, that I would probably more frequently be saying to him, Hey, like we got to sit down today and look at what it's going to take for us to hit the number, you know, this month or this quarter, like I would be doing that more often.
And so I don't know. It's just, it's interesting. I hadn't really thought about it before, but you, you got me, you got my wheels turning on that during this conversation.
Darrell (34:34): Mine as well. And, and I think you know, the general principle here is, is if the sale, if you want sales and marketing aligned, when the company wins sales and marketing should both win. And you know, there's, there's there's no disputing that, that it takes a team effort from the buyer's perspective, right?
We all know the data. We all know that that, you know, the buyers are way through the buying journey. I'm laughing Kathleen. Cause I was on a live cast the other day and I was quoting the challenger customer data on there's an average of 6.8 decision-makers in the average B2B transaction. And I said, that was 10 data, 10 years ago.
I know it's higher now. And I was live on the podcast and Brent Adamson chimed in, in the comments and said, it's now 12. So that made me laugh. But I was the reality is today, especially in the B2B buying space, you know, these decisions are complex. There's a lot of different people involved.
It takes a team effort from sales and marketing to make sure that all the decision makers and influencers are properly informed and, and, you know, properly engaged throughout the buying cycle. And there's no way that sales can do that all by themselves. So , let's look at compensation. Great. Okay.
Kathleen (35:58): If, if nothing else I'm, I think I'm going to for the next week, do a test and pretend as though that's how I was being comped and see what it gets me to do differently. Interesting. And what happens as a result of that? So I'll make myself the Guinea pig. Well, we can talk about this all day, but we're running out of time.
So I want to shift gears for a second. I always ask all my guests the same two questions at the end. I'm curious what you have to say. The first one is that, of course we are the inbound success podcast. So when it comes to inbound marketing, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park these days?
Darrell (36:35): Well, I am a huge HubSpot fan. We, we have been a HubSpot partner for a long time now and I, what I really like is I do like the innovation that's happening there. We've talked today about some account-based marketing strategies. I call it account-based marketing light, kind of, you know, for the, the mid sized companies.
And HubSpot's bringing more and more tools to the table in that space. And also just the beautiful way they've aligned sales and marketing with sales tools, CRM in the middle marketing and even operations. Now I say huge shout out for the work that's going on at HubSpot big fan.
Kathleen (37:14): I mean, they are absolutely the gold standard. Second question. One of the biggest pain points I hear marketers express to me is that digital marketing is changing incredibly quickly and it's very hard to keep up with everything. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and up-to-date?
Darrell (37:32): That's a great question. There's no, there's no stopping with education. I, I think the reality is you've got to be a voracious reader right now. So if you look behind me, I've got a lineup. This is my lineup of books to read right now. You know, and so I, I try to read a book every week and in the process as well, just you know, I've got my Feedly stacked with with as many informative blogs as possible.
There's no way getting around doing the hard work of educating yourself. And I think it's, especially for marketers, it's gotta be something where you say, Hey, I'm going to dedicate 10% of my week to educating myself. Otherwise you're going to fall behind really quickly.
Kathleen (38:20): It's very easy to do. It's very easy to do. All right. Well, if somebody is listening and they want to learn more about the Revenue Growth Engine, or want to connect with you online and ask a question, what is the best way for them to do that?
Darrell (38:36): Well, you text the word revenue to 21000 that's revenue to 21000. That'll take you through to our website, you'll get access to our growing toolkit, which actually contains some tools that will be helpful for sales and marketing, maybe to work on together and to set some goals.
And of course, my name is Darrell Amy, and Kathleen. There's just not that many people out there with the last name, Amy and the first name Darrell. So I bet if you look for me on LinkedIn, you'll probably find me. I'd love to connect with you.
Kathleen (39:04): Well, I will make it even easier and I will put the link to your LinkedIn and your website in the show notes.
So make sure to head over to the show notes if you're listening and you want to connect with Darrell or learn more about revenue, growth engine, or gain access to his toolkit in the meantime, if you were listening today and you liked what you heard, or you learned something new, please consider heading to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leaving the podcast or review, I would really appreciate it.
And if you're listening and you know, somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because you never know, they could be my next guest. Thank you so much for joining me this week, Darrell.
Darrell (39:48): I had a great time. Thank you, Kathleen, for all you're doing here on the podcast. It's fantastic.
Kathleen (39:52): Oh, thank you. All right. Until next week.
Sales and marketing alignment is a concept that companies have talked about for years and somehow still haven't managed to solve.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, growth strategist and author Darrell Amy what companies can do to finally achieve marketing and sales alignment.
Darrell knows how to help businesses grow. Rolling up his sleeves, he works behind the scenes with executives, sales leaders, and marketing professionals to develop and execute revenue growth strategies. He knows what works and what doesn’t, and he is shares this information in his new best-selling book Revenue Growth Engine: How To Align Marketing and Sales to Accelerate Growth.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Text the word "revenue" to 21000 to go to Darrell's website and gain access to his Toolkit
- Connect with Darrell on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I am your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Darrell Amy, who is the author of the Revenue Growth Engine. Welcome Darrell.
Darrell (00:24): Kathleen. It's great to be here. This is going to be a lot of fun.
Kathleen (00:28): I'm excited to dig into this with you because we have a hot topic that I think marketers have have struggled with for a long, long time. But before we jump in could you please tell my audience a little bit about yourself and what the Revenue Growth Engine is?
Darrell (00:47): Absolutely. So I am a sales and marketing junkie. I started as straight out of college with a marketing degree in my hip pocket, started in a sales B2B dog eat dog aggressive sales environment, was a sales rep, sales manager, worked with a Japanese company, helping them recruit and train resellers. And then I got the idea in 2004 to start my own business and my very first client, I trained his sales team. And when we got done training the sales team, he said, Darrell, everything you taught my team is fantastic, but my website doesn't say anything about it. Now, keep in mind, this was 16, 17 years ago, way back in 2004. And he said, do you build websites and being as it was my first client, Kathleen, you know what the answer was? Yes, sir. We built websites.
Darrell (01:38): I'd actually built one for a nonprofit and for my church as well, but I pulled my marketing degree out and, you know, with now close to a decade of, of sales experience and started down this journey of developing salespeople and have had the opportunity to train thousands of salespeople for companies in the fortune 500, all the way down to great, fantastic locally owned, small businesses. And the same time started on this journey in 2004 of web search, social inbound, account-based marketing. And it's been so much fun having a foot in both the sales and the marketing world all this time, but also feeling that tension back and forth about, you know, this, this perennial topic of sales and marketing alignment and how do we work together? So that's what brought the Revenue Growth Engine together. I wanted to put together a model of best practice to be able to align marketing and sales, to drive what we're all about, whether you're in sales or marketing, which is revenue growth.
Kathleen (02:43): I love that. And it's, it's the perfect segue because as you say sales and marketing alignment has been a topic that marketers have talked about for a long time. Certainly as long as I've been in marketing and they've even come up with names, like I think HubSpot called it smarketing. And we, one of the companies I used to work at, we joked, we didn't like the word smarketing. So we called it smalignment. But like, literally it's why is this so hard? Why?
Darrell (03:21): Well, it, it, you know, having, having a stake in both worlds here now for almost two decades I think it's hard because there's so many different reasons. One we, we tend to get focused on, on even though we're, we're heading in the same direction, we're talking different language, you know, if, if you think about the language of marketing, which you know, is fascinating journey here, you know, as it continues to evolve and the platforms and the data and the you know, all of, all of the different words and verbiage we use in marketing and then the world of sales, which, you know, in some ways has changed in a lot of ways, hasn't changed that much. And so I think there's, there's misalignment communication. And that's why, you know, to me, the, the, the moment the light bulb came on for me was I was getting ready to speak at a conference.
Darrell (04:16): And so it was a growth conference and all these businesses were there. They wanted to grow. There were, there were marketing people in the room and you could tell they were in the front rows, they were ready to roll. They were excited about all the new gadgets and all of the new you know, the new tools out there. And it's an incredibly exciting time for marketing right behind them. You could see the sales managers, the sales managers are in the room, you know, if they were either, they were either on their phones trying to, you know, close a deal or get something moving forward. And, but you could kind of see the thought bubbles above the sales manager's heads, right? Like, why are we here? This is a waste of time. We could be out selling something and where, why don't I, why aren't you giving me better leads?
Darrell (05:00): And then in the back of the room where the business owners and they're back there, I can see a couple of them drinking their coffee. And they're like, you know, looking out over this, you could just see them going, why can't y'all get along and figure this out. And as I was preparing for this conference, that's when I realized that this isn't about marketing. This isn't about sales. As much as I love either both of the professions, what it's about is growing revenue. And if you boil it all down to the most basic level, Kathleen I've determined, there's really only two ways to grow revenue. We get more net, new customers, or we sell more to our current clients. Those are the two ways to grow revenue. And so rather than talk about sales and marketing, I say, we shift the conversation to driving net new business and cross selling more to our current clients, and then let's get together and figure out how to do that.
Kathleen (05:55): All right. So how do we do that? Because you have this, I don't know why this is so difficult to solve. Like it's, it's, I would think that this would be something that would have been fixed by now. So, so I would love to hear your take on, on what the best way is to approach it
Darrell (06:12): Well, so here's the, here's the first place to start is just to look at your business and ask the question. If there's only two ways to grow revenue, getting net new clients, or selling more to your current clients, which of those two are you good at? And which are you maybe not so good at where's your core strength? And what I find is, Oh, I'll illustrate this with a story. We went to do a growth strategy workshop. I get involved in a lot of these, this was pre COVID. So it was on the airplane, down into West Palm beach, working with a great technology company down there. And we've got the owner of the company in the room, say VP of sales, marketing director, a couple other folks in the room, and they're there to put together a strategic growth plan. And so we get to the beginning of the conference and you know, we're just North of Miami, we're drinking cafecitos that great.
Darrell (07:04): Oh man, it's so good Cuban coffees. We're having a great time. We get ready to start the conference. And like all, you know, all workshops. I say, you know, what are your goals? We said, going around the room and the owner of the company goes, I want more net new business. And everyone goes, , we want more net new business. So I write on the board net new. So what's your goal? And they said, well, 10%, if we can get 10% year over year net new, you know, we'll be happy. Is that okay? That sounds modest and reasonable or write down 10%. So what did you do last year? Oh, and I'm expecting like 2%, maybe we went backwards, you know, something like that. And he goes, well, we did 9.8% net new growth last year. That's what I did. I started laughing. I was like, well, congratulations.
Darrell (07:52): You know, we should write a case study. This is great. But then I said, what about cross sell the other driver of revenue growth? And this company had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in personnel partnerships training on this new services initiative. That was a great fit for their current client base. How's that going? And the owner's eyes roll back. Right. And he's like, Darrell, we're struggling with this. So here's, here's why I tell this story sales and marketing. You know, rather than having this battle back and forth, which we can talk about, I've got some thoughts on that as well, but rather than have the battle look at the two drivers of revenue growth, find the one you're not good at and then get together and say, how can we solve this problem? And in the case of this company, you know, they said, how can we solve this problem of cross selling?
Darrell (08:44): Well, say, you know, the obvious answer from sales is we need to develop a regular cadence of meeting with our ideal clients to review business and keep up to date. So they started a periodic business program and got their reps trained and managed around that to support that marketing started a consistent client communication program and backed it up in this case with a client loyalty program, which gave the reps a good excuse to go in and have their first what they ended up being quarterly business review. And so now, you know, that it wasn't about, you know, marketing, we need more leads. These leads aren't good enough, you know, that kind of stuff, instead of was saying, okay, we've got a real business problem here. We need more cross sell revenue. Let's get together in the same room, put our creative hats on together and figure out how to do it. And as a result, you know, now they're beginning to cross sell people into that new business area. And when you start doing that, revenue starts accelerating.
Kathleen (09:42): So you talked about getting marketing and sales together and as step number one. And I think there, there are different levels at which you can on what you can really kind of look at sales and marketing alignment. There's a very like theoretical level of, of psychological alignment and that sort of thing. But then there's the very practical level of when do we put these people in the same room, how often, you know, and for what purposes, so maybe we could start there and can you talk me through kind of your perspective on, on, you know, these are generally two different departments within a company, and so what, is there a meeting cadence that you are a fan of for them?
Darrell (10:25): Absolutely. And, and so there's so many different ways we could talk about this. I think there should be a regular meeting cadence and whatever that cadence is, then the question goes, well, what's the topic of the meetings that we're going to have when we're working with clients to implement a revenue growth strategy, we'll have a quarterly sales and marketing strategy meeting where they'll look at core initiatives for a stage of the client experience that they want to work on together or a particular problem such as cross selling they want to solve. And then that group will set some, some goals for that business quarter. And they'll meet together weekly in a sale, a weekly sales and marketing or marketing and sales alignment meeting. And so in that meeting now, they've got specified projects that they're working on. You know, some are more marketing focused, some are more sales focus, but they're working together and building out that infrastructure for those projects.
Darrell (11:24): And they're both giving input on them. So we get to the end of the quarter and the projects are done. It's not, you know, one of the biggest problems with sales and marketing alignment is marketing creates something, launches it. I was talking to a sales rep out in Los Angeles and a great rep works in financial services. And he's like Darrell. I went to meet with one of my clients today and they pulled out something from our marketing department and put it in front of me and ask me a question I'd never it before in my life. So, so let's get marketing and sales together on some type of regular cadence. I think weekly to have an alignment meeting where where we're solving problems together and we're creating things together, whether it's collateral or campaigns or whatever that is so that, you know, we're cross pollinating and getting input and buy-in throughout the, throughout the process.
Darrell (12:17): The other thing that you can do there's two other things, very practically for sales and marketing alignment related to meetings. One is to set a cadence of deal analysis. And I talk about this and the Revenue Growth Engine book, where maybe once a month you say, you know what, we're going to get together for an hour, or we're going to get together for lunch, or we're going to do something once a month with some sales leaders and some marketing leaders in the room. And we're going to take a deal. We won the deal we lost and a deal that went to no decision, and we're going to tear it apart together, and we're going to figure it out and we're going to figure out why we're winning, why we're losing and why, you know, why we're getting no decision deals. And now sales and marketing in the room together are able to process that you might invite in your sales reps from time to time.
Darrell (13:06): You might even invite in the client and go, why did we win? You know, this is this is helpful. And, and doing those, those deal analysis meetings, those usually just happen in the sales department. If you have a great sales leader, they'll already be doing deal analysis. It's kind of like Monday at LA. You know, it's like Monday after the football game, we all watched the tape, right. Here, I think companies shouldn't do that as a sales and marketing team and maybe even operations together to figure out why are we winning? And that's going to make the marketing better. It's going to make sell sales better and it's going to help align.
Kathleen (13:43): I love that. I'm, I'm curious about one thing, cause so I've worked in sales I've I obviously work in marketing now. And I've run a lot of sales and marketing alignment meetings and, and what I found in my experience and maybe I'm running them wrong, but I found that that a lot of times they veer into becoming a time for sales to, to ask marketing for things. And I will say at marketing's behest, like when I have these meetings, I'll be like, what can we do to help you sell better? You know, what are questions you're hearing from, from prospects? What are, what are things you need to close deals faster? And I think those are all things that need to be talked about, right? Like, because marketing has a really important role in sales enablement, but sometimes I feel like these meetings veer into the territory of just become like adding to marketing's to do list without kind of the reverse, which is, you know, really looking closely at marketing hand sales leads, what's happening with them and what is sales doing on their side? And this is totally my biased opinion because I spend more in these meetings as a marketer than I ever did as a sales person. But what is your experience been? Because sometimes that, that to me can get frustrating where I'm like, okay, this, this meeting should not all just be about adding to my to-do list. It needs to be a two-way street where, you know, the sales team gets held accountable for using the marketing materials and doing certain things. I dunno, I dunno. Have you seen anything work really well?
Darrell (15:16): Well, I think that when you do start creating things together, so you start with strategy, you know, and rather than start at the tactical level, which tends to happen, right? What do you guys need? Oh, I need a brochure or, you know, whatever. I, you know, if you start start a lot of times those meetings start there. The other thing to do is I want to talk about leads for a minute. Cause this is one of the biggest places of tension between marketing and sales sales says he don't give me enough leads. And when you do get leads, sales said, these leads are garbage. And then the marketing people say never close the leads. So and I work primarily in the B2B space. So the answer I'm going to give here is in the business to business space and in the business to business space.
Darrell (16:04): Most of the companies that I work with in most companies in the business to business space have a defined target market. In fact we recommend that you dial it down even more to what we call ideal clients, which is not a new term, but the idea is who are the clients that can buy everything that you sell and are a good fit. They align with your company values and you know, the types of clients you want to work with once you know who your ideal clients are, you've got the profile you've marked your current ideal clients because not all of your current clients are ideal by the way. And maybe it's a usually 80 20 rule then go out in the marketplace and go, okay, let's get the data on our ideal clients. Once that happens. Now, the sales and marketing lead thing is over.
Darrell (16:57): I say, if you know who your ideal clients are, you don't need leads. You already know who your leads are, what you need is engagement and intelligence. So a lot of this back and forth of, you know, Hey, you're not giving me enough leads. What we need instead is we need, we know who our ideal prospects are. Let's now put a plan together from a sales standpoint and a marketing standpoint to make sure we have what I call a hundred percent coverage of these ideal prospects. So from a sales standpoint, you know, the sales leader goes, Hey, here's IRA. Our ideal prospects. We've agreed on a cadence to call on the three most important decision makers, influencers, or marketing speak personas in those accounts on a quarterly basis. So you can call on anyone you want to, but absolutely hundred percent. We call on these ideal prospects.
Darrell (17:52): We engage with them and if you don't want to do it totally fine, we'll give it to somebody else. So you put a target account program in place. Marketing's the same thing. Now this requires a different thought pattern in marketing. Cause usually with marketing, we've kind of been like, we're going to throw, you want to throw the nets out, throw the lures out and hope we snag something. But with an ideal client profile in mind and it lists of ideal prospects. Now it becomes incumbent upon marketing to say, we're going to use every possible effort to get the company in front of these prospects with a value proposition. And we're going to aim for 100% coverage, meaning that every decision maker and influencer hears from our company and engages with our company in some way on a regular basis. Now, are we ever going to get to a hundred percent?
Darrell (18:45): No, but you know, now from marketing rather than becoming tactical campaign focused, we're gonna run an email campaign and we're going to do this. Now we're getting in the room and we're going, okay, we've got these prospects. What can we do to engage with them? And this is more of an account-based marketing mindset. You know, an account-based marketing is a fantastic model. That's been pioneered at the enterprise level in the technology world. But regardless of what you hear in the enterprise level or technology world, this mindset of saying, Hey, we know who our target, our ideal prospects are. Let's figure out how to get in front of them and let's use our best, most creative minds and all of the tools and tactics at our disposal to make sure that happens. So now we're not talking the stuff that's going back and forth between marketing and sales now is about engagement with these ideal prospects and clients rather than, Hey, I got somebody that gave us an email address from somewhere in the world that might possibly be a human being, right? So a little bit, little bit different mindset. When we look at ideal clients, they're, I'll get off my soap box.
Kathleen (19:58): No, I love all of this. ABM is definitely can be a really powerful strategy if, if executed well. So my question, as I listened to you talking about all of this is what advice do you give to marketing and sales leaders about how they forge a relationship with each other? Because it seems to me that this would all need to start there with the head of marketing and the head of sales becoming one another's best friends.
Darrell (20:32): Yes. And you know, relationships happen with common quills, like happened with time, spent together. You know, they happen when both both parties are rewarded for success. You there's, there's so many different dynamics there, but at a minimum, you know, I would say start spending time together a lot of time together and, you know, marketing people, one of the, one of the best things that, that I think we can do as marketing people is it used to say, get out in the field. What that means now is get on the zoom calls, right? It'd be there. On the zoom calls set up, set a cadence where you go, you know what? I'm going to spend a certain amount of time every week with salespeople on calls with prospects and clients, because what's going to happen is in the process, you're going to forge a relationship.
Darrell (21:27): You're but you're also going to get that valuable information, which is what's important to our clients and prospects right now. And maybe even more specifically, what are the actual words that they're using? Because right now, and this may be, you know, there's so many times we've been saying recently, this is more important than ever, but here's one thing I want to say. And I'm a firm believer that when it comes to the message, which, you know, marketing owns the message when it comes to the message, we've got to always remember that buyers don't buy products. They buy the outcomes, those products and services deliver good old Theodore Levitt walked into his Harvard business school class. And the first day of marketing class holding up the old drill bit says, you know, nobody ever buys a drill bit. They buy the whole course set, Seth Godin would say, go South.
Darrell (22:17): We'd say they didn't buy the hole. They bought the ability to hang the plaque on the wall. Right. And I always laugh because then Donald Miller stands right behind and says, well, they didn't actually buy it. The plaque, they bought the ability to look good to their friends. So they didn't get isolated weighted and eaten by a lion, you know, whatever the motivation is, you know, buyers buy outcomes, right. And what's so critical right now. And this is why I think marketing and sales need to be working together and meeting with clients and prospects together is the outcomes shift or continuing to shift. They shifted with COVID when the crisis happens. So I think we all know that, but I mean, if you think about know, for example, right after about six or eight weeks after the crisis started this, this year Gartner went out and did some research in the tech space and they said, what outcomes do you want?
Darrell (23:08): Well, last year it was all about scalability. And how do we, you know, accelerate growth and do all these things this year or after the crisis, the outcomes changed resiliency, redundancy, remote working, enabled that same product, same service, different outcomes, which means different message. And I think that message is going to continue to shift as we move through the different stages of economic recovery, whatever that looks like. And so in this time, it's really critical that is marketing people. We get out there with the sales team and we know participate or lurk in video and zoom meetings and listen in really pay attention to what the specific top of mind outcomes, the problems and aspirations that our prospects and clients have. And that is aligning that. And then after those meetings sitting down with their sales team and debriefing and going, okay, what do we hear here? So we can make sure that the message that we're delivering from a marketing perspective that also gets repeated by salespeople is laser focused on what the clients and prospects actually want right now,
Kathleen (24:20): Do you ever find that marketing gets pushed back from sales on that participation? Because it's interesting. You know, I've, I've seen various levels of receptivity to this. I worked in one company where the sales team was highly receptive to marketing, kind of being a fly on the wall. Then I spent some time in the cybersecurity sector and nobody wants any flies on the wall, whether that's a marketing person or like now there's all this great technology like gong and chorus and you know, where you can record calls, but in B2B cyber it's, it's like next to impossible to do any of that. And, and then I've worked in companies where, you know, they, the sales team just says, well, we don't want to bring a clown car into a meeting. Like we want to keep it small. And so I'm wondering what you've seen and what, whether you've seen that pushback and if so, how you've addressed it.
Darrell (25:17): Well, certainly I think that's a sales leadership issue and you know, and obviously not withstanding highly regulated industries and, you know, different things like that. I mean, there's, there's certainly a lot of different challenging circumstances, but the reality of all of it is marketing can't, we can't as marketers deliver a clear focused message unless we're able to be in front of buyers. You know, there's only so much that internet research is going to do. It's actually hearing the words that they're using. Another way to go about if you can't get involved in the meetings. One thing that I think marketers should do and should always have at the top of their priority list, it's usually at the bottom, but at the top of their priority list is case studies, success, stories, client interviews, whatever you want to call it. So and I, this was, this comes from just a, a 32 second rant from running a marketing agency now for 17 years, right?
Darrell (26:17): Hey, Darrell, we need you know, to redo our marketing. Great. Okay. So we come back with, you know, website and all the different things. And then underneath all on that red list of recommendations is to put together a set of case studies because we always ask, do you have any case studies? Well, no, we hadn't ever gotten around to it. Okay. So now, you know, now it's like, Hey, we need a new website. We need corporate brochure, some videos, all this. And then we say, well, what about case studies? Well, we'll get around to that when we're done with that. So I got to the point where, and you know, now the answer is, look, we're not going to build a website for you. We're not going to build a corporate brochure. We're not going to do anything for you until we write three case studies for your current clients, because then you'll see, we'll see together what the actual outcomes those people want and what they value from your company.
Darrell (27:12): And I've just always makes me laugh. Kathleen, I get asked I've had the opportunity over the years to write many, many case studies. And when I do, I'll always interview the sales rep first, and this is such a great point of marketing and sales alignment. So I'll interview the sales rep and say, Hey, tell me about this client that give me the backstory. Why did they buy Oh, well it's because we saved them money. Or we gave them a positive ROI, which is sales speak for save the money. Okay. Great. Any other reason? No, no. It was mainly because of my good looks and we saved them money. Okay. So then we'll interview the client and you know, we'll get down to the benefits section. What were the challenges, what did this company do for you or how have you benefited? And the client will start rattling things off.
Darrell (27:58): We like this, we love this. This is really helped our organization. It solved this problem. And in most of those conversations, I ended up having to say, Oh, by the way, are you tracking the ROI, trying to bring the money thing into it somehow. And most of the time the clients go, well, not really, but we like this, this, this, and this. So then I go back to the sales rep and go, Hey, do you want to know why your client actually is buying from you? And do you want to know how much money you left on the table by discounting this instead of charging a little bit more than what they were currently spending to get all these additional benefits. And so case study conversations, you know, I would say as, as marketing, you know, I would challenge you to set a cadence to say, I'm going to do one of these a month, or if you don't have a library of them one a week and really get that that going, it's going to help fuel your message. So you're able to create better content, but we'll also give you tons of stuff to go back to the sales team and begin to add value and forge those relationships.
Kathleen (29:00): That's a really good point. And I don't know how many marketers really do that, but I love that notion of, you know, so often as marketers, we're going to sales and asking them to tell us things, but if we can interview customers and, and bring intelligence back to sales, that's really powerful.
Darrell (29:22): It is, and you know, the market research is good and we should be doing that. And we should be, you know, doing industry trends and seeing what's going on, but none of that can replace the actual conversations and words with our ideal clients. And that's where, you know, it gets down I'm Canadian. So I like maple syrup. I write about maple syrup a lot in Revenue Growth Engine. Just because
Kathleen (29:49): You would get along with my husband really well because he not kidding says all the time that maple syrup is the, the universe's most perfect food. He puts it in his coffee.
Darrell (30:01): Does he drink it straight?
Kathleen (30:03): I don't know if he would admit he did.
Darrell (30:07): And I don't know if I would admit on live radio, I drink it straight up that may or may not happen, but what's great about maple syrup is we take a substance that, you know, is sweet. It's okay. You know, SAP comes out of a tree, but then it gets distilled down. It takes 40 gallons of SAP to make a gallon of maple syrup. And that's where having these conversations with clients. And then also if possible participating in sales meetings, that's where you get it boiled down to the really good stuff. And that's where we create messaging that is really effective. And that can't happen until we get in front of clients as marketers and cooperating with sales. And that is one good way to start to build those relationships.
Kathleen (30:49): So I'm curious about one thing, which is, do you think that the way marketing and sales leaders are compensated feeds into this divide between marketing and sales, like is there, is the incentive structure part of the problem or the, I shouldn't say the incentive structure itself, but it's the fact that they very often have two different incentive structures or in some cases marketers have no incentive structure, right. You pay, like, I wonder if that, if that lends itself to deepening the divide between marketing and sales.
Darrell (31:27): Maybe I think so. And I'm thinking from two different angles, one is just in terms of overall results. You know, when, when the team wins, everybody should win and you know, I'm not a compensation expert by any stretch, but just that principle of saying when the team wins, everybody should win. And we all know in today's buying environment that there is no buyer that doesn't touch the company's marketing at some point before, during and after the sales process. Right. I mean, it's just, it's the reality of today's world. So I think there should be an incentive there, especially, and I would, I would say, especially around landing ideal clients, like that's where you should really have the high fives, but the other place that I think a lot of companies miss it, even if they've got a structure that does align marketing compensation with results is usually sales compensation is aligned to net new business and not cross selling more to current clients.
Darrell (32:33): And you know, this, this is when we look at companies, if you grow net new business by 10% great, you know, it's going to take you, the investment analysts have a rule of 72. You take the number 72, you divide it by the return on investment. It tells you how long it takes to double your investment. We can use that in the sales and marketing world. If we growing 10% year over year 72 divided by 10%, it's going to take you 7.2 years to double the revenue of that business. Now, if I can cross sell, do net new and cross sell at the same time, I can cut the time to double the business in less by 50% and some even more cause the exponential nature of it. So now instead of seven years, I can double the business and say three. So I think companies would be smart to compensate marketing and sales, not just on net new, but also on cross sell revenue to current clients. And to really focus on that. And most companies we go in overall, it's not a, it's probably a general rule that that's just not happening and there's a great opportunity to align marketing and sales by getting the comp right around cross selling.
Kathleen (33:47): I would agree with you. And I just, the whole thing really does make me wonder if marketers were given the exact same incentive structure as the sales teams with whom they work, how would that change things? And I was thinking, as you were talking, I was actually thinking through it, if it were true for me, which it's not right now. And if, if I was being comped exactly as my sales counterpart was, I suspect and shame on me for not doing this already, that I would probably more frequently be saying to him, Hey, like we got to sit down today and look at what it's going to take for us to hit the number, you know, this month or this quarter, like I would be doing that more often. And so I don't know. It's just, it's interesting. I hadn't really thought about it before, but you, you got me, you got my wheels turning on that during this conversation.
Darrell (34:34): Mine as well. And, and I think you know, the general principle here is, is if the sale, if you want sales and marketing aligned, when the company wins sales and marketing should both win. And you know, there's, there's there's no disputing that, that it takes a team effort from the buyer's perspective, right? We all know the data. We all know that that, you know, the buyers are way through the buying journey. I'm laughing Kathleen. Cause I was on a live cast the other day and I was quoting the challenger customer data on there's an average of 6.8 decision-makers in the average B2B transaction. And I said, that was 10 data, 10 years ago. I know it's higher now. And I was live on the podcast and Brent Adamson chimed in, in the comments and said, it's now 12. So that made me laugh. But I was the reality is today, especially in the B2B buying space, you know, these decisions are complex. There's a lot of different people involved. It takes a team effort from sales and marketing to make sure that all the decision makers and influencers are properly informed and, and, you know, properly engaged throughout the buying cycle. And there's no way that sales can do that all by themselves. So , let's look at compensation. Great. Okay.
Kathleen (35:58): If, if nothing else I'm, I think I'm going to for the next week, do a test and pretend as though that's how I was being comped and see what it gets me to do differently. Interesting. And what happens as a result of that? So I'll make myself the Guinea pig. Well, we can talk about this all day, but we're running out of time. So I want to shift gears for a second. I always ask all my guests the same two questions at the end. I'm curious what you have to say. The first one is that, of course we are the inbound success podcast. So when it comes to inbound marketing, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park these days?
Darrell (36:35): Well, I am a huge HubSpot fan. We, we have been a HubSpot partner for a long time now and I, what I really like is I do like the innovation that's happening there. We've talked today about some account-based marketing strategies. I call it account-based marketing light, kind of, you know, for the, the mid sized companies. And HubSpot's bringing more and more tools to the table in that space. And also just the beautiful way they've aligned sales and marketing with sales tools, CRM in the middle marketing and even operations. Now I say huge shout out for the work that's going on at HubSpot big fan.
Kathleen (37:14): I mean, they are absolutely the gold standard. Second question. One of the biggest pain points I hear marketers express to me is that digital marketing is changing incredibly quickly and it's very hard to keep up with everything. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and up-to-date?
Darrell (37:32): Tthat's a great question. There's no, there's no stopping with education. I, I think the reality is you've got to be a voracious reader right now. So if you look behind me, I've got a lineup. This is my lineup of books to read right now. You know, and so I, I try to read a book every week and in the process as well, just you know, I've got my Feedly stacked with with as many informative blogs as possible. There's, there's no way getting around doing the hard work of educating yourself. And I think it's, especially for marketers, it's gotta be something where you say, Hey, I'm going to dedicate 10% of my week to educating myself. Otherwise you're going to fall behind really quickly.
Kathleen (38:20): It's very easy to do. It's very easy to do. All right. Well, if somebody is listening and they want to learn more about the Revenue Growth Engine, or want to connect with you online and ask a question, what is the best way for them to do that?
Darrell (38:36): Well, you text the word revenue to 21000 that's revenue to 21000. That'll take you through to our website, you'll get access to our growing toolkit, which actually contains some tools that will be helpful for sales and marketing, maybe to work on together and to set some goals. And of course, my name is Darrell Amy, and Kathleen. There's just not that many people out there with the last name, Amy and the first name Darrell. So I bet if you look for me on LinkedIn, you'll probably find me. I'd love to connect with you.
Kathleen (39:04): Well, I will make it even easier and I will put the link to your LinkedIn and your website in the show notes. So make sure to head over to the show notes if you're listening and you want to connect with Darrell or learn more about revenue, growth engine, or gain access to his toolkit in the meantime, if you were listening today and you liked what you heard, or you learned something new, please consider heading to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leaving the podcast or review, I would really appreciate it. And if you're listening and you know, somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because you never know, they could be my next guest. Thank you so much for joining me this week, Darrell.
Darrell (39:48): I had a great time. Thank you, Kathleen, for all you're doing here on the podcast. It's fantastic.
Kathleen (39:52): Oh, thank you. All right. Until next week.
Facebook's ad platform is constantly evolving. What strategies are the experts using to get amazing results today?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Feedstories cofounder, author, and Facebook advertising expert Bob Regnerus breaks down the specific strategies he uses to help clients get incredible results with Facebook ads.
From using look alike audiences for targeting, to using retargeting to reach warm traffic, to why you should use deep funnel marketing strategies, Bob covers a lot of ground and shares actionable takeaways that anyone can use to improve their Facebook ads results, today.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit ultimatefb.com to check out Bob's interviews with folks like Ryan Deiss, Brian Kurtz and Perry Marshall, and to get his book
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I am your host, Kathleen Booth. And my guest today is Bob Regnerus, who's the co-founder of Feedstories, a digital marketing coach and author of five books, including the fourth edition of the Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising. Welcome Bob.
Bob (00:32): So good to be here, Kathleen. How are you doing today?
Kathleen (00:34): I'm great. Before we start nerding out on all things marketing, can you please tell my audience a little bit about yourself? What it is that you do and how you came to be a Facebook advertising expert?
Bob (00:50): Yeah, I'm think probably very similar to a lot of the people that are listening. I am a serial entrepreneur and I'm the type of entrepreneur who kind of found his way in through corporate channels. So I have a programming background. I, I studied that in college and my first couple of gigs out of college were at big corporations in programming. And this was kind of around 1997, 98. The internet was starting to be something rather significant. So I started getting into developing websites for clients. So I developed my first website in 1998. The first website I built that I got paid for, which was really cool. And I, it was funny, I guess I got my start into internet marketing this way that the client had built the website for actually said to me, Hey, this is great.
Bob (01:47): I love it. We're making sales, you know, this is amazing. Can you help me get traffic to my site? I said, yeah, absolutely. I know exactly how to do that. And of course I had no idea. Right. so I had to go and figure out how to do it, and that was my start in internet marketing. So I'm going on 22 years plus here of internet and direct marketing like many I've studied you know, the masters. Worked with Dan Kennedy book, Perry Marshall, and Frank Kern, Ryan Deiss. These are all people that I got to know over the years. So it's, it's, it's, it's a constant journey. So I happen to really navigate towards paid advertising. I know a lot of people are really good at SEO and organic and I'm really happy for them, but I find it too much of, I don't want to say this, but I'll say it it's kind of like voodoo.
Bob (02:39): I don't know, Kathleen. One thing works today and then tomorrow it doesn't work. I just kind of gravitated more towards paid because it was, it's a little predictable put in a dollar, make $2, you know, that's kind of our goal here. I have worked on all the platforms GoTo, Overture Yahoo, Google Adwords, but then 2013 came around actually late 2012 and 2013. I'm like Facebook is becoming a serious player. It wasn't mainstream yet, by any sense of the imagination in terms of advertising, they had a very basic garbage had product, which was right-hand side ads that you would see on a desktop, very low click through rates, very low conversions, but they started doing what are called sponsored stories. And that is the first evolution of what we see in our newsfeed today, which is ads that look like content along with all your other personal stuff. To me, that was a big, big deal. So, I dove in head first really, really got into that and it really resonated with me cause I'm a big story guy. I really enjoy connecting with people through story and its just a really good media for that. So I, I I've really been in it for seven plus years and I don't think Facebook's going away anytime soon. So I think I have some job security. Yeah.
Kathleen (04:03): Yeah, definitely. And today, are you really only focusing on Facebook ads? Are you working with clients on full funnel ad strategies across the multiple platforms?
Bob (04:14): It's a really good question. I have found. Just, just for me that I, I have focused mostly on two things. I am kind of the Facebook guy in our company and then my business partner, Brandon, focuses on video and video marketing. So, we, we make, made a conscious decision not to do full funnel stuff because, we have found being specialists is a little bit more, it works better for the way we are wired than to be generalists. And so I'm not disparaging of the agencies or things like that. Just for us, it, it feels like we can, you know, separate ourselves from the competition more, but being really good at a couple of things versus trying to be good in a bunch of things.
Kathleen (04:59): It's interesting because I feel like I could do a whole podcast episode and invite on a couple of paid ads, people and just stage a debate between like, should you do it all? Or should you specialize? And I've probably interviewed an equal number of people on either side. And, and one of the arguments I've always heard for specializing is that, you know, as you've kind of mentioned, these platforms are getting incredibly sophisticated in terms of their capabilities and that really to truly master them, it almost as a full-time job, you know, just staying on top of everything.
Bob (05:36): Well, I, I, you know, I maybe, you know, I kind of glossed over a number of years, but I think like other entrepreneurs, Kathleen, I had my up and down cycles. I, I barely survived the crash in 2008. I actually had an agency that was well-staffed. We had about 15 people working for us and we were banking on continued growth. And a lot of our clients are information marketers, especially in the real estate niche. And of course, 2008 was the great crash. Many of our clients quickly ran out of money and when they ran out of money, they could stop, you know, they stopped paying me and formed a whole cycle. So I had the pleasure number of years ago, laying off a bunch of people that I call friends. And so I didn't want to live through that again.
Bob (06:25): And so just part of the way I'm wired, I, I enjoy having a smaller company now. That's more specialized and doesn't have so many moving parts purely, purely a personal choice. I have friends that are running agencies that are six figures, seven figures, and even eight figures. And they're doing amazing. I think it's just kind of, I think you really have to pick the way you're wired and what, what, you know, I tried to develop my business now more towards the lifestyle I want. I'm, you know, I'm in my early fifties, I coach high school basketball. Like my kids who are both in college, so I'm just making different choices. And again, I think everyone's got to make their own choices as to what makes the most sense for them. And for me right now in my career, those things make the most sense to me.
Kathleen (07:15): I can totally relate as somebody who owned her own digital marketing agency in the same timeframe, 2008, 2009 that was some angst ridden years. So let's, let's talk about Facebook and you know, you and I chatted a little bit before we did the podcast about how I feel like my audience is pretty experienced. And they tend to know, you know, they, they tend to know the basics. And so I would, I would be willing to bet if I were a betting woman, that the majority of them have done some Facebook advertising, you know, they, they know the one Oh one level stuff, but, and I'll speak for myself here. That's, that's me too. I've managed teams that have done Facebook ads. I could run Facebook ads on my own, but I'm not a Facebook advertising expert. And so I selfishly want to dig into is for somebody like me, who understands basically how it works, what are the things that I need to know to really take it to the next level, especially like Facebook today and how it's functioning now and the ad types that work the way you rotate in creative and just all the, you know, I guess call it two to three Oh one level.
Kathleen (08:31): Things that, that really result in great performance on Facebook. I know that's a broad question. So I'm going to allow you to kind of take that where you want to take it. Yeah.
Bob (08:41): Well, it's really interesting. Facebook now is very much a mature media. You know, think of where Google was about 10 years ago, where it's, it's, it's a wide swath of beginning advertisers, middle tier advertisers and high end advertisers. You know, we're talking big brand companies with big budgets and things like that. So one of the things that is different now and is difficult for a lot of advertisers, just the fact that there's just a lot of money flowing into Facebook and you and I happen to be recording this on an amazing day here in the U S it's election day. We have no idea what's going to happen by the time this airs, you know, who knows what's going to be going on.
Kathleen (09:22): Right. Probably best for all of us that we're in this room. And we can't be watching the news
Bob (09:27): Safe in our bunkers, listen to podcasts, not the news, but one of the big, you know, what I'm talking about here is the environment. So for about 30 days, give or take a couple of weeks, we have seen just record high CPMs. The cost of advertising has been just massive.
Kathleen (09:48): Well, and we're coming into black Friday, cyber Monday.
Bob (09:51): Yeah. that's coming up, but I have noticed more spending this cycle than I did in 2016. And then certainly during the midterms of 2018 just the highest CPMs we've ever seen. But yeah, so this other thing that we have going on called COVID has shifted a lot of money into the e-commerce space. So a lot of your traditional big box retailers who kind of always rely on foot traffic into their stores are now heavily investing in their e-commerce sales, because they know people are not going to go to the stores in droves. So I have seen really since, you know, kind of August here political spending, and now here we are, the elections will be over. The politicians will leave, but you're right. There's going to be a huge influx of cash into the ad auction specifically for e-commerce. And I saw a commercial, I think it was two weeks ago. Target said black Friday is now right.
Kathleen (10:53): Well, prime day has already happened. I mean, I feel like it's sort of like how stores put Christmas decorations now out in August, I feel like the same thing is happening with holiday deals and sales. Yeah.
Bob (11:04): It definitely is. And stores have lost a lot of money and they are going to try to make it up. So they are pumping money into advertising and trying to make that happen. So the biggest thing that people are probably facing and, you know, the clients that come to me for coaching are like, Hey, my costs are through the roof. You know, how do we get, how do we get a stance here? How, how do we like quell the rising cost of advertising? I'm pretty sure that's what most people are fighting right now. The, the answer to that is, is, is it's multifaceted. Number one is, one of the things that we have found that is working quite well is, is really giving Facebook is much ... How do I want to say this? We want to give them as much, ability to target as we possibly can.
Bob (11:55): So really creating really good high value look alike audiences. It's probably a basic strategy at this point, but I've seen this mistake so many times is that people aren't modeling their best audience. Facebook's look alike audience is just that. It is a model of people that are just like a particular audience. And I find too many people still relying on interest based targeting versus look alikes. I was at a meeting at Facebook headquarters a number of years ago. And even then this was true. They said, you know, we know we know your customers better than you do.
Kathleen (12:37): They probably know the customers better than the customer knows themselves.
Bob (12:41): That's scary. And you, you really know that by looking at your own newsfeed, but the moral behind that story is we used to think our edge is that we would be able to dial in the targeting much better by knowing their interest and the, these pages they like and things like that. I have just found over and over that it's much better to spend time on creating a better model. So, you know, in the book we talk about this ancient concept it's called RFM recency frequency money. And the idea here is, is that we should be creating sub list of our customers. The people who've bought most recently from us, the people who buy frequently from us and the people who spend the most money and making a smaller subset of our customers and using that as a lookalike audience. And we find over and over that model beats like modeling your entire customer base and it, by far beats you know, just trying to do interest based targeting the more dialed in and the more you let the optimizer or Facebook's AI do targeting for you the better off, I think you're going to be from that standpoint. I don't know if you've experienced the same thing working with your team.
Kathleen (13:54): Yeah. I mean, I'm in a new role, so we're just getting started with Facebook advertising here, but I think it's certainly in previous situations, I've I found that to be true. Yeah.
Bob (14:05): And, you know, so kind of building on that that that's, that's really kind of a cold strategy is, is it, you know, if you, if you can't model your customers, the next best thing to customers is, is modeling an email list. You know, most of us are collecting email addresses and at least have kind of a non-buyer list. That's another good strategy is to do that. I'll get back to what to do if you don't have either of those, but I, I, I want to shift towards the idea of you know, what do we do kind of first, I think, and I see this mistake over and over, and this is why I'm bringing it up. People placed too little emphasis on retargeting. I think everybody's concept is, Oh, I'm going to go to Facebook and I'm going to go find a bunch of new customers.
Bob (14:53): And I think that's just flat out wrong. The idea of going after cold traffic is, is great, but you, and I know this and probably people listening is that cold traffic is the hardest to convert and it's the most expensive to convert. And, and quite frankly, if you don't have things dialed in right away, you lose a lot of money and you lose a lot of confidence. So one of the big mistakes I see people making is they, they they're putting too little effort into their retargeting. Retargeting of course, is the technology powered by the Facebook pixel. It's simply the ability to reconnect with visitors to your website or people who engage with your app or your content on the Facebook platform. And again, it's, I, I see it too often to not talk about it, but the idea is people who are already somewhat familiar with us are much likely to do business with us and somebody who doesn't know us at all.
Bob (15:48): I know it's elementary, but why do so many people make the mistake while they think because their product is better than all the other products? They think everyone is their customer. They simply go out to the cold, unwashed masses, and believe that their offers will convert. I really prefer to leverage warm traffic first. I like to hone my offers there and get that to convert to my warm traffic. And then if I can prove it at that level on you know, spending much less money and getting it optimized there, then I feel more comfortable going to the masses and try my offer there. I, I just think it's an elementary mistake that too many people gloss over
Kathleen (16:32): Now let's talk offers for a second because having spoken with lots of different ads experts, I've heard, you know, varying opinions on the best way to structure a Facebook ads funnel. I've heard several people, just absolutely passionately evangelize that you, you can't have just bottom of the funnel ads that you need to have your top of the funnel awareness level content to kind of draw people in. And then you, you know, you go from there. Then I've also had like, you know, at least one guest who's talked about like the progression of how you update your messaging. This was one of my earliest interviews. He talked about how if people see the same ad messaging too often, it stops working. And so he had a fairly elaborate, but I thought very wise and effective process for making sure that after a certain number of touches, he like rotated in new creative. So I'd love to just get your perspective on that kind of broad topic.
Bob (17:33): Well, here's where you can nerd out a little bit. So I, I have developed over time and this is, this is not top secret, but this is just something that I've developed and other marketers do this now. I call it deep funnel, marketing, others have different names, names for it. I really adhere to a principle that Eugene Schwartz talked about in 1966 and his book Breakthrough Advertising. It's, it's basically the customer awareness timeline. And I, and I detail this in the book. Anytime you're going out to the market, people are at various levels of awareness. Most of the market is unaware of who you are and what you offer. That's, that's just a fact. So as you, as you think about that, and as you move to the right of the timeline, the next stage is problem aware. This is really where a lot of Google advertisers really live and it's, it's actually a difficult adjustment for somebody who's good at Google to shift to Facebook.
Bob (18:32): It's because people who advertise on Google are instinctively aware about people's problems. Google is a problem solving mechanism. So when you go advertise on Google, there are people that are actively looking for solutions solution, where it happens to be the next stage of the awareness journey. And the idea is, Hey, I know you have this problem and I do a better job of detailing that problem, agitating that problem, and offering you a solution to that problem. That's, that's where a lot of advertisers are living, unfortunately, who advertise on Facebook. I see too many people running problem aware and solution aware ads to cold traffic. And that's a huge, huge mistake because only, Hey, here's what I'd like to say. Facebook is an interruption mechanism. Facebook is like a, it's like a anniversary party. You have a bunch of people over and today would be outside.
Bob (19:29): We wouldn't be indoors. We'd be outside in the backyard. There'd be family and friends there. We're celebrating the day. You know, we're laughing with, with our friends and family, and here comes a vacuum cleaner sales button, and they're screaming from the, you know, they're walking to the park. They're like, Hey, buy my vacuum cleaner. Well, you are a unwelcome guest. You're a pest at that party. Too many Facebook advertisers act like that. I know it's a funny example, but the idea is we're interrupting people who are looking at pictures of family and friends. I mean, that's essentially what Facebook is. We are interrupting them. And when somebody is at the unaware stage and you are interrupting them with problem aware solution, where ads, you are going to waste a lot of money and you're going to have really low quality scores and in turn and have really, really expensive ads that don't convert.
Bob (20:19): I think too few advertisers don't think about how to time their content. So, okay. If I'm going to interrupt somebody in the Facebook timeline, or what do I need to say to demonstrate my ability or to agitate a particular problem they have, or offer up a particular service or anything like that, you have to have different top of funnel content when you're interrupting them the first time, then once they've signaled to you that they're interested. And this is really key that the pixel really powers this. You know, I look for signals like this, they visited my landing page and they fill out a form or they watch a one-minute video. They put in their Facebook newsfeed and they watched 100% of it, meaning, Hey, they were engaged for a full 60 seconds. To me, that's a signal that, okay, they've moved beyond the unaware stage.
Bob (21:14): They're now either problem aware solution aware, and they're on their way to our solution aware or your solution aware. That's when you can start to offer them more. What I would call middle of funnel, nurturing type content, credibility, boosters, like testimonials, demonstrations you know, FAQ's those types of things. And then when they move down the funnel further, like they view an order form they watch a webinar or they've been on a call with you or something further down, well, now we're their bottom of funnel and they're very much aware of your solution and they're really narrowing it down to you or somebody else or worth you or nothing. Then you really want to target your ads towards that mindset. And I think too many people try to shortcut it and they're really misfiring on where their customer's awareness level is that, and that's where there there's big pockets of waste in their ad account because they're not adhering to where the customer is in terms of their customer awareness journey.
Kathleen (22:14): Yeah, it's interesting. I think that makes so much sense. And I think I know that I know that in the past I've made that mistake of sort of having the set it and forget it mentality with my ads and not recognizing that the customer is on a journey and the ad needs to go on that journey. The ad set needs to go on that journey with them.
Bob (22:34): And I don't know, Kathleen, the type of clients that you work with. I tend to work with clients that have much more complex or higher price products and services. Okay.
Kathleen (22:41): I don't work with clients anymore. I'm in house now. I've been out of the agency game for awhile.
Bob (22:48): I think this is another thing too, is the level of complexity in your product and the length of the buying decision makes a big difference too. You know, we mentioned e-commerce and I, and I have a lot of clients over the years who do e-commerce and it's really, it's kind of like the product that sits at the checkout counter before you go out where you don't have to do a lot of thinking. These are the types of products that the Harmon brothers, right? They work with Dollar Shave Club. And some of those like, Hey, I just saw a video. It entertained me. It's a product that I think is cool. I'm going to buy it. There's, I mean, there's obviously retargeting things involved, but it's really just like, Hey, the product is cheap enough or it's simple enough that I don't need to think about it.
Bob (23:33): I tend to attract those that are in the more complex markets. So we have more complex problems itself. It usually involves higher prices or a lot more thinking involved. So you have a lot more nurturing time in between, and it really takes a little bit more money and a little bit more patience to be able to work in that situation. Those that have that type of staying power do find success though because they're willing to go to those lengths to move and be with the customer as they shift from being unaware of me, to being aware of me and making a decision to buy.
Kathleen (24:10): What about ad formats? So specifically, you know, there are so many different ad formats now from, you know, sponsored content to stories, to videos, to you name it. You know, and that's, that's just on Facebook and I'm sure I've missed, oh carousels. I'm sure I've missed so many, but what have you seen in terms of effectiveness?
Bob (24:33): Well, it's interesting. I wish I was more creative. A lot of these new formats involve a high level creativity, and there's some cases where those big agencies just have an edge over me. I am really a proponent 80% of the time when you're starting out, you really need to focus in on the mobile newsfeed and two secondary to the desktop newsfeed. I, I prefer going into a market and make things much more simple. There are so many placements and there's so many types of ads and designs that you could do that we, we get. I think we get stuck quite honestly, I think becomes overwhelming. So what I prefer to do is, is, is simplify things for people and say, Hey, let, let's do something simple. Let's, let's try image ads and video ads in the mobile newsfeed. And I do know about mobile newsfeed, because 90% of our traffic to most businesses is going to be on the mobile side.
Bob (25:36): Okay. So I like to start there. In fact, you could live there for a very long time before you need to start branching out to other forms. Now, again, it's probably a function of the type of coaching clients that I have and the type of clients that come to us where, where some of those newer formats and more exciting formats are probably more appropriate. But you know, just realize that you really want to mix those placements and those types of designs to the type of environment and market that you're going after. I think certainly if you're in a market that skews a bit younger you probably need to have a lot more attention to types of like stories and things like that. One of the fortunate things is that we can hit both Instagram and Facebook through the same ad interface.
Bob (26:25): And you, you need to have some differences between those, you know. Instagram prefers, you know, shorter videos, square videos. Facebook tends to like, you know, profile videos like four by five, seven by 16 format works well, or the landscape 16 by nine works well. So I think part of it, Kathleen is really just I don't like people to get confused or overwhelmed by the number of choices they have. A lot of what Facebook puts into their system is, is what big advertisers are demanding. And I think part of what they do is as they deliver new products, new placements, new formats, they're, they're trying to create extra space to show ads, but the, the stalwart, the the steamship, whatever that drives Facebook's ad engine and drives most of the response still, in my opinion, is the newsfeed type ads.
Kathleen (27:21): And when you start a new campaign how many different variations on the creative do you start out with? Cause I'm a big believer in, you know, like testing and you can learn a lot, but I feel like, I feel like you could spend, you know, all your time just coming up with a million variations. So what's your personal approach to that?
Bob (27:42): It's a really good question. I think it's actually become simpler. If we are going after cold traffic, let's say we've, we've kind of here's what I, here's what I'd like to have and be armed with. Okay. as I mentioned before, I like to start with warm traffic. So what we do is we usually go and testing kind of three variations of an ad. I do not like to mix like images and videos in the same ad. So what I prefer to do is we'll, we'll develop three different videos with kind of three different messages first. So we'll, we'll kind of test those. And then what we do is we keep the same primary texts. So I'm assuming a lot about what people know about Facebook ads, but essentially there is a primary text that you see below your page name, there's the media, and then there's a headline and there's a call to action button.
Bob (28:35): So to keep things simple in our minds is we will test images first and we'll really evaluate click-through rates and just kind of see you know, how are people clicking through? And then we'll also on a video. See, like how many of the videos are, you know, getting engagement all the way through Facebook gives you, you know, how many watched it for 15, or I'm sorry, 25%, 50, 75, a hundred percent. So we'll evaluate videos that way, but I don't like evaluating images versus videos. So we'll do a video test and then we'll also do image test. You know, I like to do three. I think when you get past three, I see, I see too many inconsistent results. So you could run an image test on one day and, you, you, you think you have a definitive result and the very next day Facebook will decide to put its impressions on another image and it's really arbitrary.
Bob (29:33): So I find that three doesn't confuse the optimizer too much. And if when, once you run it for several days, you start to see some consistency. There's usually going to be a clear winner. There's going to be somewhere in second, and then there's going to be a laggard. Usually what you're going to find is that one is one is a clear winner and one is a real laggard. Um, I, I, I like to test that first and then we rotate in. So every time we have a loser, we'll throw a new one in and we'll try to beat, you know, and just see if we can move that up the totem pole. I like to kind of find three different pieces of media that work well. And then we start to test the primary text. Um, other thing that people really, really need to test is your primary texts.
Bob (30:18): Maybe you don't realize, but you only see three lines. Okay. So we used to think direct marketing. We need to test headlines well in Facebook, we need to taste, test the media first, and then we need to just test the first three lines of our text. So I spend most of my time really working on the first three lines of my opening primary text paragraph. Now, the other copy is definitely critical that we found the most impact is from, from trying variations of the first three lines. And here's, here's something just that I have found. And, and I pass this along. Everybody is you're when your three lines really engage the person in kind of a story format. If you are able to tell a story or, or engage kind of, and create an open loop in somebody's mind, then you get them to engage with the rest of the text involved in the ad. So I start with images. I'm sorry. I start with videos. Then I test images. Then I test primary text.
Kathleen (31:20): That's super helpful. And that makes me kind of think of another question, which is how long do you let a test run? Because I do feel like I hear frequently from marketers, like, Oh, I tried Facebook advertising and it didn't work. Or I tried LinkedIn advertising, you know, like I hear this about all the platforms and I'm always interested in like, is it that they didn't try long enough? Is it that when they thought it wasn't working, they should have just started new creative? Like how long do you go before you come to the conclusion? Like this channel just isn't working for me.
Bob (31:54): Yeah. There's two things that are always constantly battling for me. Number one is I have this statement and it's, it pretty much always rings true. The way something starts is the way it ends. And this is really true on Facebook for me is that if, if, if one particular piece of creative runs out in front, it's generally not going to get beat by something else. Facebook is, I mean, it's weird, but you know, Facebook is really smart. You know, the, the, the people that are creating the ad algorithm are really, really smart. The machine, the algorithms are really, really smart. So it's very rare that we will see a test run out to a lead and then retreat back later. We're always to let that run long enough so that it has some, statistical relevance. In general, there's always this rule of like 200, like you need 200 actions or 200 of anything to really make, make sure.
Bob (32:54): I tend to break that more often than not just, just going by the first, first observation. I, I have found that if you let something run a couple of days and it's just way ahead it's never going to get caught by the other two iterations. So what I like to do in that instance is declare that winner. And again, I'm not just spending $5 a day. I think, you know, you, you need to spend a couple hundred dollars on an ad before you can really make a call. It's not a hard and fast rule Kathleen, but I, I prefer, I feel much more comfortable calling a winner when I spend at least a couple of hundred dollars. So I'll follow the rule of 200 in terms of the monetary side of things. And I feel really comfortable kind of declaring a winner after Facebook's had at least a couple hundred dollars to spend.
Kathleen (33:40): All right, this is the perfect segue. Let's talk budgets. Oh yeah. Everybody, I'm sure you get this question with every single new customer that you sign. I remember I got it when I had an agency. How much should I be prepared to spend with Facebook advertising?
Bob (33:57): So there's, there's always a two part answer. The first answer is retargeting can be very, very inexpensive. I have some clients that are running very simple. What I call nurturing campaigns for $5 a day. Okay. They're coaching clients. They have a simple funnel. They don't spend a lot of money. They don't get a lot of traffic. They can put their retargeting out and nurture clients or nurture their prospects for $5 a day. However, if you are going to go and scale and go cold traffic, you need, you need to be prepared to start spending $5,000 a day. Like I said, the cost of traffic is going up, and it's going up for everybody. And of course, you know, we're, we're, we're giving you tips and tricks and we're trying to teach you how to be most effective to reduce, you know, reduce your cost, increase your response and things like that.
Bob (34:48): But it really comes down to a couple of things. Number one is, what's the conversion rate, you know, what's the normal conversion rate of your site. You know, how many people do you need to drive to that site in order for them to generate revenue for you? And, the second factor then is how much can you afford to spend to convert a customer? So the question, is a great question. We always get it. And we, we always have to kind of analyze each business individually, but it really comes down to conversion rates and, and margins. The more margin you have, the easier it is to be an advertiser. If you, if you have really tight margins and really tight windows to convert people, unfortunately it's going to be really difficult for you to make Facebook work. Because again, there, there was an expense.
Bob (35:39): You know, Facebook is not just going to give you customers, you really gotta work at it. So I, I would encourage those that have small budgets to really focus most of their time and money on retargeting. It's going to be really effective. It has the greatest return on ad spend. I have, I have an e-commerce client where we started, we only ran retargeting for three months, but that client was getting 15 to one, 25 to one, 40 to one return on ad spend during that time. And so we, we lived there for several months, kind of build up their cash stores and to give them confidence before we went out to cold traffic. Um, just know that if you've limited focus on retargeting, once you're at a cashflow or revenue space where you can afford to invest in cold advertising, then you go ahead and scale outward to that.
Kathleen (36:32): Great. Well, I feel like I could keep asking you questions about Facebook all day long, because this is such a big topic. But we are running out of time. So I want to switch gears and ask you the two questions I always like to ask all of my guests, the first of which is we always talk about inbound marketing on the podcast because we're the inbound success podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really setting the gold standard for what it means to be an inbound marketer today?
Bob (37:00): Yeah. I mean, I, I want to mention a couple people. I'm really fortunate to be friends with Ryan Deiss. Ryan and I were in the same mastermind group before he was Ryan Deiss. What I really appreciate, and I did an interview actually for this book. Ryan's one of the co-authors in the book. He contributed a chapter. I was really proud to have him in the book. But what he's done with Digital Marketer, he talks about in an interview I did. He kind of this promoter, but he's really a humble guy. And what I really like is they, they really lead with content. They, they understand kind of the needs of marketers and they've done a really good job of niching their content and offering things to people that make it really easy to engage. They lead with education and they have really good people that are kind of working to educate the marketing community. So, you know, no matter where you go on their site, there's, there's ways to engage with them. There's there's tools. There's just all kinds of goodies that you can get from them. I think they over-deliver on their content and that's really, what's made Digital Marketer such a huge company. And then of course, the Traffic and Conversion Summit, probably the biggest marketing conference in the world at this point.
Kathleen (38:19): I just had to laugh when you said you knew Ryan Deiss before he was Ryan Deiss because I know Ryan Deiss. You know, he's not my best friend or anything. I don't know him that well, but I know him and I find it hard to believe in my head that he didn't just exit the womb as the Ryan Deiss that he is today, because like, he just seems so fully baked.
Bob (38:36): So I just had to chuckle when you said that he's, he's a good guy and a great family guy. Yeah. I also, I do want to talk about, obviously I wrote this book with Perry Marshall. Perry of course, he's been around forever. He's kind of the first person that introduced Google Adwords to the marketing community. But even Perry kind of for a while, kind of went through a wall with his lead generation. And just recently we worked on a project where he did a, a five day challenge. So challenge funnels of course are kind of all the rage and we kind of think, well, those don't work anymore. But Perry just recently did a five day challenge. He, he did it of course, to re-engage some unengaged people on this list.
Bob (39:26): We, we got about 500 people re-engage and the cost of that was about $3 50 cents to kind of get somebody enrolled, but we rolled that out. Perry's team rolled that out. I should say rolled that out to cold traffic generated 2,500 new leads into the company for the same amount of money. So about $3 and 50 cents a lead. Now the normal lead, like people are happy around nine or $10 a lead in, in this space. And so that absolutely broke kind of this paradigm where we thought we knew all the tricks really, really took was somebody who really knew how to execute that idea. David Nadler, who's also in the book with me, brought the idea of the challenge funnel to Perry and, you know, together, they put that out there. So those types of things to work, and they're not just tips and tricks, like when you really have value behind something those structures really work.
Bob (40:28): So a challenge funnel is really good. And I'll just mention one more. I, I have a particular client that I'm, that I'm helping, who is just doing quiz funnels to the Nth degree. You know, these are not just like buzzwords and hacks. They really, really work. He's got a quiz funnel in the lead generation space, and it's just, it's just converting better than anything he's ever tried. So, you know, I think all of us, you know, listening to this podcast cast and following some of these people, these ideas that are out there, they're not just like, they just don't work for a little while. They can continue to work for years and years. We maybe lose favor with it because we're always looking for the next thing, but I I'm afraid that we let ideas kind of pass too quickly. And we forget about some of the things that really really work, especially in non marketing spaces, but, I'm just really proud of Perry to kind of go, Hey, you know, I don't know everything, sought out somebody to try something different and absolutely smashed for him. So I'm really proud of him.
Kathleen (41:35): That's a great story. And I think those are three really fantastic people to check out. So thank you for that. Second question. And I think this definitely applies in the field that you're in. I always hear marketers saying, gosh, you know, how to, how can I keep up with all the changes that are happening in the world of digital marketing? It changes so quickly. You know, I feel like I'm overwhelmed. So how do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated?
Bob (41:59): Yeah, I'm real careful too. I mean, obviously putting a book out and coaching clients and things like that, I don't have the same type of space and time anymore to be educated. So you know, I, I'm a friend and business partner, Perry Marshall, but I still read his email. So Perry is the person I follow. The second person I follow is Ryan Deiss. I think Digital Marketer distills a lot of the good ideas that are all around kind of our, our world. So I do follow Digital Marketer. And then I also follow Brian Kurtz. Brian Kurtz is founder of Boardroom. He retired from that. Brian, I follow Brian because he, he talks at a kind of a a really fundamental level. And so what I, what I get from Brian, he sends out an email once or twice a week, and it's really about principles type stuff.
Bob (42:52): I, I didn't say it or maybe I did say it I'm a high school basketball coach, so I really value fundamentals. I really love to be successful that you have to master the simple things. And so at this point in my career, I just really value people that, that teach fundamentals versus tactics and hacks. You know, those things, like I said, hacks only lasts for a little while with fundamentals last for a long, long time. And I was really careful by the way in my book too, to make it a lot of fundamentals versus tactics, because a book about Facebook is going to go, it's going to go irrelevant real quickly. Right. You know, that screenshots are going to be out of date and things like that. So I was really careful to put a lot of fundamentals. They know it. So that's the type of people I like to follow these,
Kathleen (43:38): You know, that story really resonates with me. And as you were telling it, it, it reminded me of something that I had almost forgotten about, which is, I almost never talk about my kids on the podcast, but my stepson, many years ago, we were going on a like a skiing, snowboarding vacation. And he broke his arm right before we left. And he was basically told like, look, you really can't go and do all that. But he was so heartbroken. And what we figured out was, we were like, well, you, maybe you can't go on like those black diamond slopes that you're used to going on. He was a snowboarder. But what if we enroll you in like private snowboarding lessons and the person, and they focus on the fundamentals with you, like you really nail how to carve a turn. And he was so mad at us.
Kathleen (44:27): He was like, lessons, I'm too old for that. Like, this is waste of time, but we were like, we're not going to let you just go down the mountain with this broken, like he had a cast on and everything, but, and it was funny. He went kind of kicking and screaming and he, it helped that he had a really cute girl who was his teacher, but I will say, like, he really did learn the fundamentals. He really nailed like the turning and this and that. And I remember it was like in the year after that, that he became a really phenomenal snowboarder and he actually went on to teach snowboarding. So I just, like that came back full force when you told that story. And I had, I had forgotten about it.
Bob (45:05): Fundementals are boring. Like I coach 16, 17 year old boys. Like they all think they're going to go to the NBA and, you know, they're, they're not they would much rather scrimmage and do all the fun stuff in practice. They don't want to do the things that really make them better. But those, those that really master that and do that end up being our best players and they have really rewarding high school careers, and some are lucky enough to go play in college. Fundamentals are boring. I, I get it. Nobody wants to dribble a basketball or, or practice passing because we all think we're past it. We were like that as marketers. We think we all heard the terms and we've all done it. But I I've seen enough. I've gone inside enough Facebook ad accounts of supposedly really expert people. We all have blind spots. I guarantee, you know, I, I have people come in and help me out and we just all have blind spots. I think, I think we're all to kind of pushing our, our, our, our fame too far or our egos too far. I think we all have blank spots. We have spaces that we can improve on. So I value fundamentals and I, and I love when people call me out on, on really simple things. Cause I, I just think we all have blind spot.
Kathleen (46:20): Well, I think that's the perfect note to end on. I totally agree. So Bob, if somebody has been listening to this episode and they want to learn more about you or what you do or connect and ask a question, what is the best way for them to do that?
Bob (46:36): Thank you very much. I would love for them to visit ultimatefb.com. That's ultimatefb.com. It's it gives you a link to go get the book. But I have I have 10 interviews on there. So I do have interviews with Ryan Deiss and Brian Kurtz and Perry Marshall and others. All people who helped me kind of put the book together. And so I was really proud to get them on camera, just like you and I are talking, and get them to tell some stories that maybe few people have heard before. So ultimatefb.com is a great connection to me and to all that I have to offer.
Kathleen (47:14): Fantastic. I will put that link in the show notes, and that brings us to the end. So if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, please head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. That would be incredible. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, as always, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next interview. Thank you so much for joining me, Bob. This was great.
Bob (47:39): Fantastic discussion. Thank you for having me.
How does a massive company like Dun & Bradstreet navigate a major change to its marketing strategy and, in doing so, increase audience engagement by 45%?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Dun & Bradstreet Vice President of Marketing Nipul Chokshi explains the mechanics behind a major overhaul in D&B's marketing strategy, from a product-centric approach, to a customer-centric approach.
From how the company got buy-in across multiple marketing and sales teams, to what was involved in making the shift and the how it resulted in a 45% increase in audience engagement, Nipul dives into the details of exactly how D&B did it, and how any business - large or small - can apply the lessons learned to its own marketing.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Dun & Bradstreet website
- Follow Nipul on Twitter
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Nipul Chokshi, who is the VP of marketing at Dun and Bradstreet. Welcome to the podcast Nipul.
Nipul (00:22): Oh, great. Thanks. thanks for having me, Kathleen. Hello to everyone and really excited to be here.
Kathleen (00:29): Yeah. I was excited to chat with you because you know, Dun and Bradstreet is, is such a, it's such a behemoth, really. It's a large company and you know, it's interesting. I think a lot of times people can, can be lulled into thinking that being head of marketing for large companies can be easier because in theory, your budget's bigger and you have a lot of staff, but I think, you know, trying to turn the ship while it's moving is can often be difficult at a large company. And you had an interesting story that really appealed to me about turning the ship and what you all have done there and the results you've gotten from it. So I'm really excited to dig into that, but before we do that, can you just take a minute and for those who are listening and maybe don't know who you are, or, you know, have heard of D&B, but maybe aren't as familiar with what the company is today, take a minute and explain you and your role and perhaps your journey of how you got to where you are and then also what Dun and Bradstreet is today.
Nipul (01:27): Absolutely. So I'll start with myself. So I run what we call so I'm a VP of marketing at Dun and Bradstreet. And obviously as you mentioned, we have a pretty big marketing team. My specific focus area is in what we call portfolio marketing specifically for our sales and marketing solutions business unit. As you can imagine, Dun and Bradstreet is a huge company. We sell to you know, all sorts of different stakeholders within our B2B customer base, ranging from finance professionals to risk management professionals, to sales and marketing professionals. And my business unit is focused specifically on solutions that are targeted towards B2B sales and marketing folks. And so I've been at D&B for a little bit over a year now. I came in through an acquisition of a company called Lattice Engines where I was their CMO for the past five years.
Nipul (02:33): Lattice Engines. We developed AI software for B2B sales and marketing. So if you're a marketer looking to do account-based marketing and want to understand who your target accounts, where you would leverage our software, if you want it to be able to understand what the best way is to what are the key messages that would resonate with your target audience, you would leverage our software to do that and so on and so forth. And so we were acquired into D&B. We're part of, kind of this bigger business unit called sales and marketing solutions which specifically sells as you can imagine to B2B sales and marketers to help them do their jobs back there. From the marketing side, leveraging the data and insights that we provide to help marketers do a better job of targeting and engaging audiences via more personalized campaigns.
Nipul (03:29): And then on the sales side, enables sales to be smarter in terms of where they focus their time and effort as well as helps them to kind of get better context around each and every prospect that they're calling into so that they have better conversations. Prior to Lattice I was at a variety of different places. And most recently before Lattice, I was at a company called Yammer which had been acquired by Microsoft. I ran kind of our solutions marketing at, first at Yammer, and then Microsoft. Prior to that, I was at a company called Marketo. And then before that I did product management at a bunch of companies, including Siebel, Oracle, so on and so forth. So a pretty long windy road, if you will setting with product management to marketing, ultimately here.
Kathleen (04:21): But lots of brands that I think my listeners would be familiar with, including Marketo and Yammer. But what I think is so interesting is what you're doing at, at D&B, because honestly, and I'll admit, I, I don't think I was very familiar with all of the things that the company does today and, and wasn't aware of the extent of the solutions that it has for sales and marketers. So it makes this conversation even that much more interesting because we have so many marketers who are listening. So you came to Dun and Bradstreet through an acquisition. And one of the things that you've worked on and it's been, how long since you've been there.
Nipul (05:01): I've been at D&B since July of last year.
Kathleen (05:04): Okay. So since you've joined, which is not a very long time you've worked on quite a large undertaking of revamping how the company approaches its marketing. So maybe you could give a little background on that and what led to it.
Nipul (05:19): Yeah, sure, absolutely. Right. So look, ultimately you know, while D&B was acquiring Lattice, it was undergoing a lot of transformation and change internally itself. You know, the company D&B has been around since like the 18 hundreds, like 1876. Interesting fact that I learned the other day is we actually have two ex presidents who've worked for D&B in the past. So Abe Lincoln used to work for D&B yeah, as well as Taft, I believe was another person who worked for D&B. And so the company has been around very story company and everybody knows D&B most likely the this thing called the DUNS number which is effectively a social security number for businesses. Think of it as a social security number for businesses. And it's an identifier that you need, if you're a business and you're looking to get a loan or you're looking to get government support or whatnot, whatever, right.
Nipul (06:21): If you're looking to do commerce. And so there's a whole big kind of data business there that the companies traditionally thrived in. And over time, it's built up a portfolio of capabilities and value propositions, not just for the folks on the finance side and the risk management side, which leverage that DUNS number, but also on the sales and marketing side where you can use the DUNS number as an identifier for that you can do better targeting for, for your you know, sales and marketing campaigns. You know, on top of that, there's obviously a whole bunch of other data assets that the company provides as well. Firmographics, data, intent data, and so on and so forth. So that, again, from a sales and marketing standpoint, you can be a lot more diligent in terms of your targeting and your campaigns. And so the company's been around for awhile. The company had been public, like it went private in 2019. Just this part of an internal kind of transformational effort. The company was looking to really kind of revamp.
Nipul (07:44): The company went private in 2019, undertook a variety of different transformational initiatives one of which was really transforming its go to market fit. You know, traditionally from a go-to-market standpoint, the company took very much a inside out approach where it's like all the value props and all the campaigns were all about promoting individual products. And at this point we have hundreds of products that we sell just to sales and marketing folks and B2B companies. And so you know, that as you can imagine, that not a very effective way of doing things. So the things that we undertook, our transformation effort was to really reorient our, go to market and make it a lot more customer centric. So that you know, rather than selling individual products you know, our key tenant is take more of an outside in approach to understand who are the buyers, what are the problems that they need solved and what the solutions, right?
Nipul (08:56): Not even individual products, but the solutions that we can deliver to help them achieve those and kind of solve those problems. And so that was kind of the crux of, of the effort. And so there's a whole bunch of things that we can talk about just in terms of, from a marketing and sales standpoint that we've done to kind of support that. So at a, at a high level, that's kind of the gist, hopefully that gave a little bit of an orientation around and context saying the problem we're looking to solve.
Kathleen (09:29): Yeah. I love hearing that story because I think that it touches on a problem that a lot of companies have, and you don't need to be as big as, as Dun and Bradstreet to experience that where, you know, if you're a company that has multiple products or solutions that are seemingly quite different from each other, it's very easy to fall into the trap of marketing in, in silos, if you will, and pushing product out to your customers as opposed to taking a solution mindset. So I, I like, I like how you kind of reframed that for the company and decided to look at it from a solution standpoint, but I have so many questions because that is way easier, said than done at a company of Dun and Bradstreet's size. So, you know, you can sit there as a marketing team and say, we want to change this orientation, but, but to use the analogy from earlier, this is a massive, massive ship that is underway. So how do you approach that when you're in a company of that size, what's the framework that you use to go about doing something like this
Nipul (10:41): So we did as part of this effort first is everything that we think about from a sales and marketing standpoint, like the key tenant that we believed in is outside-in approach, right? So when it comes to developing campaigns and when it comes to developing sales and pitch stacks, right. Obviously at some point we talk about product, but we also always, always want to start with, you know, who's the buyer persona and what's the problem that they're looking to be able to solve. So just kind of that shift in mindset what is foundational to everything that we do when it comes to developing our campaigns, developing our content, like, that's the number one question that gets asked rather than what's the product we're promoting. It's more like, okay, who's the target audience for what we're developing this campaign and this product for.
Nipul (11:45): Right. So it even extends to the product organization. And so, and that's pretty basic, that's like bread and butter stuff, right. As a marketer, you're always trained to do that, but somehow you know, this kind of, that focus had gotten lost. So that's number one. Number two you know, in terms of executing on that and the whole transformation we found, obviously it's really critical to be aligned on priorities. So between the sales team, the marketing team, the product team, right, the business development team and the executive team you know, we found that it was really critical that all of us are aligned on what are our business priorities, right. Which you know, which parts of the market do we really want to make sure we were growing and which parts of the market are we saying like, okay, they're just going to be on there.
Nipul (13:19): And the second thing is that we knew we wanted to make sure that we were all aligned on our priorities. You know, everybody from a product perspective, sales perspective, marketing executives you know, we wanted, you know, a key part of this was making sure we were on the same page in terms of, you know, from a business standpoint, what were the number one, two, three, four, five, you know, things that we wanted to make sure that we were focused on whether it's you know investing in a particular market you know, from a product standpoint that in a market go to market standpoint, whether it's, you know, kind of making sure that, you know, we were exiting a particular market and whatnot. So that alignment at the highest levels around our business priorities was absolutely critical. And then double clicking on that a little bit more, just kind of the relationship between sales and marketing.
Nipul (14:16): We felt that it was absolutely critical to make sure that we were all aligned on what our ICP was. So that was something that was you know, something that we focused on from a sales and marketing standpoint is what are the specific you know, for each of our business priorities who are the buyers that we actually want to target? And what did they look like, right. Not just in terms of the titles, but kind of the types of companies as well. Right? So company size company industry, right. If they bought a certain kind of D&B product already, right, as well as level of engagement that they might have in painstaking detail, we rolled out, you know, kind of our buyer profile, if you will, for each of the different parts of our business and made sure that, you know, from a sales and marketing standpoint, we were all kind of on the same page there. You know, as a, as a company that, you know, sells data insights and the ability to kind of end the promise of data and insights for sales and marketing, we felt like it behooved us to kind of drink our own champagne there. Right. so that we can drive that alignment which was absolutely critical.
Kathleen (15:30): I have to stop you and ask one question, cause this is like, I'm dying, I'm dying to know the answer to this. You said you all, you had to get on the same page with sales and business development and product. And of course I'm sure executive leadership, that's like, that's easy. Again, another thing very easy to say, but that's a massive, massive consensus building exercise. I mean, can you just give me maybe a short glimpse into, like, how did that process work and was it really driven top down? Cause I imagine you'd have to have high level executive buy-in to get all of those parties to the table and to get them to agree to fundamentally change the way they approach going to market.
Nipul (16:09): Yeah. We were fortunate that we did have that top-down agreement. Right? So everybody from the president of D&B down to the president of sales and marketing solutions to our EVP is down to my level. You know, everybody was aligned in terms of like, okay, like we have to take things from a customer first perspective if the D&B is going to thrive, right? Like that's a key, key aspect of growth for us, key lever of growth for us. And then in terms of the individual priorities, that's where again, kind of at the EVP and VP levels, that's where we kind of said, okay, you know, given kind of our high level targets around where we want to be as a company from a revenue standpoint, from a customer acquisition standpoint and an overall company growth standpoint, what does that mean for each of the business units?
Nipul (17:05): Like the sales and marketing business unit, for example as well as within sales and marketing business unit, what does that mean for the different kind of you know, solution areas that comprise that business unit? And so it was definitely a top down effort and we were fortunate to have kind of senior management driving that effort to kind of you know, make sure that we were successful. Because as you suggested, like I've been in companies where, you know, unless you have that top-down effort driving the alignment you know, it becomes a bit of a challenge, especially in large companies like the D&B you know, sometimes it becomes like pushing on a right, if you're trying to do things more at the grassroots grassroots level. Now having said that it's not like all of a sudden, you know, just because it was top down, everything just clicked into place.
Nipul (17:59): There was a lot of debate back and forth between you know, different folks within the business units and across business units as well. But ultimately we kept sight of, you know, kind of the values that we want to do in here too, in terms of making sure that we're honoring our client, making sure that, you know, we were investing appropriately in growing our franchise and so on and so forth. So there were definitely, you know, tactical things we needed to get done there to drive that alignment, but the top down set the stage, if you will for the alignment on the priorities.
Kathleen (18:36): Yeah. I can't even imagine what a long slow slog slash battle it would be if you were trying to do this from a, you know, initiated from, from the marketing department without that kind of support. So, so what does it, what, how did, how did it play out? Like what I feel like there are so many things that need to change. I mean, in essence, you almost need to change everything when you really make this shift. So how, how do you change everything?
Nipul (19:05): Yeah, no, absolutely. Right. So you know, when it came to changing and driving the actual transformation at a tactical level you know, there were really three key kind of pillars to our strategy if you will. First was segmentation you know, so and again, I'm speaking specifically to the sales and marketing business unit, that's kind of, you know, what, what we've been working on, but this a similar sort of exercise when, on, in the other business units at D&B as well. So you know, at the end of the day, you know, what we do is we sell to sales and marketing folks kind of this promise that you can engage with buyers in a more targeted way, in a more relevant way in a more customer first way. Like that is our value prop. And so you know, as I said earlier, like the phrase drinking our own champagne applied really well here.
Nipul (20:02): And so a key pillar to our execution strategy here was all about segmentation and making sure that we were really clear, like once we know what the ICP is, then it's a matter of figuring out, okay, you know, which of these, you know accounts and personas within each of these accounts. You know, we leverage our own AI models to be able to identify, which were the highest propensity targets for new customer acquisition for cross sell opportunities, upsell opportunities you know, what was the low hanging fruit in terms of opportunities where we might be able to arrest churn and improve on retention rates as well. So that segmentation where were able to leverage our own software to be able to kind of triage and identify, you know which accounts within our ICP we should actually be targeting was, was a key part of the execution which gave us kind of this list of accounts and contacts, if you will, for different campaigns that we would run.
Nipul (21:08): Right. We also then use data to be able to say, okay, for each of these accounts, you know, for new customer acquisition versus cross sell versus upsell and whatnot where are each of these accounts in the buying journey? You know, are they already like engaged with the D&B brand? Are they on our website? You know, have they like been engaging with our campaigns, they've been attending our webinars or are they just anonymously browsing our website. If they're not on our website, not engaging with us, are they actually in market? So right. We leveraged third party intense signals to give us a sense of kind of what kind of interests you know, that helps us to identify what use cases they might be interested in you know, to, to kind of identify. So what we did was as part of this segmentation exercise is really kind of take our ICP and our target market and segment those accounts into different cohorts, right?
Nipul (22:05): Based on propensity to convert based on buyer stage as well as based on the use case and the interest that they would exhibit. So that was, that was a first and the kind of very critical pillar of, of of this overall strategy from an execution standpoint. Once we have that, then it boiled down to how do we actually engage with these buyers in, in a more relevant way across different channels. And so the idea here is we developed programs, right, that were, you know display programs, paid social programs, you know, webinar programs, content programs, SDR, outbound programs, right. Where we would kind of say, okay, let's make sure that we design and develop these for each of the segments. And we call these always on campaigns where these are programs where we've planned them out to over like say 12 months.
Nipul (23:09): And basically the idea is that they're always on and you know, very targeted towards each of the different types of segments that we're going after, whether it's new customers, cross sell opportunities, upsell opportunities, and so on and so forth. So the second part of this execution strategy was very much a how do I kind of engage buyers in an omni-channel way across all of these segments that I've just identified. And then the last piece is measurement. You know, we are very well instrumented at this point to be able to kind of say, okay you know, what kind of top tips are working, what tactics aren't, what's the ROI on certain tactics. And so we don't, again, from a marketing standpoint, necessarily report on leads internally when it comes to identifying what's working, and what's not for our campaigns.
Nipul (24:06): What we're looking at is account engagement, right? So every week we'll look at a report that says, you know for our website visits, it's not just people who visit our website, obviously that's important from an overall brand standpoint, but we'll also look at website visits from our target accounts, from the high propensity accounts and the segments that we've actually identified. And the idea is that, you know, from a demand generation standpoint, we want that number to be increasing over time, same thing with form sales and leads or hand-raisers, whatever you want to call it. Right. We call them the hand raisers on our website. You don't want to just track anybody who comes in as an inbound way, right? Obviously we're not going to ignore them, but over time we want to see kind of that number of inbound leads coming in from the segments, the high propensity segments that we've defined to be increasing over time.
Nipul (25:00): Right? Similarly, we'll look at click-through rates on our ads, right. I don't know, you know, not as important to me to understand anybody who clicks through an ad more important for me to understand whether it's a target account, they're a high propensity target, that's actually click through on an ad. So that level of measurement where we look at not leads and clicks, but we looked at the engagement from the different accounts and segments that we've defined is absolutely critical because that enables us, like right now, we're in the process of planning for 2021. And so we're looking at all these numbers to say, okay, you know, a program might be really effective in terms of driving click-throughs. But if you add the lens of, okay, how many of those clicks actually came from, you know, high propensity targets like that program might not be as you know, good for us to invest in. So those are the sorts of discussions we're able to have as a result of, you know, kind of measuring, not leads and clicks, but the actual account engagement, if you will. So those are kind of the three key pillars for our strategy, if you will, when it comes to executing this one is all about doing the segmentation. Second is then, you know, engaging each of these prospects across the segments through 10 different channels, and then measuring the account level engagement that we get.
Kathleen (27:29): Okay. I have a lot of questions based on what you just said. The first has to do with software. So you started out talking about how you, the, the first order of business was really segmenting and using data and placing your, your ICP in different cohorts. And you're using your own technology for a lot of this. So the first question I have is is the technology that you're, this is, this is something that you're selling. And is, is this something that is only available to like large enterprises, or do you have SMB versions of this? Like what kinds of companies would your software be right for? Cause I'm just trying to connect in my head, like who out there could really replicate what you did using the same solution that you use for yourself.
Nipul (28:17): Yeah, no, absolutely. And actually we have you know, several thousand customers actually leveraging our software for various elements of sales and marketing. But basically what we do is we sell a an ABM platform and account based marketing platform. And it's not just for large enterprises. We actually have small and mid market companies leveraging this as well. In order to drive you know, more targeted marketing, more, you know, better marketing using our platform. And so yeah, I mean, ultimately you know, our, our software at least for, so we sell within our sales and marketing solutions business unit, we sell to different personas, right? So we sell to marketing like demand gen and digital marketers. And for them, our value prop is being able to use our platform. We have an ABM offering that enables them to execute on ABM programs.
Nipul (29:21): Like the one that I just described in a more scalable way. We also sell to you know, sales and marketing operations folks. And so there, we have a data quality and they customer data platform offering that enables them to make sure that whatever data they need about their prospects is as complete and as clean as possible. And they can then kind of merge all of their data into a single place so they could do segmentation. And so that's kind of the second audience. And then the third audience that we sell to is sales leaders. So sales leaders who are looking to improve on their prospecting efforts, we'll leverage our Hoovers offering, D&B Hoovers. And so, you know, there are a variety of data and insights and AI driven insights that we provide as part of that platform.
Nipul (30:19): That just makes it easier for reps to be able to say, okay, you know, if they're creating a prospecting list, they want to see, okay. I want to create a prospecting list that of folks who would be interested in ABM software, for example based on third party interest signals that they are expressing third-party intent that we might be expressing so they can use Hoovers to do that. So we have different flavors of our solution based on who it is that we're selling to and the problem that they're looking to solve. And so what I just described and what we're using is really our own ABM platform, which, you know, digital marketing and demand gen marketers would really care about.
Kathleen (31:00): Well, I love that you answered the question also by leading with who are the customers that it's right for it, because that's exactly what you're talking about as the whole theme of the podcast. So that's great. And that's one of the things I was like to ask, because I think it's easy to hear people say, we use this technology, but if it's not something that's somehow accessible to most marketers, then, then it, there's not a lot you can take away from it, but it's, it's great to hear that you have solutions for that. So my second question is, in listening to you talk about this, it struck me that, that it sounds as though this must have also prompted some internal changes as far as how your teams functioned and perhaps even potentially were structured because you're, you're really revising how you segment, you're talking about using data to hone in on who the prospects are, who's really in market, based on their intent signals. How did that change the way that you and marketing worked with sales in particular?
Nipul (32:00): Yeah, so I mean, there were obviously changes from a sales and marketing standpoint you know, in terms of how the organization structured and all that stuff. Right. but ultimately traditionally the marketing team at D&B was very functionally oriented right where you had kind of a paid media department, a email marketing department, a, you know, a social department and so on and so forth. And so what we did was we kind of shook things up a little bit by kind of making it more of a cross-functional team where you know, we have a demand gen team that is focused across all of these different personas and that demand gen team consists of kind of a program manager, as well as, you know an email marketer as well as a paid media person.
Nipul (32:55): Right. and so we've kind of made it more of a matrix organization where you know, each of these campaign teams, if you will, are accountable for driving revenue for pipeline and revenue for the company. And so my team, my team's role is to really kind of own each of the campaigns. So we have campaigns running against, you know, the marketing and digital marketing persona. We have a campaign running against the sales leader persona, and we have a campaign running against the sales and marketing operations persona. So I've got portfolio marketers who are responsible for kind of the programs within each of those, and they'll work closely with the demand gen folks to do the, to execute on the programs, they'll work closely with the appropriate product marketers to make sure we're incorporating the right product messaging and all that stuff into the campaigns as well.
Nipul (33:51): So there was definitely a little bit of a change in terms of how marketing worked, right. It was a lot less siloed we needed to within marketing, kind of get rid of those silos and act as one team that was, again, very much focused on the buyer and, you know, each buyer gets its own campaign. So like, you know, it's kind of like a campaign team there. At the same time you know, just kind of sales, you know, sales was always very much as usual is always very much focused outside in, right. When it came to engaging with targets and, you know their segmentation was you know, kind of a little bit ahead of ours when it came to how they were organized. So we're definitely more aligned with sales in terms of, you know, kind of our approach here from a campaign standpoint as well.
Kathleen (34:45): That makes sense. So you, your team is responsible for campaigns and you're, you're working on the portfolio stuff. I imagine that there are other groups within the company that are targeting the same customer audience that you are. And you talked about working closely with the demand gen teams. I'm really curious how do you, as a company resolve, making sure that it doesn't look like the right hand, isn't talking to the left and when the customer starts to get these different campaigns and communications.
Nipul (36:05): Yeah. Yeah. That's a really, really great, great point. Right. So so ultimately there's definitely a lot of, lot more collaboration. So for example, we've got campaigns aligned to each of the different personas that we'll speak to, and for each campaign, there's kind of a list of accounts that you target. Right. and the idea here is every week, like, as a team overall, we get together to say, okay, what are the programs that we're launching this week? And, you know, what's the potential for overlap. And so that's something that we're consciously, always looking at. And based on the specifics of the individual program, we may decide like, okay, it's okay for us to kind of send these two emails, targeting two different personas at the same company with two different offers. That's totally cool. But if it's the case where you're trying to send one, email, two different emails to the same persona at the same account within a particular week, that, that we don't find as much any more, to be honest, because what we've found is you know, because we've structured these campaigns to be persona specific and each campaign has its own list of accounts.
Nipul (37:25): You know, we rarely encountered a situation where we wind up sending to a, like a marketing leader. We're only sending the messages through the through our campaign that targets the marketing leaders, if you will. Right. and so we don't necessarily see that conflict as well, but you know, there are instances like we'll definitely be sending for example, emails and offers to one account but two different personas in that account. And we're constantly looking to make sure that, you know, there's not a lot of conflict there that we're not hitting. You know, we're not seeing as spammers if you will, for that account. So as a team, we kind of go through that. And I, I have to tell you that that's probably something where we need to improve on just in terms of developing more of a process oriented way of solving it right now. That's definitely more of a one-off thing that we're doing on a weekly basis as a cross-functional team.
Kathleen (38:26): Well, I think, I mean, if you figure out how to solve that, there's probably a whole nother market opportunity. And so you described, you described having a weekly meeting where you any conflicting campaigns but is that, is that same approach how you handle, because you talked earlier about having always on campaigns. And I imagine that's really where the biggest opportunity is to kind of trip up because you've got all this stuff running in the background based on rules. And how do you approach that? Because I don't have a good answer for that.
Nipul (38:57): Yeah, no. So what we'll, what we do is we basically, we look at things like we, so you know, we'll every week as we look at the reporting in terms of which of our target accounts, in which of our buyers within target accounts, are we actually pursuing you know, those are great ways for us to be able to identify like, Oh, why are we like sending, you know, the same email or like two different emails to the same person? Did they in like three days? Right. So after the fact we're definitely able to like, capture that. We also you know, again, if you think about it, like we have a campaign running against marketing leaders we have a campaign running against sales leaders, and then we have a campaign running against sales and marketing, like rev ops leaders.
Nipul (39:45): Right. and so because there are very specific titles that fall into each of those personas. You know, we don't, we haven't necessarily run into a lot of the, you know, on the outbound anyway, we haven't necessarily run into any of their conflicts, the conflicts come in where let's say it's a rev ops leader that fills out an offer for our for an offer that was intended to on our website that was intended to the marketing layer. In which case we have internal kind of pre negotiated rules of engagement, if you will. That again, reflect the current priorities of the business where we say like, okay, if it's a red lobster leader that raises their hand for an ABM platform offer, then you know, let's make sure that we're forwarding them to the right the row to the right SDRs for, for qualification.
Kathleen (40:42): Yeah, that makes sense. Now, the other question I have is you talked about how in account engagement is a very important kind of measure for you in terms of the quality of interaction and the responses to your marketing, as opposed to the hand raising and the leads. And this is something I've always grappled with. You know, when I look at things like lead scoring engagement, you, you have your demographic elements to scoring, and then you have your behavioral elements and, and engagement being a key behavior element. But I I've seen many cases where, where engagement scores don't work well because it's like, Oh, page views and email opens and this and that, and that it doesn't necessarily always equate to an in market person or quality leads. So how do you, how have you made sure, how have you architected your engagement scoring so that, you know, that in this case activity does equate to interest and lead quality?
Nipul (41:41): Yeah. And so that's where part of this is like, it's an ongoing kind of, we're tweaking this as, as we go along. Right. and so what we'll do is we'll kind of put different weights based on different types of activities. And right now we're at a stage where we kind of have a hypothesis as to what those weights are. Right? So if someone, for example, engages with us at kind of a highly curated online event, right. The equivalent of like a local dinner that we might be running, that's definitely weighted a lot higher than someone who just downloads a top of funnel, like white paper, right. So we, the way we've architected it, we kind of take into account, not just the person who's in the titles and all that stuff around, who's actually engaging on the CTA. But we'll also look at, you know, what kind of engagement that is, right?
Nipul (42:39): Whether it's a website visit, whether it's a download of a top of funnel, piece of content, whether it's just clicking on an ad, whether it's attending a webinar or an online event that's curated. And so we've got different weights associated with those that enable us to just really calibrate that. And right now, you know, we, we have kind of an initial model of that running. And you know, just based on my prior, cause we actually had a model of this running out loudest and we found that it requires iteration, right? You need to constantly tweak it. And again, that's where having a really good relationship with sales is absolutely critical. Right. you know, the SDR is actually within marketing. So I considered them to be marketing, but then also the, the reps in terms of, you know, the leads that we pass over to the reps, just kind of having that close relationship and that constant feedback with sales. You know, so in addition to the cross-functional marketing team that I talked about, we also have a weekly kind of leadership sync between sales and marketing. Right. and so there's a lot of, you know processes that we've put into place to make sure that that feedback is ongoing so that we can continue to iterate on this engagement model.
Kathleen (43:56): That's great. Well, I could talk all day about this because this is such a complicated topic, but we don't have all day. So I want to make sure to ask, I know you're not far enough into this where you have really concrete results yet, where you can say this was the transformation the before and after, but I imagine anecdotally you have some interesting results that you might be able to share.
Nipul (44:19): Yeah. Absolutely. Right. So you know the way I'll phrase it is, we've seen improvements in terms of our engagement rates within our target accounts and the segments that we've created, the high propensity segments. So at the top of funnel where we were looking to, like, we have programs running against targets that haven't necessarily engaged with the D&B brand, like they haven't visited the D&B website or whatnot. So these are effectively cold prospects. What we've seen is we've seen a 45% increase in terms of engagement from prospects who haven't necessarily engaged with us ever or at least in the last 12 months. Wow. Yeah. And then, so we've been able to, you know, kind of leverage our you know, our, our intent data and our targeting to, to help, to kind of achieve that. And at the same time, we've also been able to, you know, just improve on the ROI of our digital campaigns. And again, the reason for that is because we've been more targeted, right. We're not doing necessarily spray and pray anymore from a paid display campaign standpoint. And so we've been able to just make more effective use of our digital dollars there.
Kathleen (45:41): And that's in what time period, because this didn't, I mean, this hasn't been in place for very long. Yeah.
Nipul (45:46): Right. Yeah. No. So that's something that we've seen over the last three quarters. So yeah, so we started kind of in earnest around this earlier this year. And so we've seen kind of the improvements over that time.
Kathleen (46:00): 45% improvement is huge, especially when you have the volume that Dun and Bradstreet has. And especially during a time, like COVID, when many marketers are trying to keep their noses above water. So kudos to you and your team on that. All right. Shifting gears, before we wrap up, I have two questions I always ask all of my guests. And I'd love to hear what you have to say on this. The first one is, this podcast is all about inbound marketing. So I'm curious if there was a particular company or individual that you think is really showing the, the way when it comes to being a great inbound marketer.
Nipul (46:37): Well, I mean, inbound marketer for my Marketo days, and I still contend she's one of the best, Maria Pergolino. I think so she was the head of demand gen at Marketo way back when and then, you know, now she's off doing great things at she was at Anaplan, I think, and now she's at Active Campaign. She's their CMO. So she's awesome. Just as inbound, like in terms of setting up these huge inbound campaigns that deliver a lot of great results you know, obviously HubSpot from a company standpoint has always done really well there in terms of that. But outset. So I'm not going to just rely on that. I mean, I think you know, I'm, I'm a big marketing geek, so I try to sign up for as many offers as possible to see what people are doing.
Nipul (47:28): And, and so from a content standpoint, from a tactic standpoint, and so I found that like, NerdWallet is actually really good at inbound marketing specifically their content you know, use it to how they use content is, is really effective. I'm assuming it's effective. I just think it's really compelling from an end user standpoint, Notion and they, they provide kind of this Wiki like collaboration software for B2B and B2C. I, I think like they've been doing a great job as well in terms of their inbound marketing. So those would be my like three examples if you will, Maria, from a person standpoint and then Notion and NerdWallet from a company standpoint,
Kathleen (48:15): I love that you called yourself a marketing nerd. I too am a marketing nerd and we love marketing nerds around here at this podcast. Second question, speaking of marketing nerding out the biggest challenge I hear most marketers talk about is that it's just so hard to keep up with the incredible pace of change within the world of digital marketing, particularly how do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated?
Nipul (48:42): Yeah, I mean, I think so two things. Like, you know, first as I mentioned earlier, I mean, I try to just see what other companies are doing as much as possible B2B and B2C, because again, from a B2B standpoint, there's a lot to be learned from B2C tactics. So I like to sign up for a lot of offers just to see how other companies do it. So that's kind of that firsthand research, if you will, that's always ongoing. The other thing is obviously there's no shortage of communities out there and people to follow on Twitter and whatnot. You know, one community that I found really effective is the Revenue Collective community. I think you're a part of that as well. Right. And so I, I find that the discussions on Slack are really, really you know, are really insightful and really deep and really kind of cut to the core of, you know, what a person in our position would care about.
Nipul (49:45): So I found that was really effective. You know, and then a whole bunch of just, you know, other folks that I follow on Twitter you know you know, ranging from like Scott Brinker to Sangrum, you know, to, to, you know various other folks. So that, that you know, kind of just, again, like just kind of a news network, if you will that helps me to keep abreast of what's what's the latest and greatest, but I, I do have to say that the thing, I mean, it's funny, like over time as everybody kind of joins these communities and starts following the same people, everybody taking away the same lessons and you see a lot of commonalities in marketing. So I've started doing more and more of not just tech companies, but also just looking at more, you know, I keep kind of a personal you know, on my hard drive, I have all these Google word docs with screenshots of like ads or non-tech company offers that I just feel like you know, we'll, we'll provide a better lesson for me in terms of understanding, you know, kind of different angles, different tactics and so on.
Kathleen (51:02): Yeah. The echo chamber effect is definitely real. And I liked what you said about looking at B2C because it's true. I mean, even though we say we're B2B, we're still selling to people within these businesses. So it's like, it's all about selling to human beings, regardless of whether equity for a company and our spending the company's money or spending their own money. Exactly. That's great. Well, Nipul, if somebody wants to learn more about Dun and Bradstreet and, and some of the stuff you talked about, the products they have for sales and marketers, or if they want to reach out and ask you a question or connect with you online, what's the best way for them to do all of that?
Nipul (51:36): Yeah, sure. So so first of all, just always available via my Twitter handle @nipulc. The first initial of my last name, I'm also available on LinkedIn. And then for D&B just check out D&B.com.
Kathleen (51:58): Awesome. I will put links to all of those things in the show notes. And so go check those out if you want to connect with Nipul. And if you're listening and you liked what you heard today, or you learned something new, I would love it if you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because they could be the next interview. Thanks so much for joining me this week Nipul.
Nipul (52:25): Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Can podcasting help you generate leads and close deals? Most experts say "no" when asked this question. Jay Wong says "yes."
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Podcast Your Brand founder Jay Wong shares the strategies he uses to help his clients hit the Top 100 when they launch new podcasts and then create podcast content that actually generates ROI for their businesses.
Jay is a successful podcaster himself, and he's parlayed his experience into a successful consultancy that advises brands both big (think Proctor and Gamble) and small on how to get results with podcasting.
In this episode, he shares advice that any podcaster can use to make sure the launch of a new podcast is successful, and tips on creating podcast content that will push your customers further along their buying journey.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Podcast Your Brand website
- Learn more about Jay's "done for you" Top 100 podcasting service
- Follow Jay on Instagram
- Check out the podcasts of some of Jay's clients:
- P&G Alumni
- Stackadapt
- Young Leaders Across America
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I am your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Jay Wong. Who is the CEO of podcast your brand. Welcome to the podcast, Jay,
Jay (00:29): Super excited to be here with you, Kathleen and excited to dive into a bit of podcasts.
Kathleen (00:34): Yeah. before we get too deep in, maybe you could start by sharing your story and who you are, what you do, how you came to do it.
Jay (00:46): Sure. For sure. So I think like a lot of people that love the medium of podcasting, you know, started with, you know, high hopes of, Hey, let's go out, build an audience and be able to serve that audience. Right. And so I figured out how to launch my own podcast about five, six years ago now podcasting was very different in, in 2015 than it is at the time of recording this. And I figured out how to get my own show into the top 100 back then, there was this, you know, we're not just talking about like new and noteworthy, if some of your listeners and business owners know what, what I'm referring to, but actual top 100 in the iTunes section. And that actually got me my first, like 50 to a hundred email subscribers, right? Like this is how different podcasting was, you know, back back then.
Jay (01:40): And from there other individuals always, you know, reached out other business owners, other entrepreneurs that said, Hey, I saw what you did with the podcast. Could you do it with our brand? Right. And so thus started, you know, a little bit of consulting. We built an online program. We did two day intensives. We spoke at all the biggest, you know, podcast conferences. And, you know, one day when we were running a two day intensive one of my favorite kind of offers and services that especially when events was like a thing that people were, you know, when people could attend and, and, and actually that's in the past tense, unfortunate, hopefully it comes back because it's still one of my favorite, like, you know, models. And, and I just absolutely love it. But we, I remember we had, we had a lady at one of our events.
Jay (02:27): She came up to me, she said, Jay, I love what you stand for around podcasting. I love, you know, your way of thinking about it in terms of just making it a real marketing channel for our business. She was in real estate at that time you know, super successful on, in her own. Right. And she said, look, I'm just never going to do any of this. And I that's, that's just the truth. Right. but I would be open to writing you and your team, a bigger check, if you could figure out how I could just show up how I could just show up record. Right. And we can implement all those awesome things that you just showed us in the last couple of days. And I'd be very open to do it with you for the next year. Right. And so that, wasn't the first time that I heard a abbreviated offer like that for our agency, our done for you.
Jay (03:15): And to end, you know, service it wasn't something that I woke up that day and thought, you know what, today's the day we're going to do an agency. But we worked with a couple other clients. We worked with her, we figured out what actually works in our process. And now we've gotten the opportunity in the last two and a half years to be really behind the scenes of hundreds of top 100 launches. And not only did we get the shows and the brands into the top 100, we could talk more about that, but really we build them a customized ROI plan, right? So for some of the companies we're working with, they're looking to drive new members. They're looking at this as a retention strategy. They're looking at this as, as a new way of promoting their products and services. And those last two and a half years have been such an amazing adventure. And I say two and a half years because, you know, we all know so much can just happen in such a short period of time, but more or less, that's ultimately how we got all the way to the agency podcasts, your brand that you see and hear about today.
Kathleen (04:15): That's awesome. And it's so interesting to me to hear you talk about that journey because I had my first podcast right around 2015, the same time you did. And I mean, I did a terrible job at it because I just literally knew I wanted to podcast and I kind of jumped in without a really good plan. And I mean, it was a great learning experience, but, but it, it sort of taught me all the things not to do. You know, and then I, and then I ended that podcast and started this one, which has been a completely different experience. And as I've, I mean, I'm now like three years in, and as I've progressed with this podcast, I've seen podcasting really kind of take off and other people get more interested and, and then covert hit. And it was like, I thought podcasting was hot. And then it was just not to be goofy, but like, I mean, everybody, like I'm in a couple of online groups with heads of marketing from a lot of different companies and all of a sudden it was like every single person was talking about podcasting, which I just thought was so interesting because it's been around forever. Like it's been around a long, long time
Jay (05:22): Hundred percent, hundred percent.
Kathleen (05:24): Yeah. And it's just taken off in recent months
Jay (05:27): For sure. I, I, we, during the months of April and may, we had so many companies reach back out to us and said, Hey, remember that idea that you pitched us six months ago or a quarter a year ago. Right. We're going to do it now. And, you know, because we believe this would be an amazing time to be able to kind of capture some of that awareness and be able to add our 2 cents on the craziness and madness of the world, you know? And right around that time, we were the the, the show for Proctor and Gamble for their alumni network. And you know, man, we learned so much in, in those compress two, three months, I think we did like 10 launches. And within like a week apart of each other, it was just a crazy, crazy, you know, quarter. But you're absolutely right. More and more people I think, but even three years ago it was, it went from this like new media, you know, maybe it's the future of voice, right. Like it was right around there. Should it be a nice to have versus now I think a lot of companies are looking at it and saying, okay, we need to be the voice for whatever the industry, whatever the niche that we stand for and that, you know, this might be one of the ways that we can be able to do that. Yeah.
Kathleen (06:43): It's, it's fascinating. Now you mentioned Proctor and Gamble. You've done work with all kinds of different brands when it comes to podcasting. Can you name a few others?
Jay (06:58): Yeah. So you know, we worked with another company called StackAdapt. They built their own native advertising, programmatic ads platform. I'm pretty sure they're the largest one specifically in Canada outside of Google. But certainly they've won tons of awards in the U S as well as in Canada. We've worked with, you know, if people are familiar with like student works or college works or college pro pretty much every company in North America that has that model, we've partnered with them to be able to grow their retention and grow their communities. A lot of, you know, influencers, bestselling authors not just Amazon best selling authors, but real you know, credible, amazing individuals that, you know, have digital presences and digital backends as well. We tend to do really well for those guys as well.
Kathleen (07:57): And you help companies through all aspects of the podcasting life cycle. You know, when you and I first connected, I, I, and we talked and we were talking about kind of what you do with podcasters. I think my initial response was, you know, we've talked a lot about podcasting on this podcast. It's, it's sort of funny, it's, it's a hot topic as one might expect. And I'm always looking for, what's a different way we can talk about it. And one of the reasons I was really excited to chat with you is that a couple of the things that you brought up really are things that we haven't covered yet. You know, number one, being how to really come out of the gate strong. So when you launch your podcast, I think the Holy grail is getting in the top lists the top 100 or the top of this. So I want to start with that because we've covered in the past, like how to strategize what your podcast should be about and how to record and all of that. But let's talk about how to launch really successfully. Yeah. So
Jay (08:56): Really quick even added caveat for your listeners, is that what we're about to talk about right here? Even if you have a podcast this is still applicable, right? It's it's and, and yeah. So I think that's, that's, I get asked that question all the time. Hey, Jay, we've been podcasts in the last couple years, these are our stats. This is where we're at, right. Is it too late for us to hit the top 100, hit the top 200? You know, I would say this before we dive in as well, which is internally. And I think we talked about this internally. We refer to hitting the top 100 as the end of phase one, right? Because it is not the end all be all you're you're, it's not like the whole, it's not like there's a pre top 100, you know, life is pretty top 100 and life post, top 100.
Jay (09:43): But I do find that if we're going to spend all this time and all this energy and all of other people's energy to hop on the podcast, I think if you want to be able to launch very strongly, then it's going to be one of your better opportunities to get out of the gate. Right. And to be able to position the podcast and position to host, even create the right platform for future guests. Right. And just make your own guests feel amazing to be able to be featured on any platform. Right. I think these are just some of the things that you might be thinking about. When we're looking at a launch specifically, the iTunes algorithm works on a couple components, but really the main one is being able to increase your subscribers of that podcast, right? Anything that you could do to be able to do that, whether you're running a, you know, a contest, rather you're writing paid ads, there's so many different ways of going about it.
Jay (10:44): But a lot of times for our own clients, we build them based on their email list, based on the assets that they have are ready. We build them essentially a plan to be able to capitalize on their current assets, to be able to drive those subscriptions so that they can get out of the gate really, really strong and really form a community around their podcasts, because that's really prepping us to go into phase two as well. You know, talking about the ROI and new traffic. It just positions us to be able to win the whole game that much better. Does that make sense?
Kathleen (11:14): Yes. And I have a bunch of questions. So I've done a lot of reading about launching new podcasts and I've read different things. And I'm curious to get your take. The first question is I have read a number of articles that say that when you launch, you should launch with more than one episode. So it's not like, Hey, we've launched here's episode one. It's like, Hey, we've launched here's episodes, you know, one through five or one through eight. Sure, sure. But I've also read the opposite. So I'd love to get your opinion on that.
Jay (11:48): Yeah. You know, it's I, I've been seeing this trend more and more right. Where they'll essentially, and these are like really well known athletes or well known celebrities that are doing this as well. Keep in mind any strategy that you see any type of popular influencer or popular celebrity doing chances are that you cannot actually replicate what they're doing because of that celebrity factor. And they probably are bringing, you know, millions and hundreds of thousands of followers. Right. We've worked with people where you know, they'll have 2 million and Instagram following, right. Their numbers and their downloads. It's not going to be comparable right. To somebody that might not have that social capital. And, and, and, you know, you're not bringing that into the launch with that all, you know, so I've seen this trend where they'll release like a trailer. Right.
Jay (12:39): And it's like, it's coming soon, you know? And it's like a, maybe like a three to five kind of like a movie trailer I imagine. Right. And then maybe a couple of weeks after then they'll start releasing on like a weekly schedule. What have you I think of the launch like this, as in Kathleen, let's go try out a, this new restaurant down the street. We've heard amazing things about it. Our friends are friends with the owner. Right. And when we go in there, can we, you know, since we're trying out the place, let's order a couple appetizers, let's get a couple drinks, let's go through the whole experience of it a little bit. Right. And so I'm a very big believer that you definitely don't. I think you don't want to just release a trailer. You don't want to just leave them with one episode.
Jay (13:25): You know, if you look at the statistics of podcasts is right and, you know, for any of your listeners are marketers and business owners, you get, you guys could, could look this up as well, but I'm pretty sure when they released stats earlier this year, people spend on average, you know, six plus hours listening to podcasts is right. And I think they also spend on average listening to five to six different shows. So think about this, you're introducing them to a new show yet. There's only one episode there. Right. So we'd like to mix it up in that first batch, anywhere from three to five episodes. I think when you go beyond five, it gets a little, almost like too much. Even at five, I would feel like, Ugh, I don't know which one is going to be the best suited for me. Right. Three, four definitely would work. Right. Just in terms of just, Hey, here's a bit of a solo, here's a, maybe a longer form interview. Here's a, you know, some, you know, our, our welcome type of, you know, episode, right. So it just gives them kind of a full experience of what is to come. Right.
Kathleen (14:26): That makes sense to me. And it also intuitively makes sense because I, I feel like in the last couple of years, we've really become trained as human beings to expect, to be able to binge content, you know, the whole Netflix model of releasing the whole season at one time. And there's this level of frustration that arises when all of a sudden you're, you don't have availability, especially if it's something you really like, you know? And so I can see where that would make sense, because if I, if I'm come in and I get a taste of episode one, and I'm like, this is really good. I'm going to want, I just did this. I just did this. I'll also give an example. And I don't know how many episodes they released at once, but I discovered the, the podcast, nice white parents, which is by Serial and the New York times.
Kathleen (15:18): I just discovered it this past weekend. And I listened to, I think it was eight episodes or 10, one of the two, the whole, the whole podcast is it's. Cause it's not a, a podcast that goes on forever. And I literally listened to all 10 episodes in like a day or so, because it was good. I got hooked and I wanted more. And I think it's very easy to lose that momentum if somebody listens to one and they like it, and then they don't have that habit developed yet. Because to me it's all about building a habit. And if you haven't formed a habit yet, and then you are not able to satisfy that craving with another episode, I think it, it, it jeopardizes the longevity of your listener.
Jay (16:01): It's so good. What you're saying right now, because one of the things that we have to remind our clients, right. And just keep this in mind, but like, are I, I'm all for like, and podcast, this is, what's so beautiful about podcasting nowadays, is that there, you know, now Hollywood studios, right. Are, are shifting gears and they're deploying resources to be able to create some amazing audio programs. Right. Just think of your favorite type of true crime show. They're doing some really interesting things with like the history, you know channel and, and that, and that type of genre. But the shows that we specifically work on are a lot of times, you know, businesses, CEOs, and there's a whole brand behind it. They chances are they have different products and services. Right. And so when you're introducing a podcast, we're not just training are the hosts or the CEO, or whoever's running the, or whoever's the voice of the program to be able to create and get into the flow of creating the episodes. Right. You're also training the audience to receive the, the, the, the episodes from you to actually see that every single week or twice a week or whatever the cadence is right. To say, Oh yeah, that, that is what that's, what's, what's going on. So to your point, forming that habit right away, it's very, very important right. Out of the gate.
Kathleen (17:22): Yeah. Now, so, so if somebody starting out, you would have them do a couple of episodes for the launch. Talk me through the rest of your process for making sure that launch is strong. What are you doing to, to drive people to those first episodes?
Jay (17:39): Yeah. So, you know, it's, it's funny. Cause we, we had to make this distinction for even art, the business owners that we work with because we realized that some of them had, you know, this is one of the first launches that, that they were doing. Right. And so they would be after the first week, they would be, you know, pretty, you know, energy like exhausted, right. Because they, you know, they've just gotten a flood of emails and DMS and messages and questions and they're all social channels are being blown up. Right. But we always flick at the launch as this nice little two to three week period where once again, we're training the listeners to actually be able to tune in, we're publishing a little more on the front end before we go into a weekly cadence or a biweekly cadence, whatever it ends up working out for said business, but you're really forming, I think the beginning of the community around your show.
Jay (18:36): Right? So a lot of our clients they'll have some sort of a community aspect of this, right? Some of them, even the Proctor and Gamble one that we mentioned their main, their whole thing was, Hey, let's drive new members in our alumni network. So there's, this is more of like a, a paid, you know, network, you know, you gotta be a part of it. Right. But there are, you got, gotta keep this in mind, we call this the triangle effect within podcasts, your brand, which are three things that you want to really cycle your audience through. Right. The number one is the podcast or your main content channel, number two, basic for marketers and business owners out there. But it's going to be an email list. Right. So just even getting that cadence down, because so many times how guilty are we as business owners that we know that every time we email the list or we do it right.
Jay (19:27): You know, that that list is an amazing asset for our business. But so many of our clients, they, you know, maybe they, they, they, they don't know what to say. They, you know, they don't have the podcast right away. So once again, it goes back into training and that third piece is that community piece. Right. So whichever section that you're in, right. And this is something that we train there, the, our clients' teams on, if you're on the email list, you're promoting to the other two, right. If you're on the community, you're promoting to the other two. So if you're, Hey, have you heard the last podcast episode, Hey, go over here, sign up for our webinar coming up. Right. If you're on the email list right there, they're already signed up or what have you, Hey, you know, have you heard the latest episode?
Jay (20:08): How have you joined our discussion in our community? Right. So it's, it's th does that make sense? So you're kind of, it seems like you're everywhere, but really there's just three places. Right? And if you think about that breakdown from a consumer perspective, right? You've got their phone covered, you got the social media covered, you got their inbox covered. And the podcast really covers all those other moments that they might've been alone, you know, and they might've been alone cleaning the house. They might've been alone gardening. They might've been, you know, alone just wanting to be able to geek out on a certain topic, you know, and they might be listening to, to a show about inbound marketing, right. So it's all those little moments that our hosts and our, our, the people we work with, they get a chance to connect with their perfect customer.
Kathleen (20:52): So true story. I listen to podcasts when I vacuum, when I grocery shop and when I exercise. So the examples you gave are totally spot on. So my question about that though, is, does that mean you have to have already a large email list in order to do this well, like, you know, what, if somebody comes to you and they don't have a big list. Yeah.
Jay (21:17): So I think this is a really good question because not everybody has 2 million Instagram followers and not everybody has this massive email list, even though they might've been told that, you know, for months and years. Right. look, I think you have to understand that you're starting from where you're starting at, you know, and we got to leverage, you know, if you have none of these assets, there is no community, there is no email lists. Well, we're going to, in that process, we're going to help you start building some of these assets. Right. And it's going to go more into our, you know, our phase two, which is focused around new traffic ROI. Right. But you know, those are ultimately, you have to really have those, if you want to be able to maximize, we believe the podcasting channel and that whole experience around it.
Jay (22:04): Right. If you have an email list and you haven't been utilizing it, heck we've had clients where they come with a massive email list, but it's not really the right email lists for where they're going. Right. And so I think you have to understand that you're starting from where you're starting at. You don't have to have all three before starting, but certainly within all of our clients, we get them the amazing top 100 podcasts. And typically we have an email list, even if it's just, you know, a 50 or a hundred people that we're starting out with. And, and we kind of start from there.
Kathleen (22:36): Got it. And you kind of gave me the segue into the second thing. I was really excited to talk to you about, which is that there's a lot of debate out there within the world of marketing and podcasting about like why, what you should expect to get out of hosting a podcast or producing and putting one on. And I hear most people say, don't expect it to be a lead generator for your business. Don't expect to get deals from it. And I think in many cases, that's true, but I was really intrigued that when you reached out to me, you talked about having had some clients that have landed really big deals from it. And it's, there's no straight line equation. I mean, podcasts, all podcasts are different, et cetera, et cetera. But I wanted to kind of pick your brain on this, this notion of how a podcast becomes a part of the marketing mix to help you grow your business.
Jay (23:35): I love this question and I love this topic. And I think personally, the last few years has created, and I don't want to use this like lightly, but really it's created a whole industry where people are creating content because they feel like the idea of creating content is moving their brand and business forward. And it's not to say that sometimes, you know, you have to track every single piece of content. You can't create content just for fun anymore. You know, all marketers are ruining this. It's not to say that. But from a business owner standpoint, there are a lot of things that come up, whether it's Q and a, whether it is your objections. Okay. And maybe it's actually be easier if I share a little bit of a case study, think, go for it. Yeah. Like maybe I can do that because we worked with a client and, you know, we figured it out for her that her perfect client works with them.
Jay (24:37): Usually for about two to three years, she, you know, on a basic simplicity level, she helps people right around that half a million, you know, revenue part to be able to go into multi-millions. Right. It's not just a sales game, but it's actually like infrastructure operations, understanding finances team. Right? Like there's, and that's why it usually takes that two to three year period. Right. For her, we figured out that there was about four different stages that, and I'm not talking about like, just like four stages of like your IP, like your, for profit activators. You know what I mean? And I'm not necessarily referencing that, but four stages that she sees her clients kind of graduate from, right. Maybe stage one they're working to in the business. They're, you know, they can't see any growth. Right. They have a big vision, but not really anybody to support them.
Jay (25:32): Right. Like that, that would be stage one, stage four would be, they could sell their business, but they would never actually, you know, want to, you know, because they're actually so happy there, you know, 90% removed from any type of fulfillment, they just get to be their visionary. Right. so I'm just using this as a bit of example. Well, we created one of these episodes call, you know, the, the, the four stages of business growth. We obviously tailored it to her brand. Right. And till today, like we created this like late 2018, still to the day, I'll get messages from her team and her cause we've become good friends by now say like, show those, showcase people, applying for calls with them, right. Applying to chat with their sales team or with her. And they'll reference that, Hey, you know, I heard this, this episode, right.
Jay (26:21): And I I'm, I'm a stage one entrepreneur, or I'm stuck in stage two. I've been stuck in stage two for the last two years. Right. And I would love to work with you because I, one day I would love to be in that stage four that you talked about. Right. And, you know, we're talking relatively higher ticket, you know, certainly, you know, done for you type of type of service. And so for her, she's made a massive ROI from that. Right. And you know, once again, I think we have to tailor it for every single business. Right. But I would invite your listeners to think about this. What are all the biggest questions, most common questions you get asked, what are the biggest objections that come up over and over again? How can we start tailoring and creating content that really looks to address some of these things, because what we're really doing is you're optimizing for the future sales conversations, right. We all have experienced what it's like to sell to somebody or somebody on your sales team has certainly experienced this, where they made an offer too early, right. Where they pitched someone that was not really receptive or certainly would never even, you know, when it's not even at that stage where they could even think about it. Right. So we've all had that negative experience.
Jay (27:40): We've also all have hopped on calls where it wasn't really even an enrollment call or a sales call. Right. It was like, the person already knew what our values were. They knew what exactly what it is that we did. They knew what the result was. They knew what the outcome was. They were just checking logistics when, when can we start? Okay, cool. Right. It's more of a friendly conversation than anything. So that's really what we're trying to emulate. Right. And we do this with every single client because their strategy is going to be different. You know, some of those companies, I referenced earlier, student works as an example for them, it's not about generating the lead on the front end. It's about how they could get their entire company listening to the podcast so that they renew for year two, that they were new for them. Right. And so that changes exactly what we're going to talk about. That changes what content we're going to talk about. Right. For them, it's about how can we embed that customer journey and weave it constantly in to, to the content that they're creating that one day, if they're a part of the company, if they're lucky to be a part of the company in the next three, four years, they might have a chance to be able to see these types of results. Does that make sense from a
Kathleen (28:50): Yeah. So wait, I'm fascinated by this second example you gave of basically like preventing churn via podcasts. So how, how do you create content that gets everybody in the company listening or like maximizes the number of people?
Jay (29:02): I think, I think the, I think a lot of times people get really especially in this industry, right. In the marketing industry, everything is all about like numbers. Right. Which is totally understandable. So it's like, how many times are we posting? What are the downloads? It's, it's these types of questions versus for our clients. We're trying to get the most out of all the content pieces, right. If we're comparing, create one intentional piece of content, we're, it's kind of like we're planting that content on an external channel. Right. But internally, and all of those indoctrination email sequences were pointing to very specific episodes. It's never just, Hey, let's listen to listen to our podcasts. You know, it's listened to this episode on our podcast, right. Hey Kathleen, Hey, check out our top 100 podcasts.
Jay (29:55): That's good. Right. It's good. It's it's nice. But Kathleen, I saw that you were doing this project around inbound marketing. We just created this episode around inbound marketing, but I think you would find relevant. Right. So when we think about the types of content, our clients are creating it's how, where is it that they want their customer to go? Where is it that your listeners want their customers to go? And how can you talk about the vision of it? Not necessarily the straight up tactics of today, there's episodes for that. Right. But where is it that you could go? Right. And that's really how we're kind of essentially having these mini sales conversations every single time. And people still find amazing value from it because ultimately they see it as a reminder right. Of them going to where they, that, that ultimate destination, you know?
Jay (30:52): And I can't take full credit for this. There was a there I had a conversation with Dean Jackson. So shout out to the Dean who has a number of podcasts is one with Joe Polish. Another one where he does like live coaching in it. So, you know, he asked me one time, what I thought the true purpose of a podcast was. And, you know, I don't remember exactly what I said, but we came to the conclusion that the true purpose of a podcast is really to have an ongoing conversation. Right. It's kinda like if, you know, we all have people in our lives that are like the fitness fanatic people, you know, that every single time we see them, it feels like we should update them on like our high performance habits or, Hey, we're trying a new diet or, Hey, we, you know, I just started working out again.
Jay (31:39): Right. That's an ongoing conversation with that person versus let's say they might be chatting with you. And it's a little more about business marketing, right? That's that ongoing conversation. So if you run a podcast, if you have any content marketing, what's that ongoing conversation for you, what's that ongoing conversation that you can remind your customers of that they're on this journey with you preferably for a very long period. And that way you're increasing that LTV, you're being able to increase retention over time. And that's really what we start training our clients to start thinking about and leveraging the medium in this way.
Kathleen (32:13): I love that concept of kind of understanding your buyer's journey or that your customer's journey and, and tapping into that to create podcast content that resonates at different stages. But I think there's a fine line there of, you could easily veer into something that's very self promotional or very product centric. So how do you advise your clients about keeping the podcast content educational, you know, and not, eh, but like still relevant to what you do and to that customer journey?
Jay (32:46): Yeah. So it's, it's a great point because I think when you tell people, Hey, go, you know, here's like, here's no rules go sell, right. It ends up becoming this like long, crazy, you know, sales pitch it's, you know, great content has that educational piece as well as, as entertaining pieces. Right. And so, you know, we it's w this is a lot of coaching really, when we comes down to the content critiques of our, of our clients is how can we just get them out of like, you know, that, that expert teaching mode, right? How can we get them sharing a little bit authentically about who they are, right. Because don't forget what you said earlier. And at the beginning of the show, podcasting has been around for a very long time before it was called podcasting before this top 100 stuff, before all the ROI conversations, it used to be two or three people that liked talking with each other geeking about geeking out about a certain topic.
Jay (33:45): And it didn't matter how many people are listening. Right. They just throw it the recording online, raw recording, right. Maybe a little bit of music here and there. And it would be called internet radio. Right. That's like the true essence of, of podcasting. I think that's why a lot of people love it. It's because it's this unfiltered raw version. It feels like we're listening to a conversation that we are privy to. And we get a chance to, you know, seat in the back and not really have anything to say about it. And we get to listen to some of these amazing conversations. So how can we balance what it is that we want to be able to, you know, sell and, and that, that vision, and, you know, the customer journey, but also still have those human components. Right? So a lot of it comes down to storytelling, right?
Jay (34:35): A lot of it just like good marketing, you know, we have these things called the five connectors, right. And these are connectors. They don't all start with C. Right. But they're story connectors, you know, they're, they're, they're little nuanced things that you could do to be a better storyteller in the moment, right. In the podcast scenario. And that's ultimately how we try to find that balance. Because each time we have a client, they're not just becoming the voice for network marketing. They're not just becoming the boys for alternative medicine or conscious families or whatever the topic is that they stand for. We're also helping them find their voice. And it doesn't mean that they don't know how to speak. And a lot of them are very good speakers. A lot of them are great content creators, but what's that, what's that cadence, what's that flow. That's going to work for the, or right. And that requires a little more artistry and a little more repetition for all of our hosts. But that's ultimately what we try to do is balance that because you don't want it be too scripted. And, you know, this is where you insert the call to action and to, you know, overly produced. But at the same time, you don't have it to be this like loosey goosey type of, you know, whatever you feel like podcast experience.
Kathleen (35:50): Yeah. It's so funny that you bring this up because I just had this conversation with somebody who's thinking of starting a podcast. And he said to me, I'm not a good interviewer. And I was like, well, one way to get better is to just start doing it. And you know, like the more you have to hear yourself, I'll never forget when I first started podcasting listening to my own episodes. And I said the word. Yeah. And I still do it. Like when I start my sentences, you know, after a guest speaks, I'll say, yeah. And yeah. And this, and yeah. But what about that? And you become really aware of like, not only your own verbal ticks, but you know, your strengths and weaknesses and how you, how you are as an interviewer, as a conversationalist. And I think, I mean, at this point I'm like almost 170 episodes in, I don't, I don't have to do a lot of prep because like, I, I am so comfortable.
Kathleen (36:39): It's like second hand to me. But when you start in the beginning, you definitely, I agree with you that you don't want to be overly scripted, but you want to have like a loose framework within which to play that you can fall back on if you get stuck, if you're not sure what to ask, there's that degree of comfort there that, Oh, okay. I have these five open ended questions that I know I can ask, and it will just set my guest off on, you know, riffing on a topic that they love. But that's something that I think I discovered on my own, cause I wasn't working with anyone, but I could see where it'd be valuable, valuable to have a company like yours. Kind of guiding me in that process and shortening the learning curve in the beginning.
Jay (37:23): Yeah. Well, I mean, we all know frameworks and this is something we have to tell everybody, right. Which is like, look, we can talk about frameworks. We could probably have an entire different podcast episode on just frameworks, solo episode frameworks, interview frameworks, right. And, and, and, you know, storytelling frameworks and from a high level, you know, but at the end of the day, there's nothing that beats that natural curiosity, that natural energy or flow that that host has. And as you probably have experienced, and it probably can attest to, it takes a little bit, it takes just a little bit of time to be able to find that, that, that comfort level. Right. But if business owners or marketers out there that do a lot of content marketing right there, chances are, they're going to love you no longer form conversations even solo episodes. And I think it translates those skills, communication skills translate quite well when it comes to podcasts.
Kathleen (38:20): Yeah. Totally agree. Well, we are coming up on our time. So a couple of things as we wrap up the conversation the first is, can you give me just some quick examples of clients you've worked with, who've seen amazing from this, whether it's a great launch or great ROI, you've peppered a few in the conversation, any others that you want to mention?
Jay (38:43): Yeah. So we worked with a, a different SaaS company. They have multiple verticals that they're going after. We created pretty much think of it like a mini series per vertical, right. So much so that each salesperson responsible for whichever vertical or whoever you're chatting with, they would essentially have once again, these audio assets that they could go back to the client or a prospective client with, or go back to the prospect with and say, Hey, we actually created, if you're in the real estate niche, we created this mini series on how to be able to leverage what we do in the real estate world. Right. So context right away, they were able to get a client on the, like the second day of their launch, because we had launched with three, four different episodes. They had segmented their lists and said, Hey, if you're in this niche, listen to this one.
Jay (39:31): Right. Don't just support the launch. But listen to this episode that just created some great conversation starters there. Right. and, and they were able to see an ROI right off the bat. Other of our clients have went on, built the community, built up a bit of audience. They didn't have that email list coming in. And then maybe six months down the line, they opened up a coaching program. Even if it was like a beta version of side coaching program, they opened up their mastermind that they've been wanting to do. Right. So you can kind of pick and choose which product and service you want to be able to go. But yeah, so those are some off the top of my mind. Love it.
Kathleen (40:08): All right. Totally changing gears now. So I have two questions I ask all of my guests at the end of the podcast, and now it's your turn. Okay. the first one is this podcast is all about inbound marketing. And I'm curious, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park when it comes to great inbound marketing these days?
Jay (40:31): So it's so funny because like you told me that you're going to ask me this. So the first company that comes to mind is HubSpot for whatever reason. Absolutely. And you know, I know that you, you know, there there's some, you know, affiliation and all that good stuff, but yeah. I mean, look, we're talking about them, so it's, it's working. And you know, I, I think they do a superb job.
Kathleen (40:55): Oh they are absolutely amazing. And you would not be the first person who mentioned them, so that's definitely to their credit.
Jay (41:03): Yeah. I added another point. Yeah,
Kathleen (41:05): Seriously. Second question. Most marketers that I talk to, one of their biggest pain points is that they have a really hard time keeping up with just all the developments in the world of digital marketing. It's changing so quickly. So how do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself,
Jay (41:24): Okay. This is a pretty interesting question because I think we're living in a world where it's noisier than ever. And I see this happen to business owners and marketers, all the, where they get so excited about it. It could be anything. It doesn't mean the thing that they're getting super excited about doesn't, you know, is not applicable or, or, or works. Regardless of it's a mini webinar or a quiz funnel, podcasts, a tech talk, right. Like it, all of them work. Right. But I'm a big believer of mastery of platforms. And, you know, I'm not saying that just because we have all these amazing things for podcasting, it doesn't mean that your business like it, it might not be a good fit for your business, right. It's, it's, I'm not a big believer that everybody should have a podcast. Every business should, should, should do that. So the way I actually keep myself up to date with it is I pick one each year, just try to pick one marketing, like initiative and one marketing platform to just truly master. And I find, or at least the last few years I have found it to be more fruitful. Just from my productivity and my focus.
Kathleen (42:32): That's really good advice. I suspect a lot of people will struggle with that because we, as marketers also suffer from shiny penny syndrome.
Jay (42:42): It's business owners. Right. And I think that the question I ultimately asked myself about a year and a bit ago, which what kind of business and what kind of life do am I going to be happy with? Right. Do I want to, you know, find cool little hacks and things to create a little bit of momentum? Or could I find something to really double, triple, quadruple down on and actually just be able to dominate it. Right. And so it's like, I totally hear you because I think so many entrepreneurs and so many marketers in general, they want to be able to say, Hey, you know what I know about this, I know about this. And all of it is really amazing, I think you just have to choose. Yeah.
Kathleen (43:18): Absolutely. All right. Well, we're, we're at our time. So if somebody is listening and they want to reach out and ask you a question, learn more about what you're talking about or connect with you online, what is the best way for them to do that?
Jay (43:32): So two different spots. One is, if you want to see our entire podcast process from beginning to end, like we lay out all four stages, we call it the top 100 buyers podcast system. You can go see that whole system at doneforyoupodcast.com. If you want to reach out to me and socially stalk me, probably Instagram is the best way to being able to go do that. We post there pretty much daily and our websites, podcasts, your brand in case you want to dive into some other case studies and you want to see every, you know, all the deliverables and all that good stuff.
Kathleen (44:06): All right. I will put the links to all of those places in the show notes. So make sure you head over there to check it out. And as always, if you're listening and you liked what you heard, or you learned something new, head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast, preferably a five star review because that's how other people find us. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass, inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to interview them. Thank you so much, Jay. This was a lot of fun.
Jay (44:36): Yeah. Thank you, Kathleen. This was great.
"If I only knew then what I know now..." We've all wondered how we would do things differently if given the chance for a do-over. Here's how Rand Fishkin applied the lessons learned from the past to the launch of his new startup, SparkToro.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, SparkToro Founder Rand Fishkin talks about starting over.
Rand rose to marketing stardom as the Founder and CEO of Moz, where he became known as one of the foremost experts on SEO in the world.
When he exited the company a few years ago and founded SparkToro, he reflected on the lessons learned from his experience at Moz to develop a fresh new approach to everything from raising investment funding, to speaking out about issues some might consider controversial and the development of a marketing strategy for his startup.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the SparkToro website
- Get Rand's book Lost and Founder
- Follow Rand on Twitter
- Email Rand at rand@sparktoro.com
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I am your host Kathleen Booth. And this week I am incredibly excited to tell you that my guest is none other than Rand Fishkin. Welcome Rand.
Rand (00:26): Thanks for having me, Kathleen. Great to be here
Kathleen (00:28): To say that I'm excited is an understatement. I, this is, I'm just going to throw it out there and this is embarrassing, but I have had a marketing crush on you for a long time.
Rand (00:39): Marketing crush. One of the most unusual types of crushing.
Kathleen (00:42): I mean, you have to really be a marketing nerd to develop like marketing crushes and I truly have one. So I will just tell a brief story about how and why I developed this crush. And then I'm going to ask you to tell a little bit about yourself. So I, I started reading your content when you were at Moz and I always just loved, loved it for two reasons. One is, it was incredibly substantive. There's a lot of crappy content out there and I've been a marketer for a long time. And I don't like to waste my time with stuff that isn't going to teach me something new.
Kathleen (01:17): And I just always felt like I learned something when I read your content, but I loved also your delivery and the fact that you let your personality shine through and you, weren't afraid to be kind of fun about it. And that's what first you know, turned me on to the content you were creating. But then I think what really cemented it was actually when you left Moz and you wrote your book Lost and Founder, I was a business owner for 11 years. I owned a digital marketing agency and I had what I would call a less than glorious exit. You know, there were a lot of failures along the way. I even actually toyed with writing a book. It's the first time I've ever said this to my podcast listeners. I toyed with writing a book called full frontal failure about like how important it is to just own it and put yourself out there and how, like being an entrepreneur is so lonely and nobody talks about the bruises and the, you know, the bad parts and I saw your book and I read it and I was like, Oh my God, this is what I'm talking about.
Kathleen (02:18): So it really spoke to me and then you started SparkToro and I was so fascinated and impressed by how you built the audience first. And really again, what putting out incredibly substantive content, I loved everything you did with Jumpshot while it was still available. Anyway, so I mean, I could go on and on and on, but that was kind of my journey following you. And I've always just loved how unflinchingly, honest you are. And the most recent example of that is the amazing blog you put out about why you left Moz's board of directors and, and you've always been a champion of diversity, and I love that it made room for two women of to join the board. So I'm going to stop now, cause this is getting a little awkward.
Rand (03:04): No, no. I mean I think what's, you know, what's wonderful, Kathleen is I always felt like the the contributions that I, that I wish, you know, resonated more in the world are exactly the ones you're talking about, right. Transparency around entrepreneurship and around the hard parts of broken relationships and broken systems and you know, work around diversity and equity and inclusion and those kinds of things. And yet, you know, mostly for better or worse, right? Mostly what I'm known for is like, Oh, you really helped me learn keyword research.
Kathleen (03:45): Whiteboard Fridays.
Rand (03:49): I'm, I'm very grateful and honored to have helped people with those things as well, of course, right. That, that built my career and, and helped build Moz. But I think there are, there are lots of places to get that information and to your point, it, it can be pretty lonely and challenging to find real people telling real stories about the painful and hard parts of work and life and and recognizing what opportunities they've had and which ones maybe they didn't earn. Which, which has certainly been the case with me too. So,
Kathleen (04:29): Yeah. And I would add to that and helping other people perhaps avoid some of the pitfalls you did. I love that you shared your term sheet and lost and founder. You know, I, I actually sent that to a friend of mine right after I wrote it. He said he was starting to look at maybe taking on investment. He had a completely bootstrapped, very, very successful software company, but he didn't have a succession plan. He didn't have children who wanted to take over and he wanted to retire. And I said, I have a book, you have to read, read it before you take any investment. And I just think that's, so what a gift to be able to like, pass that on and allow people to, to avoid some of the things that you've had to encounter in your journey. So thank you for that.
Rand (05:09): Oh my gosh. I'm honored. Thanks.
Kathleen (05:11): Yeah. Well, the big reason other than the adulation I'm pouring on you, that I wanted to have you here was that I, the thing I think is so interesting and what makes me want to ask you like a thousand different questions is that you are somebody who has started and grown a very successful business in Moz and learned a lot along the way and SparkToro's a more recent journey. And you know, we always say like, Oh, if I had only known that, then what I know now, and you kind of had that opportunity a little bit with SparkToro. So that's really what I want to dig into as someone who has been there, done that and seen both the good and the bad of growth and what works with marketing and what doesn't when you decided to start SparkToro, can you, can we, maybe we could start by having you walk me through, what were the lessons you pulled from your earlier experiences to put together? What, in your mind was the plan that would work for a brand new company from a marketing standpoint? Because of course we talk about inbound marketing on this podcast.
Rand (06:16): Yeah. let's see. I had a bunch of things that I really wanted to do very differently. And some of those, some of those, I kind of outlined at the end of Lost and Founder, but you know, I wanted to fund SparkToro differently. I knew that I wanted to raise investment because I didn't, you know, to your point around leaving a company and not having a financial exit, right. I didn't have a financial exit from Moz. And so, you know, I needed to I had a nice severance agreement, but otherwise right. Had to start getting income pretty darn fast. And I knew that I wanted to build a company that could be successful, successful, meaning for its employees and its customers and its shareholders be successful for all three of those groups without having to be hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
Rand (07:16): And so the VC model just does not really allow for that, right. It is you know, Moz is a company that got to $50 million in recurring revenue and is considered kind of a, like frustrating mediocre plateau, you know, of a, of a company, because it just won't, it won't go away and die, which would be fine, right. In venture capital world. It's fine. If 98 out of a hundred companies that they invest in die or right. Or could it get to a fast growth rate and North of a hundred million dollars in revenue? That's fine, too. Everything in between is no good. Right.
Kathleen (07:56): That's so funny because I feel like if you talk to any startup founder, well, I don't know any, but most 99% of startup founders would say $50 million company. Yeah. Sign me up. Like that sounds great. It's weird.
Rand (08:09): And I think almost all of us, in fact, all of us should feel that way, but the venture capital asset class has biased a lot of people to think like, Oh yeah, that's, that's not good enough. And that's pretty, that's pretty dumb, right? Because what we want, what we want as a society and as people, and as human beings who are familiar with how capitalism and economics interact and politics, we should want lots of little companies, right? What makes a sector robust? What makes an economy vibrant is competition and lots of diversity of, of, you know, different companies owning parts of the market and innovating as a result of that. What you absolutely don't want. The last thing you want, if you want a healthy economy and a healthy politic and a healthy sort of income equality you want, you do not want Facebook owning 90% of social media, Google owning 95% of search Amazon owning, you know, whatever it is.
Rand (09:16): Percent of e-commerce 50% of e-commerce, right? Those are negative externalities and the results of you know, a sort of system that gravitates toward the most powerful. And that is bad for everybody, right? Bad for entrepreneurs, bad for employees, bad for consumers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. So I knew that I wanted to build a company that could be successful without the forced venture type of outcome. I knew that I wanted to keep the team really small. I don't like building big teams. Casey doesn't either, both of us have worked at, you know, companies that are like at Moz when it was like 20 people and 25 people. That was great. 50 people. Okay. Still, all right. 75, Ooh. I'm not feeling as great about this hundred, 200 plus really I'm not a match for what the kind of working environment that I like. And so, yeah, that was another intentional decision to, to longterm. Keep the team small. We knew we wanted to build an audience before we launched a product. We knew we did not want to launch an MVP. We wanted to launch a very robust sort of impressive product. That would be remarkable to a lot of people. The first time they tried it. So all those things are very different.
Kathleen (10:40): Yeah. Let's talk for a minute about building an audience before you build a product. That's something that I'm personally passionate about. I, I spent two years as head of marketing at IMPACT. And I, after I exited my agency, I always said I would never be in an agency again. But I stayed in IMPACT because that was Bob Ruffolo, the CEO, his vision was to build a media company around the agency. And I was like, that is interesting to me and that model was build the audience and then, and then we'll have products we can roll out to them. So it's not exactly what you're talking about, but it's that same mindset of, if you have a really passionate audience, it unlocks so much opportunity. I'm interested in knowing like, how did you go about that with SparkToro? I kind of saw it from a reader standpoint. Cause I think I've read every one of your blogs since the beginning, but maybe explain to my listeners a little bit about why you chose that approach and then how, how you approached it. Because I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding how exactly you would go about doing that.
Rand (11:38): Yeah. Yeah. And I did it quite differently than with Moz, right? So Moz was like blog five nights a week you know, try and get traffic to all those posts, try and get good at SEO earn, you know, links to those posts. And then, you know, slowly build up this sort of content and SEO, flywheel and SparkToro was essentially built on the back of what I call social media marketing and digital PR. Right. So I did lots and lots of and continue to do lots and lots of podcasts and webinars and conferences and events and guest contributions and you know, get interviewed for other publications platforms, blogs, media channels, research reports get quoted in news, like all, all that kind of stuff. Right. Essentially leverage the power of other people's platforms because SparkToro, when it launched had none of its own and also leverage the social media platforms that I carried over from us.
Rand (12:40): Right. So I didn't, I didn't get to carry it over, like my, you know, my content library and all the search traffic, but I got to bring with me, you know, some of that social media presence and, and that following on like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram that essentially kickstarted the SparkToro audience and the sort of what, what started as our beta invite list and then became our early access customer list. I think for any startup, for any business that's trying to build its audience and email addresses the most important thing to capture, you know, getting website visits, getting social followers yeah, those are okay. Not, not like a problem or anything, but an email address is so incredibly valuable. You can do so much with those direct communication, you know, broadcast communication. And of course all sorts of, you know, stuff on the ad platforms too.
Rand (13:43): So we, over the course of about 18 months, which was essentially the development time, the R and D and testing and beta process for SparkToro we had about 15, 16,000 email subscribers who said like, I want to get notified at launch or like I'm interested in being a beta tester if you'll have us. And that helped us. And even though we launched in April of 2020, like the worst possible time in the last hundred years to launch a company we did manage to get our first, I think almost 150 ish customers via that, that list of folks. Right. Who said, like, I'm interested in what you're doing. And so that platform has done through, you know, social broadcasting. I published probably, I mean, you, you, you read them all. So I think over the course of 18 months, I don't think I published 30 blog posts even right. Fairly small limited number, but I probably did a hundred. Yeah. You know, interviews and conversations on other people's this sort of digital PR approach to things. And I would do that again. I think that's a, that's a great way to play it. I mean, you know, obviously we're having a podcast conversation.
Kathleen (15:01): That's very meta.
Rand (15:05): Yeah. Which is a little bit of the reason that's so valuable is because when you don't have an audience of your own finding the audiences that are, that potentially will resonate with you and leveraging them from other folks, platforms is a super valuable way to go. It also worked really well because we had that sort of free signup funnel, you know, before launch, it was give us your email address to get notified at launch. And after launch, it was tries searching SparkToro for free, and then, you know, register to create a forever free account. And that that funnel has also been very successful for us. So, you know, I'll be on a webinar, I'll be on a podcast. I'll, I'll do a video live stream or something I did when a couple of days ago. And you could see like the spike in Google analytics, right. Cause lots of people are paying attention to podcasts. We're having a conversation and they're like, Oh, let me go try this SparkToro thing. Right. So it works really well. As long as you've got your funnel optimized for that type of acquisition.
Kathleen (16:05): It's interesting that you say, you know, you, you were successful because you essentially identified other people who had audiences and you were able to draft off of that a little bit. I'm going to put a pin in that. Cause then we're going to come back to what SparkToro does. Cause I feel like that's the perfect segue before we get there though. So I want to make sure I understand correctly. You had about an 18 month development period during which the product was not publicly launched. You mentioned you wrote 30, let's call it 30 blogs. In addition to doing your digital PR, I do want to add as the reader, that, that sounds simple, but it wasn't because these were not just opinion pieces or, you know, 10 ways you can write a great subject line. These were blogs that included a lot of original research that you did in conjunction with the Jumpshot data, as well as some real thought leadership around what was happening with Google and, and being able to get clicks in search results. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about that because I do feel like that was one of the reasons that I avidly followed you, was the quality of the information in those blogs was not to be found anywhere else. I couldn't find that information elsewhere.
Rand (17:17): No I didn't. Yeah. I think that's absolutely right. So, you know, part of my thesis around building a successful whole marketing flywheel is going and finding a way that you can contribute unique value that your audience cannot get elsewhere. Right. And you know, I've written about this and I talk about it all the time and when you know, startup founders and marketers ask me like, Oh, well, where should, where do you recommend that someone new to marketing start building their their funnel, their channels, their, their, their flywheel. My recommendation is always something you're passionate and interested about somewhere where your customers actually pay attention and somewhere where you can add unique value that no one else is providing. And so this was, you know, this was sort of my stab at what, what can I do uniquely? I had this relationship with Jumpshot.
Rand (18:07): I had been using their their data at Moz. I've been really impressed by their click stream data quality. And so I continued that relationship sort of helping them by being a vocal supporter and proponent of their day of using their data. And in exchange, they gave me a bunch of, you know, research time. So they, you know, they had someone super friendly guy named Sean who worked with me on their, on the R and D side of Jumpshot. And I'd be like, Hey Sean, can you pull this data for me? And he'd pull it, send it over, I'd put it into Excel and play around with it and produce some nice looking charts and graphs and publish that and try and try and tease out the interesting bits of like, Oh, here's the distribution of where web traffic is coming from? Like, you know, more than two thirds of all web traffic is controlled by the alphabet corporation, right.
Rand (19:00): Between Google and YouTube and Gmail and Google maps and yada yada, yada, that entity was referring more than two thirds of all web traffic to sort of the top. I think we pulled the top 20,000 or so websites. Right. so that feels a little monopoly. Yes. Great. It's sort of, yeah. Sorta dangerous. And then you look at, you know, web search as a whole, and of course, Google at the same time was trying to claim to who was at the attorneys general of the United States who were looking into it from, I think like 40 some odd States, quote your research as part of that. Right. So, you know Congress through what's his name? Congressman David Cellini I think is the, the representative who's looking into an a, on the house subcommittee for antitrust and, you know, they're, they're asking Google, all these questions and Google is giving them these clearly obviously BS lie responses.
Rand (19:59): And so I'm able to call that out, right. I'm able to look at the data and be like, Nope, you're lying to Congress. I don't know if there's consequences for that. Apparently there's not, but yeah. Let's not go down that road right now. Cause I'm yeah. If you would like to take away women's rights, apparently it is totally cool to lie to Congress, but, you know but yeah, so being able to call out, you know, Sundar, Pichai, Google CEO, and say like, look, the thing, the thing that you told Congress under oath is provably false. Maybe, maybe Congress wants to do something about that. Right. You know, maybe that's going to come back to bite you in the butt. I hope it does. Cause I, you know, I don't think that's acceptable behavior. And I don't think any of us should, should, should accept that, but, but these are kinds of things, right.
Rand (20:47): That it did, it did two things, right? One, it brought a lot of folks like yourself to SparkToro subscribing to the, the blog, paying attention to the publications. And it also helped create in my opinion, a very accurate narrative around how do we, as marketers break free from the duopoly of Facebook and Google, like, can we do other things, other marketing things, can we pay attention to other channels? Can we spend our dollars and time to go find other publications in people and sources of influence that reach our audiences and not exclusively rely on these untrustworthy and potentially risky partners. And that obviously serve SparkToro's interest as well, because fundamentally at the core of SparkToro is I'm trying to solve this problem. Right? The, the reason I created the company is because I'm frustrated with the Google Facebook duopoly. Over-Marketing
Kathleen (21:51): Well, let's take a minute and actually have you explain what SparkToro does cause we kind of skip that part in the beginning and I'm gonna make sure we don't completely miss it.
Rand (22:01): Yeah. Fair enough. I, I don't love to be self promotional, which is a little,
Kathleen (22:06): But I mean it's germane given what we're talking about. I'm the same way, but yeah,
Rand (22:09): Yeah. Right. Is that weird? You, you like, you should, that, that's the goal of marketing and you know,
Kathleen (22:16): I always say marketers are terrible at marketing themselves. I'm I'm, I've been trying to get a personal website launched for the last two years. And I don't know if it'll ever go live because having to write my own website copy is like the most insane form of torture about myself.
Rand (22:33): Open offer. I have been working with a wonderful technical writer. I'm a woman out of the UK on some of our case studies for SparkToro. And she is amazing. If you want someone to interview you and then turn that into your copy,
Kathleen (22:47): I will get her name from you because I can't, I cannot write about myself.
Rand (22:51): I love working with consultants and agencies. I know that's weird. Like startup founders is supposed to want to build that strength internally. I don't, that's one of the things I did at Moz that like, we always tried to hire instead of work with consultants and agencies. I think that was a really dumb move. At SparkToro I'm using tons of agencies anyway. You would ask, what does the company do? This is very fair. Right? So trying to solve this problem around Facebook and Google's do opoly over online marketing and advertising. And if you're in e-commerce Amazon sort of makes how to try opoly. Essentially what we realized is that the, the challenge comes in when folks are asked to understand where they can reach their audiences outside, they're outside those platforms. So like, Kathleen, if you and I start a new company to sell, I don't know bone broth, we're like, Oh yeah, let's, let's do the, the, the bone broth thing.
Rand (23:53): And like, w we'll we'll we'll make lovely stuff and then we'll sell it online. And where do we reach people who are interested in things like, you know, paleo and keto diets, right? Cause that has a big overlap with it. And people who are big into like college enrich foods and people who are big into cooking. I don't know the result though. And where do we, where do we find those communities? Like, okay, I, I know a few recipe websites, but are those the right places or not? And so what you want to be able to do ideally is go find all the people online who are talking about whatever bone broth or collagen or keto diets, or I don't know, maybe you have a big affinity overlap with yoga instructors or something, right? You want to go to those communities, go find those people and then figure out, probably figure out like their home address so that you can break into their house and steal their phone and log into it, right.
Rand (24:55): Get their unlock code, log in and then see all the things they were browsing and reading and watching and listening to and following. But of course that's illegal and super unethical. And so the next best thing to do, because surveys and interviews don't work for this. Like that's the way most marketers get this data. That's how I got it before. And it does not work because people just can't. It's not that they don't answer, honestly. It's just, they can't remember. You know, if you ask someone like, Hey, tell me a hundred people you follow on Twitter. What? No, I can't. How am I supposed to remember that? I can tell you maybe like five,
Kathleen (25:34): Right? The classic story. When I used to own my agency, I had a client I worked with who said, Oh, we, we train all of our sales people to say, how did you hear about us? And one of the most common answers we get is, Oh, I saw your ad in the Washington post. And my client was like, I have literally never advertised in the Washington post. You know?
Rand (25:51): And this, this speaks to another fundamental problem, which we found with a ton of you know, agencies and consultants who would work with businesses. And you, you go talk to the executive team and they'd be like, all right, I want you to get us placed in the wall street journal. Why the wall street journal, like we're selling bone broth here. I golf with our customers every weekend. They read the wall street journal. You get us covered in the wall street journal. Like, no, my friend, I look, you you're getting super biased responses. And like you and your golf buddies, I'm sure do read the wall street journal, but that is not sample size of three. Yeah. Right. And so apart from breaking into people's houses, what the other way to do that? We saw a few really, really smart businesses marketing teams and customer research teams who had their engineers basically take a list of their customer's email addresses, send them through a service like full contact or Clearbit and get all of their social accounts.
Rand (26:54): So like, you know, here's Kathleen and here's Rand and here's, Rand's LinkedIn account. And here's his Facebook page of it's public. And here's his Instagram, if that's public and here's his Twitter and here's, Kathleen's, you know, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, Quora, Medium, blah, blah, blah. And then they would crawl those social URLs. If they're public and extract all the data, they could like everything that's publicly shared by that person online just like Google. And then they would aggregate it together and be like, okay, our customers follow these social sources. They listen to these podcasts, they're sharing these YouTube channels. They're sharing these articles and websites. Now we can put our data together and go advertise and market in smart ways in smart places. And Casey and I were like, Oh, that's genius.
Kathleen (27:44): Amazing. What is incredible? And also, are you kidding?
Rand (27:48): You custom built with like three engineers on your team over nine months, this process, just to get that one piece of data. No, that's unfair. We should build that for the whole internet. Right. Let's just build that for everybody. So now you can go to SparkToro and sort of instantly, you know, search for any audience and discover what they read, watch, listen to and follow
Kathleen (28:11): It's awesome. And, and I can, I will add, as we go through this conversation, I am a customer currently. I was actually one of your beta users at a different company. So your funnel works because I am the living breathing example of it. But now going back to, so you had 18 months, you created this awesome content. One of the things that really struck me that you said was you partnered with Jumpshot and, you know, they have this data and they assigned a researcher to you. And, and the reason that struck me is that I imagine there are probably a lot of people listening, especially if there are people who are engaging in, in creating a startup who are saying, that's great, Rand Fishkin could do that because he's around Fishkin. And he worked at Moz and people are going to give him anything.
Kathleen (28:57): But I think the truth is though that the, at least the, the lesson I extracted from what you said is about partnership. Like if you are somebody who doesn't have a huge following, if you are somebody who doesn't have access to a ton of proprietary data, who out there is in an adjacent space to you, is complimentary, who does. And I mean, I did this in my last job because I worked for a small cybersecurity startup that had like no web traffic. And we put on a, a four day virtual summit on IOT security and the partners we had were unbelievable. Nobody had heard of us, but they had all heard of our partners. And my whole deal was, I'm not going to charge you to be a sponsor. You're going to get a speaking slot. All I ask is that you promote this and am going to put in all the elbow grease, right?
Kathleen (29:43): Like I'm going to do the marketing. I'm going to get like 500 people to come to this thing or whatever it was. And I think to me, like, I love that example of Jumpshot because you don't have to be a Rand Fishkin. I think you just have to understand what's in it for the other partner and the fact that you were able to shine a spotlight on their data and give them visibility. You know, there's, there's something for everyone out there in terms of figuring out the right partnerships. So I feel like that's a really valuable lesson.
Rand (30:10): Yeah. I was going to say a lot of, a lot of amazing data is public or publicly available. I a guy just emailed me in the, in the SEO space. Jeff, what's his last name? Jeff Baker, I think. And he had put together this study where he analyzed a bunch of SEO tools. It just use their public, like, you know, he subscribed to the free trials or paid for a month of access or whatever. And then like did a big comparison and published it on. He pitched it to search engine land, which is a big publication in the, you know, search marketing world. They accepted it, you know, despite that he didn't, it's not like he had a big history with them. He didn't have a big following previously. He pitched it to them. They published it. He emailed me and was like, Hey, I think you'd be interested in this.
Rand (30:51): Would you share it? I was like, yeah, this looks great. And did really nice work here. Right? It's small sample size, but excellent methodology. Sure. I'll share it with my audience. Right. I posted it to Twitter and LinkedIn, it got picked up by a bunch of more people like great, you know, he had no special, you know, relationship previously. I think there's opportunities like that to find unanswered or unasked questions in virtually any topic and field, and then expound on that take advantage of that, that opportunity in the market, underserved opportunity in the market to create unique value that your audience can't find elsewhere. And if you do that even just a few times, you know, I am not talking about publishing every night or every week, you can publish, you know, five times the year and be very successful with this kind of thing. If you become known for providing that source of information, data opinion you know, analysis that is unavailable elsewhere.
Kathleen (32:00): Well, and I would also say having a point of view, which is something that you've done consistently on everything. Yep. And this is a, this is something I want to explore just for a minute, because you know, having, having owned an agency, I've talked to so many business owners and, and, you know, heads of marketing having worked at other agencies like hundreds, hundreds over the year, the years. And there's a lot of, I feel like this is the third rail for so many of them. Like there are a lot of people who just firmly believe you don't take a position on anything period. End of story. I am not one of them, I believe in taking positions. But then there's this whole other gray space in between of like how, how firmly can you plant your flag in one direction or the other?
Kathleen (32:45): And a lot of business owners get very afraid of offending anyone and then kind of shying away from that. They become, I always refer to it as like the milk toast of marketing. You don't offend anybody, but nobody really likes you that much either. So I would love to hear your thoughts on, because I think I do think it takes guts. You know, and what you take a stand on has to match your personal passions and what you truly believe in because you are putting yourself out and taking risks. So maybe talk through a little bit as the owner of the business, how you thought about this and, and how in your head, you reconcile the risks of taking controversial positions with what you see as the, the kind of things you could gain out of it.
Rand (33:27): Yeah. So let's see, I think about this in sort of three ways. I think about it from a an ethics and philosophy sort of perspective. Like, am I a good person? Am I doing good things for the world? Am I prioritizing the goodness that I do for the world over a personal greed, right. Making more money? And if the answer to that becomes no, then I am obviously the definition of evil, right? Evil is not like I'm going to go murder people. You know, like that that's almost never happens almost all evil, at least in our society exists because people trade the courage of doing what they know to be the right thing for money or power or influence. Right. And that there's, that's evil. So I think about it from that perspective and on that vector, this is just an incredibly easy answer, right?
Rand (34:28): Like you, you should obviously do it the second way. I think about it is from a marketing and branding perspective, which is essentially what kind, what do I want to be known for recognized for appreciated for what kind of audience do I want to attract? Who do I want to you know, bring to my community and who would I like to keep out of my community? And from that perspective, it, it also is a relatively easy answer, right? Like, I, I want people I'm happy to have you know, what would have been classically called political disagreements on like, well, what should the tax code look like? Or how should we do zoning and you know, a neighborhood or well, what about, what about investments in whatever it is, you know, military versus environmental spending versus regulation on mining, like, okay, those are all political conversations that I think are, are reasonable. And then there are unreasonable political conversations like, well, should we allow blacks and Jewish people to live? That's not a political conversation. Right? I of, that's not, that's just human, right.
Rand (35:42): That's not an open for debate conversation. Right. And I think unfortunately there has been a a rash of sort of, well, don't you want diversity of thought and diversity of thought just means a diversity of thought to me is like a look I'd like to be white supremacists and not get criticized for it. And so can we just agree to, let me be like that? No, we cannot agree on that. That is an untenable well position. We're not, I'm not okay with it, so right. I'm I am, I'm happy to turn away those audiences and build a, you know, build an audience around that. That resonates with my perspective. I also think about it from a third perspective, which is what does the structure of the business that I'm building forced me to accept and allow me to work with them.
Rand (36:37): And so this was one of another really big reason. I didn't want to raise venture capital because yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Right. Like in the venture backed world, you do not that you need to be milk toast, but you are absolutely pressured to build a giant market and building a giant market often means attempting to turn off almost no one. Yeah. Right. Attempting to be uncontroversial in a lot of ways. And and I don't think that's a healthy or right thing. I am. I mean, I'll definitely say, I think probably a lot of Americans and a lot of people all around the world who are facing sort of this nationalist, autocratic surge in politics that we've been seeing globally. Right. A lot of, a lot of those folks, a lot of folks are frustrated that like these sorts of issues have become so front of the top of mind for so many people all the time, I, I feel that frustration too, right?
Rand (37:43): Like I'm, I am absolutely in the world of, gosh, I, you know, I really disliked a lot of previous administration's policies and like things in the United States, but I never felt like they were going to absolve us of our democracy. And now suddenly we have to worry about that. And that that's very frustrating. I don't like that. So I think that this these sort of three things have guided me towards an ability to say, okay, the structure of my business, the way that I want to attract customers and market to them and the audience that I want to build. And my philosophy and ethics are all in alignment. I don't know that every business owner gets to do that, but yeah, I hope I hope they do because they should. It's absolutely. It's, it's obviously the, the best way to go. I need more people
Kathleen (38:38): That hits the nail on the head, because I know I've always said this, like when it comes to taking a position, there's not like any one position everybody should take. I mean, that's where the owner of the company, the founder has to kind of a very much align with them as a person and you are going to attract the people that are naturally attracted to that same position. And so it is, it is interesting, but I think it takes a lot of guts and I really commend you for it. And, and you're right. Yeah. I don't think you could do it if you had traditional investment in your company.
Rand (39:09): Yeah. I mean, I certainly could, but it would put me in conflict with some of the goals and expectations. It could create strife and you know, who knows if I would be able to maintain that longterm. I think, you know, as a, as a key example, right. You can see with with Facebook and Zuckerberg, this sort of like and, and Larry and Sergei and Eric Schmidt and Sundar Pichai at Google, you can feel this sort of tension between like, they sort of know what the right thing to do is, but they're really scared about doing it because of fears of a combination of like political interference from, you know, people who's in who's interested is not, and market fears around, you know, where, what their users will do, what their customers will do, and the fact that they have to generate billions of extra dollars of revenue every quarter.
Kathleen (40:07): Yeah. Yeah. It's a prison that they've grown into over time. I think.
Rand (40:12): Yeah. I mean, we, we amplify that, like there's a lot of, there are a lot of people I'm sure there are people listening to this podcast right now who equate a person's worth with their productivity and their economic entrepreneurial contributions, right. And their financial success. That is a pretty terrible metric of a person's worth, right? Like we all know we should be measuring people's worth in the kindness that they bring to the world around them and the way they build relationships and how they and, and fundamentally all human beings are worth while. Right. All of us have, that's why human rights exists. And, and reducing that to this late stage capitalist model of like, you are how much money you make. That's, that's a bad way to go friends.
Kathleen (41:08): And this is why you are widely known as the nicest guy in marketing. Is that, so that is the word on the street. I'm just gonna,
Rand (41:16): Or a significant number of people on Twitter who disagree.
Kathleen (41:19): Oh, well, there's a significant number of people on Twitter who disagree with everything. So so going back for a minute to, you made a point about digital PR and again, I'm going to just sort of put this through the filter of, there are probably a lot of people who think, Oh, well, that's easy for Rand Fishkin. Cause he's everybody knows who he is so he can get the interview. So any advice for founders who don't have the reputation as to how to go about doing that?
Rand (41:47): Yeah. Yeah. So this is an area where I think before you start your company, it is hugely valuable to build up your expertise in a niche and to build up a network as well. Right? So that doesn't have to be through, you know, blogging. It could be through your social channels. It could be through video. It could be through hosting your own podcast. It could be through unique research that you do. It could be through one on one consulting and help that you give people whatever it is, right. But build your expertise and then use that expertise to build your network so that you are known for having that talent and being able to contribute in those ways. Once you do that, then it is so much easier to do all of the forms of digital PR and, and earning amplification getting attention. I cannot recommend it enough, but I think for whatever reason, there's this sort of sense of in the entrepreneurial world. Like I start my company, I build my product and then I figure out how to market it. No,
Kathleen (42:52): Oh, backwards.
Rand (42:55): That's not how you do it. Right. First, if you build up a community of people who care about the problem you're solving, even before you have the product that solves it, your launch and your growth will be so much easier. Right. So don't, you know, I'm not, I'm not saying this from the perspective of like, yes, I obviously have the privilege of, you know, the 20 years that I spent at Moz building up a, a reasonably sized following in this sort of niche of digital marketing world. But that, that can be a relatively easy, easily achieved, not necessarily the same degree, but easily started down the path of, and you don't need 15,000 people on your email list if you have 1500 or 150, that is still such a better starting point than zero. Yeah.
Kathleen (43:41): Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So when you think about the future of SparkToro and where you're going to go from here, what how do you think you're going to grow it moving forward? Is it still the same strategy of digital PR and really great content? Or are you changing anything starting anything new?
Rand (43:59): I, so I really, Kathleen, I really desperately want to invest in self hosted self created episodic content. Like what I did with whiteboard Friday at Moz, right? Like a series, probably something with video. Cause I'm reasonably good and experienced with video. Maybe involving a whiteboard too. I don't know. But the what's holding me back right now is, is time and bandwidth and investment dollars. Right. So I know that, you know, if I was going to do something like that, I'd probably want a video producer that's super challenging during COVID just, you know, by for one thing. And it's also a really hard to make the time available when it's just me and Casey working on SparkToro. So I think, you know, it might be next year when we're, you know, able to grow enough, to be able to bring in another hire or to invest in a, you know, whatever a content agency that helps me produce that that content with some consistency.
Rand (45:00): But I, I do think that would be a very valuable thing. And even doing that something like once a month, you know, having a monthly episode of a, whatever, 15 to 30 minute video series on topics related to things that are of interest to our audience, that probably would do pretty well. So episodic content I think is, is very under invested in because it's hard to start. It's hard to get the motivation to keep going. It, it generally doesn't, you know, take off immediately. Like it's a, it's a slow burn, slow build process, but it is something we really want to invest in.
Kathleen (45:37): I love that. Well, I will watch it when it starts tell me then I'm in the Rand super fan club clearly.
Rand (45:47): What I love, I love what I love about it is like the, it almost works like the Netflix model, you know, where you, you see one episode of the show and you're like, Ooh, that was really good. I kind of want to binge watch all of them. Right. And if there's a big catalog, you just get all this engagement and yeah, I'd like that. I think that model has legs. I don't see a ton of people investing in it. So I'd like to do something like that. Nice.
Kathleen (46:13): Well, we're going to come up to the top of the hour and I have a thousand more questions I want to ask, but we don't have time for it. So what I'm going to do is shift gears because there are two questions that I ask all of my guests at the end of every interview. And I don't want to end without having the opportunity to find out what you have to say about this. The first one is this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that today you think is really kind of setting the gold standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer?
Rand (46:47): Ooh. Okay.
Kathleen (46:49): You can name more than one if you want to.
Rand (46:51): Yeah. I mean, there's a bunch of folks who have been really impressing me lately. Let's see. So I don't know if you follow Melanie Deziel. She wrote a, she, yes. Yeah. Okay. So she writes, she just published, I think earlier this year Content Fuel Framework which I think, Hey, look at that. Hey Melanie, look, I'm promoting your book. No, I, I, I think, I think the world of Melanie she's extraordinary and she just she just keeps contributing in, in such a remarkable ways. I think she's keynoting content marketing world, the digital version, this week.
Kathleen (47:30): Wow. That's awesome.
Rand (47:31): Isn't it incredible. So amazing stuff from her. I've also been really impressed with, do you follow Nandini Jammi on Twitter? She's @nandoodles.
Kathleen (47:43): I feel like I maybe even touched base with her about coming on the podcast.
Rand (47:48): Oh, amazing. Yeah. So she is my God. She's so impressive. Like she's kind of my hero. She's she's been working on kind of a, a, a new version of brand safety and advert and helping advertisers save money and optimize their spend away from manipulative and sort of trolling. And I don't know what you would you call it, like sort of non-factual you know, Macedonian creatives.
Kathleen (48:24): This is why, so I know her not through the podcast, but I'm in week four at a new job. And my company is, amongst other things, we solve for publishers. We have an anti malvertising software. This is why I know her.
Rand (48:40): Got it right. She was one of the cofounders of Sleeping giants. Now she's the co founder of check my ads. And so they, you know, she, but she writes about and talks about all these topics on, you know, national media and and, and online. And she's just extraordinarily smart. I think she, she's a what I would say she's like a very sharp edged person on Twitter. And like many folks, right? She's, she's, she's much more sort of heartfelt and, and a little more, you know, leans into kindness off of Twitter, which, which we probably all do when we're not limited to 280 characters, but I think the world of her I'm super impressed with her work. Sarah Evans from, she's @PRSarahEvans on Twitter. She has a newsletter. She does amazing work in the PR field, especially for early stage companies. Super impressed with her. Yeah. So that's awesome.
Kathleen (49:36): I love all of those and none of them have been on the podcast. So I'm going to have to reach out to them now and ask them to come on.
Rand (49:41): I have so many recommendations for you Kathleen.
Kathleen (49:46): We're going to talk. Second question is the biggest challenge I hear a lot of marketers say they experiences is that keeping up with the changing world of digital marketing is like drinking from a fire hose. How do you personally keep yourself educated, stay up to date on all of these changes?
Rand (50:03): I built my own tool for it. I dunno. I dunno if you have checked out, but we have this thing called trending on SparkToro. It's just sparktoro.com/trending. And when you go there, it's basically like the 25 most diversely shared articles, every 12 hours by digital on Twitter. So we essentially just built a little system, you know, where people OAuth their account, their Twitter account, into the trending tool. It's free. It's not like part of our paid package or anything, but yeah, like, I don't know, seven or 800 marketers every day, read, trending, and check it out. And so, yeah, it's fun too cause people reply and be like, Oh, so cool. Our article was on trending today.
Rand (50:51): You can get traffic from it. And you can, you can go there once a week or once a month and click the, like, what was the most shared article this month, this week, any given day. And that has been super useful. Like really it helps Casey and I just kind of stay on top of everything going on in digital marketing world. With very little effort, like we don't have to scroll through a bunch of feeds. We can just like, Oh, all right. That one looks interesting. That's cool.
Kathleen (51:20): So it takes the firehose and turns it into a little garden hose for people.
Rand (51:24): Exactly.
Kathleen (51:25): I love that. Yeah. well we are now coming to the top of the hour and so unfortunately we're going to need to wrap it up. If people are listening and they have questions for you want to follow you or connect with you, learn more about SparkToro, what is the best way for them to do that?
Rand (51:42): Sure. So my email address is rand@sparktoro.com. I'm pretty fast on email. I am most active on Twitter where I'm @Randfish. And if you are interested in trying SparkToro for free forever, it sparktoro.com.
Kathleen (51:57): Awesome. All right, there, you have it. We, we could go for 10 hours, but we only had one. If you enjoyed this episode, as much as I did head to Apple podcasts or the platform or your choice, and I would love it, if you would leave the podcast a review because that's how other people find us. And if you know someone else who's a kick ass inbound marketing person, tweet me @workmommywork because I would love to interview them. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Rand. This was amazing.
Rand (52:25): Great to be here. Thanks for having me, Kathleen.
Jeff Reekers joined Aircall when it was a small startup looking to break into the US market. Here's how he's built a marketing strategy that fueled 15X growth in just three years.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Aircall CMO shares the marketing strategies he's used to help the company achieve extraordinary growth in just three years.
When he first joined Aircall, Jeff was one of just two marketers on the team. Now, the marketing department alone has 30 employees.
Jeff shares why the company's international-first approach, along with its emphasis on partnerships, allowed Aircall to scale quickly.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Aircall website
- Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn
- Give Jeff a call on his Aircall number at (646) 712-9381
- Learn more about the Revenue Collective
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Jeff Reekers, who is the CMO of Aircall. Welcome to the podcast Jeff.
Jeff (00:25): Thanks Kathleen. It's a pleasure to be here.
Kathleen (00:27): I'm excited to talk with you. Aircall has such a fascinating growth story and you know, one marketer to the other, I'm always interested to kind of try and pull back the curtain and see how the, not to use too many analogies, but see how the sausage is made. So, but before we dive into the Aircall story maybe you could talk a little bit about yourself, what your background is and, and how you wound up in your role at Aircall.
Jeff (00:53): Yeah, sure. So I've had a few different experiences before joining Aircall. I started my career going way back. I'm from the Bay area originally. I moved out to New York city to start my career originally, didn't really know what I wanted to do, had a economics major and I was coming out and hoping to do grad school at the time. And ended up getting a job at Forbes, which is where I started my career. Mostly doing copywriting, ad copy, a little bit of journalistic ghost writing when I was asked to do it. And it was an amazing experience and it got me introduced into marketing. But interestingly, one of the articles I had to write was something called best of the web, but essentially you know, interviews with entrepreneurs we're getting started in the New York city area.
Jeff (01:50): And somebody I came across in my research for that was a company called Lawline, which was an online education startup for attorneys who needed to recertify their license. And it was just like the emerging time when you remember like real time player that they, that was a, that was a thing. And the videos were just starting to go online. And so this was a first step towards online education for attorneys who all have to recertify their licenses. And we were the first to do that, to move online. That was an amazing experience because it was just from the start and we scaled and we grew, and, you know, I had that traditional experience of kind of doing everything in a company from being joining it early. And I realized immediately that that startup life, that was exciting to me and having a real impact was exciting to me. And so that was sort of my springboard into the the startup world. And I got deeper into marketing thereafter headed demand at a few different companies. Think HR, Handshake, which was recently acquired by Shopify. And then I joined on with with Aircall about four years ago now.
Kathleen (03:03): Awesome. And what does Aircall do for those who are not familiar with it?
Jeff (03:06): Yes. We're a business, a hundred percent cloud based phone system for support and sales teams. So focused on the SMB. So any inbound, any teams that are receiving inbound inquiries, e-comm companies, whatever it might be, that need to efficiently route calls and know who their customers are before they call them, or the sales organizations that are looking for a productivity boost or to have better insights into the customers that they're calling. There are two main focus points.
Kathleen (03:34): Great. And the reason I was so excited to talk with you is that you came in at an earlier stage with the company. It wasn't really all that long ago, three, four years ago. And at the time how big was the company?
Jeff (03:51): I have a trouble remembering the exact number of employees. We had around 40, 40, 50 employees somewhere around there and you know, a couple million in revenue at that point.
Kathleen (04:03): Yeah. And, and today, how big is the company?
Jeff (04:08): Larger than that. We're we've, we've gone from, you know, that stage closer to the $50 million mark. So we've grown quite well over that time. And we've expanded into the U S, which is essentially one of the initial points of myself joining on in the company was helped build out the U S and we scaled other regions as well across the, across the country. And now we're at about 350 probably going on 400 pretty soon employees.
Kathleen (04:39): Wow. And if I understand correctly, like I'm not a big math person, but I try to, I try to do math in my head if I'm doing it correctly. It sounds like you, as a company, you grew by about 15 times in three years. Is that roughly accurate?
Jeff (04:55): Yes. I think that sounds, I think that sounds pretty accurate. Yeah.
Kathleen (04:58): Wow. That's unbelievable. And, you know, selfishly, like, I, I want to know, I want to know what went into that, cause that's, that's such a crucial stage of growth. I'm also a startup marketer. I love the startup world, right. That's like the Holy grail that everybody wants to experience. You come in when the company is smaller and you ride that rocket ship and you're a part of that story and you contribute to the growth. So, you know, from a marketing standpoint, like, I'll just turn it over to you. Maybe you could kind of set the stage and talk about like what you did in the beginning and some of the key leavers that led to the growth of the company.
Jeff (05:31): I think, I think what's important to realize is one is yes, I like to believe that there's been things on the marketing and we've done that have had a major impact here, but even going before that there's, there were some inherent aspects of Aircall that stood out at the time that I joined, even though we were small, that that indicated we had a really positive opportunity, big, really big opportunity for growth. And a friend and former colleague and great, just start up mind, his name is Preston Clark, I remember he wrote an article years ago about I think it was how to become a VP of sales in SaaS. And he wrote about uncovering the hidden opportunities or how to, how to find those small companies that were just going to take the, the I'm really going to explode it in the next stage.
Jeff (06:22): And so there were, there were some things I recall when I joined our call that really made me feel that this was something special. The first was there was an early product market fit. We sold there was traction in a very specific segment of the market, which is SMB market. There was inbound demand for the product already. And there was positive, you know, positive growth. And you could see that from an early stage, there were some things that had to be improved on certain customer segments. We had to go further into further develop who our real customers were, all these things, but there was something, there were part of us put out in the world and people were finding it, signing up for it, sharing with their friends. And that was a really positive sign. The second was, we were just getting started in a new market, which is the U S and so we had proven traction in Europe and we were just starting on the U S side.
Jeff (07:21): And so that was very exciting to me. Cause you could see the ability for the product to adapt over into the U S market. And third was probably most important because it's the sustainability of the company is Olivier, our CEO wanted to build a great company to work for and you can't really accomplish what you like to accomplish. If that's not true, is this harder to stick with a company it's harder to be there for four or five, six years or for the long haul, if you don't have that. And those, all those things were really true. First off at Aircall that I think helped us. And that, that to me was the foundational part that all their marketing tactics or strategies or how we sold it, came from that base in a way.
Kathleen (08:11): Yeah. That I love your point about wanting to build a great company because it is true, you know, to support growth that fast. I I've, I've owned a company in the past. I've been a CEO and any CEO can tell you that growth can either be the greatest thing that ever happened to you, or it can be the thing that kills your company, you know, and growth is the thing that kills your company. If you're not building that, that strong culture, like a place where people really want to be where they're inherently self motivated and excited about the mission and all that. So it's interesting that you brought that up because it's seen as something outside of marketing, but I think it's, it all goes back to that philosophy of like you companies only have customer service to the extent that they have happy employees is sort of the same principle.
Jeff (08:57): Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And you know, from there, it was from there, we grew up our, our strategy and we scaled fairly logically. So we had a good presence already in France and other parts of Europe and we wanted to expand those, get into a few new markets. There's Germany, Spain, UK, that we wanted to grow more aggressively. And we had some early ground already coming from a few other regions like Australia. And then we, you know, we really needed to focus on, on us and let that expand as well. So we had an international strategy as well from the start, which I think was very advantageous to us because we were able to spread very quickly and have an infrastructure that that was global from day one and...
Kathleen (09:51): Now just a clarification. When you joined the company, how many people, including yourself, were in the marketing team?
Jeff (09:56): There was one other person.
Kathleen (09:59): Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Were you the first US hire on the marketing team?
Jeff (10:03): No, we were just starting our us office and our one other employee was also in the US.
Kathleen (10:10): Okay. So they, so the company had grown outside of the US without having like fulltime in-house marketers. Is that?
Jeff (10:18): Yes. Correct. So we had I think we had a couple people writing content local content out there. But really our first marketer was in the U S and Olivier, our CEO, was very adamant about going to the US market very early in the company's history. So it didn't become this sort of you know, stepchild or the hated stepchild or the always in the back seat or something like that. And so was very adamant about building and moved from Paris to New York city. And so he started the first office out here with a few other, a few other employees that were hired soon after that, including our first marketer who's a sort of a junior generalist at the time.
Kathleen (10:58): So that's okay. So, so you come in your, did you have a background in international marketing at all?
Jeff (11:05): That was pretty new to me. That was pretty new. Only other really other English speaking countries, you know, UK, Australia but not real dense in across the European markets was that intimidating was exciting to me, to me that was exciting. And that was it was the perfect, that was the perfect balance because there was something to offer on both ends. You know, I was going to get to know those markets extremely well. And at the same time my first and foremost focus was how do we do this in the US? How do we replicate this in the US? So I was allowed in a lot of the opportunity to really focus on the U S for the first six months or so, because that was objective number one, build pipeline in the US. So I didn't care about product, I mean, there was no care about or no focus on product marketing. No we weren't yet on post, you know, post sale customer marketing. We cared about it a lot, but
Kathleen (12:09): Got it. You can't boil the ocean. Right. So what did you start with? Like, how did you come in? You've got good bones is how I would describe it, right? Like you said, you've got great product market fit. You have the start of a really great company and you've got inbound interest. So you've got all the good bones, like, what do you start with?
Jeff (12:27): Yeah, there were two things. One, our product demos really well. It's a beautiful product. Ease of use. The design is really what stood out as a differentiator. So first was what makes this product different? And, you know, I came from a background where I had set up phone systems in the past. One of the many things I did at Lawline of all my jobs there was I set up our company phone system. It was ShoreTel. It's actually a company called N5 networks, which was acquired by ShoreTel soon after, but I set up that system. And so it was like, you know, it's a baby boy product. He still had the landline, phones, everything plugged into some thing in the, in the back room. Every time I went to go troubleshoot it, I was unplugging wires and shutting off the internet accidentally.
Jeff (13:12): I didn't know how to train anybody cause it was just difficult to use. And so I recall my first experience using Aircall and it was just, I signed up for my own trial. It was just this wow moment because what took me weeks to set up, I already had this, I was already set up in the app. Like I signed up for trial. I had a phone number. I signed up for a Zimbabwe phone number. I was adding my teammates, I had everything set up. And so to me that was this wow moment where I really felt that from the side that I, when I was a consumer, I could empathize with that. And so first thing I really, we really thought about what is, how do we just show that to people right off the bat? How do we get that out? And so, you know, we've always focused on trial experiences and trying to get people to the point of a demonstration. And so we focused a lot on events, inviting people into our office, holding community events. We'd demo people and show the product at, at those at those events. I used to do a lot with webinars, like really bottom of funnel webinars, product driven, and just get it out there and get some early customers coming in the door.
Kathleen (14:27): And when you say events, did you, do you mean like local events or describe to me?
Jeff (14:32): We did both. We would do some trade shows. Really costly. So we were cautious, cautious of doing too much there, but yeah, we would do local events, invite people into our office and gather 50, 60 people in the sales or CX community, holding events. Do a little bit of a community around it. And then eventually we were able to follow up with them, you know, show them a demo, something like that. And it gets some early cost get, just get a few customers in the door, essentially. Yeah. Yeah. And then that would say that scaled into more questions. Okay. So we've got some things working there. Then the more challenges came with, how do we really scale and grow that more quickly? And I think one thing that's been very unique to Aircall in our marketing has been our focus on partnerships and integrations.
Jeff (15:28): And so by far the biggest driver of growth in North America has been that we've partnered with very strong companies to integrate the product for one and then to drive co-marketing and co-selling efforts. And so how do we build a brand in North America? Well, easiest way to do that was to try to attach ourselves to HubSpot and Intercom and Zendesk and companies that were already doing a great job. If we could just attach ourselves to that, that would be fantastic. And so we worked really hard to build integrations, drive up app rankings on their app exchanges, do co-marketing efforts where we did all the work. Just hope that the, let us slap the logo on there and, and help distribute it. We worked to get into onboarding emails. So it came out from a HubSpot, for example, you know, like you signed up for HubSpot, they'd recommend Aircall, one of the apps to sign up for. And so we just started attaching ourselves to these brands through product integration and then co-marketing efforts and it kind of organically grew from there.
Kathleen (16:38): So what I think there's a lot of people that talk about co-marketing and talk about channels and things like that. Can you talk a little bit more about what it takes to, to really make that partnership successful? Like you talked about doing a lot of the work, like dissect that a little bit for me.
Jeff (16:56): Well, it has to start with the need. And so we tried to go beyond the co-marketing was a way that helped promote a dual need that their customers also had. And so the integration product part is really critical. And I think, I think that's been a core thing is that the product and the marketing are really integrated at Aircall. And they always have been whether it's that trial experience and getting the customer to a wow moment, whether it's being able to have a, an amazing UI UX that we can demo really well. Or if it's on the integration front so that we are partnering with companies, building integrations into their product, to help them solve a problem. And then leveraging that from a marketing standpoint, how do we comarket with them? And so, you know, HubSpot, for example, timing is great.
Jeff (17:46): They're building out their CRM system, a sales hub, soon after they started building out support hub. And what's something you needed, you go from Salesforce to HubSpot, you need a dialer on top of that. And so we built that integration and we solved that problem for them. So somebody goes from Salesforce to HubSpot, I'm a HubSpot account executive, and I'm getting an inquiry of, okay, I'm using, you know, NewVoiceMedia with, with Salesforce. I need something new because you guys don't integrate with HubSpot, or you guys don't integrate with NewVoiceMedia. What can I use? They, and eventually we got top of mind with the HubSpot team so that, Hey, we promote Aircall and that's fine.
Kathleen (18:24): And how do you get top of mind? Like what, what, any advice? Yeah. Like what would be your advice for somebody who's just starting that process?
Jeff (18:31): A lot of work. We, we put a lot of focus on our partnerships from both the, we have that team. That's been a part of marketing, but we focused on the partnership itself, relentlessly. And so first to get one customer and do unscalable things, you know, if we got, when we were trying to really grow on certain apps with certain apps like HubSpot or a customer with it, with a K or a Intercom, those first customers, they were very meaningful. They, they have an issue. You've got to hop on it immediately. If you just got up to go above and beyond to show that, okay, I've referred over, you know, Aircall on top of HubSpot and, or I have an app that comes into attaches in the HubSpot. We have to know that if I'm the HubSpot team, I'm probably going to get a question about this integration of it's not working.
Jeff (19:24): And so if that sort of stuff comes up, you have to solve it immediately. Give HubSpot a really good experience from your side. Let them know the partnership's valuable. Gain traction over time with getting good reviews you know, lots of installs. Helping them. If you think of HubSpot, for example, they had a lot of focus on growing their ecosystem. One part of growing their ecosystem was showing that apps are getting installed. So how do we get as many apps installed as humanly possible on top of that ecosystem, regardless of whatever we have to do, and we can get their attention in that fashion. So we really focused on just hustle, really? How do we, how do we get a lot of installs? How do we drive an amazing experience with those partners? How do we solve a need for them? And then eventually if we can service them enough and give enough value, we can be top of mind for them.
Kathleen (20:16): Was there anything in particular that you can point to that really drove the growth in installs?
Jeff (20:25): There's a number of things that say there's no, there's no one magic thing. I can't think of one magic, you know, activity we did that that opened the flood Gates. It was just a lot of work. It was getting one, doing one-on-one on outbound on just a specific focus for three months, sign up many customers in the segments. It was SEO, you know, searching for what competitive terms around our partner plus phone system or call center or apps on that exchange. Could we do it was positioned our website in a certain way that facilitate people to go towards one direction. So let's just, a lot of activities, you know, they all come, they all sort of compounded. I think that the main thing is that we, we focus that as a core part of the strategy and the product was solid there. And so we, we combine the, the marketing effort and the product effort together. I think that was the, you know, that was sort of the kicker. And then was just a lot of activities after that.
Kathleen (21:32): And you talked about also one of the things that was key was really getting a lot of reviews in their partner marketplace, if you will, or their app marketplace. Were there any strategies in particular that you use that you found to be successful for getting those reviews? Cause I've, I've been in the position of having to get reviews before, and sometimes it can feel like, like pulling teeth, trying to get people they'll, they'll say yes, yes, I'll do it. And then they never do. Or, you know, like how did you, how did you approach that?
Jeff (22:01): Just pay people. An email and pay then a $25 gift card. This is pretty much our only tactic.
Kathleen (22:09): Yeah. Well, Hey, if it works, if it works. Yeah,
Jeff (22:12): Yeah, yeah. Pay for the review.
Kathleen (22:15): And did you, did you invest in any like review site marketing outside of your partner relationships? Like, did you do any G2 Crowd or any well now?
Jeff (22:25): Yeah. Yeah. So, so I'd say on top of the partner, which, which has always been still is one of our key drivers. We've always had an intense focus on inbound as well. So review sites have always been a core part of that. And you know, we could, we could control that. And so we tried to look at like, what are the things in the world that we can control? We have customers, lot of them are happy. We can control number of reviews that we have on G2 and Capterra. We just have to hustle and do it. And so we focused heavily on the first, the app review sites where we thought we could gain SMB market share, which is what we were more focused on at the moment, really small business. And we focused on Get App, Capterra. Sort of winning the awards for those those categories or those those platforms promoted them and so on. And then eventually we would spend money on them to help promotions as well.
Kathleen (23:23): Nice. So, all right. I totally took you down a winding path there cause I love, I just like getting into details. So you formed these partner relationships and that really began to kind of like heat up your, your lead gen and customer acquisition. I'm going to turn it back over to you now.
Jeff (23:41): Yeah. We did it with HubSpot, Intercom. We had a great with, still do, and that makes sense. Aircall plus Intercom, you've got chat and phone together. So I'm really focused on co-marketing with them. Co-Marketing calendars with them. We developed a couple of unique products with them as well. We have one product called Aircall now. It's not something we still actively promote, but I had a ton of buzz around it at the time, which was you could convert an Intercom chat directly into a phone call and that phone call would go directly to the rep that you were chatting with at the time. So when you got really innovative with the, those types of activities, and then we turn that into an app ecosystem. So initially we hustled, we built all the, all the apps.
Jeff (24:28): We tried to create partnerships with them. And then at some point along that growth cycle, we thought to ourselves, well, we could be that company that other companies are building into and then trying to get leads off of with us and partner with us. And then we could do lead sharing in that way. And so at some point we turned that into an open marketplace for apps that could be built on top of the Aircall market, on top of the air call API. We publish them on our app exchange and that's something we've been focused on the last year and a half, two years or so. And we've had 60, 70 companies build out apps on top of us and that's scaling quite well. And so we kind of use that as a, okay, we had to really hustle, get it done. We still do that. How do we enable other companies to do that also? Create a flywheel effect from that.
Kathleen (25:21): And now you're in the opposite position of people wanting to, whereas you were bending over backwards to make a relationship work with HubSpot, hopefully now there are people bending over backwards to make a relationship work with you.
Jeff (25:31): Yes, it's both. It's both ways still. Yeah, we grew those out. Gorgeous customer. I think I can name many, many partners that we've had that have been really strong for us. And that's been a big driver in other areas, you know, inbound, outbound.
Kathleen (25:49): When did you add outbound into the mix? How soon?
Jeff (25:53): Early? Pretty early.
Kathleen (25:56): And did you insource, like, did you have your own team doing the outbound or did you outsource that? How did you handle it?
Jeff (26:03): In house? From the start and different regions respond? You know, the international part is very interesting with with outbounds in certain regions. You know I think of France, for example. The response rates are just 3X, 2X higher than they are in, in the US for example. And so we've grown them everywhere. We've had SDRs, we have an SDR team in France for Germany, Spain, for UK, for APAC and North American team as well, although it has slightly different oddities and unique points to the local markets to grow. But yeah, we, we scaled that out and built it early. We want to do it in house and I found it particularly valuable, not just from the pipeline generation standpoint, but early on when we were first starting to go to market. I mean, that's how you get to know and experiment who your customers are. You can try different segments out, you can iterate, you can see what messages that respond, that you get are being responded to.
Kathleen (27:16): And did that team sit in marketing or in sales?
Jeff (27:21): It sat in, it sat in sales. Yeah, it sat in sales, but worked really closely with myself. And there was a brief period of time, again, this is like startup sort of life, I guess, but there's a brief period of time in 2018, late 2017 and most of 2018 that I headed up the North American sales team. And so it's kind of a blurry question because it was all coming in to me.
Kathleen (27:46): So that, you know, it's so funny because I always say like, every marketer should work as, as a salesperson at some point in their career, it makes you such a better marketer.
Jeff (27:54): Yeah, totally. And there's no better way to get to, yeah, to get to know the customer, to understand what messages are resonating. I mean, the, the campaigns we're running to figure out what what pockets of customers are responding, what messages are they responding to?
Kathleen (28:12): And to know how, like what salespeople need from marketing.
Jeff (28:15): Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's, that's, that's how we figured out what integrations to build. That's what we figured out. The messaging on the website, and we're still using a lot of that copy today. And a lot of the information that we found throughout balance is, is, you know, actively in our, our our marketing today.
Kathleen (28:31): Nice. Now I really want to hear like, kind of the parallel story of all of this is happening. This is what you're doing from a strategy standpoint. How did your team evolve? Because you joined and it was you and one other person and how many marketers are there on your team right now?
Jeff (28:51): There's approximately a 30 marketers.
Kathleen (28:53): Oh my gosh.
Jeff (28:55): And then we've got another 10 or so in channeled partnership.
Kathleen (28:59): Talk to me about like, how did that evolve? Like what positions did you add first?
Jeff (29:06): Yeah, so we're very demand focused. Most of our early hires were in demand. I like that mentality when you're first starting because demand can hack, not a word I'm using frequently anymore, but demand can kind of piece together and hack product marketing to a degree in messaging. We could figure out contents because you have to answer those parts to get the, to get pipeline generated. So by default, you have to experiment, you have to figure things out. You could start the other side and really focus on product marketing and messaging did not solve the demand part, not piece everything together. And so I think first off was what am I okay. Being okay. And what would I like to be really great with? And we really want to be good on demand, acquisition marketing, build up our SEO strategy, figure out what channels could really work for us.
Jeff (30:08): And then have an experimental mindset when it came to customer cohorts, you know messaging, all those activities. And so our first hire was in demand for North America. We hired multiple content marketers at that point to build out our SEO which you put a lot of effort into. We then hired we, then continued on events cause we have been marketing early on was, as I mentioned, was working well for us. We hired on events. We started adding on partner account managers to handle our partners. And it, it kind of scaled from there. Eventually we got to the point where everything was being housed in the US and I started seeing a huge imbalance at that point. We're putting all this emphasis on the US and then just trying to translate things for Europe which was a mistake.
Jeff (31:03): You can't just translate content and call it localized you know, localized market ready work. And so we then, one of our first hires then went out to Paris to lead our growth efforts in Europe. And she ended up building out a pretty large team. That team was actually larger than the US team at this point because we localized everything, we built original content for Spanish market, for the German market and so on. And so we've really focused heavily on that content marketing portion there. And then I would say we delayed product marketing till about hire 15 or so, a year and a half year. And I hired our first product marketer. It was too late, but I think at that point, for every role that we've had, and, you know, I think we, before we expand into a new area, if it's demand focused, want to know this is what to double down on.
Jeff (32:00): If it's not demand focused, then I really want to feel some pressure. Like we have to have it, we can't hustle any harder than we're hustling. And if we don't have this, it's really going to hold us back versus versus getting into that mentality when you start to scale, which is you know, like, Oh, we really need customer marketing, but really nobody's, we could do customer marketing if we just prioritized it internally, or, you know, it gave somebody a new opportunity or figured out a way to move pieces around. And so he, we brought product marketing on second. We brought operations on third. We don't have a director of operations though. We've kind of more leveraged our revenue operations team for that. And then more recently we brought on brand marketing as well. So if I go through our lineage, it was demand, content, and then doing that same thing in Europe. Product marketing next. It's really help us figure out what cohorts and sort of scaling different verticals, enabling sales to go up market and these activities. And then starting to bring on brand managers to think about, you know, our, our, how we are competitively different in terms of our style, our tone of voice, all these activities that we have. We have a good longterm vantage point of our our strategy.
Kathleen (33:30): How many direct reports do you have today?
Jeff (33:33): I have, let's see. It's it's changed a little bit recently, so I have eight at the moment.
Kathleen (33:41): Yeah. That's about, I feel like that's about the max that you can have before it starts to feel like crazy. You're in one on ones all, all week long.
Jeff (33:50): Yeah. Yeah. So those teams are North American demand, European demand, product marketing, brands. We have an ecosystem head person that runs our marketplace, that new apps that are installed on our marketplace. We have a head of developer evangelism as well, who's one of our cofounders and he's responsible for essentially the marketing for developers to come build stuff on top of Aircall. And then our head of brand as well. And then the last two that sort of fringe with our North American team, which would likely now report into marketing longterm would be our partnerships head and head of channel sales.
Kathleen (34:31): Okay. All right. So I could talk to you forever and there are some more questions I have, but you are a very busy man clearly. So the question I have for you is if you were talking to somebody who right now was in the same shoes you were in three years ago, like coming in as the first, you know, head of marketing and like, and it's one or two people in the company and they, their goal is to scale the way you have. What advice would you give them?
Jeff (35:00): Well, I think there's, there's two seemingly separate concepts here. One is we really focused on what was, where could we find growth efficiently? Testing it, and then doubling down, while also placing some big bets along the way that were going to be necessary for two years down the line. And that's really critical because if we didn't do the big bets that weren't going to pay off for a long time, that we couldn't really test, we wouldn't have continued to grow. We would have grown in the short term, but not the long term. And so I think what we had done, and still do successfully is think of both the short and long term, an example. I think all the things I was mentioning earlier were sort of short term. That testing mentality and growing off of that, but then longterm, you, we had to answer some difficult questions.
Jeff (35:56): We've got to, we invested a lot in certain integrations and partnerships like Salesforce. We invested in channel which it was a lot of work to build up a channel team and direct sales. It's a lot of work to put into our marketplace and get apps to get built on top of the marketplace. On top of that marketplace, who was, are things that weren't going to payback for two years down the line, and we think they're going to work. But you have to place enough of those and and structure it in a way that you're okay if a couple of them don't work out fully and that the upside is going to be there. A couple of them do really, really well.
Kathleen (36:37): And you also, I would assume, need to have a CEO that has the same attitude. Cause it's one thing for you to feel like I'm going to place big bets and know that that's a big bet and it may or may not pan out. But like, I feel like that's the tricky thing as head of marketing. You know, there are lots of marketers who see the value in that, but if they're not really aligned with the C suite on that approach, then that can really backfire.
Jeff (37:01): Yes. Yes, totally. And I think that goes back to that original point though, which is what were the, what's the pre joining the company components that indicated this had an opportunity to be kind of special and the mindset of the CEO was a critical component of that.
Kathleen (37:20): Yeah. Wow. Well, like I said, I could pick your brain for hours, but I'm going to shift gears cause there's two questions I always ask all of my guests. So before we wrap up, I want to make sure I ask you. The first is the podcast is all about inbound marketing. So I'm curious if there's a particular company or individual that you think is really kind of setting the gold standard for what it means to do inbound marketing well these days.
Jeff (37:44): Well, I, can't not say Intercom because I just love Intercom and I'm not just saying that because of our partnership. But, but when I originally joined, I remember our, our one of, one of the members of our board interviewed me and asked me if, if we could build one company, who would you build it after? Emulate? Intercom was my go to response. Just love their brand or their content strategy. And it's just they're, they're, they're quite inspiring. I think they've always done a good job. Individual named Shane Murphy runs their marketing now. He's quite fantastic. So also love the work that there's a few answers to this from different ways. Like I love the sort of mojo that Gong has built. I find that inspiring. Drift's done a really cool job on, on social media and there's definitely parts to take out of their playbook for what they've done, what they've created. I also think that Gorgias a company that we work closely with who's in the help desk space does a really fantastic job of having that growth sort of, you know, hacker mindset. So there's a lot of companies that I think do a really admirable job on the inbound side.
Kathleen (39:00): Nice. I like those examples. You are not the first person to mention Intercom, so it's not just that he's biased. There's definitely something there. Cause I've heard people say that before. Second question. A lot of the marketers I talk to say their biggest challenge is just keeping up with everything in digital marketing, cause it changes so quickly these days. How do you personally stay up to date on, on all of it?
Jeff (39:23): I mean, I read as much as humanly possible. Both on marketing and not on marketing, I find a lot of inspiration from, you know, non-marketing books. Like there's gosh, whether it's like bio's or, you know, stories of generals and strategies type of books, I really, really enjoy. There's a book called Thinking in Systems, which is Donna Meadows, which is just a fantastic book about logical mindsets, like logical thinking and the systems that can help, can basically create the infrastructure for anything. And I find that to be a really fascinating book as, as it applies to marketing because you know, marketing is an insanely complex system as it grows kind of logically about it. You can, you can tie things back and I, I get a lot of inspiration books like that.
Jeff (40:21): And then outside of, it's more, more specific direct marketing related. I mean, any of the sort of traditional blogs, whether it's Saastr or whether it's Tom Tungaz, whether it's your traditional like SEO land, you know, SEMrush, those types of things. I love, I love inbound. I love SEO. And so I try to read as much as possible on those activities. And I'd say also Revenue Collective. I mean, gosh, I don't know what I've learned more just like life as a whole, but also marketing, because you have every great marketer on the planet in that group and you can post messages to them. So I'm giving, I'm giving a shout out to the Revenue Collective, but gosh, that's how we met.
Kathleen (41:11): That's how we met.
Jeff (41:11): Yeah. I think that's the community where I've just learned so so much. And you can just go through the logs and read old history of conversations in there and that's, that's an evening of reading right there.
Kathleen (41:21): Yeah, that's great. I would second that. So if you like autobiographies, as you said, I don't know if you've already read this, but my one hot tip for you, and I am shamelessly copying this from David Cancel at Drift because he's the one that I got this tip from, read the autobiography of Arnold Schwartzenegger. Actually has some of the most amazing like marketing and business and life lessons. I was totally captivated by it and I mean, that would not be who I would normally pick up a book off the shelf by, so yeah, it's great.
Jeff (41:55): Yeah, I will, I will. I'm gonna play this part for my wife because she knows I have a fascination with him.
Kathleen (42:03): Have you read it yet? Have you read it?
Jeff (42:06): I read like the first half of it, I have not read the completion of it. Actually. It was Audible. Like I was doing it on my own.
Kathleen (42:11): I did, I listened to it when I worked out, actually I would listen to it while I was lifting weights and I'd be like, okay. I mean, if Arnold can do what he did, I could lift 15 pounds. Right. So it's so good. I loved that book. But anyway, enough about Arnold. So if somebody is listening to this and wants to learn more about Aircall or connect with you online, what's the best way for them to do that?
Jeff (42:35): Well I always have to say this. An easy way is to call me on my Aircall number, (646) 712-9381. And you'll get a, you get a nice voicemail experience there as well as if you call it, then I've got a lot of lines. So I can, I can, I can distribute that and not ruin my you know, my, my cell phone for,
Kathleen (42:59): I think you're the first guest I've ever had who's given out their phone number. So I love this.
Jeff (43:04): That's it? That's it. You don't, you don't, don't email me. You can LinkedIn me, I suppose, because it's easy to, to find my my LinkedIn. But yeah, it's just drop an Aircall and that will get the message and tell me how to contact you back.
Kathleen (43:19): Cool. I think everybody should test that out. That's fantastic. All right. Well, if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast, preferably a five star review, but of course, whatever review you think it merits cause that's how other folks find us. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, please tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Jeff.
Jeff (43:47): Thank you, Kathleen.
Podcasting has taken off as a business marketing strategy, but while many businesses have podcasts, not all of them are successful. Here's what it takes to get your podcast in front of the right audience.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Motion Agency co-founder Justin Brown shares the strategies he uses to promote both his own podcast, and the podcasts he produces for clients.
Motion Agency provides podcasting services for B2B tech marketers and Justin has worked with a lot of different companies to get better marketing results through podcasting.
In this interview, he talks about how to promote your podcast, including repurposing the content, sharing on social, using graphic assets to gain greater visibility and more.
Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Motion Agency website
- Connect with Justin on LinkedIn
- Check out the two Slack channels that Justin mentioned:
- Revenue Collective
- RevGenius
Transcript Kathleen (00:01)Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And my guest this week is Justin Brown, who is the co founder of motion. Welcome Justin,
Justin (00:20)Kathleen, thank you so much for having me.
Kathleen (00:23)Yeah. it's so funny because you and I connected, you were connecting with me as a potential guest and I'm thinking, Oh, you know, I wonder where he is and we were talking and you're right around the corner in Northern Virginia. So it's kind of nice to have a local guy on the podcast.
Justin (00:39)Yeah, it was funny when we were talking, I know you're in Annapolis and I'm here in old town Alexandria. And for those who don't know, we're like on opposite sides of DC, but very similar towns on on the water. So we're, we're close in proximity and kind of just the, the place that we live. Yeah.
Kathleen (01:00)Yes. Like twin cities in spirit. Well, before we get started can you maybe talk a little bit about yourself what you do, your journey and also what motion does?
Justin (01:14)Yeah, absolutely. So I have an interesting journey. I started my career in sales development. That was my first exposure to marketing. When I was doing it, I didn't really realize, and this was before the time of sales development falling under the, the marketing umbrella. So I thought I was just going to be a salesperson that was going to be my career. Then from there I ended up becoming a head of sales for an agency and you can already kind of see how these things are all starting to splice together. You know, I got this sales development background, then I go work for an agency. Fast forward to today. I've started my own agency where we help B2B tech companies to launch podcasts. So that's where I am today. I work with and talk to CMOs regularly. I have a podcast of my own. So I work with CMOs and tech as my clients, I talk to CMOs and tech on my podcast and that's really what I do with my life.
Kathleen (02:13)Awesome. Well, I'm a CMO in tech, so, and I'm also passionate about podcasting. Yeah, I have two podcasts right now, one this one, and then the other is one I do for my company. And actually I had one before this, so this is my third. I'm a three time podcaster.
Justin (02:31)Wow.
Kathleen (02:32)So big, big fan of it. And you know,
Justin (02:35)So maybe you can tell other CMOs why it's so important.
Kathleen (02:39)Oh, well, I mean, I could, that could be a whole episode in and of itself. Like honestly I could go on and on. It's so valuable for so many reasons. And we have actually a couple times on this podcast, talked about the value of podcasting, but what we really haven't dived into as much is for those who are podcasting, what are some things you need to do to really build your audience and make your podcast successful? And that was one of the reasons I was excited to talk with you because you also helped your clients with that. And specifically you have some thoughts around LinkedIn. So I was hoping that we could start there.
Justin (03:19)Yeah, for sure. So I think where I want to start is, pod fade is a real term. I think the average podcast last five episodes and that's because the startup cost is very, very minimal to start a podcast. I mean, really, I could, you could hit record on this zoom conversation like we're doing, you could hit record on a voice note on your phone and call it a podcast. And it sure is the issue is, is it takes time. It takes, thought it takes energy and what are you getting out of it? And I think that people the, as this podcasting medium is new into B2B for a long time, it was even in business, a B2C focused for the most part, people had B2B podcasts, but you know, it was a, here's how, you know, Chobani, yogurt got in stores across America or whatever, because you're trying to appeal to wide audiences.
Justin (04:17)That's something that my mom would listen to. My mom's not going to listen to a CMO in tech talk about how their Salesforce integrations are changing the game. But I would listen to that. And so we're building out this world of smaller niche podcasts. Well, that's great for the content, but it's tough for conversions. People are like, I want to see an increased web traffic to my site. We're releasing episodes. Why aren't people filling out forms saying that they heard about us or from us from our podcast. And the reason is, is because that shouldn't be what the focus of your podcast is, and that kind of breaks some traditional inbound mentality, which is do content, get leads, get MQL, get results. And that's not, that's not exactly what this is. And I can dive into some of the approaches that we recommend or go really whatever direction you want me.
Kathleen (05:25)Well, before we do that, I just want to say amen. Because I mentioned that I had a podcast before the ones I'm doing now, and, and that was exactly kind of my lesson learned was I started the first podcast when I had my, I was, I owned an agency at the time and I was like, Oh, I'm going to start a podcast and get leads. Exactly like you talked about. And I did it for, I don't know, 20 something episodes. And I was like, yeah, this is not going to get me leads. And so then you really have to think about like, so what's my goal as you said. And, and I think, I do think a lot of first time podcasters jump in without really thinking through the goal and the strategy and all that. And so when I created this podcast, it was more about raising brand awareness getting, and at the time I still owned my agency, obviously don't have it right now, but it was about getting our name into the conversation in the marketing world.
Kathleen (06:20)And, and it's morphed over time. Like for me now, the goal is relationship building. Like I it's, to me, this is an amazing way to meet experts within the marketing industry and to form relationships that can lead to other opportunities, but then also secondary to that, or maybe even not secondary, like I just learn a lot as a host. It's kind of amazing. So everybody's goals are different, but I could not agree with you more that for the vast majority of podcasts lead gen is really not. It's not a great strategy for that
Justin (06:53)Can be a great strategy for target account lead gen. I will say that so we recommend that you go after five different personas for your podcast. And if we talk about that relationship building aspect what you're going to do is get relationships with the people in your space, customers, internal subject matter experts, that's to industry influencers, partners. And then the final one is prospects. You know, the same idea of sending someone, something in the mail to try to capture their attention. You can bring them onto your podcast to highlight them and create a relationship with someone that you didn't previously know. Obviously don't just flip it right away into a sales call and try to you know, kind of pull the chair out from underneath of them, but they understand, you know, if you've been reaching out and trying to get in front of them, and then you have a different ask, which is, Hey, I was wondering, OK you don't need to come on my demo, but would you be open to being featured on our podcast? They get it. And usually they're excited about that. Anyway, people like to be able to talk about their personal brand, but it should be a flavor of those five things with traditional lead gen only being a small portion of that.
Kathleen (08:13)Yeah. And what's interesting to me is that, and I can only speak from my personal experience, you know, I've had the opportunity to interview people who otherwise, I can't imagine why they would ever have a conversation with me. You know what I mean? Like not to talk myself down, but but you know, people will say yes, a lot of the time to a podcast interview because it is great marketing for them. And so some of the people I've interviewed, it's been the result of purely cold outreach, like Goldie Chan, great example. I really wanted to meet her. She's somebody who's an amazing LinkedIn video creator. She's actually moved on to other things now, but I just had no, like outside of my podcast, I had no entree whatsoever, no reason for that. She would take my call, you know, but I tweeted her and I was like, I would just really love to interview you for the podcast. And she said, yes. And how awesome is that? And now I have a relationship with this person that I just think is amazing. And I've learned so much from, and you know, she's just one example and there are handfuls of them in the course of the podcast history, cause I'm almost 160 episodes in. So I've had so many great opportunities to meet people who are like my marketing idols, but also other people who maybe I have never heard of, but who are amazing. So I love that part of it.
Justin (09:34)Yeah. I actually just released on LinkedIn the other day, a post about how it's a great way to have conversations with customers. You know, you hear all the time, people say marketing should listen to what the customer is saying. So how do you do that? Right. Well, here's one option. Let's do a sales call our prospects going to be a hundred percent honest on sales calls about all the things that they're going through and experiencing. So bring your prospects and customers on and have these 30 to 60 minute conversations, not about your technology or what it is that you sell, but just about what they're experiencing and going through similarly to you, I've recorded a couple of hundred episodes. I actually know what CMOs go through. I know what is frustrating. I know. And that wasn't me saying, so, you know, what are you dealing with in terms of content marketing and how can I help?
Justin (10:26)It was like, I got a full picture of what they're experiencing and going through to then say, wow, this is what these, these folks are good at what they like to do and enjoy. And this is where they maybe need a little bit of help. You know, your other option. Your other option with the customer is to say, Hey, do you want to take 30 minutes to talk? I don't know about you all, but me personally, I have enough zoom meetings during the day that if I'm buying something from somebody, I probably just want them to give me the service and you know, and nothing against them or anything. But if they said, Hey, Justin, you know, would you mind coming on our podcast and talking to us and spending some time together there? Okay, you've got my attention. And then you can go talk to your customer. Maybe they drop, you know, a line about how they're using your technology. It's not a testimonial, but you know, maybe they talk about it or what have you. So there's a lot of things
Kathleen (11:18)That you can do. Yeah. Now, okay. We clearly are big fans of this as a medium. Again, we could do a whole episode on this. So let's say you're podcasting and you've got these episodes and it is totally the tree that fell in the forest, right? If there's nobody there to see it fall, does it make a sound? So talk me through how you counsel your clients on what they should do once the episode's been created to get it out there into the world.
Justin (11:48)For sure. So I think that is the big move that we made was we were a content marketing agency. We will, we'll build your website, we'll write a white paper for you, whatever, you know, we'll do video, whatever it may be. And what we found was when we launched our podcast in 2019, was that it's not just about this little audio recording that you get, that you throw up on Apple podcasts and Spotify. What we found was what it really is, is capturing 30 to 40 minutes with someone in your space, those five profiles that I mentioned before, and then getting to create content out of it, it's the best type of content that you can create. It's people having organic conversations about what they're experiencing in your space. And so then your promotion strategy becomes around the content itself. Not necessarily just about hey, do you want to listen to my podcast and hoping that people convert then your conversion strategy becomes very similar to anything you'd be doing with content anyway, promoting your content, getting it out there in front of the people, in your space and providing useful assets that people want to consume because they're actually getting educated.
Justin (13:13)You know, I'm an agency owner. If I go out there and tell a bunch of CMOs how they should be doing their job, they're not going to listen to me. But if I say, Hey, I've interviewed a hundred CMOs. And here's what each one of them are saying. All of a sudden, I start to get people's attention. So if we fast forward to your question, which is, you know, how are you suggesting to promote the podcast? The answer is, is using the content on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on the platforms that you use for me, it's mainly LinkedIn. And so we have, we chop each episode up into eight different deliverables because people consume content in different ways. There are video assets that are, that we create called audiograms. There are imagery which are called quote cards, which are static images with a quote on them.
Justin (14:02)We have featured articles that go out that are actually blog, you know, long form blog posts written about things that were said on the transcripts and what you need to do. And what we advise that our clients do is it's not just about posting to your company page. It'll be interacts with a company page. Maybe they throw you a like here and there. Maybe they say, eh, you know, they see someone who they know and they say, you know, Hey Jimmy, you did a great job on that episode night, nice to work. But for the most part, what people want to do is they want to interact with their people and they want to, they want you to have opinions about the content. So I don't just say, Hey, I released another episode, check it out because people aren't on people go to LinkedIn and to consume content there.
Justin (14:55)So by me saying, go check out my podcast, you know, search Apple podcasts. So if somebody's literally going to read my post on LinkedIn, pull out their phone, and then they're going to type in my podcast, tech qualified. Then they're going to throw in headphones. They're going to sit there for 30 or 40 minutes and listen to it. Probably not. And that's not what I want my content to do. I already captured this episode. I have my set of listeners. What I want to do is I want to take hard-hitting quotes. I developed another one of the deliverables is a transcript. And I pour over that transcript. What were some maybe controversial things that were said, some interesting things that were said that are different that might get people talking, take that, give my opinion of it on LinkedIn, and then let other people start to chime in and interact with me, not with motion, my company and they're talking to, and we're not Wendy's.
Justin (15:50)And you know, I know I use this example with you, Kathleen, but Wendy's is a great social profile. They do a great job. They're funny. People tweet at them because they want Wendy's to tweet back. I would say 95%, maybe more, and this is not a hard number, but are brands that people don't care if they interact with they want to interact with people. They want to interact with you. They want you to have opinions and then to chime in comments, start conversation on LinkedIn around that. So I'll stop there. I've got a lot more thoughts here, but I'll let you kind of interject and give your, your thoughts as well.
Kathleen (16:27)Justin, you and I have like a mind-meld going, because I just did a rant on LinkedIn about this yesterday. That like, I don't know. I don't know why more people don't understand this more marketers, more specifically more executives. What you just said is so important. So I want to take a pause. If you are listening, I want to repeat something he said, which is that basically nobody wants to really follow and engage with a company. There are companies that have really great witty social media presences. And I would say those are like few and far between, and that's great if you have that, but it's still no substitute for people engaging with people. So think about your own behavior. When you go to LinkedIn. I know when I go there, I'm not like, Ooh, that corporation just posted again. I got to reply to them.
Kathleen (17:20)No, not at all. I might look at their posts, but I'm not like carrying on conversations with companies on LinkedIn. I am carrying on conversations with people 100% of the time, but it's so fascinating to me because when I talk to CEOs, so many of them don't understand why it's important for not only them, but like multiple people within the company to have strong personal brands. I mean, the, the best companies, I was just discussing this with somebody yesterday. The best companies I think on LinkedIn are the companies where it's like in the culture. So like Drift is a great example of that. Like all of their employees are really active on LinkedIn. I want to say it's probably part of the job description. Like everybody's doing it. They're all doing it really well. It's baked in, there's probably really good training and they have an amazing presence that people really engage with versus that company that just like posts, self promotional stuff to their feed all the time. And that's it. It's just so boring. The ladder is so boring. So again, I totally agree with you.
Justin (18:27)Yeah. And, and I think that's what, and what the podcast does is it gives you something to talk about, you know, for me and I get it, there are so many people that are out there that feel that they, that they have imposter syndrome or no, one's going to care about what they have to say. And for me, the podcast gave me a voice because I wasn't using only my own ideas to go out there and start to talk. I was taking ideas from the people in my space and then giving my own opinion on them. So they gave me kind of clout if you will. Because these are recognizable names in my space to the people in my space. And once people see that, then you know, I actually have a topic that I can talk to because it's clearly a topic that the people in my space care about because they talked about it on the podcast.
Justin (19:23)So I think, you know, the common misconception, if we go back to it, is that a podcast is going to do the work for you. What a podcast is going to do is it's going to create the foundation of content for you to be able to distribute, to put on your site stuff that people are actually going to care about and then stuff for you to talk about. And you mentioned executives, you know, that's one of the biggest reasons that we recommend bringing on internal subject matter experts onto your podcast, get them to be evangelists of the show, get them to start to see that they have a voice, empower the people in your organization to get out there and start talking about what it is that you're doing.
Kathleen (20:03)Yeah, it's, it's so important. So let's say somebody is listening and they're thinking, okay, I have a podcast, or I'm totally gonna create one and bought into this notion that it can be the thing that seeds my contact, my content on LinkedIn. It gives me something to talk about. Can you talk a little bit about like, how you go about building your personal brand on LinkedIn and how you like get a little more granular on how you use that content?
Justin (20:29)Yeah, for sure. So a few things with your posts. Try to follow some guidelines of writing copy for LinkedIn. There are all sorts of books that are being written about the way that people digest copy on LinkedIn. So just kind of separate your lines a little bit so that it makes it easy for the, those reading. That's, that's simple in terms of the tactical approach to it. Consistency is King on LinkedIn. You get rewarded for being consistent on the platform. You will increase your visibility. So for me personally, I put out one post a day and this is what I recommend for my clients and anybody who I'd be talking to one post a day, have it go out early in the morning so that it's there all day long, maybe plan it out, you know, the day before.
Justin (21:23)So you're not, or, you know, in advance. But try to make it personable, try and make yourself vulnerable and show, you know, what you're going through, what you're experiencing, some things that you heard or are seeing things that you feel like if you saw this, you would have an opinion on it cause you want to get people to interact with the content. So when you write your post and whether that has an image or video, or it's just, text-based try to have some sort of call to action to get people to chime in. And so that's your, your personal outpour right there. Now, if you're just getting started, the biggest recommendation that I can give to you, well, two things, one don't get frustrated when you don't have it. It's definitely comparison is the thief of joy kind of situation where you see you have this great post and then you see posts that for whatever reason you may feel are inferior to the posts that you posted yet.
Justin (22:28)It has 2000 reactions, 760 comments, and it was two lines that really didn't empower your community in any way. That's fine. Don't get discouraged by that. It takes time. Most of those people who have that kind of engagement have been at this for a long, for like a year plus posting every single day. And the second piece of that, that I was going to say is commenting on other people's content that is going to be thought. And my my personal approach with LinkedIn is I'm not there for hot takes. I try to be thoughtful and everything that I post for myself. And I try and think about if it's going to help the people in my community, which is CMOs in tech. And with my comments, I try to beat them. So it's not just 100% absolutely agree. I try to give, you know, almost like a pseudo, a post of my own. That's like maybe a full paragraph or, you know, two short paragraphs on my opinion that are thoughtful comments. And when you, I do that and I try and do 10 a day. And when you do that, you watch the the inbound connections increase. Because, I mean, I can't tell you how many connections I've had that said, I saw your comment on so, and so's, I thought it was insightful. I hope to hear more from you. And then the more connections that you get, then your content will then start to get interacted.
Kathleen (24:10)So I want to say something about that, because this is a debate I've had a lot with my husband. I don't talk about him. I don't talk about him a lot on this podcast. I'm just, cause I don't like to mix the personal with the work,
Justin (24:22)But I'm excited now for what it's going to be.
Kathleen (24:25)Yeah, well so it's so funny. The first podcast I ever had was called, he said, she said like a marketing and sales podcast and he's a sales person and I'm a marketer and it was just like us arguing with each other. And so one of the debates we have is around LinkedIn and accepting connection requests. And it's really interesting cause I've done, I wouldn't say I'm the most consistent person on the planet, but I try to post pretty often on LinkedIn and I, you know, I have opinions that I put out there and this and that, and I'm pretty into like building my brand. I hate to call it that, like building my brand on LinkedIn, but it's like other stuff I'm passionate about. So I talk about it. So my, and I, Oh, go ahead.
Justin (25:03)Oh, I was going to say is, you know, I know that people sometimes get weird about saying that. I do want to say if you're not someone who's super active on LinkedIn, it has gotten incredibly better over the last six months. So I, I have no shame in that game.
Kathleen (25:19)Yeah. Agreed. And, and so the debate we have is that I pretty much accept connection requests from like everybody. It's very rare that I don't accept one. There has to be some major red flags and that he, on the other hand is very picky. Like he has to know you and you know, this and that. And, and then he wonders why he doesn't get a lot of engagement with his LinkedIn posts. And I'm like, well, you don't have any connections. I'm like, I connect with everybody because why not? Like, what is the harm? LinkedIn has changed. When it first started it was definitely like, this is my network. And so for sure, there are times right now, and it just happened to me yesterday, when somebody will message me and say, I see that you're connected with so and so. Can you make an intro?
Kathleen (26:06)And I gotta be like, I'm sorry, I don't know that person from Adam, you know, they're in my, they're in my network, but I don't know them. And I'm sure he, on the other hand, if somebody reached out and asked him that same question would be like, absolutely, this is my good friend. So, it is a trade off. And I'm sure there's people have strong feelings about this, but I guess it depends on what your goal is. Like if your goal is to get your content out there to really build your audience, then you should be accepting lots and lots of connection requests. That's just my opinion. And it's probably controversial, but that's what I do.
Justin (26:40)I accept everybody. I mean, if I, if somebody, I heard a new term recently when somebody sends you a a LinkedIn request and immediately pitch slaps you, which I thought was funny, very common. So, you know, I get those just as much as the next person, but you just ignore them. I just ignore it or I say, no, thanks. Not right now. Because for me, I want my LinkedIn rewards content that gets interacted with. Yeah. So if that person who wants to, you know, pitch me I create a decent relationship with them and just say, Hey, you know, I'm not interested maybe in the future. But it's nice to connect with you. And that person starts throwing me. You know, reactions are basically likes or a comment on my content. I move up LinkedIn's algorithm. I get more, I get viewed by more folks, you know?
Justin (27:42)So for me, that's beneficial for some people who get frustrated by that, or, you know, they want to be able to go search through their connections quickly to go see, you know, who they want to talk to that day, especially for somebody in sales that could be valuable. It's kind of like their own, you know, personal Rolodex. I get it. For me, I want to have broad reach. And I want people interacting with my content. I want to get rewarded for that. So for me, the reason that I'm going out and I'm commenting is two fold. One is I want the people who I'm interacting with the people in my space to start to recognize my face and say, Hey, yo, that guy, you know, he always comments on my stuff. And you know, I appreciate that. And I remember him. So that's one. And then the second is that you increase the amount of inbound requests that you get. Because I don't want to go out and spam the entire LinkedIn universe with connection requests. I want those connection requests to be real. And it's really nice when they start to come my way and they come my way by interacting with others.
Kathleen (28:51)Yeah, totally. I mean, I will say again, I accept all the requests and since I've started using this approach that you're describing, like I probably get 10 new connection requests a day. So it does work for sure. Again, it's not for everybody, but certainly if you're in marketing or sales, I would say this is a game changer.
Justin (29:13)And if you don't feel like you have anything to say right now for yourself, commenting is still valuable. You don't need, and it's a lot less putting yourself out there because it's okay. If a comment gets no interactions every morning and I put a, I put a post out on this the other day and this is, you know, just me being like I've mentioned vulnerable and honest and telling real life stories. Every morning I, I come into my office and I take 10 coins and I put them out on my desk and I put them away one by one throughout the day for each comment that I do keeps me honest. I know my day's not over until I do that. And that is a way that I've really increased that inbound connection requests. I think I'm up like 250% since I stayed consistent with that.
Kathleen (29:58)There's an awesome trick. So again, pause, if you're listening super great way to build a habit, get 10 items can be coins, could be paperclips, whatever, floats your boat, put them on your desk. And over the course of the day, take one away. Every time you make a comment. And at the end of the day, you'll have no items left in the pile.
Justin (30:17)I know, I know the audience can't see, but yeah, this is my Boba Fett.
Kathleen (30:21)Give it a shake.
Justin (30:22)This is my Boba Fett piggy bank I got like five Christmases ago as a, as a joke gift. And yeah, I use it every day, take out my 10 coins. And I know that I don't get up from this desk and my day until I've commented on 10 people's things. And I know it sounds maybe silly or trivial.
Kathleen (30:41)Oh, whatever works it does. Yeah.
Justin (30:44)People appreciate it. Think about yourself. If you put something out there and you're nervous about what you were going to say or, or what you were going to put out and nobody interacts with it, everybody out there is feeling those same feelings and they appreciate the comments. And what you'll also find is it's best practice on LinkedIn to respond to all comments. So even if you see like a post that has 60 comments on it, you'll be surprised at the amount of people who will respond to what you have to say, regardless of how big their name is. And that's something that I've found to be really nice about the LinkedIn community is if you take the time to say something insightful, a lot of people are going to take the time to say something insightful back. And it's, it becomes this very much. You know, I scratch your back. You scratch mine kind of community.
Kathleen (31:37)Yeah. And I would, I agree with you. And I would say because of that, LinkedIn is more and more becoming a place where true conversations happen. Whereas it used to be a place where everybody just broadcasted their career updates. So it just really changed as a platform. A couple of things I want to just kind of like go back to first of all, you mentioned, there's a lot of content out there on how to create LinkedIn content. And you mentioned like spacing out your lines. And I had to chuckle because after you said pitch slap, it reminded me. There's also a term for this form of content on LinkedIn. And it's called broetry, as in poetry by bros. So if you Google the term broetry, you'll find examples of this. And it, it cracks me up. I heard somebody else call it the dead broets society.
Kathleen (32:25)People call it that cause it is a lot of guys that do it. But not exclusively. The people that post this way on LinkedIn and some people take it to like seriously annoying extremes where it's like three words per line. Like I called her. Hard line break. She responded. Hard line break. You know, I, I don't think you need to go to quite to that level, but the, but the bottom line is the reason people write that way is, is twofold. One, it is aligned with the way we like to read, which is we do not like walls of text and two, it actually plays into LinkedIn's algorithm because LinkedIn rewards posts on which people dwell for longer. So like they stay looking at it for longer. And if you put a lot of line breaks in your post and you make it a really long post, it, people are forced to essentially dwell longer on the post. So it's just interesting to me, but I wanted to mention that because I absolutely love the term broetry. But, and then the other two things I was going to mention and maybe ask you to talk about. One is tagging other people and when you should do that, and two is hashtags.
Justin (33:32)Okay. So Broetry, I had not heard the term, but it's funny because I think that it, it stemmed from one of the early creators of this was Josh Fetcher of BAMF media, BAMF media, broetry, it all kind of plays together. You can see kind of where that all came from. But I, you know, it, it works and I like reading stuff like that, but I'm the same way. If, if I write in a way that tries to just separate my lines to make it easy, to read the three words per line thing I don't read. I personally, maybe I'm just different with, I also don't like when there's a ton of emojis, it looks like it was written by someone who's a professional copywriter. Not like, Hey, this was just an idea.
Kathleen (34:21)Yeah. Like on my personal approach to emojis. And that's a, I'm glad you brought that up because that is another thing to talk about. Like a, I do think emojis are fine. Even in the most professional settings, I think they can be used really well if used correctly. Like my whole thing is, is it adding value? Like sometimes I'll use it to call attention to a particular line in my post or like if I wanted to bullet point something, but LinkedIn doesn't allow me to do bullet points. I'll find an emoji to sub as a bullet. But yeah, there are some people who take it just to crazy extremes
Justin (34:53)And that, that goes back to you know, I try to have these personality traits that are my personality traits that I embody on LinkedIn. And I always try to think of if it's providing value in the word, the trait that I try to embody for myself is thoughtful. You know, it is me putting this out there thoughtful, or is it just trying to draw attention? And I don't want my content to work because I had some growth hack. I want it to work because I'm helping the people in my space.
Kathleen (35:25)Amen. There are a few people I follow who use that format and they do it in a way that just is so contrived feeling like I get so sick and tired of their posts. Cause I'm like, Oh, another one of these. And then there are people who do it and they follow that format, but they're like really sharing something that's interesting. And that makes me want to read it. And that's thoughtful. So couldn't, couldn't agree more. You and I are just like on the same page about all of this, I feel like we need to find something to disagree about. Do you have any controversial opinions on hashtags?
Justin (36:02)I don't do so I'll go to the previous question, which was tagging people in it. I hate to sound like a broken record here, but I try to be thought I, I'm not going to do massive tag ins. What I try to do with my content again, if we go back to looking in the mirror, I'm an agency owner. People don't care that much about what I have to say in my space and that's fine. Believe me. I don't lose sleep about it at night. I've, I'm very comfortable in my own skin. And I think it helped me a lot as a professional to understand that as an agency owner people, don't net, maybe they'll care a little bit about all my personal opinions, but I try to, because I run a podcast. And because I talk to these people all the time, I try to bring in things that other people said that I hear from other folks or other LinkedIn posts that I saw.
Justin (36:59)I talked about my 10 comments per day. Well, sometimes I'll write a comment and I'll be like, wow, that's a good post actually. And so then when I go to write that post, I thank that person who I commented on initially for inspiring that post. Then I get a comment there from them and maybe there was someone else who I thought that it might be interesting for. So I may tag them in the comments, but you'll see these giant bricks of 20 people who are tagged in a comment to try to drum up engagement. And again, I view that as counterintuitive for your personal brand. If you look like you're trying to hack the system to drive up engagement, people will recognize that, right. Kathleen saying, you see it, you, you feel it, you know, it, you don't think positively on the people who are doing that. If you don't think negatively, if you're not like, wow, this person is really out here to help me. Right?
Kathleen (37:53)No, the only time I like it is when somebody is like, Hey guys, I I've heard that LinkedIn really rewards posts that like are in this format. So here we go, space, I'm going to test it at space. What do you think? Like when they just say like, this is what I'm doing and here's why I like that. That's cool with me.
Justin (38:13)So I think, you know, when it comes to tagging people in, if you're being thoughtful about it, I think people appreciate it. I know almost every time that I tag someone in and say that they've inspired my posts, they don't even know that I'm about to do it. And they're like, wow. You know, I I did one yesterday. I, I think this woman who had put out a post and show her, I, you know, I have a note sheet that I keep of all the things that I may want to write about. And she was one of them and it was a post that she released two weeks ago. And then I say, two weeks later, Hey, you know, I was thinking about this post that Kathleen wrote to two weeks ago. I think her name was also Kathleen or Catherine. And you know, it just inspired me to, to write this and she's like, wow, you remembered my post. It's like, I spent time on that. You cared enough to remember it and bring it back up and talk about it again. That means a lot to me. I have now left a positive impression on that person. So be thoughtful care, you know, when, when you're writing something, don't just write it to try to drum up engagement, but really try to help the people in your space. And people will recognize it.
Kathleen (39:25)And to go back to what we started with to bring this full circle, if you did interview somebody for your podcast, then you absolutely should tag them in your post, both so that they see it. And also when you tag them, their followers will see it. And I think people that's of interest, like you've just interviewed them, they're sharing their knowledge. That's a great way to get that knowledge out in front of a bigger audience.
Justin (39:46)Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you know, just using real world situations makes what's suppose so much easier. And if we go all the way back to, you know, we went down this, this pathway of talking about LinkedIn, but if we go back to the podcast, I mean the podcast, it just gave me a voice on LinkedIn. And then the content that you get out of it is more important than the actual podcast itself. Because if you're looking to have, you know, 5,000 downloads per episode, well, I definitely recommend you don't make a podcast and B2B it. It's just going to be really hard. I'm not saying it's not possible. And there aren't podcasts out there that do extremely well. But I think the people who do well with their podcasts understand that number of downloads per episode and inbound traffic directly from someone saying, Hey, I listened to your episode and it made me want to work with you is probably way down the ladder in terms of the reasons that people are doing it.
Justin (40:51)I'd say what you said, which is relationships with those people in your space. And then the content and the voice that he gives you in your space to be able to go out and talk and say, look, I I've interviewed me personally since the pandemic. I think I've interviewed 75 heads of marketing. I'd argue that I can go toe to toe with anybody in the world in terms of how many heads of marketing and B2B technology that they've talked to since the pandemic hit. I would, I don't think there are many people who have heard from as many people as I had and that's powerful.
Kathleen (41:25)Well, and I think there's a fundamental flaw in the assumption that you need to have a lot of downloads, which is that, as you say, in B2B tech, for example, or in B2B anything, oftentimes our audiences just aren't that large to begin with. Like if, if you're really being focused, like if you want to reach a very specific audience, that audience may not be that big, but if you're getting the, call it 300, people that are in your super, super focused niche, if those 300 people are listening, that's the most highly qualified audience you could get. That's the best audience. So who cares about the other 5,000? That 300 is the 300 you want, right? Like it's quality over quantity, in my opinion.
Justin (42:12)I mean, anybody out there who's listening. If, if you had the choice to have 5,000 random listeners or 200 executives in your space that listen to your podcast, I know what direction you're going to want to go. You want those executives to associate your podcast with thought leadership with the people who are spearheading the way and they'll listen. They want to hear what their colleagues are doing there. It seems like it's an infinite world out there, but there's only so many CMOs CEOs, heads of finance in specific industries. And if you created a niche podcast, you'll get the people in your space, listening and caring about what you're doing.
Kathleen (42:57)Yeah, absolutely. Alright. We could go on and on all day, but we're actually going to run out of time because we have so much to talk about. So we're going to shift gears here for a sec. I always ask my guests two questions. I'd love to know what your answers are. The first one is this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or a specific individual that you think is really a great example of how to do inbound marketing right these days?
Justin (43:22)Yeah, for sure. So let's, I'd rather give, I think people, since we went down this LinkedIn path, I'd like to give people some profiles to check out that I think do what we talked about. A lot of that let's do. My favorite person is Justin Welsh. Justin Welsh combines the ability to have broetry, he's all text but is extremely thoughtful in what he puts out. And you can tell it's really who he is as an individual. He teeters more on sales. He was the VP of sales for a company that exploded. And now he spearheads his own consulting business for companies from zero to 50 million SaaS organizations. And he, he's amazing with the way that he speaks on LinkedIn. He talks about, he wants to post to be polarizing and he defines polarizing as the balance between intriguing and crazy. And so he teeters that line all the time and it drums up crazy engagement. So look up Justin Welsh and then two other people who I really look up to and I think that they do really well on their profiles and just being themselves are Kyle Lacy of Lessonly. You're I see you shaking your head, so I'm sure you know who he is.
Kathleen (44:42)I just interviewed him. He, I haven't published his episode yet, but that'll be coming up or by the time this airs, it will have been.
Justin (44:48)So if you're listening to this episode right now, after this, cue up the Kyle Lacy episode, because he will be better than that.
Kathleen (44:56)Totally different topic.
Justin (44:58)Totally different. He is fantastic. He comes from just a wealth of experience in the, in the tech space as a CMO awesome guy. I've had him on my podcast. I interact with him on LinkedIn regularly. And he is just, he's a guy that, you know, he's a tactician, he's doing, he's doing the job every day. And he balances, you know, Justin Welsh and me, Justin Brown are, you know, entrepreneurs and, or just self-employed. So we have the time to really promote our personal brand. You want to look at somebody who is doing it in terms of he's a CMO at a tech company, he's got a boss, but he's out there, a mate, jumping on your podcast, jumping on my podcast, putting out content all the time for both his personal brand and his company brand. He balances it extremely well, just a really talented, smart interesting person. So those two were the two that, that came to my mind that I thought might be good examples for the audience.
Kathleen (46:01)That's awesome. I love those examples. So keep an eye out for that Kyle Lacy interview. Maybe I need to interview Justin Welsh next so that I can make it the trifecta. But those were great answers. The other one I always get the question is how do you keep up? Like, there's so much changing all the time in the world of digital marketing. How do you personally keep yourself educated?
Justin (46:23)Yeah. So I have a few answers to this question. The first is I still try to read and that's not actually staying educated in current climate. And so when I read, I've tried to read books or reread books that are like pillars of sales and marketing. I don't have the time in it. And I think this is hard when people want to pick up something to read. They're like, what do I read? And for me, I like to read books that were pillars in sales and marketing because they age well. So examples of books that I've recently read I re-read spin selling and I re-read how to build a StoryBrand. Those are books that aren't going to age out. They're done on research. They're done as books that when they came out, they were, they were just, they changed the way that we do marketing.
Justin (47:23)So I wanted to start there because I think it's important that people still read. And I didn't want to give you the same cookie cutter answer of LinkedIn, like but, and I won't go to LinkedIn next. The next thing I'll go to is I recently joined a Slack community called rev genius. There are a couple out there. I know the revenue collective is a great one that Kyle Lacy's in and a lot of practitioners are in. I am not allowed to be in the revenue collective because you have to be, you can't be an agency owner. You have to actually be doing the job. So I had always had people on my podcast and I felt left out cause I want to join. I wanted to join the revenue collective. It's all these people that I find so interesting.
Justin (48:02)And I look up to and recently this new one came out, which was called rev genius. And I think in the last three to four months, and don't quote me on that, cause I might be wrong. They've gone from 15 to 5,000 members. It's a Slack channel. I'm a part of it. And I look and I love it. I, I'm talking right now about launching a podcast with them. And I get to interact very easily with all of these people who are out there doing great things. So I would say find communities of people that can help to educate you, especially in the world that we live in. Now it's so much harder to interact and engage with folks. It's why podcasts are on the rise. It's why so many people are going to LinkedIn, which would be my next recommendation. That's how I stay up to speed, having conversations with people in my space.
Kathleen (48:48)Well, I am a member of both the revenue collective and rev genius and would second that. It's a great recommendation and I'll put actually the links to both in the show notes in case people are interested in going and checking those out. So awesome recommendations, Justin. That is all the time we have. So if somebody is interested in learning more about you or motion or connecting with you online, what's the best way for them to do that?
Justin (49:14)Yeah, for sure. Just LinkedIn backslash Justin Brown motion. Awesome. Then my company is motion agency.io. I mean, you're, you're welcome to go fill out a form on there if you want it to work together. But you're just going to get me anyway. So you can just reach out to me on LinkedIn open to all connection requests. Like I said, happy to engage.
Kathleen (49:36)Awesome. All right. All of those links will be in the show notes. So head over there, if you'd like to connect with Justin or learn more about some of the resources or the people that he mentioned, and that is it for this week. So if you're listening as always, if you enjoyed this episode, please take a minute and head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast or review preferably five stars. But if you don't think it deserves it, I get that too. And if you know somebody who's doing kick ass, inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. Thank you so much, Justin. This was a lot of fun.
Justin (50:12)All right. Thanks Kathleen. It was great to be on.
The term "account-based marketing" gets tossed around a lot. Here's how top brands are really using ABM to get better marketing results.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, B2B Fusion founder Jon Russo explains what account-based marketing is, and breaks down the strategies that top brands are using to penetrate target accounts, get meetings, and drive leads and sales.
From researching your ideal customer profile, to building your tech stack and using direct mail to get meetings, Jon gets into plenty of detail about what is and is not working with ABM today.
Jon's agency works with industry-leading brands like Level 3, Thompson Reuters and Blackboard. Check out the episode, or read the show notes, to learn exactly what he is seeing get results.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the B2B Fusion website
- Connect with Jon on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Jon Russo, who is the COO and founder of B2B Fusion. Welcome Jon.
Jon (00:20): Hello, Kathleen. Thanks for having me.
Kathleen (00:23): Welcome to the podcast. I am excited to dig into some nerdy marketing topics with you. You know, and especially because we have a particularly interesting topic, I think in a time like this with COVID, which is account based marketing. But before we start talking marketing, can you talk a little bit about your story? You know, your background, how you came to be doing what you're doing now, what and what B2B Fusion is?
Jon (00:52): Sure thing, Kathleen, and thanks for having me. I know we've been trying to get this on the calendar and greatly appreciate kind of us getting together here. So, great news. Yeah, my story. Look, that's my favorite topic. We could talk about me all day long, but I've been head of marketing or what they now call chief marketing officer for 10 years in public and private companies. And that was in Silicon Valley, New York city in Luxembourg. So I've seen kind of every iteration of B2B marketing in smaller companies, as well as large companies in that process and how I kinda got to where I am today. One of those CMOs assignments. I remember the emotion that I felt as a head of marketing, having to account for my function. And this was probably close to 10 years ago where I distinctly remember the best practice kind of companies that are out there that are professing the funnels and funnel shapes and definitions.
Jon (01:52): And then at that time marketing automation was new. And so one of my challenges as head of marketing was I was trying to take this best practice theory and be able to articulate to the CEO and the board members, what my impact was to the business. And to my surprise, Kathleen, what I found out was I did a, with the help of a, my 22 year old sales operations assistant, who now currently works for me a little bit older now, but at that time he was fresh out of school and we were in Excel putting together marketing impact. And I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. I'm spending all this money on marketing automation. I'm spending all this money on best practice investments. And I can't get these two things to work and then show it to my board of directors and compounding.
Jon (02:41): That was the fact that when we were producing this information, I was literally getting it in real time. So I was basically getting the information the day before a board meeting and racing it to my board of directors. And to my surprise at the time my border directors were like, wow, we never see marketing and actually measured. We've never seen anybody take an interest in this. And I remember coming home that night and sharing that with my wife saying, you know, I can't believe that this, these esteemed board of directors have never seen marketing measurement before, and they are top, top notch VCs. And that's when she said to me, I think you have a business there. And of course, like all men, I'm very slow to learn that. So she said, I think you've got a business there. You should really go after kind of the marketing measurement side.
Jon (03:29): And that began my journey a little over nine years ago with B2B Fusion. And really we, we formed an agency that's at that nexus of systems and strategy to get the best measurement. And it's morphed a little bit since that initial vision, but that was kind of how I got to this point in time. I basically thought, well, I could become a CMO or a head of marketing for our 11th year in a row, or I could help other marketers on their journey to be more effective. And I find a lot more passionate in that, quite frankly right now. Maybe it's just where I am in terms of where I'm at in my career. I'd rather see others succeed and help them on the journey because it's not an easy journey for anyone. So that's a very long winded answer as to how we got to this point.
Kathleen (04:18): You know, it's interesting listening to you talk about that. There are two aspects of it that really resonated with me. One is when you talked about the emotion involved and having to kind of justify your existence as a marketer and I think anybody listening I'm sure can relate to that because, you know, we get into such technical details and weeds. And it's funny, cause I literally came to record this episode from a meeting with my company sales team, where they were asking about this and, you know, thank God I can pull up my marketing automation platform. And today the tools have come so far. That was the other thing I was going to say really resonated with me was, you know, I owned an agency back around the same time that you were getting started and, and it was a completely different world back then, as far as our ability to track and report. And now, now it's almost like we have too many tools and that's the problem. The bigger problem is figuring out which one to use and how to like how to really use, fully get use out of it. Cause there's just so much available to us. And so the world has changed so much for marketers. So I think it's really neat that that's what you focus on. Every marketer needs needs somebody like that, kind of looking over their shoulder and helping them.
Jon (05:35): Yeah. And you know, we're, we're on the Budweiser hot seat here in terms of performance, right, as marketers. And it may not seem that way. No one ever tells you that as a marketer, you just kind of discover it. So and especially as a head of marketing, your shelf, life is not that long. So you better be putting points on that scoreboard quickly. And it takes a village to get the right business processes, the right measurement, the right systems in place. And to your point, now we have 7,000 MarTech choices out there. 10 years ago, it was maybe in the hundreds. So it is exploded. And I think that's kind of where our direction for my agency kind of morphed was we broadly now see two major issues. One is how can we grow faster with this new technology and how do we get the most ROI out of the investments, whether it's measurement or otherwise.
Jon (06:35): And sometimes measurement is a distinct question that comes up in and of itself. But those are kind of like the categories now that we're finding most companies asking about in those first two categories, they kind of sorta existed. Like the MarTech really didn't exist at all. But the, the growth one people kind of thought about it, but they're thinking about it a whole lot more, especially post COVID. So those are the three buckets that I'd say today. I think we broadened our lens from that emotion that I felt a few years ago. Because of exactly what you said, the landscape has changed quite a bit.
Kathleen (07:11): Yeah. Now one of the areas where you're, I think doing some really interesting and, and forward-thinking work is, is in the area of account based marketing which I feel like has become a big buzzword in the marketing world, but it's really interesting because I'm a part of a couple Slack groups for marketing leaders and sales leaders. And one of them is the revenue collective, which is a fantastic group. And I remember we had a, I co-lead the, the Washington DC focus group for them. And we had a conversation about account based marketing and everybody wanted to talk about it, but then we get on the call. And first of all, nobody really could define it. And those who tried, none of them had the same definition and nobody was nobody really, at least by their own way of defining it was doing it. And so I feel like this, there's this interesting paradox with ABM where we all have heard of it and think we should be doing it. And yet not a lot of people are, and those that are doing it probably aren't like really doing it. So maybe coming to this conversation from that perspective, maybe we could begin by just having you really define what ABM is to you. And, and we could use that as a jumping off point.
Jon (08:34): Yeah, no that I could, I could see why there'd be some confusion. And maybe as a precursor to that, I'm drawing upon a hundred plus ABM experiences that we've been through primarily through relationship that we orchestrated through Demandbase slash Engagio. And we've had a great relationship them and through our own mechanisms as well. So across those experiences, I could see why a question would come up. And by the way, if you don't have that well-defined definition, even in your own company, it makes it very challenging to measure and to improve. So oftentimes we start with defining what is account based marketing. Now your mileage can vary quite a bit depending on the type of company that you're dealing with. Right? So typically we see two classes of companies that are doing account based marketing right now. The first class would be more or less along the lines of very large companies.
Jon (09:35): So for example, one of my clients McAfee, we did a quite a bit of ABM work for where they had a global sales organization. And one of their challenges was pivoting from a lead based system to an account based system. They have a very different challenge because they've acquired a lot of companies and they're doing a lot of upsell cross sell. So in bigger companies, it's a, an upsell cross sell type initiative. Now it contrast that to another one of our clients code science, as an example, they build apps for the app exchange on Salesforce are explosively growing right now. And they too had a lead based system wanting to pivot into an account based system and why they wanted to do that was really because of growth. So it was new account growth in very specific tiered vertical markets.
Jon (10:26): And so account based marketing terminology is used there in terms of acquisition, as well as the upsell and cross sell. There are probably other ways you could define it. I've seen definitions in terms of a triangle of very strategic accounts. Perhaps you're only focused on three to five strategic accounts versus kind of a mid tier accounts. There always seems to be tiering that's involved when it comes time to whatever the strategy might be. So I guess the answer is it depends a lot on the situation but getting that definition right in your company and making sure that it's well understood is critical for the measurement side of things.
Kathleen (11:11): I'm glad that you started with what you did because at least in my own experience, I think that the big mistake a lot of marketers make is they define ABM, not by what it really is, but by how it manifests in terms of tactics. And so there are a lot of people who think ABM is just targeted, dimensional or direct mail, right? And then there are people who think it's a particular way of approaching paper, click advertising. And then there are people who see it as a combination of both like, but that is not really ABM. Those are the tactics that you use to carry out your broader ABM strategy. I think you defined it really nicely, which it's really a shared definition of how you're going to go to market and how you segment your list and focus and prioritize at least if I'm hearing you correctly.
Jon (12:03): Yes. Yeah. I think you're exactly right. I think you're exactly right. It's almost, in some cases it's almost doing demand generation a lot better than what perhaps we've done before. So I think it's confusing because there's so much technology out there. Now you have the salespeople that have their own definition of account-based, whatever sales, marketing, everything, you know, whatever the flavor is du jour. And then you've got marketers that also have their definition. So it's chaos in terms of definitions which makes it really, really challenging for marketers to say, Hey, I produced X number of MQLs or marketing qualified accounts for, for sales to then go target or go after. So I'm not surprised that you found, you know, what you saw in that Slack channel. It's not a surprise to me.
Kathleen (12:54): Well, and then the other thing that I find interesting about ABM and this came up in that conversation, I mentioned that we had in the revenue collective because we had half of the people on the call were sales and half were marketing. And what became very clear very quickly is that it's, it's not, it is something that spans both groups. And it, you know, we always talk about the importance of sales and marketing alignment, but I would say perhaps with ABM, more so than most things, it's so important because there were people who sort of said, well, I'm in marketing and we've started doing ABM, but the sales team's not on board, which basically means you're not really doing ABM. And then we have other people who are like our sales team has a list of, you know, tier one, two and three accounts, but our marketing isn't really doing anything, which also, you know, so it's, it's, that, that is also interesting to me is that it really needs to be a joint effort between the two and, and getting that coordination seems to be more difficult maybe than it should be.
Jon (13:55): Yeah. This is a topic we've, we've been talking sales and marketing alignment. We've been talking about for 20 years and I think you're, you're hitting the nail on the head in terms of, for ABM to be successful you really have to have that alignment. And if you have an SDR function, that's the connective tissue, meaning it's the connective tissue between marketing and sales. So you're only as good as that connective tissue in terms of targeting. And let me give you an example on that. I won't name names, but we were in another client situation and you got to remember SDR is a very, very difficult job, very, very challenging job, and probably the most valued job from some surveying that I've done with my peers in terms of what the next generation CMO is. Having said, that we found SDRs that were faking Amazon gift deliveries and to book meetings, because that's how they were incented to get meetings.
Jon (14:52): Now, you think about the brand damage that you're doing when now when you're 22 or 23, I don't know what you were like when you were 22 or 23. I couldn't even remember, you know, my head for my elbow back then, but it's a tough job. It's a pressure cooker job that you've got to get these meetings. So you know, bad behavior, but the damage that, that does to the brand and, you know, forget about ABM, just growth. Like how can you possibly grow when you're, you're, you're doing something like that. So that's one very clear example of why that function is so important in account based marketing of that handoff between marketing and sales and that, that connective layer.
Kathleen (15:36): I think you hit the nail on the head with the SDR being the connector and it's, it's interesting, cause you do hear more and more conversation about SDRs traditionally having been thought of as sitting in sales and now more and more we're seeing them sitting in marketing perhaps for that very reason. So I'm, I would love to, to hear from you, I think for a lot of people it's hard to, to really picture what a best in class ABM strategy looks like without kind of having some examples. And you do work with a lot of companies, as you mentioned maybe you could share, and you don't need to name names if you can't, but I'd love to hear some examples of some campaigns that have gone really well and been super effective. And what goes into that?
Jon (16:20): Yeah, it's a, a thoughtful question. And just thinking back to a couple end points like to me, the end point is what have you done to move the needle from a certain stage? So I can think of cases where we've helped move the needle from say a stage zero to stage one, and we can measurably see what that conversion improvement is over a period of time. So I could give you an example of where we more than doubled it from a 22 to 49% jumped from stage zero to stage one and how we got there was really through a series of plays a series of plays, meaning it wasn't just marketing batch and blasting a bunch of emails. It was being really thoughtful toward very specific accounts. So it started with what accounts were you focused on? And within those accounts, do you have the right contacts, are the contacts that you have?
Jon (17:21): Do you have enough research that's done on those contacts? So in this case, in order to get to that doubling, we had to do a lot of pre-work and do some research on those contacts. Then it became a question of what that campaign strategy was. So together with sales, we put together a coordinated touch strategy between marketing and sales, electronic outreach with phone outreach via LinkedIn direct sequence, as well as a marketing followup. So kind of a multitouch cadence or approach. And what we found was the more obviously, I mean, everybody talks about it. The more personalized you can get, the more relevant you will be to that end user. We spent a lot of time on that personalization. It's really hard to do at, you know, people talk about personalization at scale. The most effective way that we have found doing that is actually offshoring research at a very low cost and doing a lot of groundwork that the SDRs quite frankly could or should be doing, but it's, it's a function of their time. So what you're doing is you're trying to speed up some of the research process of the SDRs. So in this case, as we did the multitouch, the SDRs were prepared with their outreach and their canes with some nuggets that they could drop into their sequences and then target that end user.
Kathleen (18:47): So can you just, sorry, I want to clarify when you say offshoring research, what kind of research is this? Like, what are you looking to surface?
Jon (18:54): So it, it, we've got if you're familiar with a Miller Heiman blue sheets model, it's a similar model to some of the questions that are typically needed to be addressed going beyond firmographic information account industry, revenue size employees. It could get down to somebody's college or university, which you could scrape off of LinkedIn, and you can potentially personalize that the interests in terms of what they follow. There are now vendors that kind of focus in an in and around that area as well. So if you don't want to off shore, you could get a vendor that would focus on it. Anything that could get it a little bit more personalized and then doing the account-based research itself. So any G2 that you can gather as far as what some of the company initiatives are, that two would go into this form. So the way we did it was we had a set of questions that they would go and, and why we offshored is, you know, we would structure it in a way where they would have to fill out or populate the questions and do the research via the web to them present back to the SDRs. And it would be resident in Salesforce, such that you could, you could pull out access information as needed. So that's how, how we would approach that.
Kathleen (20:17): What's an example of how an SDR might use some of that?
Jon (20:22): Really, really good questions. So we've seen actually an evolution of this too. At, at first we kind of let SDRs, we would give the information to say, you know, have added SDRs, do whatever you need to do over time. What we've learned is there's a lot of benefit and value of having marketing really create the cadence structure or the message and the outreach with the fields that might be populated by the SDRs through that research. So marketing is really the skeleton and they provide the skeleton. It doesn't matter where the SDRs report to, and why we, we came to that conclusion is it totally avoids the Amazon gift scenario and it controls the message. And typically salespeople are grateful that you take, as a marketer, interest in that. And sometimes marketers end up ending the, that tool as well, like the sales loft or the, the outreach. But anyway, to answer your question, I'm, I'm deviating a bit, what we would do then is give them the opportunity to pull that information from the research and drop it into the template, and they're going to have to massage it. There's some level of massaging that has to be done, but what they're not doing as a wholesale net, new creation of that template and that outreach.
Kathleen (21:46): Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So we have really good research on the front end. We have marketing essentially dictating messaging frameworks, so that SDRs, you know, are not creating it out of whole cloth every time they have a conversation. And your SDR is really trying to get you that first meeting. What are some of the other elements of, of these really great campaigns you've worked on?
Jon (22:13): Yeah, some sometimes we've seen, and I wouldn't say in all cases because I wouldn't want to mislead people, but in some cases doing a direct mail or a customized mail campaign somewhere early on in that prospecting cycle has been helpful. There are a couple companies that are out there that do that. But the one that jumps out to me that we've recently have experienced with one of our own clients is a company called Alyce where Alyce has a lot of sophistication around the interests of the end user and can pull information from the web and make recommendations based on the interest. So for example let's say I was the prospect and you can see visually behind me, I've got a lot of college basketball memorabilia behind me. So it's likely that a system like Alyce would pull that information and say, Hey, Jon is really interested in college basketball, specifically the university of Connecticut college basketball, and maybe there's something related to that, that you could recommend under a certain budget that could eventually get to Jon. And there are ways to get it to the home address now as well. So that has been an effective way. It flies close a little bit to the sun of, you don't want to do a quid pro quo, like, Hey, I'm buying your first meeting. But sometimes what we see is it's, it can be an effective way to kind of break the ice. Or if that first meeting's already established, the second or third meeting, it's just helpful to kind of maintain that momentum.
Kathleen (23:52): Yeah, I've done a little bit of that kind of mailing in a past life. And I found that the real utility of it was twofold. One it's getting past gatekeepers, especially if you're trying to connect with somebody who's fairly high level in an organization. You know, flat mail does not do nearly as well at that. And secretaries, personal assistants, et cetera. If it's a package, if it has something personalized, they're going to forward it on. They might open it. They might not, but they're going to forward it on. And then the other one is just, I think, on the recipient end, at least through the feedback I've gotten, if it is truly well thought out, and if you've done a good job of it, a lot of times you'll have, like, we had somebody, this was back in the early days when I had my agency, we actually had a guy that we had been trying to get a meeting with, write us and say, wow, you really like hit the nail on the head with that. Like it's worth having a conversation just cause I totally respect how well-targeted this was. And I think, I think it can peak somebody's interest if you're able to, to really nail something that matters to them.
Jon (25:02): I think a good example of that was the last physical conference marketing conference that you and I think were both, that was the demand gen conference in February and Phoenix or Scottsdale. And there was somebody on stage in the millennial section that talked about how she received a yoga mat. And she said she was blown away because she's like I do yoga 24 by seven and out of the blue, this person, after I was already in a sales cycle toward midway or toward the end, sent me this out of the blue. And she's like, it resonated so much. And here she is telling an audience of a thousand plus people of marketers, right? Like we all, we're all drinking the Koolaid. But it was really a really powerful example as to the level of connection, if you can get that personalized touch. And that's where I think Alyce kind of separates themselves from kind of the other, other systems that I've seen on the market that our clients sometimes use as well, but where they can kind of separate themselves as they have the intelligence to figure out what does this person really, really what are they interested in?
Jon (26:11): What's relevant to them? What's going to resonate with them? We've had situations where we've actually tested handpicking versus their system and their system has been more effective. So yeah, it's, it's been pretty, it's pretty amazing. And you know, that technology didn't exist 10 years ago, so it's a, it's a new world. So I think that those types of things help with ABM. It's not a Nirvana, it's not going to solve world hunger, but it, if you do things like that your chances of success go by an order of magnitude.
Kathleen (26:44): Now you mentioned as part of what you were just describing that it's, there are ways of getting home addresses. And I feel like this is the challenge we're all facing right now is that, you know, people are not in their offices. And so what used to be a simple exercise of, you know, look up the website, scrape the address and go is, is no longer. So can you just touch on, are there any particular tools or anything that you like or a strategy for tackling that?
Jon (27:10): Yeah. And I think a couple of the the direct mail providers Alyce and Sendoso specifically, and probably PFL, I just have not checked with them recently, but it wouldn't surprise me if they haven't thought of this because the other two have, they now have figured out a way to drop in a form and capture the home address without storing the data longterm. So they've figured out a way to, to reroute that direct mail and bring it to the home address. There have been some instances that I've heard of, some people were early on with COVID they were very reluctant to receive direct mail because they just didn't know. But I've heard that more as the exception rather than the rule. But, but there are some of those case is out there. The other thing, the other value in doing that validation is direct mail can be a very expensive proposition. And there are ways that we, we have recently figured out ways to do this where you can actually track the ROI, whether it's gaining new meetings or accelerating the pipeline, but it's it's PhD level work like something that would come intuitively you really have to stare at the systems to figure it out. But there are ways where you can actually now begin to track that depending on your marketing automation system, so that too can be valuable data to, to bring back to your company.
Kathleen (28:34): Yeah, you're so right, because when it comes to that direct mail stuff having done a few of those, I would say if they're easy to do, but they're easy to do wrong in the sense that you could send a really cheap, not so great item that doesn't, that isn't effective and you could spend a lot of money in doing it. Or you could like narrow your list a little bit more and spend more per person and really get amazing results. And I think that's, that's where a lot of people go wrong is they try to go too big and, and it doesn't, it doesn't have the effectiveness of spending more per individual getting a really fantastic item and maybe doing it in stages. Like we used to always tell clients when I had my agency, pick, you know, if you want to spend a lot, pick 20 accounts that are like super strategic and spend a lot on them, send it out, see how it works. And if it works, then do the next one. Right?
Jon (29:28): Yeah. Yeah. Staging, I think is a terrific idea because it does take time like any of this marketing technology or, or anything new, it takes time to see those results. It takes time for end users to adopt to. So you're talking about maybe working something new into a sales person's workflow that didn't exist before or an SDR workflows. So you're changing behavior, which I don't know about you, but for me, it's difficult to change behavior. So it, it takes time, but once you figure it out it's pretty powerful. It's, it's really, really powerful.
Kathleen (30:04): Yeah. Now moving beyond the mail piece, because I feel like we could spend all day on that as a topic in and of itself easily. And it's an interesting topic, but when you look at approaching ABM campaigns what are some of the other pieces that go into those campaigns beyond mail and SDRs?
Jon (30:25): Let's see, what other things? Other than the personalization piece I guess the biggest piece would be the measurement side of things and really making sure that you are capturing what it is that these campaigns are producing and ideally in Salesforce. So there's probably, there's a whole campaign strategy to get to that point, but the end point would be, you really want to have a clean and crisp measurement. And I'll give you an example of what I mean by clean and crisp measurement. So it's easy for us to get caught up in the campaign lingo and you probably have used Salesforce before. I'll give you an example, the leads object in Salesforce, what they call the leads object, doesn't necessarily relate to anything else in the database. So you could have all sorts of activity on the lead side of things and your salespeople who may work in your contacts and accounts may never see any of that activity.
Jon (31:26): Even if you have the technology to in theory, link those two up, there still can be cases where there's activity on the leads that are not coming over to the accounts and to the contact side. So to answer your question on the campaigns, if you're doing all this campaign activity and you're like, Hey, I'm a, I'm doing this great, great job, but if your underlying processes aren't right in Salesforce, it's not going to matter. Your campaign strategy is not going to matter, or it may matter, but somebody else is going to get credit for it. Meaning the salespeople will take credit and say, Hey, we did all this work. Marketing didn't do the work. So really getting clarity around kind of that measurement and NPS is a very, very critical piece. And I can give you an example of a client of ours, that, where they came into the situation and through a dashboarding, we, we learned a couple different things.
Jon (32:20): One was there was all this activity going on on the lead side and they couldn't understand it because it wasn't in their targeted tier one, tier two and tier three, they're running all these campaigns. And lo and behold, what we discovered was their ICP was not correct. They thought it was a certain assumption, but through our dashboarding, what we realized was there was a new target market that was returning, eventually returning, a lot of revenues. So what they ended up doing was pivoting the entire company. This is post COVID pivoting the entire company toward that vertical market and, and getting a lot more folks just because of all this activity that was going on. So that's another reason to dashboard. The other example that same client, what we discovered was in the sales efforts, we found that the sales team was following up on certain accounts.
Jon (33:14): And in one dashboard we could see the activity level of sales and we could see the activity level of marketing, and we could see that the accounts were different. And so we were like, well, why is there a difference? It goes back to what you said, you know, a minute five, which is why aren't we aligned? Well, now we can visually see sales is focused on five accounts and they're hyper engaged here. Our marketing's got six accounts that are hyper engaged, that that sales is not. So visually we now have the data where we can say, Hey, we're just not aligned. So it goes beyond the theory of alignment. You can actually see it. And this all rolls up to your campaign question, like, what are you doing right in your campaigns, if you're able to dashboard some of that, your chances of campaign effectiveness and future investment go up by an order of magnitude, because now you can have the conversation. It could be a lot more data driven versus, you know, Hey, I just ran this great seven touch cadence, or with direct mail and this, that the other because you really need to measure that days on.
Kathleen (34:20): I love that, that we're sort of bookending this conversation and coming back to measurement. Cause I feel like that's what we started with. Like that was the Genesis of your business. And it, it, it does it like always comes back to that. Right. so speaking of measuring, can you maybe share with me a sense of what kind of ROI some of these companies have seen from account based marketing when they do it? Right.
Jon (34:45): Ooh, good question. And I've got a bunch of statistics, but I don't have them off the top of my head
Kathleen (34:50): Ballpark.
Jon (34:54): The hard thing with ROI is you really need to track costs too, with your upside revenue. And what I find is very few companies have that level of visibility. So I don't have a really solid answer on that one other than I can get back to you, but that's not gonna help your podcast. But typically what I see is mostly on the revenue side. So for example, I'll see engagement in terms of accounts that are happening. So if, if you're getting a large percentage of accounts that didn't engage pre ABM to post engagement, that would be a mechanism. So if you have the definitions, right, you're, you're making progress as a milestone of saying, I've got a certain percentage that are showing account engagement and within those account engagements, what percent are then converting to an opportunity after that initial ABM strategy implementation. And that's usually more of a revenue metric as opposed to an ROI metric, if, and I'm really, you know, I'm splitting hairs here. I also think that not a lot of board members and VCs are asking per se about ROI. They're asking about some other questions. They're asking about a cost of acquisition, CAC, LTV to CAC ratios. So they're going more broadly bubbling things up at a more broad sense, which are typically manual calculations.
Kathleen (36:34): Do you find that cost of acquisition comes down dramatically with ABM or no?
Jon (36:39): I think it all depends if, if your, your focus on strategic accounts, it's costly, no matter what, because you got to, you got a huge buying committee. It's a lot of energy and effort to kind of crack that from a strategic account, but if you're doing a one to many, yeah, it can, but I think it's, it's an investment, no matter how you slice and dice it. I don't think it's any cheaper than demand gen. I think demand gen is kind of the first generation of marketing automation where you can just kind of spray and pray, but you're using a lot of the same technologies and the same people as you are with ABM. So I don't know if there's a huge savings per se. It's just a little bit more focused effort. I think that that would be the best way to think of it.
Kathleen (37:28): Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, it's, I feel like this, this could be a 10 hour long podcast on the topic of ABM. But it cannot be because we do not have 10 hours nor does anyone want to sit and listen for that long. So I want to switch gears for a second and ask you a couple of questions that I love to ask my guests. The first is, you know, we talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast, and I'm wondering if there's a particular company or a specific individual that you would point to that you think is really setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days.
Jon (38:03): Hmm. Great question. I think some of the vendors that do a really good job at it, Drift, Gong, the usual suspects, Drift, Gong, HubSpot I would say, would be the strong, strong performers in terms of they're putting out a lot of content. Drift feels like a very natural kind of inboundish, I don't know if you'd kind of call it inbound. It's not, you're not really calling people if somebody has to reach to your website. So I guess that that would be an inbound. So I would say those three are the ones that come to mind in terms of who's doing it really, really well.
Kathleen (38:41): Drift certainly comes up a lot when I ask that question and the other ones, I mean, while, I mean a HubSpot of course but Gong has started coming up more and more lately. So it's always fascinating to me to see the trends in how people answer. And when I start to hear certain names over and over again, like that's an interesting indicator. Second question is that...
Jon (38:59): Gong has done a phenomenal job there.
Kathleen (39:01): Oh, sorry. Sorry.
Jon (39:03): No, go ahead.
Kathleen (39:03): I was just gonna say the other, the other thing I hear a lot of marketers say is that they really struggle trying to keep pace with all the things that are changing in the world of digital marketing. And I think this conversation is a great example, this struggle with like, what really is ABM and how really do you do it? What, how do you personally stay up to date and current on all things digital?
Jon (39:25): Yeah. And that's a, a common issue right now, you know, going back to MarTech of three to five years ago, there was a thousand MarTech providers now 7,000. So how do you keep your finger on the pulse? It will sound self-serving, but relying on agencies that spend time with a lot of different technologies, cross organizations and tapping them, I'm surprised actually that more of our clients don't rely more on us for that type of advisory work. Typically we're attending a lot of the conferences. So you'll see me at either speaking or attending a lot of the major conferences and whereas they may get the opportunity to go to one or two, I'm going to eight in a year or 10 in a year. So we're leaning heavily on kind of your partners for that expertise or understanding is certainly one way post COVID now.
Jon (40:25): I think another way is just Slack and being, you had mentioned, Hey, you're involved in Slack channels. And I think you and I are involved in some of the same Slack channels cause we've been communicating on some other things there, but post COVID, I think a lot of stuff now is just gone to communities like Slack. And there are a number of different communities, whether they're marketing operations specific, growth operations specific. I'm on a board that is focused on growth ops and we've got a community. There's CMOs specific Slack channels. So that too would be an area to ask, you know, colleagues. There's even geographical ones. I found one up in the Boston area that that has a heavy concentration of Boston based heads of marketing. So, you know, I think triangulating across all of those sources, as I think about it out loud are probably, that's how I keep kind of in the know so to speak.
Kathleen (41:20): Yeah, I think you're right with a lot of these communities. It's a way to shortcut what otherwise would be a much longer process, you know, and, and just sort of take it from the people that, you know, know a lot and let them tell you what, what need to care about. But yeah, I mean, I rely on those communities heavily, although I will say my latest pain point is that I'm in too many Slack groups and there are a few that are just a lot of noise and I'm, I'm now to the point where I'm thinking I'm gonna just exit some of them and focus on the two or three that are really delivering value. Cause it can become a huge, huge distraction.
Jon (41:54): I, yeah, I could totally see that as well. And sometimes what I do with Slack is I kind of cherry pick and go in and out, the beauty of Slack for me is if you ask an ignorant question about two days later, everybody forgets about it. Cause it's so, you know, it's pushed up in the, in the threads of threads. So I feel you on that and that's how I kind of dip in and out. I'm almost like a seagull I'll fly in. I'll ask a couple of questions and then I'll pop out.
Kathleen (42:23): Yeah. My favorite feature of Slack is that you can set up your sidebar to show you all of your unreads. And I can just like come back in, look at all the unreads. Mark them as read, see the ones that are important and then go. Cause it's really distracting if you try to like jump in every time you get a notification.
Jon (42:42): I hear you loud and clear on that. I think that that too could be a generational thing for me. I would never want, some of our clients ask us to have Slack. I reluctantly agree to that because it is incredibly disruptive to my workflow. It is incredibly disruptive to the workflow. So, but there are ways that we've integrated Slack with other project management tools that have helped speed up the process. So it helps them and it helps us but from a workflow process, that can be very disruptive. I agree with you on that. Yeah.
Kathleen (43:15): Well I'm sure that there are some people who are listening, who have questions or would love to reach out and connect with you online or learn more about B2B fusion. What is the best way for them to do that?
Jon (43:25): Yeah. Great question. So two ways. One would be on LinkedIn or you can always email Jon dot Russo, Jon.russo@b2bfusiongroup.com. And at any point in time, if you just want to have an exploratory conversation or need something to bounce off, I'm happy to do a quick call with you. And you know, we can, we can compare notes, so don't hesitate to reach out
Kathleen (43:45): Great. And of course, as always, I will put the links that Jon just mentioned in the show notes. So head there, if you want to reach out and connect with him and if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, I would love it. If you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast, a preferably five star review so that others can find us. And if you know somebody who's doing really great inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next interview. Thank you so much, Jon. This was a lot of fun.
Jon (44:16): Thanks Kathleen. I really appreciate it.
SEO best practices are constantly changing as search engines fine tune the way they determine how to rank content. Here's what's working right now.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, iPullRank founder Mike King shares the SEO strategies that he's using now to get results for his clients.
From content and keyword strategies, to natural language generation, internal link generation and technical content optimization, Mike goes into detail with tips about how you can spot SEO issues that might be hurting your rankings, and what you can do to fix existing problems and proactively position your site to rank well.
If you love getting into the technical weeds (like I do), this episode is for you!
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the iPullRank website
- Check out Mike's movie Runtime
- Follow Mike on Twitter
- Read Mike's Medium article "This, too, shall pass"
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week I am excited to welcome my guest Mike King, who is the managing director of iPullRank. Welcome Mike
Mike (00:32): Kathleen. Thanks for having me.
Kathleen (00:34): So excited for you to be here because I heard you speak back in, I think we decided it was 2016. I was attending Wistia Fest, which is not a thing anymore. It was an awesome annual conference that Wistia ran for a few years there. And I went to it and I, I saw you, you speak on the main stage about SEO. And I remember at the time thinking this guy is amazing. His talk is really good. It's packed with incredible substance, which you can't always say for main stage talks. And, and like, wow, I was just so impressed. And it was funny because recently when I was asking people in my network who I should interview for this podcast, your name came up and I kind of connected the dots. And I was like, that's that guy? So I'm so excited that like this has come full circle and now I get to meet you and, and pick your brain.
Mike (01:40): Thanks for having me. And yeah, that was a great show. I really enjoyed Wista Fest. I really appreciate them as a company too. Like just their ethos. It kind of reminds me of early Moz. So yeah, I really love those guys.
Kathleen (01:54): And they did a very Seinfeld-esque thing where they had a great conference that was growing and they were like, we're not going to do it anymore because we've realized it's not the right thing for us, but they definitely left while they were on top. So that was cool. So before we jump into all things SEO, can you maybe give my audience a little history on yourself and how you came to be doing what you're doing now? And also what iPullRank does. And I should note, as I say that, that this is basically the sixth anniversary of the company, so happy anniversary, that's a huge accomplishment.
Mike (02:32): Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, it feels crazy to be here six years and, you know, just because of like the, the weight of everything that's happening in the world. So yeah, I'm very appreciative that we are still around. So yeah, me, my background, I did music for a living for a number of years, but, you know, before that, I grew up a very nerdy kid who learned to code from 12 and all this, and actually got into a bike accident. And and I didn't have health insurance cause you know, I was a rapper and this before Obamacare and I had to get a job to pay my medical bills. So first place to hire me was an SEO agency because of my, my technical skills. And then I ended up working at some bigger agencies and then some search focus firms.
Mike (03:25): And then after that, I was just like, I'm pretty sure I can do this myself. And so six years ago I started the agency just put a, put like $5,000 in a bank account and never really looked back. And so what we do is, is digital marketing of course, with a primary focus on SEO and content strategy. And, you know, we work with a lot of clients and we really build that rapport and that trust. And then they allow us to do other things as well. So we've got some expertise in things like analytics and machine learning and so on. And there's just a lot of overlap between those that allows us to be very effective and the things that we do for our clients.
Kathleen (04:03): I think it's interesting that you say, you know, your background, you were kind of nerdy and you learned to code because I feel like what marketing has evolved into these days, that is a super power, like people who know, who understand code and who, who are more data driven and, and kind of think like a programmer there's so much you can do with that knowledge, as opposed to the way marketing was taught way back when I studied marketing, which was like a much more about like strategy and creative. And it's just, it's a different discipline today.
Mike (04:39): Yeah. And I think that we kind of exist at the confluence of like marketing technology, creative and like media, right? Like, so there's when I worked at some bigger ad agencies, everything was pretty rigid in kind of like what you just described. It's like, okay, you do that. We have a strategy, we do the creative, we run the media and that's it. But because with SEO specifically, you have to like fix the website, you end up like touching a lot of other different areas. And so that's why we ended up getting into machine learning and things like that because all of that supports what we're trying to do. And I kind of look at it as though, you know, the web is a program. You know, the search engine is a program. Your website is a program, that's an input for the search engines program.
Mike (05:31): And so if you think of it as just like an ecosystem of program, you can make your website do anything and then you can make it ultimately, you know, work for these other programs. So if you think about something like personalization that is literally turning your marketing mix into a program that reacts to people's you know, their, their features and their behaviors. So yeah, I agree with you. It's definitely a superpower because if you think of, of everything in your marketing in that way, you understand that you just have so much control over what can be done.
Kathleen (06:08): Yeah. It's amazing. And, and I know, you know, you have pretty deep SEO knowledge and experience. In fact, you were recently you were, you're going to be speaking at Moz con live, which of course, due to the crazy situation that we're in as a world, you presented at Moz con virtual you did something really different and creative that I want to maybe start with here. So can you talk a little bit about that? Cause it's so cool.
Mike (06:38): Yeah. We made a movie. And the way I describe it as it's like Batman, the animated series meets the TV show, mr. Robot. And so they told me like the theme of Moz Con this year was going to be something like circus or carnival related. And I was like, all right, why don't we use a character that's like, kind of like the joker and make it like the three ring circus of technical SEO. And so you've got this protagonist who she's like this hacker type who is when you first meet her. She's just like doing all this SEO stuff, like super fast. So of course you got to present it in like a Hollywood way. Cause otherwise people would get bored. And then she runs into a problem. She meets me. I'm kinda like her coach. And so during the process of me coaching her to beat these different challenges, I'm also teaching the viewer different technical SEO tactics.
Mike (07:32): So going into this, you know, like you said, I was excited to speak at Moz con live cause to me it's like the super bowl of SEO conferences. And when they said that they were going to go virtual at first, I was a bit disappointed because I really enjoy the, you know, speaking in front of 2000 people with my newest, coolest tactics and all of that. But then I realized like, no, this is an opportunity because not only is this virtual, but they want to do a prerecorded. And I'm like, alright, let's maximize this media, let's do a movie. And so my, the, the creative folks on my team were super excited about it. And we came up with a few different concepts of how we could do it. And then we just made it happen. You know, we, the, the music in the film is mostly in house.
Mike (08:21): Like the person that is the voice actor for both the clown character and the woman, that's a protagonist also sings. The first song that you hear when the wind starts. Yes. Her name is Neferkara, she's our office manager. And she's so talented. And it was really cool to be able to like extract the talents of different people across the team. So like I wrote the script, I'm also a voice actor in it, our senior visual designer, she did the design concepts and then we've got designer who's also an animator who contributed. And then, because the timeline was so compressed, we also brought in a couple of freelancers to help us out. And it was just like, you know, one of those round the clock projects until we turned it in, like we literally turned it in. Like they said, we need it by 3:00 AM. At this point I had sent on the email at two 59 and 48 seconds. But yeah, we made it happen. It was a really fun project.
Kathleen (09:23): So I just want to pause for a second. And for anybody who's listening, he made a movie. Like this wasn't just, let's film a video. This is like, you made a movie, you wrote a script, you brought in talent, it had a story. It was animated, which I think is, makes it even harder and more work. That just blew me away when I heard that. And when I saw it, I was blown away too, because it's really good. No, it's really good. And so where I, I'm sure the thing that everybody's thinking as I listened to this is wait, now I need to go online and see this movie. So where is this movie? Where does it live?
Mike (10:05): Yeah. You can watch it on our website. You just go to i pull rank dot com slash runtime. Runtime is the name of the film. And it's right there and we watch it.
Kathleen (10:16): So cool. So a lot of what that movie was about is what is working right now in SEO. And that's really what I wanted to talk to you about because, you know, SEO is one of those things that like, you can't learn it and be done, right. It's just constantly changing to the point where this week, you know, all I look online and, and I'm seeing like, Oh, there's a core algorithm update with Google. And then, and then two days later, it's no, they just made a mistake. And you know, there's all this craziness happening in the world of SEO, which is why it's so appropriate. So people who are listening to this can't see. But if you check out the show notes, you'll see it. Mike has this awesome zoom background, which is like, it looks like the house is on fire and the Simpsons is my best guess?
Mike (11:01): It's from that meme with the dog where everything is on fire. And he's like, this is fine.
Kathleen (11:05): Yeah. Everything's fine. It's fine. Literally the world is on fire. I feel like that's SEO half the time.
Mike (11:12): Pretty much. Yeah.
Kathleen (11:15): So, so yeah, I would love it. If you could just sort of like talk about with what you're seeing. I mean, most of the people listen to this podcast are pretty experienced and they understand content marketing and they get keyword optimization, but there's a whole nother level out there that I think unless you're a specialist, you, you just, you can't keep up with
Mike (11:35): Yeah, that's the thing. So, I mean, SEO does change every day. There's algorithm updates regularly lately. And the thing is, people are very reactive to those algorithm updates. That's not the way you should approach it. Like if they roll out a new algorithm update, you got to wait a couple of weeks and see how that settles. Google is a software company, just like any other software company. And so when they roll things out, they may say, okay, we're going to roll out these five things at once. And they may say like, okay, four of those things didn't work. Let's pull those back. And only one of them stays there. So if you're jerking the wheel back and forth in reaction to them, you may end up being caught up in one of those things that wasn't actually a problem for your site.
Mike (12:18): So I always tell my clients like, Hey, if you hear about an algorithm update, wait two weeks and then see where you fall from there. And the reality is that, you know, most of the things that you would want to do in reaction to one of those updates anyway, were things that we probably already told you you should do. Right? So it's not, it's not, it's very rare that it's a dramatic change to whatever you thought about doing or whatever your, no, you should have been doing it. And so it's all about prioritization from there, but to your point of it being another level, like most people that are doing content marketing don't necessarily know like how search engines think about content, right? So you may think like, okay, these are my target keywords. I got to talk about these keywords when I'm writing about a thing, that's the top level of it.
Mike (13:12): So the way you got to think about it is that your keywords have keywords. And what I mean by that is that there's a context that's built based on what currently ranks for any given keyword. So as an example, if you rank for the, or you want to rank for the keyword basketball, and right now, the things that ranked for basketball also feature, you know, NBA bubble and LeBron James, and, you know, championship. Like if those words are featured on pages that rank, you also have to use those, those words on your page when you're trying to rank for basketball. And that's a simplified version of it. Like there are, you know, you gotta think about as far as like the topics being covered, the current, the people, places and things that are being covered. And we call this whole process of understanding that and using it technical content optimization, and it uses a lot of natural language processing to understand these concepts and so on.
Mike (14:10): But the ultimate output from that is a very data-driven brief that we use to inform the content that we create. And these concepts are super powerful. You know, like again, most people are just being like, Hey, I want to rank for basketball. So I'm going to talk about basketball and use that word 49 times, but we will beat you because we're thinking about it the same way the search engine itself is, and we're looking at those topics and incorporating them so strategically, I would say that any content marketer that is, you know, optimizing for SEO, they should look into these concepts, more, plenty of tools out there for it. Search metrics, have a tool called content experience. SEMrush has a tool for optimization like this. There's a tool called phrase. So there's plenty of tools out there that do this level of analysis.
Mike (15:02): And there's also a tool called content success by a company called Ryte. And what they do is like, as you're writing something, they'll say, here's my target keywords. It'll say, okay, well, use these words more, talk about these subjects more so you can be more optimized with respect to what search engines expect. So that's, that's one of the bigger ones that I would say that people that, you know, have knowledge about SEO don't know about this, and when they discover it, they see just like these small changes of how their writing would dramatically improve their rankings and so on.
Kathleen (15:38): Yeah. It's interesting. Have you also heard, I keep hearing a lot of buzz about a newer tool called market muse. Have you heard about that?
Mike (15:45): Yeah, they, yeah. Market Muse. They do a very similar thing. So they they've actually got a lot of different features and functionality to support this type of work. And they're also going into leveraging natural language generation pretty heavily as well. They do something that I can't remember the name of the product, but basically they'll give you a first draft of a piece of content based on what you're trying to target. And that type of technology has dramatically improved in the last couple of years, you know, or even the last few months. And that when people used to try to like generate content, they usually do, what's called content spinning. And that's where you kind of like take an existing article and just like change the words around like use synonyms and things like that. That's always been bad content. Now you have something called GPT two and also GPT three, which was put out by Elon Musk's company, open AI. And it's like really good at writing content. Like as long as you configure it, right. A human cannot tell the difference between a piece of content written by a human and written by this.
Kathleen (16:59): It's funny that you say that because I just talked to somebody who rewrote 60% of his website using GPT three, cause he got access to the early beta and he was like, it's performing so much better. It did a better job of saying what we do than I could have done. And, and all these people in the Slack group I'm in, went to look at it and we were all like, that's amazing. It's crazy. It's like a little freaky though, because I don't know, like what does that mean for, for the future of us as marketers? Right.
Mike (17:29): I think it means good things. You know, I think it frees us up to write content that's valuable and creative rather than like, imagine your eCommerce site. Right. And you're like, okay, to optimize these pages, I gotta write 200 words on every category page. No one wants to do, wants to do that. No one wants to write the copy that goes on product detail pages. They just want to be able to like take that data and turn it into something. Well, now you can't. And so it frees up actual copywriters and creative content marketers, and so on to think about how do we make interactive content? How do we write things that are like emotional and so on? Like, you know, I don't think we're going to get to a point in the near term that something like GPT three is going to be able to write conversion copy right now. I think he can give us some insights, but I don't think it's going to be able to very much be able to say like, okay, this certain type of person I want to write for them.
Kathleen (18:30): Well, I think your key, you said the three key words, which was in the near term, I think eventually it'll figure it out,
Mike (18:37): Right? Like we get to enough computing power and, and people are writing the right algorithms. Yes. You can retrain anything. But right now...
Kathleen (18:45): Hopefully by that point you and I will be sitting on a beach somewhere and having a pina colada retired.
Mike (18:54): But the other thing is that I think that we're going to get to a point where you can say, I want to rank for this keyword. And those types of tools would just ingest what ranks there and then use all those features that I'm talking about that we use as humans and it's going to write the perfectly optimized content for you. So then what is going to, what's gonna make, what's going to be differentiator between you and me and how we create the content. I think it's going to be those creative aspects that are going to be even more valuable. So GPT three does not replace your editorial team because you're still gonna need editors to edit whatever it spits out. And then you're going to need creative people that can create things that don't exist because GBT three learns from what does exist.
Kathleen (19:41): Yeah. It's pretty crazy. But it also goes back to that point I was making earlier where, you know, programming and knowledge of code is a super power because you can't just like get access to GPT three and just like, it will know how to write your website. Like you had there's there's you have to understand how to leverage those tools. And there's a certain degree of technical sophistication required for that. At least at this stage, I'm sure at some point someone will build a software interface that will make it easy for anybody to do it, but that doesn't exist yet. Yeah. So that's pretty cool. So, all right. So we have number one, understanding the context around your SEO and that your keywords have keywords. I love that. What else do you got for us?
Mike (20:23): Let's see. So I'm a strong believer that for, you know, the last like five or six years, SEO has become more content marketing. And a lot of people that do SEO don't know much about the technical side of it. And I don't think there's necessarily a problem with those people. I just think that the technical stuff needs to be brought back to the forefront because a lot of things have changed about the web in the last couple years. You know, JavaScript is more prominent in the way that search engines can understand that stuff and so on has changed. And so there's been a lot of new tactics that have popped up as a result of that. So one of which is AB testing specifically for SEO. So if you've got a big site and you're like, Hey, we're considering making this change before.
Mike (21:20): It's like, well, we make the change and see what happens. Now you can do that as kind of like a step approach by taking a you know, representative sample of URLs, making that change there and validating or invalidating that hypothesis that this will work. And then once you see that it works, you can roll it out at scale. So I think that that's something that every SEO needs to know how to do, because that's a good way to avoid losing money. But you know, again, that goes back to the technical aspects because that is a very technical thing to do. Like you got to know more about CDNs and how sites are set up, or you got to know about Google tag manager and things like that. So my point here is that, you know, we're, we're still going through what I've, I've called for a number of years.
Mike (22:07): Now, this technical SEO Renaissance where people that sit at the intersection of like code and, you know, creative marketing sophistication, and, you know, I guess SEO are able to really capitalize on things that others can. And I very much encourage, you know, SEO or content marketers to learn more about these things. So at least they can be aware and discuss with more technical people. Like how can we deploy this in such a way that what I'm doing as a content marketer works even better. So, you know, it used to be that you could just like build a site and put a bunch of great content on it. And the links that you would attract as a result of those, those that content would yield better rankings for you. But because Google has gotten more sophisticated and they have better understanding of the pages that are very rich in that type of content, you've got to understand things like server side rendering and dynamic rendering and, and Google's capabilities like where they end. So you can make sure that that content always has the best chance of ranking.
Kathleen (23:22): How much do you think the average marketer needs to learn about technical SEO? Because like, I've always, you know, I've always kind of looked at the landscape of the marketing industry and there are some people who like all they do 24 seven, like their one job is they are a technical SEO expert and they do it really, really well. But I do think, I mean, it seems to me there is some baseline level of technical, technical SEO understanding that every marketer should have. I'm curious where you fall on that.
Mike (23:53): Yeah. And I don't think that everyone needs to know how to do like 301 redirects and fix AC access files and so on and so forth. I think they just need to be exposed to those ideas. So if you're someone who read Moz's, you know, beginner's guide to SEO, I think that is a good base layer foundation of understanding technical SEO, because you're exposed to all those problems that you might have. And you can say like, Hey, I don't think the page that we just published is in our site map, that's important. Or I looked at, I looked at this plugin and it showed me that, you know, what is showing up for Google is not what I see in my browser. Like understanding those base level concepts is enough because you can find an awesome technical SEO, like you described, or even just an engineer themselves and be like, Hey, I'm at, I see these problems. I'm not the expert here, but can we look into this so that we can make sure that the content I'm creating is visible to Google?
Kathleen (25:01): Yeah. That's kind of what I was going to say is it's like, you need to know enough to be able to recognize that you have a problem so that, you know, when to make that call, right. Like whether it's, I have a feeling, my images are too large. And so my page is loading too slowly or, you know, it might be, I need you know, more structured data on my website. I don't know how to do that, but I know what it is and that it needs to be done. Like there's sort of that level that I think is important for marketers to have.
Mike (25:30): Yeah, absolutely. Cause you know, I mean, I personally come from a time back in my day where, you know, doing websites was you had one title and that was webmaster everything from master of all the web. Yeah. You were like a network administrator, you are front end and back end developer, you did Photoshop. Like you did everything. Right. So for me, like I want to know everything because I'm just used to that. But the modern web doesn't work that way. And so people have their, like their separation of concerns and that's fine. But I do believe that having like a general understanding of what someone like that technical SEO or engineer does just makes the end product even better. So I would recommend people just learn that foundational.
Kathleen (26:23): Yeah. That's good advice. All right. So other things that you're seeing really kind of move the needle these days from an SEO standpoint.
Mike (26:35): Yeah. so I mean, I'm, I'm starting to get super tactical. One of the things that we run with every single website that we pick up, especially because we work with mostly enterprise brands is they always have a bunch of external links pointing to pages that no longer exist. So the worst I've ever seen was, you know, one of the bigger sports organizations had 12 million links pointing to pages that 302 redirected. Now a Googler will tell you, there's no difference from how they handle 302s and 301s. I can definitively tell you that that is not true based on my experience. And this was a case where it was like one of the few things that we were able to push through in the organization was converting those 12 million, 302s and the 301s and their traffic shot up dramatically from organic search. So ever since then, I've, I've made sure that we always look for that. And every time you always find it, that's a problem. And one of the things that we do to make sure that that's not a problem moving forward is is with Ahrefs, which is one of the link index tools. They have a API end point for telling you what pages have broken links. So what you can do is set up a script. And again, this is something that you would work with your engineering team on.
Kathleen (28:02): It all comes back to that coding.
Mike (28:04): And I have a script that pings that API and says, all right, here's your list of broken links now automatically set up your 301 redirects from now. So then you don't have to worry about that as a problem. One issue though, is that Google and I believe this would be true. I don't have any definitive evidence of this, but it's something that I've like my hypothesis based on things that I've read in patents. They store copies of your site forever. So if you make a change to a page, they're able to look at what the previous version of that page is just like the way back machine. Yeah. And so if you implement a 301 redirect from one page to another, and those pages don't match up, like the content that used to be there, it doesn't match up with the content that is there.
Mike (28:51): Now, they won't apply all the value of the link that you're redirecting. So the way that we've gotten around that, and again goes back to code. Google has something that they call the natural language processing API, which will allow you to determine the topics of pages. So what you would want to do is look for an old version of whatever page was there. Again, the way back machine is a good place for that and run it through that NLP API. And then they'll tell you all the topics and were called entities that were on that page. And then you run your other pages through that and find whatever page has the closest match topic. And then that's where you redirect it to. And then you're more likely to get more value out of that.
Kathleen (29:39): That's cool. I did not know that. See, this is why I wanted to talk to you. I knew I was going to learn some new things. And by the way you were like, now we're getting tactical, I love this part of the conversation. So let's go into the tactical weeds. Do you guys have anything else like that?
Mike (29:55): Absolutely. So another one that again, another commonplace thing that we see when we bring on clients, well, the first thing that we do is our SEO quick hits. So what are the things that are, you know, high value that we can do very quickly to show that, right? And another thing that we find, and this is especially important for big sites, but it's important for all types of sites. And there are links internally to pages that redirect. So 301 redirect is, you know, they're your last resort basically like when you have links pointing from an external site, it is difficult to reach out to a hundred or a thousand sites and say, Hey, can you update? So the 301 is the best thing you can do in that case, but within your own site, you have complete control. So you shouldn't be linking 301s because for every 301, there's a small loss of link equity. So again, whenever we get a site, we'll crawl a site and see what that internal linking structure looks like. And if there's a bunch of links to 301s, we fix those by just linking directly to the final destination URL. And then while I can see improvements from there, and the same is true of links to 404s. So those two things, and, and also with the external links, if you fix those three things, you will always see an improvement in organic search.
Kathleen (31:17): That's awesome. And I feel like that's just like good website housekeeping. And it's funny you mentioned that because I was just doing that. We migrated the site at the company I work for, we migrated it from WordPress to HubSpot. And when we did that, it meant that everything basically was on one domain instead of sub domains. And, and it was like, it was a painful few days, but so necessary. I, I spent like three days going through old blogs, like fixing what were section headings and turning them into H2s changing the link so that they went to, they were like internal links and not external links that went to 301s, like the whole process was such a slog, but when it was done, I it's the same feeling I have like when I clean out the junk drawer in my kitchen. I'm like, Oh, I feel so good. Now it's all clean and perfect.
Mike (32:06): Yeah. It's tedious, but it's work done.
Kathleen (32:08): Yeah, it is. It is awesome. Well, I mean, I literally feel like I could sit here all day and talk to you about SEO and you're this endless fountain of, of incredibly useful knowledge, but we only have so much time. So shifting gears for a minute, I always ask people at the end of my interviews, two questions, the first of which is the podcast is all about inbound marketing and people who are doing it really well. Is there a particular company or individual that you can point to that you think is really setting the standard, what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days?
Mike (32:43): Hmm. I mean, I feel like it's a cop out to mention Rand, but Rand is really good at it.
Kathleen (32:49): You know what, you know what, I just want to say this came up once before. He's almost never mentioned, which blows my mind because he is the person that I would probably mention. So talk, discuss Rand.
Mike (33:03): Rand is, he's like a inbound marketing machine, you know, like if you think back to the things that he was doing with Moz, where it was like he was blogging every night and he created the Fridays, Whiteboard Fridays, which he does, or he was doing every Friday. He had the beginner's guide to SEO, which he did the first iteration of, and then Brittany Mueller has taken over. So yeah, I think if, if you want to point to someone who is doing it and isn't a huge brand, like he's obviously, you know, a big influence in the space, you can watch him do it again right now with his new startup, which is Spark Toro. And so you see him blogging pretty regularly. He's putting out videos on like how to use the product. He is identifying new social channels that work for him.
Mike (33:54): Cause you know, Twitter engagement is down pretty dramatically. Linkedin engagement is up and I'm starting to see him pop up there more. He's doing a ton of different, you know, podcasts and webinars and things. So I think Rand is a really good example of how to do it right. And how to really laser focus in on your audience and then like continually know what they need and put it in front of them. So then show like, Hey, I've also got this product. That's very valuable. And then the other thing is that, you know, he's always had like a very empathetic approach to everything that he's done. And what was really striking to me was that they have an email through Spark Toro that goes out right before they're going to charge you like a week or so. And it's like, Hey, you know, this is of course a subscription product, but we don't want to just like lock you into a subscription and make you forget like, Hey, your, your bill is coming up. If you want to cancel. That's okay. You're welcome to come back. So it's like proactively being like, Hey, we're going to bill you just like, no. And I really think that speaks to his approach and why it's a better approach than a lot of other things that you see out there. It's really good in that market.
Kathleen (35:13): I could not agree more. And I, a couple things I would add to that. One is that, so it's Rand Fishkin, who was the founder of Moz, who now, as you've mentioned, founded this new company Spark Toro, which has an incredible product. That's a whole nother conversation, but the couple of things I've noticed about him, one, what he did that was so brilliant in Spark Toro is he started producing content before he had a product. Like I was following him before he ever launched that product. And he was building that audience. So that by the time the product was ready, you have this like ready-made group of people who were, who were waiting to just say yes to him, which is so smart. The other thing is that the content he creates is phenomenal. It's very, very high quality. So, you know, some people might hear, Oh, he blogs every day or however often he blogs and think, eh, you know, sure you could do that, but it's checking the box.
Kathleen (36:04): He does not check the box. It's very, very good content. And he does a lot of research. Like that's why people follow him so much. And then the other thing that I just love about him, and I think this, you reminded me of this when you talked about the email about billing, is he's so transparent even about the negatives, like what people might perceive to be negatives. So he has this book he wrote called Lost and Founder, which is very transparent accounting of how he wound up leaving Moz and all the lessons he learned. All the mistakes that he says he made and what he would do differently. And it's just like, if you've ever owned a business, which you do, and I have, reading that book, it's so relatable and so refreshing to hear an entrepreneur talk about the things they didn't do right. Cause sometimes you feel like people only talk about their successes and that is so not a true picture of entrepreneurship.
Mike (36:55): Yeah. I got an advanced copy of the book you know, at a, at a very challenging point in running my business and it was, and you know, I was like walking out the door to go on vacation. Like I can't see it anymore. And I took a copy of the book and it was so refreshing to read it and feel like, okay, there's someone else out there that understands this? Could you, you've got books. Like The Hard Thing About Hard Things by then, but that book is kind of BS. Cause it's like, Oh, everything got hard. And then I went and raised $60 million.
Kathleen (37:27): Thank you for saying that. Cause I thought the same thing I'm like, yeah. Huh.
Mike (37:31): Like that's not how this works in real life. So yeah, that book is definitely refreshing in that regard.
Kathleen (37:37): Yeah. I totally agree with you. Well, and to add to that, you yourself have just published what I think is an absolutely beautiful article on medium about your experience as an entrepreneur and all the lessons that you had learned. It's like you basically wrote a letter to yourself sort of from the future about the things that you should be doing differently. And I just thought it was so spot on to, I mean, I just, I just know I related to it as somebody who has owned a business and specifically an agency and like been in those shoes. So I will put the link to that in the show notes because it's definitely something everybody should read. It's really great. All right, second question that I hear all the time from marketers is how do you keep up? Because marketing and specifically SEO, as we talked about changes so quickly, how do you personally make sure that you stay educated and kind of on the cutting edge of everything that's happening?
Mike (38:31): Yes. Two things. One, following people that are not our industry. So I follow a lot of developers and things. And I just read voraciously, you know, I read all types of stuff and it's, it's very important to me to like have ideas that are not about my day to day. So then I can figure out ways to assimilate them to my day to day. And also it just like keeps me more broadly creative than if I'm just focused in on one thing. So yeah, it's just that, that curiosity and that thirst for knowledge and the way that I action that is my following more people and just keeping stuff coming at me.
Kathleen (39:11): Awesome. I love it. Any one or two people you want to mention who you think are worth following?
Mike (39:18): I'm putting you on the spot. Yeah, I can't really think of anybody. I would just say, you know, look at me on Twitter and look at who I follow.
Kathleen (39:26): That's a good idea. There you go.
Mike (39:27): The people, the people that you know are that will pop up first will be the people I've followed most recently. So yeah. Check those out.
Kathleen (39:35): That's a good tip. All right. Well, Mike, I'm sure there are people listening who are like, I want to ask this guy a question. I definitely want to see his movie. I want to learn more about this company. What's the best way for them to connect with you online?
Mike (39:49): Yeah. Just go to i pull rank dot com or just reach out to me on Twitter, which is just @ipullrank.
Kathleen (39:54): Awesome. All right. Again, all of those links will be in the show notes. So head there to check those out. And in the meantime, if you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast, preferably a five star review. So that, that would help us get found by other listeners. And of course, if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Mike. This was a ton of fun.
Mike (40:28): Thanks for having me.
The holy grail of local search marketing is ranking at the top of Google's Local 3-Pack. Here's how a local search expert helps his clients do just that.
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Local SEO Search Owner John Vuong shares the strategies he uses to help clients improve their local search marketing strategies and rank at the top of Google's Local 3-Pack.
Hint: There is no magic bullet.
Ranking locally begins with a well run business that sells a great product and treats customers right. If you've got those three things in place, then John has some straightforward strategies that any company - large or small - can use to get to the top of local search results.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Local SEO Search website
- Connect with John on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is John Vuong, who is the owner of Local SEO Search. How's it going?
John (00:21): I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Kathleen.
Kathleen (00:23): I'm excited to have you because you are a local SEO guru amongst other things. And I feel like, especially at the time we're living in right now with what's happening in the world, getting your SEO buttoned up is more important now than ever because everybody's starting online these days. Right?
John (00:46): Exactly.
Kathleen (00:47): Before we get into our topic today, can you tell my listeners a little bit about who you are, your story as well as what Local SEO Search does?
John (00:57): Yeah, definitely. So I started this agency seven years ago. But prior to that, I've always been in sales and advertising sales in particular. So I studied business finance, but I didn't really know where I wanted to go with it. And I got into my first job as a sales person and I kind of refined and learned the art of sales and really got better over the years, asked the right questions. Fact-finding, did a lot of training courses, audio tapes at the time because there were no blogs and video like there is today in podcasts. So consuming as much as you can to learn the art of sales. And then the last thing before I started my agency, I actually worked at Yellow Pages and I was there for over five years and I learned, I didn't really work in an ad agency per se, but I had a chance to understand advertising and how it worked in terms of a recurring business model and how to run a larger operation.
John (02:00): And I did, I was basically face to face with the end consumer clients. And that's where I learned the most because I connected with them. I understood their pain points, their troubles, and I wanted to really help. Right? However, I was restricted to the product line that we were offering at Yellow Pages. As you know, at the time Google was really taking off, they were getting more and more users and more people were spending more time in front of a computer than ever doing searches. And as you know, more people were spending you know, more money at Yellow Pages, but getting less return on their investment. And so that's the reason I started this agency. From listening to my clients, letting them know that, you know, you can continue with Yellow Pages, but they didn't really adopt quick enough. And they don't have a solution where customers, your ideal prospects are now actively looking for businesses like yourself. So that's why I got into the world.
Kathleen (03:00): So I just have to say that you saying the words Yellow Pages just took me down memory lane. And I'm sure there are people listening that either won't remember this or, or, you know, it's, they're too young, but like, just that I hear those words and all I can think about is the, the brick of the giant Yellow Pages book being dropped at my front door, like shrink, wrapped in plastic. And I have this one special drawer in my living room where I used to keep all the phone books. Cause you would get like your city phone book, your County phone bucket. And there was the Yellow Pages and the white pages and just the amount of paper that, that took, like, I don't know my mind, I was like, whoa, deja vu, as soon as you said that. So it's, I don't, I don't know whether I look back on it fondly or not. I haven't quite made up my mind.
John (03:54): Yeah. But, but if you imagine like think about 10 years ago Google didn't take off, like the internet was just slowly taking off where the speed of connecting to the internet was dial up, right? Like getting in front of a computer to check your email. It took you five minutes to open up a browser and then search and load up a website. I mean, things took a very long time. And so before, you know, computers and internet and technology started taking off Yellow Pages was still the most instrumental place for a lot of small business owners small, medium sized business owners to market themselves because they knew it was an active, engaged consumer that was actively looking for a product or service. And all you have to do is advertise your one page content and kind of call to action. And really hopefully they will convert, right. They're engaged, they're ready to buy. And all you have to do is be in front of them at the time of purchase.
Kathleen (04:58): So it's funny when I think about that, because, because yes, it was a very like binary equation of what it took to succeed in the Yellow Pages. It was a combination of purchasing an ad. And for those companies that were really creative, naming your company, triple a whatever, like, because literally ranking first was about alphabetization, you know, which is so simple and straightforward. And then you go into this world that we're in now we're ranking first is like, it's like magic, you know, or it seems like it's sometimes we were just talking about that before we started recording about how things changed so much and Google has this supposed algorithm, and now they have RankBrain, which is artificial intelligence. And, but, you know, they don't really tell anybody what's in that. I mean, they give you a sense of the big drivers of what makes you rank, but nobody really, really knows for sure. You know, what, what those factors are. So it's just such an interesting thing when you juxtapose, you know, it was alphabet, did your company name start with a, and did you have a good ad?
John (06:04): It was very straightforward and easy, right. But then comes, but it wasn't actually easy because you had to run a really good business as well. You have to take care of your fundamentals of understanding who your customer is offering a really good product or service taking care of your clients and staff and, you know, pricing it, right. Competitive analysis, all that other stuff like foundational right before you can then promote with a good offer or call to action or whatnot to get them in the door. Right. So you still need to know how to run a good business when you were advertising the Yellow Pages. Right.
Kathleen (06:40): And that will never change even today. Like all the digital advances in the world will never change the fact that you have to have the fundamentals straight. So if, when, when somebody comes to you and they're a business owner and they say, I want to, you know, dominate my local market for search, where do you begin?
John (06:59): Yeah. So I always first find out a little bit about the company to see if they're actually running a good business in the first place. Right. See the little fact check thing to see if they even have a digital presence in first off, like, do they have a website? They don't have any social assets social or any, any media. And then also find out if they are a profitable business, do they know how to run a business? Right. So understanding who their ideal customer is, persona avatars, understand all that. And then you take on the path of what we potentially can do, because ultimately it's all about positioning themselves as the leader thought leader, authoritative figure and expert right. In their niche. And then from there, it's all about like that journey, what it looks like, how long will it take, because we need to really benchmark them and figure out where and what we need to do in terms of strategy and a campaign over the next course of weeks, months, years, even. Right. so it is a long process in terms of inbound and intake, but it's the right thing to do because it is more of a relationship partnership that we're looking for versus an ad campaign.
Kathleen (08:08): Yeah, absolutely. So I mean the Holy grail of local searches, Google, there are other search engines, but let's be honest, you know, if you want to succeed in, in SEO these days, your, your starting point is Google and Google has the three pack. So can you talk a little bit about that?
John (08:25): Yeah, definitely. So as you know, most people are doing searches by keywords on Google. There's paid at the top, there's the local three pack, which is usually radius centric, relevance, and distance based on that storefront or service area that you actually go in and do service calls on as then below is there is an organic listing. So traditionally before the map existed, it was all about making sure you rank organically or naturally below the ads. Right? And the local three-pack came out because mainly the driver was mobile. The reason the map came out because people were on the goal and they wanted to look for local coffee shops, gas stations, restaurants, whatever at their fingertips. And it was easy to go to that store quickly because of directions. You could read reviews, check out their followers, et cetera. So Google's intention was trying to get people usage up on their assets like Google, but also display as much information on their property as possible without going to their website.
John (09:33): So state getting them to not go on your website, but keep them on Google as long as possible. So they can store and obviously, you know, understand your behaviors, right then there's ads. That will be retargeted to you. So the big thing for you to understand is how do you capitalize on what Google is presenting itself, where you can now be on the map potentially in front of a potential prospect who is searching or seeking out your keywords. So first thing is, make sure you verify and own your Google, my business page. So that's the first thing a lot of people don't even do. However, you should do that on it. Got to my business Google my business and own it. Usually it's a postcard that gets sent to you takes two weeks. It's just to verify that you're a legitimate business at that physical location. If you are a service type of business and you don't have a physical address, you can still claim it because you are a local business, you just service a radius. So you just submit it as if your home is your main central pinpoint. And then you can go into Google My Business and put in the radius service area or cities that you actually service.
Kathleen (10:48): No, I had somebody I know who did that. Actually, this is interesting that you bring that up, who was a service business who put in their home and then Google automatically pulled the picture of his house for the business. So how do you deal with that? Like, I mean, I think there's a lot of people who would say, I don't want anybody to have any information about my home. I don't want them to know that it's a home based business. So how do you manage that?
John (11:10): Because Google has maps, right? So there's a difference between putting your address and hiding your address. So you can actually go in and hide your address because then people will not know the physical address. So as a service base, most people are operating from the home and therefore you have the ability to just hide your address. Typically, if it is a service based like plumbing, HVAC, roofing, because these are category driven. And most of the time Google recognizes the services as if they don't have physical locations, because you can operate at home and just run a business, right? So certain categories, you can actually hide your address. And in that case, your friend, you can definitely hide it. And then that map and that photograph of your home will not appear.
Kathleen (12:01): Okay. Good to know. So when, when you talk about the three pack for people who might not be familiar with, what are the three things that make up the three words?
John (12:08): So there's a lot of factors to rank on the Google three-pack. And as you know, Google is always changing their algorithm and always looking for the best result for that given search query or the user. Right? And to understand that you need to understand users in general, right? Because each criteria each vertical, each industry, each market will have different subsets of criteria and factors to rank on that three-pack and even on the natural listings, right? Ultimately what you want to do is have a great website that answers the question, answers the user intent, but ultimately it's all about users behavior as well. So you need to understand that you're providing good, authentic, raw expert content on the website to position yourself as the expert clean look, user friendly website ease of navigation, quick loading, secure website, all these stuff that you should be doing anyways.
John (13:12): And then of course, it's the other factors as a fundamental. It's like, make sure that you have good reputation out there. Good reviews, make sure that other people know about you backlinks, right. Go out there and position yourself as an expert by being a part of better business, rural, or getting more speaking engagements or other articles. You know, it's like a guest posts and associations and memberships. All these are all other factors that organic SEO also plays, but there's other signals that Google local three pack are really prominent on, which is citations, which is you know, directories are submitted, which is consistent across all the board, all, all channels. So all your assets should be consistent. The messaging, the content piece, the authorship just everything, right. And then of course it's all about relevance as well. So if you service an area that is New York, for instance, Manhattan or whatnot, you have to make sure that your website, every property and as every post that you mentioned should be related to that region, right. That the surface area, because you don't want articles to be mentioning your, your service or product if they're in a different country or a different postal code, or, you know, because Google, their whole purpose is to really provide the best user experience for that customer. Who's seeking out the best product or service or finding best business owners to match them. So by displaying the best results for the user you're trying to position yourself so that, you know, you get a higher conversion rate. No, that seems pretty straightforward.
Kathleen (14:52): If you are, let's just use this as an example, a plumber, who's servicing a very specific area, but what if you are, you know, I'm a big like Mr. Plumber that has locations all over the country, but wants to show up first in each of those locations, because then you do have a situation where your website is going to have to have content on different locations. So how do you, how do you tell Telegraph that to Google that, like, I might have all this information on my site, but I have these very discrete, like territories or areas that I serve.
John (15:23): Yeah, definitely. So it's a very similar process as a local mom and pop shop business, small businesses owner, right. Because if you're a Mister plumber, Mr. Rooter or whatnot you have a franchise model and one person still owns that region, right. So there should be a website or a landing page or a subcategory within a page so that you can actually optimize and let people in on that page. Right. Because that's really representing the brand. So it's the same factors because you're still ranking for that one location one.
Kathleen (16:02): So are you putting that landing page in as your website address for that particular local pack listing?
John (16:09): You have to, because if you're going to the main page, which is where every other city is going after you're not going to be optimizing for the right reasons, right. Google will not, you know, signal their signals out there. Right. And they will know that it's more of a branded search versus like a local search.
Kathleen (16:28): So whenever I think about local search and, and you know, this whole topic, there, there are obviously fundamentals, as you said, that need to be put in place a good website, good content you know, getting, claiming your listing and having it all set up properly. So I feel like there's some table stakes and, and, and that's accessible to a local business. But then there are some things that are trickier, right? Where if you're a local business and you're trying to compete against the 800 pound gorilla of your market in the local listings there, they're probably going to have a much higher domain authority, more backlinks. So when you look at all of the different things, the factors are the levers you can pull that are within your control. Are there certain ones that carry more weight with Google? You know, so CA can David take on Goliath in this situation?
John (17:27): Yeah. With the local three pack, it's actually a lot easier for a small, medium sized business owner to capitalize on a competing with a big brand big monopoly, right? Because end of the day, the big, big brands, their main focus is really not on the local level, but more on the branded level. They're going after national campaigns, national ad campaigns, they're not focused on long tail keywords markets, regions, neighborhoods, cities, street level, right? Like intersections, that's where community level search results and queries can dominate versus large brands because their focus is on the bigger picture versus the like little micro level picture. Right. So I always ask clients like, you know, yes, there's a specialty, there's actually a niche in most subsets, like plumber, for instance, but you are also looking for like long tail, what are some of the triggers like drainage, septic tanks stuff that actually matters for that local small business owner that might not actually matter for the larger brands that were just going after very broad plumber terms, right? Yes. There's a lot more competition. There might be a little bit more keyword volume, but is the conversion rate as high, right. What really matters for a small business owner is leads cause sales, revenue, and profitability.
Kathleen (18:49): Yeah. Now it's interesting. Cause like we talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast and a lot about content specifically. And so I think probably most people listening are pretty well versed generally on what constitutes a good content or organic SEO strategy. But what I think is very interesting, at least to me, is when you take that overarching approach to content marketing, like, you know, for example, you want to go after the long tails, you want to answer the questions that people are asking about the problems they have. And when you put that, when you put a local search lens over it, I think it could be very easy to get your content wrong. And what I mean by that, and I've seen this play out is I'll just use an example. Like I live in Annapolis, Maryland, and I, I know someone who owns a commercial real estate company.
Kathleen (19:41): And we talked about this once and you know, you can create all kinds of content around commercial real estate. And you know, you could even do commercial real estate in Annapolis, but, but there's, I think there can tend to be an inclination to get a little, I don't know if spammy is the right word. We're like, let's have a landing page for every neighborhood and let's, let's make sure to put the words, Annapolis, commercial, real estate and every blog we write and it can start to sound really forced. So do you, how do you generally counsel your clients to approach that so that they're creating genuinely helpful quality content, but still nailing it at that very hyperlocal level?
John (20:26): Yeah. So I, when I try to find out from the clients are, which markets really are important for them, right? Like always dominate local first and expand, you know, regional national, et cetera. So the big thing for me is understanding where they want to go with it. In terms of, yeah, there's service pages, blog pages, there's different content assets, like video, audio images and all that, right? Like written content. So you need to really refine and figure out like who your ideal customer is. Figure out, map it all accordingly with the journey, but then figure out like, yes, there's certain landing pages that will result in a higher conversion rate you to make it sound natural. So there's an an art to it. Then then more than anything, right? Like you're not just writing for the purpose of Google, you're writing for the purpose of the user.
John (21:21): Right. And you should always write for the user and yes, there's keyword research, semantic keywords, there's different variations. Yes. You can use some certain keywords and embed a couple drippings of that. Even internal waking and all that other stuff, but it's all about like always focus on your ideal customer and write for them. And if you do that on a really regular basis, consistent basis, then it's no longer spam because you see, you'll see a lot of fruits and rewards from it because your ideal customers will reach out to you so far down that funnel that all they care about is pricing, or they've already vetted you. They already check out your case studies, reviews, and testimonials. All they care about is when can you start.
Kathleen (22:08): Right. That makes sense. So when it comes to the listing, you mentioned in the beginning, you have to claim your listing. Obviously that's, that's step one, but then once you have that listing, there are a lot of things you can do with it. And you just talked about assets. And I'm really curious, you know, how important are those assets, the photographs, the video reviews. Like I would love to understand what weight reviews really carry and how many do you really need and that kind of thing.
John (22:33): Yeah. So it's all about perception of running a real good business, right? So it's your first impression. If people don't go to your website, they're going to check you out on Google, my business. Right. And the first thing they see is images of the store, either external or internal. So make it as professional as possible. Spend that extra photography fee to make it look as genuine as possible. And also it's all about like, you can put videos as well, right? Short little clips because more important than ever people want to check you out before they even come to your store today, especially during this pandemic. Right. So they want to vet you and then the reputation aspect is all about making sure that they're authentic as much as you want more, I'm more concerned about quality reviews, right. And always genuinely ask as a process to every single customer, not just your best customers. Right. Because those see right through that you vetted your reviews even, or you paid someone to get only five stars. Right. So try to be as genuine as possible, there are going to be some negative and that's okay. Right. It's all about being real about it and acknowledging it and really responding to positive and negative reviews. Right?
Kathleen (23:55): Yeah. There's a lot of research that goes into like that, that has shown that, that having only positive reviews actually is not good. And it makes sense to me intuitively as just a buyer. Like if I go and I'm looking at a restaurant and all they have is five star reviews, I'm like that that person got their cousin to write all of those, you know? So I agree with you. It's important to have variety. Any best practices around how you ask for them?
John (24:22): Put it in your process, right? So whatever it is from reception to invoicing to thank you, email or a thank you letter, make it a process or text message or call whenever it is. And drip them, it's the same thing as where you drip to get a new customer, you need to have that final, have a final for getting reviews. A lot of people forget that once you have a client that's active paying, they're inclined to do something for you already. They already, you know, use you for a reason. So why not? If, and it's all it is, is a process it's like, you already have an active client, get their email, their information so that you can drip them for a newsletter or whatever it is, right. Like referrals or whatever it is.
Kathleen (25:10): And how often should a business be looking at their listing, updating it, keeping it fresh?
John (25:19): So updating and keeping them fresh. I personally don't update mine quite as often as you know, because nothing really changes. You only update it when there's dramatic service changes or product changes, right. Unless you move location, you have new images of which we need to talk about. Yes. But it's all about like, you know, if you're in a very hyper competitive industry and they expect a lot of changes, like restaurants, like you need to stay on top of what's going on. Like, are you doing deliveries more so than ever where the specials, because you can do Google my business posts as well, very similar to Facebook posts. You know, you can post it on Google and they last for seven days an image and a content piece with hashtags. So why not utilize that extra piece of asset? Right. so I forgot to mention like images, make sure it's your own images to like never use stock photos, make sure you personalize it as much as possible, as much as a lot of people use image tags and make sure that, you know, you, you save it on a file with keywords, Google actually, you know, so they say they don't take that into consideration.
John (26:29): Right. They already have a geotarget. They already have their own vetting system to make sure that it's authentic and real. So do just things that are real to your business. Don't try to hack or trick anyone because people will see through it, especially Google. Yeah.
Kathleen (26:44): That's a good point. I didn't realize you could post updates like you can on Facebook. That's interesting. And I mean, how many businesses would you say really take advantage of that?
John (26:54): So all my clients, we do it for them. So when, when you, most businesses don't even know about it, maybe 5% actually utilize that feature because only half of the businesses actually claim and verify the Google my business page. So there's a huge amount of people that are even missing that boat, let alone, you know, understanding like the category that you put yourself in is so important. Right. And making sure you check in to see where your competitors are actively marketing themselves as well, in terms of review, count, always check into your competitors, make sure you're in the same playing field, right? Because Google will look at trends. They'll look at industry stuff to see if you suddenly have a hundred reviews and every, or your nearest competitor only has five. What's going on. Are you being in buying reviews? Like just do things that are natural, right? Because if you're a high, big ticket item and you're selling homes, you maybe sell five or 10 a year, how do you have a hundred plus reviews?
Kathleen (27:53): Yeah, no, that's a good point. It's a good point. So I assume that you have some clients that come to you and they don't have their listing set up and you need to help them do that from scratch. But I would think, and correct me if I'm wrong. Do you have some companies that come to you and they've set their listing up and they're like, I want to get higher in the rankings. I would love it. If you could talk maybe about any, any case studies or examples you have of like, what, what have those businesses done when they've come to you with an existing listing and they just want to increase their ranking? What are the things they've done and what improvements have you seen and how long does that take?
John (28:29): Great questions? Because we get asked this daily. So most of my clients, I mean, we've been in business for seven years and we focus on family, run, small, medium sized businesses, dentist, physio, chiro, you know, professional health and beauty as well as traits. Right. And usually they are smaller in size, but they're a local leader, right. They have experienced, they've been doing it for five, 10, 20 years. They expect it and plan on doing it for another five, 10, 20 years. Right. so that's my target client and what their intention is, is obviously to cultivate new, acquiring new customers because they understand like Yellow Pages. If you're not there and present, you're not visible to have the opportunity to generate leads, potential clients. Right. so most of my clients actually week we have a pretty good track record. And majority of them do see an increase of between, you know, 20 to 50% in terms of organic traffic growth annually.
John (29:36): And it actually grows afterwards too because we focus not just on the map, but organic as right. And we really focus on like service level targeted keywords that actually drive real business versus blogs that are general in nature and informative type of content pieces that doesn't really drive real customers acquisition of, you know, sales and revenue, because the main purpose for all my clients is phone calls, leads, revenue, sales, and profitability. Right. And if it's not working exactly. And if they don't, if it doesn't work, they're not going to renew with me. So my focus is yes, we have a longer term contract, but we have a very high renewal rate because our whole premise is longterm relationships because we want to grow with them. And it's more of a partnership than anything.
Kathleen (30:27): Well, what you're saying makes sense. And I think in general, philosophically, I get this question a lot. Like if you're doing content marketing, where do you start? Because you have, you obviously want a full funnel strategy, but like where do you begin? And I always tell people, you start at the bottom of the funnel, which is basically what you're saying, which is hyper-specific queries that have to do with high intent purchase searches. And that's because that's the fastest path to revenue and you start getting revenue in and that buys you a lot more time to figure out the top in the middle of the funnel. So I totally agree with you.
John (31:03): Exactly. And then in terms of timeline, I forgot to answer that. So I've seen clients rank months, and then it's some clients like dentists in Toronto. That's where I am may take years because it all depends on benchmark where they're at versus some of the major players. Right. and how much they've invested, especially your client competitor. So it's very hard and it's very individualized in terms of the quotes that we submit to our clients.
Kathleen (31:33): Well, I really liked your suggestion though, of competitor tracking, like, you know, set a schedule, whether it's once a week, once a month, once a quarter, whatever you decide it is. And I guess it depends on how competitive your spaces and go in and look at all of your different competitors and how many reviews they have and what's going on in their listing on the category they're targeting. Like that seems like something very actionable that any business could do right away. And if you see yourself slipping by comparison, then you sort of have your marching orders. Right. It makes, it makes a lot of sense. All right, well, shifting gears, then I have a couple of questions that I always ask my guests. And I'm curious to know what you have to say. The first one is that we talk all about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is doing a really outstanding job, but with their own inbound marketing these days?
John (32:22): Yeah. So I I'm always reading HubSpot, Infusionsoft in terms of their you know, blogs and marketing tactics. Cause they seem to know a lot and just like a big brand, like Yellow Pages, you respect people that have been there for a very long time with a huge user base. And they usually hire the top leaders and experts in the industry. So I do follow them. In terms of specific people in SEO, there's dozens of people that I follow. Just because it's, so, I mean, there's so much going on from technical to link building to you know, user engagement, UX, design speed, there's so much going on. So for me, there's people. But there's also a lot of like big software that I follow it.
Kathleen (33:13): Yeah. Yeah. And I see if you're listening, you can't see this, but I, I can see cause we're on video that behind you, you have Rand Fishkin's book Lost and Founder, and he's one of my favorite people to follow for SEO information. So all right. Second question. I always hear from marketers that it's very challenging to keep up with all the changes, especially in the space you're in. I mean, as you we've talked about this at the beginning, SEO changes all the time, literally. And in fact, I think right now there's a lot of chatter that we're in the middle of a big core algorithm update and everybody's kind of like freaking out, what does this mean for me? So as a marketer, how do you stay up to date with all the things that are changing all the time?
John (33:55): So that's the biggest challenge like, yes, we read a lot. All everyone on my team needs to be on top of the game. There's changes all the time, but there's major changes. We try to stay away from like small level micro changes because it's not going to move the needle as drastic as the larger macro ones. Right. but we do read a lot. So Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, Moz, Ahrefs, SEMrush, backlink.io, Or there's so many different blogs out there. So many videos and podcasts. I listen to it, but I always look at like core foundation and fundamentals all the time. That's more important to me like business. How do you run a good business that has lasted for generations? Not just five, 10 years, I'm talking about 50 years, 80 years, right? Those are the people that want to pick brains with and see what cultivates and what are the real, tangible things.
John (34:50): And that's why I learned a lot from Yellow Pages, like working with thousands of business owners that lasted through many generations. It was all very simple. If you think about it, it's taking care of your customers, listening, understanding what the value prop is, differentiating yourself from competitors, pricing it well, like all the things that you take for granted, but a lot of business owners oversee and they think, wow, getting on the first page of Google will be the Holy grail of at all. But if you think about it, if I get you there and you don't know how to answer your phone, take care of your clients, price it right. All these other factors, it's kind of a waste of effort. Right?
Kathleen (35:28): I feel like, I feel like it's like weight loss. Like everybody gets so entranced by the latest diet fad, but really it's eat less and more, but none of us want to do it. We all want the quick, the quick fix. Right? well, so interesting, John, I really appreciate you sharing all of that with us. If somebody wants to reach out and ask you a question or learn more or connect with you online, what's the best way for them to do.
John (35:55): Yeah. So you can check out my website, it's www.localseosearch.ca. But you can also connect with me on LinkedIn. That's probably the best medium and you can find me. It's John Vong V U O N G. And I'm the founder of Local SEO Search.
Kathleen (36:11): Awesome. And I will put links to all of that in the show notes. So as always, head there and check that out if you want to connect with John. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, please head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a preferably five star review, because that is how we get found. Just like a, you got to get found in local search with reviews. That's how podcasts get found. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. Thanks so much for joining me this week, John.
John (36:47): Thank you so much, Kathleen. I had a lot of fun.
What does it take to build a thriving online community?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, host Kathleen Booth talks with Gianna Whitford, Aileen Casmano, and Maria Velasquez -- the founders of the Cybersecurity Marketing Society.
Gianna, Aileen and Maria created "the society" (as they call it) just a few months ago and in that short time, membership has grown dramatically and they are now putting on the first-ever CyberMarketing Con, a week long conference for cybersecurity marketers.
From how they built their rapidly growing Slack community, to what they're doing to make membership in the community a valuable experience that keeps members engaged, Gianna, Aileen and Maria share all the details behind the Cybersecurity Marketing Society's successful launch.
Listen in to learn what they did, and how you, too, can create a thriving online community that creates brand advocacy.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Cybersecurity Marketing Society website
- Check out (and register for!) CyberMarketing Con 2020
Transcript Kathleen (00:05): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And today I have my first ever episode with three guests. Three is better than one that's for sure. So this week my guests are Aileen Casmano, Gianna Whitford, and Maria Velasquez of the cybersecurity marketing society. Welcome ladies.
Maria (00:37): Thank you.
Aileen (00:38): Thanks for having us.
Kathleen (00:39): Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. This should be a lot of fun. And for those listening, the reason that I have three guests is that the, the three of them are the cofounders of the cybersecurity marketing society, which is an awesome community that I'm a member of that is on Slack, but that has a whole lot of other things going on. So we're going to talk about all of that in a minute. And we're going to talk about building community and what that can do for your brand and your business and, and other things.
Kathleen (01:08): But in the meantime, let's start out by having each of you do a quick introduction of yourself and who you are and where you work and, and anything else you, you decide you want to add. And we'll go in the reverse order from which I introduced you. So we'll start with Maria.
Maria (01:23): Awesome. So Maria Velasquez, I am currently the head of marketing at Unibuddy, which is an ed tech company, helping universities connect with prospective students via various tools and widgets and virtual event platforms and that sort of thing. And previously, I spent a few years in cybersecurity marketing, which is why I am part of this today. Except, you know, even though I moved to EdTech, half of my heart is still in cybersecurity. And so we're happy to be here.
Kathleen (01:56): Awesome. Gianna.
Gianna (01:59): I am Gianna Whitford dialing in from sunny, beautiful Tampa, Florida.
Gianna (02:06): I'm a cybersecurity marketing consultant and one of the cofounders of the cybersecurity marketing society. Previously, I worked at a threat intelligence company.
Kathleen (02:16): Awesome. And Aileen.
Aileen (02:18): I'm Aileen, and I work at Owl Cyber Defense. And I work as the integrated marketing manager, but basically do all of our outbound stuff, advertising, social email campaigns, all that fun stuff that we all love so dearly.
Kathleen (02:37): Alright. So I guess this is such an interesting scenario here because I've had people come on and talk about community on the podcast in the past, but they've always been like the in house marketer at an organization that wanted to build a community for itself. This is interesting because the three of you come from different places and you're this community for reasons outside of work. So I guess let's start out by talking about why did you create this and what the heck were you thinking giving yourself more work outside of your day to day jobs?
Gianna (03:12): Yeah, so I can kind of take a stab at this one. So basically the idea for the society, the cybersecurity marketing society, we call it the society, you know, exclusive, came from when I joined my first, I was creating a company as a marketer. So I had previously worked in big tech and real estate and all these different industries in a marketing role. And, you know, I thought that marketing in cybersecurity would be pretty much the same, but learned quickly that it is a completely different animal and totally different beast. There's a lot of complexities with the product. The audience is different, incredibly different. And so right off the bat joining this company that I first joined, I had wanted to find resources and information, other marketers to kind of reach out to and say, Hey, I'm new to cyber security marketing.
Gianna (04:16): Can you lend me a helping hand? Can you share, what's worked for you. And so a couple of years later I was just like kind of brainstorming with my friend Maria here catching up on a call and had said, Hey, wouldn't it. We were both like talking. It was like, Hey, wouldn't it be great if this thing that has always been an issue for every new marketer entering into the cybersecurity field? Like what if there was a resource there? What if there was a community? Like we all have this informal network of other marketers that we reach out to, peer mentors, essentially, that we ask for advice. Why don't we make this so that other people can access it too? And so Maria had worked with Aileen at Owl Cyber Defense and we all got together and that is sort of the the origin story of the society.
Kathleen (05:07): I love it. And it's so funny because, you know, I'm, I've been working in cyber, in house, about a year now. And before that I advised cyber companies when I had my agency. But I always thought the same thing. Like how come there's not a group that I can join? And then you guys created it, which is why I was so excited about it. So, so describe the society to me because there is a Slack group, but it's more than just a Slack group. You have some other things going on. So can you talk about like the different aspects of what you do and how you've built the community?
Maria (05:43): Do you want me to take this one? So, I mean, from the beginning, we knew that we needed to generate a lot of content and we needed to make sure that we were consistent with it to keep members engaged in and really happy with being part of the community.
Maria (05:59): I think you and I talked about this Kathleen, once about keeping the momentum and not letting it die out. So we were just really thinking outside the box and figuring out, well, there's a lot of zoom fatigue out there. What else can we do that is a little bit different, but still would engage people and get them to register and come on and join the conversation? So one of the things that we started doing off the bat are these happy hours on Fridays. And we try to manage to do them every other week, if not sometimes every three weeks, but we call them cyber beers and tears. And the requirement is that you bring a beer or some sort of other drink of choice, and we just talk and it's, it's usually smaller than, than a webinar.
Maria (06:41): And everyone talks about what they do, or we can talk about something other than work. So it's, it's really fun. And then most recently we did a couple of days and we're calling them fireside chats and they're very interactive laid back Q and A type sessions. And it's usually about one topic. And we bring on a couple of our members actually joined one time. We had someone else that was an expert in marketing operations joined, which was a really good session to a lot of questions and a lot of distraction in the chat. And those are really fun. And then the big beast that's coming up soon, which is the cybersecurity marketing conference and that's our inaugural conference. And we're so excited about that. It started off with a fun idea that Gianna came up with and now we're 15 sessions plus Gianna I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, you have the latest numbers, some amazing speakers one of which is you Kathleen. I thank you for that. Thank you for participating. And yeah, we're really excited about it. I think people, like you said, we needed something like this, and that's the reason why this has taken off the reason why members are so excited. And we've gotten so many signups from the conference and people waiting 40 sessions to, to, to kick off.
Kathleen (07:57): Are you cursing yourselves yet? Because I feel like every time I'm involved in planning an event, it always seems like an awesome idea. And then the closer you get to it, the more you're like, what was I thinking?
Gianna (08:09): We, we knew that. So at least we knew that it was kind of having not, I don't want to say a, make it or break it the conference because we're bigger than just a conference, right? We're a community, we're a society where group, we are interacting almost on a daily basis with other members. We have our fireside chats. We have our other ways that we interact and connect. But this conference was kind of put together in order to show the cybersecurity marketing society to the world, as well as help all of our members and produce something, you know, with love almost like for them. So yes, totally. I think all of us are, are maybe kicking ourselves a little,
Kathleen (08:57): But then I always, and this is maybe this is a terrible joke. I don't know. It's not even really a joke, but I truly have always thought of like running big events, almost like having children. You're like, Oh, I really want to have a baby. And then you get pregnant and the closer you get to your due date, you're like, this is terrible. What was I thinking? And then you have the baby and it's hard for a little bit, but then you're like, let's do it again. I haven't had to have my own. Yes. That's just my own personal outlook on it. But so, so in addition, so you have this community on Slack, you have a website, you have these fireside chats, these happy hours, you've got a conference, you also have a newsletter and you guys write blogs. Like how on earth are you finding all the time for this? Because you all have regular jobs. Maybe I'll have Aileen take this one.
Aileen (09:47): Sure. late nights, I know that's when I work on stuff. And Gianna specifically has been the one that has been sort of leading the pack with getting the most done. And we're so thankful for her. And then I think Maria and I try to find time after hours, usually texting at 11:00 PM, Hey, check out the newsletter, give some edits. So we're really just doing our best to, you know, we're, we're all super passionate about it. So when you're passionate about something, you find the time to get it done. And I don't know if you guys want to add anything. That's how I feel.
Maria (10:31): Yeah. A lot of late nights, once the little monsters are asleep, back on the computer and get a few things done. If you love it. I don't mind. I don't, to be honest, I don't mind the extra hours, the extra effort if you like it.
Aileen (10:40): I think what's so like what keeps us going too, is we see the benefits our members are getting out of it, like the peer to peer, like advice. And just like, if you have a question, I feel like there's always someone in the society that can answer it. And so it was like, you know, that saying, there's not for that. It's like, there's someone, there's a number for that. So I think that's what keeps us, you know, just so motivated is that we're seeing, this is actually helping people solve their problems and we're not, you know, there's nothing being pushed down. Anyone's throat. It's like you come in, you ask a question, are you engaged with it? It's just helping you to be better at your job.
Gianna (11:27): I'd add one more thing in that. Yeah, exactly. Aileen, your last, your last point there is that because this is a group focused around cybersecurity marketing and all of us are cybersecurity marketers or lead marketers. It's not like we had exactly to learn like an entirely new thing. You know, we built a community around ourselves kind of. So all the skills are there. The network is there, which also makes it easy. I'm glad this isn't, I'm glad we didn't start a group about like, I don't know, vegetable farming. Because that would be really hard. So cybersecurity marketing, at least we have an idea of.
Kathleen (12:06): So I've, I think hopefully people have a good sense of what the organization is and kind of some of the activities it does and who it's for and what it entails. What I would love to talk about now is your thoughts on an advice really for anybody else considering creating a community? Because I know I'm a member of a lot of communities and especially a lot of communities on Slack, probably like 20, but there's only a couple that I focus on because otherwise it's just too much and I can't do it all, but also not all of them deliver value. And so I would love to hear your thoughts on how do you structure the community in a way so that it really does deliver value to the people that are members and it encourages them to be active participants.
Aileen (13:01): I can start off. I think something two things we've done, right. One is, early on we just sort of reached out to people that we know in our network and said, we have this idea, what do you think of it? Would this be something you'd join? And that intrigued people and we sort of, you know, took that further and told them our idea. And they were like, yeah, I'd support you. And you know, our first call, our first cyber beers, I think we had around like 10 people. And the sentiment was like, everyone was like, all right, when's the next one? So it was sort of like, I like beta test group. And then we went on to like create the Slack. And I think what we're doing, why it's working is we're letting members drive, drive the conversation where we're letting them drive what they want to get out of it and what they want to put into it too. So people, you know, anyone can write in a channel, we had people request channels like, Hey, I want one on personas or I want one on podcasting. And we're just like listening to our members and giving them the avenues to just grow.
Gianna (14:11): I would also add we have instituted a couple of rules. You've seen them. A couple of rules to keep the community high quality as we scale. We're not, there's a thing called tragedy of the commons where things get too big and then they kind of get diluted in terms of quality. And we're trying really hard not to let that happen. We, that everybody who comes in to make sure that they're actually a cybersecurity marketer and not there to, for example, sell services.
Kathleen (14:44): We had that conversation early on. I'll never forget. Cause you guys asked, should we let vendors in? So, and I, that, it sounds like the decision was no.
Gianna (14:53): Exactly. And so that points directly also to Aileen's point there, is that we ask our members like how they'd like to see this shaped. And then, and then again on the, on the rules side of things, you know, pretty standard rules that we enforce as well as we can you know, standard rules and communities to ensure that everybody's respectful, everyone's polite. We don't allow people to be anonymous, which I think is a problem in online communities. When you're anonymous, you can be kind of you know, we've all seen it with Reddit and other social communities like that. You can, things can get a little nasty. So we make sure that everybody is a marketer. We started with a trusted base of people that we respect and like, and know are great. We have these rules and generally I think that creates a great environment. Maria, what would you like to add?
Maria (15:41): Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with both of you. I think also just keeping it authentic because at the end of the day, we're all just marketers alike and no matter our levels, right? In experience in cybersecurity marketing, we just come together and in this, we're sort of leveling the playing field a little bit and we're just coming together just to help each other. And nobody's there to outshine anyone. And it's been great. It's been actually really just a natural thing that's happening where everyone's just helpful, really kind and always, you know, raising their hands to provide and share the secret sauce of what's something that's worked for them. And I like that. And I think that that's because we put a lot of work in making sure that we put ourselves out there, people really know who Gianna, Maria and Aileen are. It encourages other people do really just break that barrier and to say, I'm here. I don't know much about SEO. I'd love to learn. Like that kind of thing.
Kathleen (16:41): Yeah, that's great. And then one of the things I've noticed or observed is that you have a really nice, very organized and very defined process for onboarding members. And so maybe you could talk a little bit about what that process is like and, and, and how it gets executed.
Maria (17:02): Yeah, that's Gianna. We're going to point to Gianna's corner.
Gianna (17:05): It's funny. Cause we're on a zoom and you're pointing, you're all pointing in like, different directions.
Kathleen (17:10): Right. It's like the Brady bunch only, everyone's seeing a different layout.
Gianna (17:14): Yeah, exactly. So the onboarding process is first through a form. So we have everybody who wants to join, apply on the website. They have the request to join. They fill out a type form and then we review the type form and I check their LinkedIn and make sure they're, they're who they say they are. And then I sent you send out an email invite to them to come into the Slack. And then we have a, it's not a welcome bot. It's me. You guys might think it's a bot, but it's actually, I go in, and, and personally, every
Gianna (17:50): Single person that comes in, I invite them to read our community rules. And I also invite them to share a little bit about themselves because along with being marketers where people and part of the society is is, is a networking group, you know, and I think in our rules we say you know, we want to network, share, solve problems, but also come out with some great new friends. So we invite people to share also a couple of fun facts about themselves in order to make sure it's not just like I work in threat intelligence. And like, that's it.
Kathleen (18:21): Two of the things I really like about the onboarding process. Again, I'm a member of a lot of Slack groups. And so I've had that, the benefit of being able to like, see how this plays out in different ways, both good and bad, two things I really like about what you guys do is you do in the welcome, as you said, are you linked to the community rules?
Kathleen (18:39): And you actually say, when you introduce yourself, please acknowledge that you have read them, which gets people to have to affirmatively say, I have looked at this, which is really smart. And then you also ask people to put their company name in their Slack public user profile name. And I find that really helpful because, you know, if somebody, if you're having a conversation with somebody we're all in there, because we're in the same industry, you know, and it's, it's nice to be able if somebody says, well, my company we're doing X instead of having to like, then go search LinkedIn for that person to be like, what's the context here? You know, you immediately kind of know, Oh, this person's from a big company or a small company, or they're a service company or a product or whatever. Like that context to me is incredibly helpful. And it's interesting to me that more select groups don't do that because I think it, it really adds to the conversation a lot. So let's talk about how you have grown the membership base, because that's been interesting also to me to watch. I think I came in pretty early and it's really seems to be heating up in terms of the pace of people coming in.
Maria (19:51): I think you came in at what? Five, no, you were number five. You would definitely one of the first 10.
Kathleen (19:55): I don't know!
Maria (20:01): Well I can take the start of this one. We put our sales hat on and our BizDev hat on very early on. And we went on LinkedIn and network and did a lot of outreach, a lot of cold outreach. And in, in the beginning it was, it was a lot. And then I think it just, it got to a point where people were starting to invite other people. And it actually took a while for some early members that, that have a big team of other cybersecurity marketers. It took a while for them to invite their team on. They kind of wanted to get a feel of what this is about before I invite my team. I want to make sure this is the right kind of environment. And once we proved that it was a really good environment that the team can actually learn a lot from then we saw everybody,
Maria (20:48): You know, inviting their coworkers and colleagues. So yeah, in the beginning it took a lot of biz dev and sales work and outreach. I'm not gonna call it sales. It's just outreach, just a little bit of brand awareness. And then, and then after that, it just took off on its own. Which, you know, I think there's still a lot to do, you know, in terms of growing it. But we like that there is organic growth because we could see that there is interest there in intent.
Kathleen (21:15): And you all have a website and I've joined some Slack groups where literally you get a link and it sends you to just a page with a, enter your email here to join. How much do you think the website has helped or, or do you like, do you send people there when they're interested in joining and do you think that's made a big difference?
Gianna (21:36): We try to send people there. We have, it's an interesting, because like that is the best path into the society because we vet people cause it's easy. People fill out a questionnaire, we know everything, not everything about them. We're not the government.
Kathleen (21:55): You never know, it is cybersecurity. We have hackers doing your background check.
Gianna (22:01): Exactly. That's the best in the first pass forward. But we started to see like various sad people started inviting people in to the society via just like Slack invite, like without, even without asking us which we were not offended by. So people still do that. Although we direct people to the website because the website's the best way to both like, let people sign up for the newsletter and also double check that there they are, who they are, who they say they are and all of that.
Maria (22:37): But they still need our approval, even if they invite through Slack and we get to see, you know, who they are. And a lot of times if it's the same domain name and we know it's the same company, then it, then it's kind of okay and it gets in like that.
Aileen (22:46): I think also, I mean, the first thing I do as a consumer is if I want to know about a brand, I go to their website. So I think it's important to just have a face for the society. And like people know that if it's serious and it's legitimate and you know, it's definitely a growing brand and it's, there's purpose behind that. So we have nice, like good info on there that people can read before they actually join.
Kathleen (23:15): So let's talk about the event. When is it happening? Give us some details.
Gianna (23:27): So the it's called cyber marketing con 2020 and it's happening completely virtually September 21st through the 25th with the main sessions held the 21st through the 24th and then an after party held in the afternoon of the 25th.
Kathleen (23:46): I love that you guys are doing an after party. I just think that's awesome.
Gianna (23:52): Yeah. We're hoping that people bring what's coming out of their swag bags to the after party. Yeah. We're doing swag bags. We, you know, it's, it's like we, we got a sponsor to do the swag, which is really, really the way that we could afford to do it. But we still wanted to make that connection to our members. Again, this is a member driven organization. Everything we do is in the interest of other cybersecurity marketers. And we're hoping that this helps, you know, being everything, being virtual it's like sometimes it's almost like not real. And we're hoping to create, we were hoping to create like a physical connection to our membership. Does that make sense? That's not too woo woo.
Kathleen (24:40): No, it's, I think you make a great point. And I should say just to put some context around this, at least right now, there's no cost to join the group. Yeah, you guys are all just putting in sweat equity at this point. What is the cost to attend the event?
Gianna (25:02): Tickets for the conference are currently $50 and they'll go up to $75. I think it's September 12th. So we're doing it South by Southwest style, discounted all the way up until the full price. And the event is chock full of sessions that are, are with wait, sorry, are, were, you know, I'm biased, but it was way more than what the ticket price is. We're going to have 15 plus sessions on all sorts of topics. I'm sorry, ten plus sessions on all sorts of topics. SEO demand gen, PR, partnerships, and all these sort of like things that you may not get as a cybersecurity market just inside your own organization.
Kathleen (25:45): Yeah. I mean, that's an amazing deal for an event that's going to spend multiple days. I'm just going to say that like it is, it's very cheap. Not cheap. That's the wrong word. I hate the word cheap. It's it's very reasonably priced.
Aileen (26:00): For attendees, if their company does any sort of personal development, reimbursement, not a huge reimbursement cost. So we get into that.
Kathleen (26:10): Basically like the cost for lunch out for two people, but you get a lot more value out of it. And if somebody wants to learn more about the event, where should they go?
Aileen (26:24): Yeah, we have a Hey Summit page. It's cybermarketingcon2020.hey,summit.com. And then you can also get there through the cyber marketing con spread through the society website. So cybersecuritymarketingsociety.com.
Kathleen (26:38): That's awesome. And I just side note, Hey Summit is the best if you're running a virtual event. I did my virtual event on that in July, and I couldn't believe that all I had to do was set the event up and then it did all like the email reminders and the speaker portal. I was like, Whoa, this is unbelievable. And it's not expensive. So if you're putting on a virtual event, small side plug for Hey Summit.
Maria (27:00): It's like having a part time event manager.
Kathleen (27:05): It really is. It's pretty unbelievable that they don't charge more for it. I shouldn't probably say that because then maybe they'll raise their prices, but it's a good deal. I won't tag them when I promote this post.
Kathleen (27:21): Awesome. All right. Well we are getting to that point in the podcast where we shift gears and I ask you guys the same questions that I ask all of my guests. So the first question is this podcast is all about inbound marketing. So I'm going to let each of you answer this separately. Is there a particular company or a specific individual who you think is really doing inbound marketing well right now who's a good example for listeners to check out online? And we'll go in the other order. So this time Aileen first.
Aileen (27:53): Okay. Well I'm not just saying this to say it, but I think IMPACT does an awesome job and I look at them a lot for best practices. I've attended their conferences in the past. I read They Ask, You Answer. And a specific individual. I, I honestly just try to leverage like who I'm connected to on LinkedIn and just get like peer to peer advice. I would say that's the best, the best way for me and people are always willing to share their, like their secret sauce or their way of doing things. And then you can sort of learn how to apply it back to your, your business or your strategy.
Kathleen (28:37): Awesome. Gianna, how about you?
Gianna (28:41): So I'm also going to say IMPACT and then for companies that I think are doing good inbound, I'm going to go off a little off the beaten track and say Afford Anything, which is a personal finance book run by Paula Pant is really good. It's a little bit of a personal finance book on the side, and I really enjoyed like the in depth articles that she produced on, for example, like real estate investing and stuff. So she's one of my favorite inbound marketers. And then of course you, Kathleen. The content you're producing. I have to honestly say that.
Kathleen (29:24): How about you, Maria?
Maria (29:26): Gosh, I would definitely second you Kathleen, because I mean, I've been following you for quite a while. I think I might've even stalked you, but I'm surprised you're here inviting me to your podcast.
Maria (29:42): I don't have just one favorite. So I love, and this is actually a CEO, but I love what David Cancel of Drift does. And he's the CEO and I'm a huge fan of any brand whose CEO is out there on social who's out there really putting content out and building the brand. So that definitely. I love Chris Walker from Refine Labs. His LinkedIn videos are amazing.
Kathleen (30:12): He's a machine. I don't know how he does it.
Maria (30:16): They bring so much value, so much good content to the point that I actually, it inspired something I'm doing at Unibuddy and I'm getting my sales team to do which we're calling higher ed hot minute. And so we think one topic for a quick minute and they get on video wherever they are. I don't care if they're in their backyard, just do it. And then I take it and put it in a nice frame and put the transcription in the bottom and we put it out there and it's been great. So I love what Chris is doing. So shout out to Refine Labs. And then the last one is Dave Gerhardt, which he's now at Privy. And I think he was at Drift. I love his, his posts. Lots of wisdom in his posts for sure. And the amount of engagement he gets on his posts is amazing. I'm so jealous. I need to, I need to ask him the secret sauce.
Kathleen (31:05): The secret sauce for Dave Gerhardt is he's been doing it for a really long time and super consistently. You know, it's funny because I interviewed him way back when I first started the podcast and I'm now like almost on episode 160 and back then he was already like, he already was in that position of having a lot of engagement and it's literally just he, and he said this to me once. Like he doesn't overthink it. He doesn't like plan out these big posts. He just, if he thinks of something, he puts it on LinkedIn. He just puts it out there. And you know, it's, it's literally almost stream of consciousness in some regards. And you'll, you can see that because early on, he used to do a lot of videos and now, and then he was doing like longer written posts and now it's just like a sentence. Its just on the fly.
Maria (31:52): He gets ts 5,000 views and I'm like, Oh my God.
Kathleen (31:54): But you know, it's funny. I feel like this is one of the biggest things I've learned doing podcast interviews over these past three years is, it's a lot like exercise. Like nobody wants to hear this, but it is totally just like consistency, like sticking with it over time and you know, not taking those days off. I have a problem with that in marketing and in exercise.
Gianna (32:19): My favorite quote is Calvin Coolidge's nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Gianna (32:26): Like everybody listening, look it up. It's my well, you don't have to, but it's my favorite quote and it ends with this.
Gianna (32:32): Determination alone are omnipotent or omnipotent the slogan press on his salt and will always solve the problems with human race.
Gianna (32:40): Everything is about just doing it.
Kathleen (32:42): Yeah. It's so true. Well I feel like that's just a great kind of way to start to wrap it up. So thank you guys for sharing all of your wisdom about community building and where the society is going and the information on the event. So once more for everybody listening, if you want to learn about the society you go to where?
Aileen (33:09): Cybersecuritymarketingsociety.com.
Kathleen (33:12): And if, and if you want to learn about the event or register, you can go to that website and hit the link for the event. Awesome. All right. And if people want to connect with the three of you online, what's the best way to do that?
Maria (33:28): We have a LinkedIn page for the society and you can find us through there. Or you can just go on our website. I think there is a few blog posts with our name on it. I'm not sure if we linked to our LinkedIn pages, but there's definitely numerous ways you can find it.
Kathleen (33:45): And I can put those links in the show notes too, so that everybody can find you guys. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me this week and if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast, a preferably five star review so that others can find us. And if you know somebody else who's doing awesome marketing work, please tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much to Gianna, Maria and Aileen.
Gianna, Maria and Aileen (34:17): Thanks Kathleen. Thank you. Thank you, Kathleen.
In a world crowded with content, how can brands stand out and develop content that people will fall in love with?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Wall Street Journal best selling author and MarketingProfs Chief Content Officer Ann Handley shares her perspective on what makes great content.
Ann debunks the myth that business content has to be "professional" and shares examples of companies that have developed authentic brand voices and, in doing so, built huge followings.
Check out the episode to hear Ann's advice and get actionable takeaways for creating your own brand voice.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit annhandley.com
- Subscribe to the Total Annarchy newsletter
- Get your ticket to Marketing Profs B2B Marketing Forum
- Get a copy of Everybody Writes
- Check out some of the other resources Ann mentioned:
- Subscribe to the CB Insights newsletter
- Subscribe to the Phrasee newsletter
- Visit the Think Currituck website
Transcript Kathleen (00:12): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And you guys, this week my guest is Ann Handley. Woohoo! Welcome Ann.
Ann (00:31): Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here with you and with everybody. So thank you for having me.
Kathleen (00:35): I'm so excited to have you. I don't know why it has taken me until episode 150 something to have you on this podcast. Shame on me. But then again, I will admit, I hesitate to ask the people that I, that are sort of like my marketing idols until I really feel like I have my act together. So I'm just going to say that I, maybe I finally have my act together enough, enough to have you on.
Ann (00:46): I like that. I like that.
Kathleen (01:01): So for, for those who don't know, Ann is a wall street journal bestselling author, the author of Everybody Writes. She is also a keynote speaker who's amazing speaking at live events, if you have not seen her. And she's the chief content officer at MarketingProfs, and I mean, I could go on and on about your resume, but I think you can probably tell us better than anybody your story and how you came to be doing what you do.
Ann (01:27): Yeah. So I think you, you covered the you covered the highlights. I went to school for journalism. In my mind. Journalism training is the best training that any marketer can have, because what that does is it inspires you. It instructs you, it educates you on how to think about the audience. And increasingly that is what marketers need to be doing. I mean, obviously we always need to be thinking about our customers. So thinking about your customers in terms of what they need from you, I think is uniquely suited to to journalists. And so I, I think that my background as a journalist, I worked for a journalist for, Oh, I don't know about a decade or so before I, I joined I launched clickz.com, which is one of the first sources of marketing education online for this using this nascent thing called the internet. And and yeah, and then so from there, I was a journalist for 10 years before I started dipping my toe into the marketing space. And it's surprisingly relevant.
Kathleen (02:40): You know, I couldn't agree with you more. I have hired a lot of marketers in my many, many years, I will not say how many in the industry and by far the best writers I've hired have all been, they've all come from journalism backgrounds to the point where now that's almost like a requirement for me when I put out a job description. It's not only I feel like, do they know how to really speak to an audience, but they know what questions to ask. Like, that's such an interesting skill that, that I think was surprising to me. And maybe I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that that marketers aren't always the best interviewers and listeners, whereas journalists are really good.
Ann (03:21): Yeah. And that's really interesting because I think about this a lot, you know, I wrote Everybody Writes as you generously pointed out in the introduction, and as much as I believe in the power of good writing, what good writing means in a marketing context is really about providing value for the audience. So what does your audience need? You know, I hear from people all the time who feel, you know, they say to me, I'm not a good writer and that's not really how I think about, you know, the value of writing because in a marketing context, again, the value of writing is really what is your audience need? What do you need to give them and what can only come from you? And so I think if you reframe writing in terms of that, it just it'll automatically just improve how you communicate a hundred percent, because you'll be thinking about your audience.
Ann (04:09): And, and that to me is the biggest differentiator between marketers who don't think about the audience, they just think about what they want to say. They want to talk about their products and their services and I get it because that's so exciting to us. We want to talk about that. We get excited about it. We see the value for the people who we sell to. And so we want to talk about that, but the reality is, you know, you've got to take it one step beyond that, right? Because your audience doesn't care about you. They care about what you do for them. And that's so elemental in so many ways, but at the same time, I see marketers and marketing all the time that doesn't look at the world through that lens. And so I think if we can constantly do one thing, just remind ourselves all the time, you know, what, what is it in it? What is in it for the audience? What do we need to lead with? Not to what, what not, what do we want to say, but what would be most important and resourceful and what would be most interesting to our audience? And so it's a subtle shift, but I think it's such a key and important one and one that we tend to forget. And I, and I'm guilty of the same, but we've really got to always remind ourselves of that.
Kathleen (05:17): You know, one of my goals before the end of this year is to actually have a baseball hat made that just says "Marketing" on the front. And the reason I want to do that is that I've been saying for so long, this the same thing that now I need like a physical prop for it, which is that we as marketers, we're all human beings, right? We, in our lives, we buy things. We are marketed to. We know, instinctively as human beings, what we like and what we don't like and what works and what doesn't. But for some reason, when we go into work, we put that marketing hat on and we like forget what it means to be human. And and so I think that's one thing I want to do before the end of this year is literally have the marketing hat, like sitting on my desk, in my line of sight so that I can keep remembering, like, do not put that marketing hat on when you write and, you know, and, and pretend like you're talking to your friend and not the audience.
Ann (06:09): Yeah. That's awesome. That's a really funny idea. I love the physical manifestation of that. That's really great. I love that. I think, yeah. If we take off the marketing hat while we're writing and then maybe it's okay to put that marketing hat on, when you think about, you know, things like distribution and how are we actually going to leverage the kinds of, of content assets that we've created. So, you know, that's not to say that there's never a time for a marketing hat, but I think when you were thinking about it as a content creator, and when you're thinking about serving the needs of an audience, it's, it's better to just sort of set it aside for, for a little while and then maybe put it back on
Kathleen (06:49): Oh, for special occasions,
Ann (06:51): Bring it out for special occasions. Yeah. Like that.
Kathleen (06:54): Well, one of the reasons that I have always really kind of admired you and followed you is because I like your writing a lot and I particularly have enjoyed reading your newsletter. And, and to me, at least I can only speak for myself, it, it it's, it makes me feel like I know you, like, you're my buddy. You know, like I read it and I, and I know things about you as a person, sad things like when your dog passed away and just like, it's funny, I guess it must be with like what celebrities experience, where they walk around and everyone feels like they know with them. I kind of feel like that about you. And then there's something special in the way you've developed it. And, and, you know, it's interesting when you talk about giving your audience what they need. Cause I feel like sometimes what the audience needs is information and sometimes what they need is a feeling of belonging and relationship. And you seem to have like intuitively mastered that. So I'd love it. If you could talk a little bit about that.
Ann (07:52): Yeah. That's so wonderful first. Thank you. I, that I've, I've never thought about it quite in those terms, so that's really, that's, that's really, that's nice. Thank you so much. So yes, I publish a newsletter every other Sunday. It's called Total Annarchy. And if you want to check it out, it's at annhandley.com/newsletter. And I'm sure you'll put links somewhere on this page, right? Yeah. And it's, it's funny because I started that list, started the newsletter because, you know, I've had my own site forever. I've, you know, as, as much as I I've grown marketing process, I've also had my own website and I would occasionally blog on there. But, you know, what happens when your career is that after a while you, you know, as you go further, along in your career, you stop touching things quite as much, you don't build products anymore and byproducts, I mean, marketing assets anymore, you know, you manage people who do that and you certainly might have a hand in it, but you don't physically touch things quite as much as you once did.
Ann (09:02): At least in my case, that's a hundred percent true. And I wanted something that I would build myself. So I wanted something that would really show me from the ground up. What does it mean? I like to build an email list now in, when I started at 2018, for example, here it is in 2020, I'm still learning that, you know, how do you actually connect with, with a, an audience, you know, from the start I started with very few people, that email list and here two years later, it's now I just hit 30,000. Wow. Which was, yeah, it was personally really gratifying to me. So what have I learned a lot in that, about building audiences? And so some of the things that you just talked about, like I said, I don't think I've quite expressed them in that way, but I've felt them, you know, and so connecting with an audience and growing it.
Ann (09:48): It's just, I've learned a whole lot about it and it's really given me something to own and to, to build myself, I get enormous psychic satisfaction out of it. But I also have learned a lot about what does it take to be a marketer in 2020 again, when you, you know, when you're, when you've been in marketing for a long time and when you leave teams, you know, you don't necessarily, you're not in the trenches quite as much. So I really have valued just that ability to do that. And that's really why I started my list. So anyway, all that to say, it's been interesting too, to see its evolution. Like if I go back two years and I look at it, what I was talking about, then I, you know, I felt a little unsure about how is it that I actually communicate.
Ann (10:34): I, I, was it like I can, it feels tentative when I read it now. And here it is two years later, and I've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't. And one of those things to your point is that the more you can be vulnerable, the more you can show people who you are, the more relatable you are and ultimately the more effective any piece of content is. And so that was just such a big, big takeaway for me from this whole exercise. And yeah, it sounds, again, elemental, it sounds like something I should have known, but I, didn't not in, not in any true sense, you know, not at that level. So that's, it's been really interesting to me just to sort of see that, and sometimes I'll publish something, you know, the thing about just publishing about owning something like I do and publishing it under me, not under MarketingProfs, but under me.
Ann (11:25): So it's very close to my heart. There's a vulnerability to that. So there's a vulnerability to writing about, you know, my dog passed away anyway, which was a massively emotional experience for me. Or, you know, this past week I wrote about imposter syndrome and how I still struggle with it from time to time and sort of what I've learned from it and how I've used it differently now than I might have a few years ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago when I started my career. So writing about those subjects, you know, it can feel vulnerable and I sort of have to brace myself sometimes because I worry that it's going to, that people are going to be mean about it, basically, that they're going to say, you know, what are you, who are you to write about this? Or, you know, shut your face, or I don't know, whatever.
Kathleen (12:13): Have you encountered that?
Ann (12:15): Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Kathleen (12:16): I would be shocked if you hadn't.
Ann (12:18): Yeah, for sure. And so my point of saying this to you is that I think the more vulnerable that I am and the more vulnerable I feel when I publish, when I hit that button, I'm always a little bit terrified. And I actually think that that's a good thing. How does that relate to marketing? Because I think if, you know, as I wrote about this past week, and if we're not a little terrified when we're doing, doing whatever it is that we're doing, then I think we're not pushing ourselves far enough as marketers, because the point is, of course in marketing is not to connect with everybody. And as gratified as I am, that, you know, that they're, that my list has grown to 30,000. There's also a ton of people who have unsubscribed. Right. Of course, because if they don't feel like it's in that, what's in it for them is not a value and that's fine, but I think that's an important lesson for us to learn as marketers too.
Kathleen (13:04): The interesting thing to me about having this conversation is, is, you know, your, as you said, your newsletter as a personal newsletter, but you also create content for MarketingProfs. And I think it would be easy for somebody listening to say, well, that's great. That's a personal newsletter. It's different when you're writing for your business. And one of the first things that really illustrated to me that it doesn't have to be different actually is something that you turned me on to. I've never told you this story, but you mentioned in a conversation around newsletters, you mentioned the CB insights newsletter, and I, to this day, still use that as an example of how a very successful, very like a business that's in a very professional sector, can have a newsletter that injects a strong vein of, of personality into it. And the, the part of it that I always shine my, my spotlight on is that I think his name is Anand Sanwal who writes it, he signs off every newsletter with, I love you.
Kathleen (14:09): Who does that in a business newsletter? Like it's so awesome and unexpected and fantastic. And, and they have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. So clearly it's not, you know, causing people to unsubscribe in droves. But I wanted to, for one, share with you that, like you were the one who first alerted me to that example, which is one that I really love and to this day, still share with people, but also ask you if you could talk a little bit about, you know, that objection, because I feel like it comes up a lot. Like I can't do that in my company newsletter or in my company marketing, because I have to be somehow, you know, display this other level of professionalism.
Ann (14:44): Yeah. I do hear that a lot. And that CB insights newsletter is a really great example of that in part, because of that, I love you, but also, you know, the way that it's written. He, Anand, writes it as a letter. Essentially it starts with hi friend, not friends, right? Hi friend, one person. Very different than a group, a room full of people. He does not write to an audience. He's writing to one person. And then, you know, the way that he approaches, so he talks about emerging technology, right? He he's he covers the, the the VC world a lot. He covers technology and data science and all kinds of things like that to your point, very, very buttoned up. And he talks a lot about FinTech, for example, not a category known for its warmth and humanity. And so I love the way that he's injecting that in a very, very unique way.
Ann (15:40): So when he writes it, it's, it's a little snarky, it's funny, it's, you know, it's got definite personalities that, that I love you with the end is not, it's not divorced from the rest of the newsletter is what I'm saying. It's very much baked into the vibe and the approach and his perspective. And so I think that the broader lesson I think in, in marketing is, is just, you know, a few of those things, like he's, he's grown that list by the way, from 3000 people to, I think he's just over 600,000 now.
Kathleen (16:11): It's unbelievable.
Ann (16:12): I know it's massive. And so just think about the lessons inherent in that, you know? I'm not advocating that every B2B tech company out there, that every B2B company or that every, you know, insert any category here, company needs to approach their marketing and sign their newsletter with an, I love you.
Ann (16:31): What I am saying is, you know, how can you inject your humanity and your personality into what you're doing? I mean, Anand Sanwal is a great example of that, but another one of my favorite newsletters is from a brand called Phrasee. It's with a ph. So Phrasee, I think it is. And they are based in the UK. What they do is very similar, like an ensemble, lots of personality goes into their newsletter, but it doesn't come from the CEO in this case, it comes from Phrasee. So it sounds different. It doesn't sound like any other tech company out there and Phrasee by the way sells a AI solutions for, for B2B companies
Kathleen (17:14): Also. So also an industry that you wouldn't immediately think of, you know, as lending itself well to personnel.
Ann (17:20): Yes, very good point. But I love the way that they write that newsletter. And you know, another objection that I hear is, well, we don't have an announcer on wall. We don't want it to come from one person. I mean, there's a diff, there's a million different iterations on that approach. And so I'm mentioning Phrasee as an example of another iteration of that tons of personality, they use lots of GIFs or, or Jiffs depending on,
Kathleen (17:46): Ann, don't stir that controversy on this podcast now.
Ann (17:51): Oh my gosh I know. We'll get letters. Talk about unsubscribes. That'll just, that'll just launch people into detonate. But they, they use GIFs in their, in their, in their newsletter. It's really fun. The personality just shines through and it comes from a brand. So it's, you know, we're not saying that you have to use, I love you. You don't have to have a person's name attached to it, although that's fantastic. If you do it, doesn't have to be personal in that approach. It just needs to be personable. So that's what I counsel brands about. It's not about personal, it's about personable. Are you actually showing people, you know, your personality and yes. Even if you are a brand are you giving them a shred of humanity to latch onto, does it feel like it comes from a person like start there? You know, that's a pretty low bar.
Kathleen (18:41): You would think, you would think. Yeah. So when you, you said you counseled brands and what's so interesting about that statement to me is like obviously a brand isn't a person. So when you have, let's say a larger company where they're there, you know, there may be isn't that clear or one person who could be the voice. How do you advise companies to determine what the voice of their brand is going to be?
Ann (19:09): Yeah, your brand, I mean, sorry, your brand voice comes from your personality as a company. And so that's going to depend on your brand more broadly, you know, what is your positioning in the market? How do you communicate with your prospects, with your customers? What are you all about? You know, in a lot of smaller companies that is going to come from the CEO, right? Because a lot of, or the founders voice you know. Dollar shave club, great example of that, right. Right. Comes from the founders sort of quirky, fun, irreverent style. So in a smaller brand, that's a hundred percent true, but in a larger brand, I think you've, you've got to really just think about like, who, who are we number one, and then just some basic attributes about how, you know, what best defines you. How do you communicate with your prospects?
Ann (20:02): You know, do you want to keep it very buttoned up? And there's nothing wrong with that, by the way. I mean, I think you can be personable and buttoned up. But at the same time, you know, just, just make, making sure that it matches your, your overall brand. And the way the thing that I always think about is like, what are the three adjectives that best define your brand, right? How do you actually what are the three ways that, that, or three attributes, I guess, that you would, that you would say would best define your brand? So marketing process, for example, you know, when we think about this, we are marketers marketing to marketers. And so we want them to know that they can rely on us. So we want to project confidence, for example, another thing, though, we want to be approachable.
Ann (20:46): We want them to feel because we are marketers marketing to marketers. We want to have that personal approach, right. That we want to be personable. So we want to be approachable is the way that we define it. And the third way we define it is some elements of unexpected, like sell some elements of fun somewhere. We don't want to sound like any other marketing training and education company. So what does that element that we can, that we can use to spice up our, our voice from time to time to spice up our content, everything we're doing across the website, across social channels, our email, like all of it.
Kathleen (21:20): I like that approach because I think just the three words, it's very simple. It's approachable. Any company can do that, certainly as a starting point.
Ann (21:29): I mean, you could hire an agency and come in and they will charge you, you know, I don't know, a hundred thousand dollars and do it for you.
Kathleen (21:34): To come up with three words?
Ann (21:34): They can go much deeper, but I'm talking about it, a basic that just, just start there and then, and then blow it out from there.
Kathleen (21:44): So it's one thing to write a newsletter and to have a voice in it. But it seems like, you know, that voice needs to carry you throughout all of your marketing. So how do you do that? You know, like how do you really filter that voice down and seep it and soak it through all the various aspects and assets that you have in your marketing?
Ann (22:08): Yeah. I think one of the things that we used to do in, in in my journalism days when I used to work for newspapers back when newspapers were actually paper we used to have editorial meetings, right? Every day we would have a standup editorial meeting. And so I think that, you know, that same approach applies to teams of marketers who all need to be on the same page. You know, it can be part of your creative review potentially, but I think it's important to just have that conversation, you know, to talk about your tone of voice as a living breathing document. So the first thing to do of course, is to write it down, document it somewhere, which sounds incredibly boring, but I think it's just the kind of thing where you need to have it front and center for you and for your teams all the time.
Ann (22:58): Even if it's just a simple Google doc, which is what we have at MarketingProfs, by the way, simple Google doc that you can refer to when you need it just as a refresher and throw in examples, you know, here's how we communicate here. Some really strong examples. And by doing that, it also allows you to share that living, breathing document with freelancers or content creators, or anybody who happens to be creating content on behalf of your brand. So, you know, I think we tend to overcomplicate this whole process, but, you know, internal conversations, talking, you know, calling out great pieces of content that, or, or are great examples of tone of voice within the own or within your own organization. We do that all the time. And then secondly, a living breathing document, and I'm emphasizing living, breathing document because, you know, your tone of voice, just like your brand, just like your company is not a stagnant thing. It's not like you say, here it is. And you put it up on a shelf somewhere in your brand guidelines and end of story. I think it's much more relevant if you keep it front and center close by and you, you iterate and evolve it over time. Yeah.
Kathleen (24:04): Now we've talked a lot about voice because selfishly, that was something I wanted to pick your brain on. But you know, I know for you this overarching theme of honesty, transparency, authenticity is like a big focus area right now. And I feel like for some people, those are very loaded words, especially in the day and age that we live in. And there's a lot of fear around that and what, you know, what are the guardrails to that and that sort of thing. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.
Ann (24:33): Yeah. I don't know if it's funny, cause I feel like, you know, here we are having this conversation in the we're, we're rolling into the, the, the close to the end of 2020, I guess, in, in, in August. And I started to feel like you can, you can see the end of the year over the horizon. And this has been such a crazy year for, for so many brands for so many people. I think if there's anything good that has come about from COVID is that I have seen greater transparency and authenticity with brands. Now this has obviously been a very difficult time for, for so many, so many businesses. But I, I do think that there's also, commensurate with that, there's been a sense of who people are as people within these, these brands, as much as we're getting a sense of of you know, just, just how, how are brands responding and how are people responding?
Ann (25:37): So, you know, just, just as an example of seeing people in their home offices, seeing the challenges that we all deal with right now with kids home and, and the lack of clarity around what's going to happen next. Like nobody knows. And so I think that has added to a layer of, you know, kind of empathy and understanding. I mean, I certainly have a sense of people on my team, what their challenges are much more so than I I did before this pandemic hit. And you know, and, and we've always been virtual, but I think that this added stress and added layer has only improved our communications internally because there's a whole lot more, I don't know, there's, there's, we're all so hyper aware of each other's humanity right now, I guess, is the best way to put it.
Ann (26:24): How is that playing out with brands? I mean, I think there's been a couple of great examples of companies who I think have done a really good job and trying to be as authentic and human and, and relatable as possible during this time at the very beginning of this pandemic, I really liked the way that Arnie Sorenson, who's the CEO of Marriott at a time, when so many brands were issuing emails or press releases to their, to their audiences expressing, you know, during this time during these unprecedented times, and I'm using like unprecedented air quotes during these unprecedented times, you know, we are here for you, we're with you, but I love that Arnie Sorenson did the complete opposite. Instead they fired up a video camera and filmed Arnie in this five minute video that they shared on social media. And in the video, Arnie discusses just how gutted he is by what's going on around the world, but especially how it's affecting Marriott associates.
Ann (27:27): I think that was just so poignant and such a telling example of what I think so many more CEOs and leaders in business should have done, which is get on camera and turn that camera around, show your audience who you are. Don't just say during these unprecedented times we are gutted, you know, actually show it. And that's exactly what happened in that video. You know, you could see the emotion on Arnie's face. So that's a great example I think, of, of using and using is the wrong word, because I don't want to sound like, you know, any brand should be using the pandemic, but, but taking the opportunity, I think to just not just say how you feel, but really show how you feel.
Kathleen (28:11): Yeah, it is so powerful and I'm sure there are many CEOs who probably have trepidation around that. Just like you say, you have trepidation around hitting send, but I think, you know, like you said, if there isn't a little bit of fear, then you must not be doing something, right.
Ann (28:26): Yeah. Yeah. And you know, since then, there's, I mean, he did that back in, I want to say late March, maybe early April, something like that. So pretty early on when we have seen more leaders come out front and center, but you know, not, not as many as I think we could have. And so I'm just really thinking about how is it that we should be communicating right now. I mean, I think every brand should be having that conversation internally. How do we actually communicate in a way that's different because the world is not different. I mean, the world is a hundred percent different. The world is a hundred percent different for your company, for your audiences, for the people you do business with for, for, you know, for you, for me, for everybody, it's like, none of it is, is as usual. And so I think the conversation that needs to be happening internally and every brand out there is, you know, what is our response to this going to be not just now, but longterm. Because I do think that's how we behave right now does have repercussions, you know, years and months and years from now.
Kathleen (29:26): Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Now speaking of the world being a completely different place one of the ways that that has manifested is the whole industry of events has just had an atom bomb dropped on it. And, and I wanted to ask you about that because MarketingProfs has an amazing annual event, B2B marketing forum, and it was supposed to be coming up here shortly. Tell me a little bit about what you guys are doing.
Ann (29:58): Yeah, well, it is a surprise to absolutely know that the B2B forum, which was supposed to take place November 4th and fifth in San Francisco, California is now going to take place online. So it's going virtual, like every other event out there. It took us a while to get everything in line, but we are now moving full steam ahead with our virtual program. So it'll be a two day program. And one of the, the things that we've done is, you know, again, just like this conversation, we're having a minute ago about how it's incumbent on every brand to have this conversation, you know, what do we do now? How do we respond? And so a, I guess a silver lining of this pandemic is that we absolutely had to have that conversation internally at MarketingProfs about, you know, what does this mean for us and how do we actually respond in a way that's meaningful. We couldn't take a two day program that was intended to be in person and just poured it into an online platform. And I was like, okay, done. It just doesn't work that way anymore. And so we had to ask ourselves, you know, what's inherent to a virtual platform that maybe we can't do in person. And so that's an issue that we're working through. Like, is there, is there actually opportunity in a virtual environment? Now, one of the things obviously would be, yes, you can attract an international audience, whereas before not so much,
Kathleen (31:26): Although I will say I was at the event last year and I was actually shocked by how many people I met from other countries at an event of that size. Like, I felt like an outsized proportion of people came in internationally. Much more than I had expected.
Ann (31:40): Yeah. That's a fair point. Yeah. I think compared to other marketing conferences, I'll put it that way. Yeah. Yeah. That is a fair point. But I think even, even more so now, right. Because we just have the, once you, once there's no travel involved and whatsoever, that means that it does open it up to a whole host of people who may not have been able to be there otherwise. So yes, that's true. And then the other, the other issue that we thought about was, you know, the great part about going to an in person event is that you go there and it's, you meet all these people and you're inspired and you learning all kinds of new things and you just feel like, so I'm so filled up and so on fire. And then you get back to your office and it's you walk into the door and you sit down at your desk and as you open up your laptop and you've got like a thousand emails from that you need to respond to, and then your boss needs to meet with you and maybe your direct reports need some help and maybe sales wants to have a conversation.
Ann (32:32): And next thing, you know, like by the afternoon, like all those good vibes are just completely just destroyed and you're sitting going, Ugh, what was I going to focus on again? You know? And so we saw that as an opportunity. Okay. So that moment isn't happening, right? People are not going to walk back to their, their, their opposites, right. They're not going to drive to their office on Monday post event and, you know, fire it up. So how do we actually think about that a little bit differently? So our solution to that was to think about how do we actually extend the inspiration and the learning from something like the B2B forum year round. So what we've done is that anyone who buys a ticket to the B2B forum this year will also get a pro subscription. So that means that you'll get access to our pro community.
Ann (33:22): We have a Facebook group, we have ongoing resources, we have regular webinars and in the fall we'll be introducing masterclasses around various marketing topics. And so what we're doing there is essentially giving people the opportunity to extend that inspiration and that learning and that access to resources and that networking all year round. So yes, you can get fired up over two days, but then it's not going to go away because you're going to have access to it all year round. And so I'm sharing all of that with you as an example of how I think so many companies in the brands need to rethink, how is it that we are delivering our products and services with the, the, with empathy, for the mindset of, of those people you sell to, as I said, you know, people are not going to go back to their offices because we're already all in our home offices.
Ann (34:11): And so that meant that we needed to, we needed to strengthen the value for our attendees, but also it was, it was a great opportunity I think, to display something or, or, or, or to address a challenge that I know I felt as a, as a business person, as a marketer, as somebody who loves events. I mean, I feel that same struggle of going back to the office and just being, you know, all those good vibes being completely destroyed. And so how is it that we could address that? It, it, it, for me, I think it was a it's I'm really excited just to be able to talk about that more. And I'm really excited to see how it plays out long term.
Kathleen (34:50): I think it's really neat that you're including the membership in pro as part of it. Not only because it gives people access to all, all of that learning and education, but, you know, the community aspect, I feel like so much of it's really been interesting to me community online communities have been a thing for a long time. And but I really feel like in the last 12 to 18 months, some there's been like a tidal shift that has happened. And so much like goodness is occurring in these communities that are out there, whether they're on Facebook or on Slack or on somebody's website, in a, in a platform built there that, especially with us all stuck in our houses right now, it's such a great way to keep the energy going for the rest of the year and to build and, to form those relationships. And like, I mean, I've been in the MarketingProfs, the pro Facebook group, and there's great content in there, but it's also fun. Like I love watching Kerry when she does her videos.
Ann (35:48): Yeah. It's a lot of good stuff happening there. Kerry did a great job and it's new. Like we just launched that basically in April, I think it was April. Yeah. So again, that was another response to the pandemic, you know, how can we actually connect people without the, who don't have the ability to connect in person anymore? So that was another example of something that we, that we wanted to do as a, as a, as a kind of gift to our, our pro members.
Kathleen (36:14): Well, it's awesome. Everybody should be a part of it. If somebody is listening and they want to check out B2B forum, what's the best way for them to do that?
Ann (36:23): Oh, they can go to mpb2b.marketingprofs.com, or you can just go to marketingprofs.com and you can just click on, sorry, my daughter's coming in.
Kathleen (36:38): Part and parcel of the whole, yeah, the Zoom from home thing.
Ann (36:42): Just got completely distracted. Yeah, you can go to marketingprofs.com and you can navigate to the B2B forum easily from there.
Kathleen (36:48): Great. now shifting gears for a second, I have two questions I always ask all of my guests at the end. And I'm particularly curious to hear what you have to say about these two things. The first one is, of course, you know, we're all about inbound marketing on the podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really setting the standard for what it means to be, you know, a great inbound marketer these days?
Ann (37:12): Hm. That's a good question. Setting the standard for what it means to be great inbound marketer. Does it have to be B2B or can it be, can be, can be an individual?
Kathleen (37:25): It can be a company from any industry.
Ann (37:32): Okay.
Ann (37:33): Yeah, that's really interesting.
Kathleen (37:35): And you can make more than one too.
Ann (37:37): So, yeah, so I think my, my favorite, I was, it's not really a company organization who I think is doing a great job with their marketing is it's a, I wrote about them actually recently in my newsletter. So maybe it's familiar to you, Kathleen, but it's the economic development agency in Currituck County. If you go to Think Currituck, and it's C U R R I T U C k.com. Thinkcurrituck.com. What I love about what they do is that if you go to their homepage, they have a button right on there that says how to do two different calls to action on there. One is a, I think finding properties, something like that because an economic development agency, you know, they're charged with with, you know, developing the business in that area.
Ann (38:32): But the other one says, call Larry. And Larry is Larry Lombardi, who is the executive director of the Think Currituck economic development agency, of the Currituck County economic development agency. And so all of their their, their marketing efforts are really around Larry. And so it embodies everything that we're talking about here, you know, that sense of humanity and vulnerability and transparency. But what I love about their approach is that it carries straight through to a call to action on the website. You know, so everything that Think Currituck is doing from both an inbound perspective, as well as, you know, just like again, they've thought through little details like that. I just think it's great. It's just genius. Their blog is, is really solid, really good. The website is not tons of bells and whistles on it, but it's it's so it's just to the point, you know, it's very direct.
Ann (39:29): And so I, I just love the way they've honed that message. And then it's also wrapped with it's a wrapped around Larry Lombardi's personality. And that that call Larry button is genius. And when you click on that button, by the way, which I did, it gives you Larry's contact info and it gives you his, his telephone number.
Kathleen (39:47): I was going to say poor Larry, his phone.
Ann (39:50): So I called it, I called Larry, of course, because it told me to. That was a call to action on their website. Partly because I was like, Holy, wow, I love this. This is genius. What are you doing here? It's hilarious. I have to meet Larry.
Kathleen (40:03): Yeah, exactly.
Ann (40:04): So when I called Larry, like, hello, Larry, he's like, Hey, I'm like, hi, this is Ann Hanley. And he's like, how can I help you?
Kathleen (40:11): Fantastic.
Ann (40:11): So just a genius use, I think, everything's sort of working together. And I asked Larry, like, how many, how many of these do you get? And he said, he gets about 15 a month, which is not, I honestly thought that it would be a whole lot more, but anyway.
Kathleen (40:26): I bet there's a lot of people who just don't believe like you're really going to get him. And there's probably a lot of skepticism out there cause people aren't used to anyone being that generous with their phone number.
Ann (40:36): That's exactly the point though, isn't it like people aren't used to that level of generosity. So, you know, we haven't really talked about generosity, but that's another great way to think about your marketing was through that lens. And so I love the way that he is so accessible. People don't abuse. It, it turns out and maybe it's because as you say, people don't trust it, but how fantastic is that?
Kathleen (40:55): It's awesome. Well, I can't wait to go check that out. I love hearing examples. So thank you for that one. All right. Second question. The number one pain point that I hear other marketers express is that things change so quickly in the world of marketing and they're, they feel overwhelmed by trying to keep up with everything and to educate themselves and to consume all the content that's out there. So how do you personally educate yourself and stay up to date?
Ann (41:23): That's a good question. I, I read a lot, I read a lot of industry newsletters but I also, you know, my, my family makes fun of me because I think of everything through a marketing lens. So I I'm right now, I'm, I'm talking to you now from a little town on the, in Southern Maine, right on the coast.
Ann (41:49): And when I go downtown, there's like, there's one little store in town, like one little general store with a tiny little sandwich counter at the back. And when I go down there, I just, I think about everything through a marketing lens and the way that they are approaching everything. And so I get a lot of inspiration just by the way that I move through the world, which sounds goofy. But man, it's like, I learned so much about what works and what doesn't work and by what I see other people doing myself. And so, yes, you know, you can read tons of, of online publications and you can, you can educate yourself all day long, but ultimately I think you've gotta just use all, you know, internalize all that information, just look to see what's working around you. You started this call today saying, you know, talking about your marketing hat.
Ann (42:38): And I love that because, you know, we do your point, like you, as you said, we are all being marketed to on a regular basis. And so what, what cuts through the clutter for you? Like, I get a lot of inspiration in that way. So when I go talk to Lisa down at the grocery at the right in downtown two blocks from here and I listened to her and what's, what's working for her. I get a whole lot of inspiration from that. And I don't think because I'm going to suddenly start consulting with a bunch of small town, grocery stores, what, you know, what she's doing has and what she's finding valuable and what she's not finding value in has repercussions for a database business or a technology company.
Kathleen (43:21): She's also very close to her customer, which a lot of bigger companies are not. So yes,
Ann (43:25): Yes. That's actually a really good point. Yes. That's in part and, and some things that she's feeling frustrated by, I think, Oh, that's because you're not doing this. Right. Right. Right. And so it's, it's, it's equally when she says something isn't working, it's equally as interesting to me. So so yeah, so that's actually how I get a lot of a lot of, of education and inspiration also just like social media. I learned a whole lot just by, just by listening on social media and shutting up every once in a while. And just listening to what people are talking about, podcasts like this one too. I mean, I get a lot of value out of listening to friends and seeing what, what they're talking about just as much as, as I do. Just, you know, just through my own reading and, and and you know, from, from any of that,
Kathleen (44:12): Well, it's really interesting to me to hear you talk about kind of just going out into the world and being a keen observer, because one of the things that I've noticed over 150 plus episodes of doing this podcast is that some of the best marketers I've interviewed - yourself, another person that springs to mind, Marcus Sheridan, who I know you're very close with - they're not trained as marketers. And it's, which is not to say that you shouldn't go out and study marketing. It's just that what makes them great marketers is that they are keen observers of, of the human condition and, and passionately interested in understanding what makes people tick. And like, that's what makes Marcus such a great communicator is he, he likes to figure out like, how do we connect as people? And I feel like you, you do the same thing. Like there's an instinct in there.
Kathleen (44:59): You know, your training was in journalism. I don't even know what he studied as an undergrad, but he had a pool company. And there are plenty of other examples from throughout the history of the podcast that that's the case for. And so it, I guess the takeaway for me is really like, you can study marketing and it's good to do that, certainly. And there's a lot to learn from that, as you say, you learn from that as well. But none of that can make up for if you don't have the type of mind that's interested in understanding what makes people tick as human beings.
Ann (45:27): Yes. Yes. And I guess the other thing I would add to that, and also this is a callback to what we were talking about earlier in this conversation, but make something, create something, try it, you know, build an audience. What are you passionate about? Even if it's something that isn't related to really what you're doing in your job at all? You know, my newsletter is about writing and it's about content. It's it's, I don't necessarily talk about writing all the time, but in this newsletter, that's what I focus on. And that's where I, what I am building an audience around. And so I've, like I said, I've learned a lot about communicating and writing and and what, what people really value and what connects with them just through that act. So wait in, get your hands dirty. Like you're not gonna learn it just from, from observing, you know, what, what, what other people are doing. I think it's much better if you can really weight in and apply some of that to actually building something yourself.
Kathleen (46:22): That is great advice. And on that note, we will wrap up with, if somebody does want to check out your newsletter and subscribe, where should they go to do that?
Ann (46:30): Yeah. So they can go to annhandley.com/newsletter. They can also go to just annhandley.com and, and navigate there via the newsletter button. Or you can check out anything that we're doing at marketingprofs.com as well. Awesome.
Kathleen (46:44): Well, I will put the links to all of those things in the show notes and of course, check out B2B marketing forum and the Total Annarchy newsletter, two of my favorite things. And if you're listening and you learn something new this week, please consider heading to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leaving the podcast a five star review. That helps us get found by other people. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next interview. Thank you so much Ann. This was a ton of fun.
Ann (47:15): Yes. Thanks for having me.
How can any company - large or small - own their competitive market, charge more, and at the same time, build a customer base that absolutely loves it?
This week on the Inbound Success podcast, Theresa Lina, author of the book "Be the Go-To: How to Own Your Competitive Market, Charge More, and Have Customers Love You For It," talks about the Apollo method - the system that she says is the secret to standing out as a brand.
Theresa's method is simple and actionable, and something that any company can apply, and in this episode, she breaks down the details and talks about why so many companies get it wrong.
Resources from this episode:
- Connect with Theresa on LinkedIn
- Buy the book
- Visit the Apollo Method website
- Check out some of the other resources Theresa mentioned:
- Visit ecorner.standford.edu
- Stu McLaren's website
- Salesforce's Trailblazers community
Transcript Kathleen (00:15): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Theresa Lina, who is the author of the number one Amazon bestseller "Be the Go-To: How to Own Your Competitive Market, Charge More and Have Customers Love You For It." Welcome to the podcast Theresa.
Theresa (00:35): Thank you, Kathleen. I'm so happy to be here.
Kathleen (00:37): Yeah, I'm really interested to speak with you. First of all, I love the topic of the book. I mean, who does not want to be the GoTo and also have their customers love them and be able to charge more and all the things that you mentioned in the title? But also you have a really interesting background and mix of things that you do. You're not only a book author, you're a consultant. You are a teacher. You're involved in Stanford university and educating people about marketing. I wonder if maybe you could take a minute and talk a little bit about your background, how you got to where you are today and all of the different things that you're involved in today.
Theresa (01:13): Okay. Yes. So yeah, my, my primary emphasis throughout my career has been strategy and marketing in the tech and mostly in the technology space and primarily B2B. So I've studied marketing and information technology at university. And then I got a job with Accenture coming out of college and spent many years with them and was in both the client on the client side. And then later helped start the industry marketing program there. And I had a global industry marketing role for one of the business units that I helped start with the partner in charge at the time. And we grew that to be over $850 million in a very short period of time with all organic growth, which was really incredible. It was an incredible ride. And now that business unit is a multibillion dollar business unit.
Theresa (02:14): It's massive inside the company. And then I went off on my own. I, part of me, I had, I sort of wore two hats. I had one company that was an educational entertainment company for children, which was a personal project. And then I started a strategy and marketing consulting firm and worked with Accenture and other clients with that. And then over time, there were various times when I went back inside to become chief marketing officer and chief strategy officer for a couple of different companies, which kept me grounded because as a consultant, it's so easy to think you have all the answers and, Oh, everything's straight forward, just do this and you'll succeed. And of course we all know, any of us who've spent time on the inside, life is very different when you're, you know, dodging the bullets every day inside a company.
Theresa (03:08): And one of those stints was during the dot com rise and fall. And so I lived through all of the dot com bust and the 9-11 and all of that. And then another stint was through the great recession. So you know, I definitely know what it's like to go through these hard times as somebody on the inside. And then I also have been involved at Stanford for a little over 15 years now in various capacities, both in helping with their own outreach to their alumni and their communities and stakeholders. And then also I help I'm on the teaching team for some courses and one of their executive ed programs at the business school. So I wear quite a few hats and then I have, I still have my consulting firm.
Kathleen (03:59): Now let's talk a little bit about the book. Be the go-to. What does that mean?
Theresa (04:03): Yeah, so, you know, one of the, the, the big problem that I was running into with my own business and that I was running into with companies that I was working for and with clients is that customers or clients started putting pricing pressure on us because they weren't seeing what made us unique and different from anybody else they could work with. And it was really frustrating because this was happening like say in my case with clients that I had had for a very long time who knew me, who knew our work, they, they had they knew we were a pretty different and the way we could execute and that we brought a lot of value. And yet they still would say, yeah, yeah, but, you know, we could go over here and get the same work for less money.
Theresa (04:51): And it was really frustrating. And meanwhile, I knew that there were companies out there, Accenture, the one I, the organization I have have helped start within Accenture. We were a very high margin business getting paid very well for what we were doing. And I was on the phone with one of my subcontractors one day who told me about a friend of hers who was charging $50,000 a day for what she was doing. And she had less experience than we did. And we, you know, it was, it was incredible. And so I really became fascinated by this. What is it that makes some companies able to charge so much more than everybody else? And they can command these premium prices. They hardly ever have to compete for work. They are there the first name that comes to mind when somebody has a particular issue or problem.
Theresa (05:41): And so I really wanted to understand what the recipe was. And a lot of the typical answers weren't in themselves enough having the best product, not enough having great PR or great market visibility, not enough you know, the, the list just went. So I did a, I did a lot of research and interviewed a lot of clients and executives and other people out there in the marketplace. And I came up with what seemed to me to be the recipe for my own business. And then as I wrote it down on a plane, on to Chicago, one day, literally I was jotting it down and I realized, Oh my God, all of my clients need this. This is, this is it. This is what you do. And that became what I ended up dubbing as the Apollo method for market dominance. Because later I came to realize that the parallels between what the Apollo space program had done to put a man on the moon actually were very striking compared to what a company needed to do to achieve sustainable differentiation and market leadership in, you know, a given market.
Theresa (06:54): So that was the genesis of all of this. And the essence of what the book is about. I basically wrote down the methodology. I've said, I want this to be something anybody can go off and do. It's very step by step and actionable so that you don't need me to do it. And it's not a big pitch piece to get to the upsell. It's you can go off, read the book, and if you do what it says, you can, you can have a, make a remarkable difference in your profit margins and your longterm sustainability in a, even in a very competitive space.
Kathleen (07:33): I'm sure everybody who's listening is thinking the same thing I am, which is, tell me more about this Apollo framework. What exactly does it entail?
Theresa (07:45): On the surface it's so simple, and it almost sounds insulting because it's, it's very straight. It's very simple, but of course, when you dive into the details, it gets a little richer with some of the nuance of what you need to do. But a lot of it is bringing together pieces that a lot of companies do go out and do. There are some things that I, I see missing, which is why I did feel compelled to write the book, because I just was not seeing it discussed out in the market. So there are four phases or four pieces, and I present them in a chronological order in the book, but you can do bits and pieces. You can pull from different parts depending on where you are with your business. So the four stages at the high level are launch, ignite, navigate, and accelerate. So launch is where you decide what it is you're going to be known for.
Theresa (08:35): You decide not just what product or offering are we going to put out into the market, but what, what do we want to own? What problem do we want to take full ownership for in the market where we are really the, the thought leaders around that problem. And we are the ones advancing progress in that area for the market. We have a vision for what the market needs to do and what will solve this problem. And we are in it for the long haul to to guide the market along. So that's, so during that phase, you decide what markets, what market or markets you're going to focus on, what you want to be known for. And then you develop your point of view on that problem. So what's why is it a problem? Why is it a pressing problem and what needs to be done about it?
Theresa (09:24): And then you define, or you hypothesize or define your unique, what your unique approach to solving that problem is going to be. And then you put your stake in the ground and say, by golly, we own this. You might do it with a big launch event. You might do it with a press release, with a, with an ebook, whatever it may be. So that's your launch. Then ignite is where you take that point of view and you go out and your, your goal is to lead a movement in the marketplace around that issue, around that point of view, around that problem and what needs to be done about it. And of course your approach, but on a, at a higher level, it's really more about taking the market forward. So you see Tesla doing this with electric cars, you know. They have their, they have their higher purposes.
Theresa (10:16): We want to accelerate the adoption of electric car technology in the marketplace. We really believe deeply that the world needs to move to electric car technology. And so when they talk about themselves, a lot of what they talk about is electric car technology, what we need to do to take the industry forward. You know, they, they talk about their cars to an extent, but it's really that, that bigger message and a key in the ignite phase is that you're getting other power brokers in the market to embrace your, your your point of view and your purpose. And so they become evangelists on behalf of you as well, out in the marketplace on your behalf. So the goal is to get that momentum going and really lead the market forward. We saw Mark Benioff do this with salesforce.com. Anybody who's watched that story unfold over the last 20 years saw him take a point of view, which said, we have got to get the world off of this expensive installed software that takes months, or if not, years, to install and millions of dollars, you know? We need to kill software.
Theresa (11:24): He literally had a a logo, the Ghostbuster style logo that said, you know, get rid of software. And so when he would go out to conferences, he would not talk about the Salesforce technology. He talked about the need to put the world in the cloud. And at that time, this was incredibly controversial. And a lot of people didn't think it was going to be ever embraced. Because at that time you didn't dare put customer, your, your most precious corporate data in the cloud, no way would anybody do that. So he was an example of somebody who really went out and started a whole new movement in the marketplace. So that's the goal with ignite. The third phase is navigate, and this is where you have to walk the talk you have to deliver on your promises. So this is where you actually take your offering to market.
Theresa (12:19): You sell and market your offering, you get your people on board. This is what people normally associate with the business. But the big difference is that you have a unique offering that is more than just a product. It's a true solution, so that you're, you're delivering a result. You're not just selling functions or features. You're delivering outcomes for the customer that really change their business and actually solve their problem. And we can talk about more, talk more about that later, if you want, because it's an important distinction between what, what a lot of companies need to be doing to truly be of high value and justify those higher prices versus the way they do it today. And then the fourth phase is accelerate. You have to invariably, even no matter how unique you are in the beginning, people are going to come out and start copying you, especially as you become successful. And the market is going to change. The world is going to change around you. So accelerate is all about staying ahead of the market and changing and adapting with the market. So those are the four key, the four phases.
Kathleen (13:29): So I have a bunch of questions. You mentioned at the, well, let me back up. The first one is, in the world of marketing, I feel like there's a lot of buzz right now about the concept that people refer to as category creation. And and there's, you know, the book "Play Bigger", which is on that. And there's, there's a whole host of other books in that space that this sounds a lot like that. Can you talk about like, is, is that really what this is? Are there differences?
Theresa (14:01): There are differences. There are differences. Yeah, I actually don't, I know, Christopher and I have had a conversation. He's a colleague in Silicon Valley and we have a lot of mutual friends. And I know that, that I know that they have a very strong, the authors of that book have a very strong point of view around category creation. And a lot of people talk about it. I personally don't believe that you have to go out and create a new category. In many ways, Salesforce did not create a new category. They, they did it differently. They did the same thing that Siebel and other salesforce automation companies were doing. They, they did the same thing, but in a different, unique way that solved a very particular problem. So my, my perspective is that the key is focusing on the problem. What, what problem are you solving for customers?
Theresa (15:00): What, so it's, and it's more around coming up with a unique approach that solves that problem in a very, very high value way. So you do, I don't believe you have to go. There are many, many companies that have tremendous success that don't go out and create an entirely new category, and some analysts would even counsel you against trying to do that because it's extremely expensive and you're trying to really change, fundamentally change the market. And yes, it's doable. And I know Blue Ocean talks about those as well, to some extent, but it's, it's not necessary. The one big difference with my book is that you can apply this to any business, no matter what phase they're in. It could a solopreneur could go out and implement this for themselves, and a person trying to figure out their career could, who could apply this, or any product organization within a big company, or the company across the board. You know, it can really be applied at various layers. So it's not about category creation.
Kathleen (16:10): I'm glad you've explained that because, and I'll just share, it's interesting. I have a point of view on this because, you know, I'm in a lot of different groups of CMOs and heads of marketing. And I feel like every single person I talk to says, they're creating a new category.
Kathleen (16:27): And at the risk of violating my clean content rating on Apple podcasts. I just think that's bullshit. Every single company can not be creating a new category because then every single company would be in a category of one. Like, it's just, it's almost gotten ridiculous how common it is.
Kathleen (16:46): And I do think there are companies that are genuinely doing it, and I think there's a lot of excitement behind that, but that, you know, I sort of like teed this up. I didn't tell you I was going to ask you that question, but, but I wanted to have that conversation because I just, I really do think it's become almost ridiculous that it's like, if you're today's marketer, you have to create a category, right?
Theresa (17:07): Yeah. It also kind of depends, you know, you can define the word category and I guess in a lot of different ways you know, I think with Play Bigger, they have a great perspective and you can do that and have tremendous success. And with enough capital and enough support and resources behind you you can definitely implement their strategy. They talk about some great stuff in that book. I'm by no means denigrating what they talk about, or it's just that I don't feel that's the only way to go out and have tremendous success and and have a tremendous impact. And, you know, my focus is more on how do you go and have you know, deliver outcomes to a set of customers that are going to view you as, you know, the thought leader and the torchbearer in their, in their world.
Kathleen (18:04): Yeah. So I like that. I like that you have a focus on making this accessible, accessible, I should say, because I think that that's one of the issues when people talk about category creation is it feels like you need to be VC backed and, you know, it's, it's a whole different play.
Theresa (18:21): It's expensive.
Kathleen (18:21): It is. It's very expensive. It's a long game,
Theresa (18:24): Right?
Kathleen (18:26): You mentioned at the beginning that it's, that this might seem like a big duh, but the reality is most companies are not doing these things. And so can you just take a minute and speak to why you think that is?
Theresa (18:38): Yeah. You know, it really confounds me. I developed this 20 years ago and I I'm stunned that nobody has already come out and come up with it. To me, it was, you know, it's almost like writing down the chocolate chip recipe, chocolate chip cookie recipe that grandmothers have been making for eons. But so when I first came up with it, I actually found some resistance in the market. I think I was a little early and talking to people about this because it was pre-internet and they couldn't see how similar they were to other companies. As a consultant, I'm traveling around, I'm talking to lots of different people. It's like Gartner, you know, all day long. They talk to companies and every company that walks in and sounds like the last one, but to the company themselves, they, you know, they didn't see each other.
Theresa (19:29): So they couldn't tell. Now that, now that digital marketing in particular has sort of put everything online companies, I think executives even now more see, they used to be very insulated from how much they looked and sounded like everybody else. And that's no longer the case. So I actually realized even last year, cause I've been trying to talk myself out of having to write this book for years, I've started and stopped thinking, Oh, well, I don't think we needed it. You know, I've heard about Play Bigger coming out. And with the way they talked about that book before it was published, I thought, I had a conversation with Christopher on the phone and after hearing him, I thought, well, I think their book might be the same as mine. Maybe I don't need to write this. And it came out and I realized, no, it's still not quite the same.
Theresa (20:18): And last year I thought, Oh my God, you know, we, we need it now more than ever. And so because companies, they're there, there are a lot of, they do some of the pieces, but they don't quite put the pieces together properly. And then they're really missing the boat completely in other areas like, like a point of view, you know? Very few companies have an overarching, true thought leadership point of view about the market and where the market needs to go. They have a point of view about themselves and their product and, and their, how their product operates and why. But you should be able to take your product out of it completely and talk just about where the market is going, what the problem is and what they need to be doing about it, independent of your company. That's true thought leadership. So that's one of many examples of things that companies are, are missing the boat on.
Kathleen (21:19): Yeah, I think that's, to me that's so important because I feel like it's that first step where probably 90% of the problems are. And I think you hit the nail on the head, which is that everybody thinks they are differentiated. Like, honestly, I mean, if you talk to any marketer, they're not going to say I'm doing a terrible job and I'm copying everyone else. Like they're going to give you their pitch and their value prop, and they're going to feel like they've done that.
Kathleen (21:43): So I think maybe it would be helpful if you spoke a little bit more about really what it means to have that point of view, because I'm not sure that people listening are going to understand, like, what does that look like when it comes to life?
Theresa (22:02): Okay. Yeah. So in the book, I have a very prescribed message framework that I believe companies should be using, especially if you are a solution to a problem. And what most technology companies, most B2B your audience has more of a B2B focus.
Kathleen (22:19): No, it's, it's not, it is kind of all over the place, but I tend to talk a lot about B2B just because that's where my focus is.
Theresa (22:28): And a lot of, I think a lot of it, it used to be interesting. It was so consumer and B2B were such completely different animals in the past and they still are somewhat different, but it's interesting how much more similar they are now than they, than they ever know, or in terms of how you do your marketing, but the point of view. So the message framework is this. It's three pieces. That's why there's a problem, what needs to be done about it and how you've uniquely solved the problem. So why, what, how. So the point of view is the first two. It's why there's a problem in the market. So it's not just that there's a problem. It's why is it a problem? What's the fallout from the problem? So for example, with me, I would say, you know, the problem is most companies don't adequately differentiate themselves in a way that's going to be sustainable over time.
Theresa (23:20): And this was a problem because it leads to declining margins over time. It leads to price based competition. When your customers can't see what makes you different. And over time, companies have to compete on price. They have to lower their prices. Margins fall. They have fewer and fewer dollars to invest back into the business and back into their future and in marketing. And eventually they go out of business. I mean, we say, see with agencies all the time. I mean, there's some of the worst offenders and failing to differentiate. So, so what should they be doing about it? They need to come up, you know, they need to be, have a unique approach to a problem that they're, that they own in the marketplace. So that would be for me, my what. So I can talk all day long about those issues and all, all what companies are facing and what they need to be doing, et cetera, and never once talk about me or my, my company's services or, or even my book. You know, I can go all day long just on that point of view about what needs to be happening. So every company ought to have that for themselves. They ought to have that very strong perspective.
Kathleen (24:38): You mentioned Salesforce earlier, which is a great example, and I love that story of Mark Benioff staging a mock protest with his sign. And are, are there any companies, maybe some more recent examples of companies that you think are doing that really well, that, that first step in your four step process?
Theresa (24:57): Well, I think for sure you know, I like to use Tesla because I think again, they're kind of a textbook because they have taken such a unique approach to solving a problem that people have been talking about for a long time, which is how do you get electric car technology to be embraced? I don't think people realize that I have the year in my book, but electric car technology has been around since like the beginning of the 20th century. I mean, we're talking over a hundred years of electric car and the, and you know, gas and electric were sort of developed at the same time. And then gas took off and electric got left in the dust. So but you know, Tesla has this, this very you know, Elon Musk. I mean, he's a great example for all of his businesses.
Theresa (25:42): You know, his businesses start with a higher purpose. You know, SpaceX, you know, wants to make space, travel more accessible and more practical. The Boring Company, you know, he wants to solve the traffic problem. You know, he, we need easier, better ways to get cars off, you know, to get across town. So, you know, those are examples. You know, REI, well, that's not a recent example that these, you know, I, I tended in the book, I tended to study companies that have been around for awhile. The whole point is being sustainable. You know, I think, you know, I know you talk, talk about HubSpot a lot in your podcast and, you know, I think they're a good one. The, the challenge with that company is that it's a little broad the way they talk about what needs to be done, but if they just were to focus on the, and they talk, you know, of course emphasis is on inbound, but you know, with them, I'd love to see a more focused message around, you know, what's wrong with the way most companies approach their inbound marketing and what needs to be done about it.
Theresa (26:58): That would be an example of an opportunity, you know, for them to get more clear about leading the charge, even though they have done a great job of leading the charge in elevating the approach to digital marketing, getting people to be more integrated in how they do it and being more sophisticated and make it, making it more accessible to more companies.
Kathleen (27:22): Yeah. Now I think it's interesting that you have your second step as ignite because it is, you know, it's one thing to have your point of view, but if nobody knows about it, it's the tree that fell in the forest. Right?
Kathleen (27:35): So talk me through what that ignite step looks like or should look like, or how a company should approach it.
Theresa (27:45): Yeah. So a key thing is is, is understanding the role of power brokers in an industry. So a lot of companies, a lot of marketers, I think don't quite appreciate this, and they certainly don't leverage this to their full advantage. So every single industry or every market has literally a handful of people who know everybody, are respected by everybody in that market. They, their tentacles reach, I, I nicknamed them tree trunks with vast root systems, because that's how you can think of it. You just see one person standing there, but underground unbeknownst, you know, because a lot of times you don't even know how far reaching their network is, but there's this vast network and they all talk to each other and interact with each other. So one of the keys to getting traction is getting those powerbrokers converted over to your point of view and to the point where they actually start evangelizing on your behalf and they help get the word out.
Theresa (28:48): So it amplifies your message. So instead of having to reach 500 people, one person at a time, you can, with one power broker can just because they have so much power and such a voice in the market, they can immediately convert thousands on your behalf. You know, relative, let's say your market is, you have 10 or 20,000 people you're trying to reach. They can literally reach a giant chunk of it all at once. A good example of this in the technology space is Gartner. You know, if you get Gartner on board and behind what you're doing, they start writing about you in their reports. They start talking about you even informally in conversations. So and you know, the, the media can play that role, but there are also individuals just, you know, most industries have maybe a dozen who they know everybody, and they have the tipping point.
Theresa (29:50): Malcolm Gladwell talks about personality types, and one is the connector. And so these power brokers are connectors. They just proactively spread the word about other people and other companies they know and put people in touch with each other. So you're looking for those types of people and that can propel you very quickly into a market in a highly credible way that you won't be able to do on your own. So this is something that a lot of companies don't fully leverage. They do go after media. And you know, of course there are social media influencers and some, some social media influencers fall into this a lot. Don't, you know, a lot of them just have their 50,000 followers and they put out a tweet or whatever. That's a flash in the pan that might give you some quick response, but you're trying to get enduring influence in the market. You're trying to become one of the powerbrokers yourself. And so you need these power brokers to help take you in that direction, but they can also make it happen a lot more quickly.
Kathleen (30:55): So I think that sounds great in principle, but in my experience, a lot of the power brokers in any given market have a lot of people clamoring for their attention. And when we, you know, we started out by talking about how this approach is a very accessible one. So it's one thing if you're Elon Musk going to try and like get in front of power brokers, and of course, they're going to take your call. It's entirely another. If you are, you know, a first time founder who doesn't have a big reputation or VC backers, or, you know, that, that super powered network. So how does one go about brokering those relationships?
Theresa (31:35): This is where the power of the point of view comes in because when you have a very powerful, provocative point of view on a really critical problem, and you have a perspective on what needs to be done about it, that's truly fresh and innovative. People will listen. They're, they're hungry to know to understand what's going on out there. You know, I think of, I mean, not everybody may be able to relate to this example, but I think of Jamie Oliver who is the chef out of the UK, who caught, captured a lot of attention with a Ted talk he gave about nutrition and how it, how the typical person's nutrition is literally killing them. And he gave this powerful Ted talk. He was, he was a nobody at the time, just some chef, but he had this very powerful point of view and a very passionate devotion to his point of view.
Theresa (32:27): And he got the ear of lots of people and got onto the Ted stage. And eventually he got a TV show and, you know, he got a lot of notoriety, but it was because he had that point of view and Ted talks are actually a great example of points of view. They're not up there to sell anything. They have very powerful perspectives that are interesting enough for the rest of the world to listen. It's what's their slogan. Oh now I'm, now I'm drawing a blank on what it is. I'm sure somebody can put it in the show notes for us. Ideas worth sharing. So your point of view needs to be an idea worth sharing, because if it's provocative, I have four criteria, actionable, bold, controversial, and distinctive. And so the ABCD that's in the book, so you can have a reminder. But it needs to be provocative to get other people wanting to talk about it.
Kathleen (33:28): I love it. So we're probably not going to go into detail on the, the last two stages because I think those are probably the ones that my audience is much more familiar with, which is having to do with going to market and really how you execute. I think, I think at least the first two stages are the ones that, that really trip people up. And let's be honest, you have to get through those to get to the second two. So I'm wondering if you, just, for people who are listening, who are thinking, I'm interested in maybe doing this, other than going out and buying the book, which they should absolutely do and we'll talk about how they can find it. What are some things like if they just want to get started, if they want to listen to this podcast and then go back to work, what are, what are one or two things that they can immediately start doing that can set them down on the path to get started with this?
Theresa (34:14): Yeah, I think one thing is, first of all, it's just like any, anything else acknowledge the problem. Acknowledge that you have a problem. What I have found even as a chief marketing officer is sometimes having such a hard time getting the rest of the executive team to acknowledge that we have a problem. And marketers know how often do you feel like you're putting lipstick on a pig? You know, you inside, you know, know this company really isn't different. You know, I have to make it, I have to make it sound different, but in all honesty, it's not different. So if there's any way to get the rest of the full team to acknowledge that there's a strategic issue and that the company, this is not a marketing problem, this is a fundamental strategic issue for a company that the marketer and others in the company need to play a role in solving.
Theresa (35:07): So I'd say that's one thing. It's get the team. And even, even if you're a product team or a unit within the company, just to agree that this is an issue and that you need to do something. And then the next thing is really get clear on what problem are we devoting ourselves to? What problem do we want to be known for in the market? What problem are we devoting ourselves to eradicating in the marketplace? And then, what is point of view about what it will take to solve that problem? And then figuring out how to make your approach. If you already have a product, how do we make it more unique or how do we turn it into a more comprehensive solution? And instead of just some SaaS offering with our three levels of purchase option, you know, a silver, gold platinum, or whatever you want to call it, you know, how do we turn this into a full solution?
Theresa (36:05): I am, I, I have a support website out for the book Apollomethod.com. And there are some tools that I have in the book that you can also get. Just go to the website to get that. It will also help you start taking action on some of these areas right away. For example, an offering blueprint form can, it's sort of similar to the business model canvas, but it's an offering blueprint that will help you just define components of your offering. And you may see where some of your holes are right now that, that keep it from being a, a complete solution.
Kathleen (36:44): Awesome. Well, those are really good tips to get started. And I think, you know, that's, that's the first step as we said. So for somebody who does want to really see this through you, you mentioned the URL for the book website. Can you say that one more time?
Theresa (36:59): Yes. It's www.apollomethod.com.
Kathleen (37:02): And is that where they can get the book or will that take them to it?
Theresa (37:05): They can, yeah, there's a link to get the book, but they can also just go to Amazon and do a search on, on Be the Go-To and put my name in if they want, if they have trouble finding it. So Theresa Lina. And they can get the book on Amazon. It's also available on other platforms both in hard cover and hard cover paperback and ebook on Barnes and Noble and some others, I think.
Kathleen (37:31): Great. All right. Now shifting gears, I have two questions that I always ask my guests. So now it's your turn. The first one is, of course this podcast is all about inbound marketing and we've talked about a lot of companies in this conversation, but opening it up, you know, when you think about inbound marketing is there a particular company or individual person that you think is really kind of setting the gold standard for what it means to do that right?
Theresa (37:58): Well, right now, well, I've heard a lot of really good ones mentioned on your podcast. I listened to your podcast religiously. And so I won't, I don't think I'll duplicate that maybe they've been mentioned, but I really think salesforce.com still does. They're huge, but they do a phenomenal job of inbound strategies. Their trailblazer program is really phenomenal. It goes beyond just typical lead generation where they're really trying to, this is part of a strategy and the book, they, they, I did not work with salesforce.com, but they are a textbook implementer of the Apollo method for market dominance across the board. So they have so many great programs that are all about generating, you know, getting people to start using the product and then making the product more and more a part of their business. So I think they do a phenomenal job with all of their, the blogs and all their various blogs and materials and their free trials and the trailblazer program, the Dreamforce conference, et cetera.
Theresa (39:09): And you can do everything they do. You can do it on a small scale. You can, you know, Harley Davidson started the Harley owners group with 50 people back in the eighties, and now they have, I think, hundreds of thousands. But they started with just 50 people. So you can you can start these programs with, you know, on, at a very small scale and still experience a lot of success. And then, you know, it's interesting. I don't know if you've ever heard of Stu McLaren, but he, he's a, he's one of these internet creator, you know, in the internet creator space. And he specializes in building member-based communities. And I really think he's doing some neat things around helping people and companies start membership programs, membership, or community based, or member based communities, paying members. And for example, he has this wonderful founding member strategy, which I think is really brilliant that he talks about. If you Google him and listen to some of his podcast interviews, you'll, you'll learn some interesting things from him, I think.
Kathleen (40:23): Oh, I'm so interested to check that one out.
Theresa (40:25): Yeah. He's one that's caught my attention lately.
Kathleen (40:28): Well, funny enough. Yeah, you're right. I don't think anybody has mentioned Salesforce, even though it seems like it's obvious.
Theresa (40:34): Is that right?
Kathleen (40:35): But I also don't think anyone's mentioned Stu McLaren, so that's awesome. I like to get new ones. Second question, and you know the drill cause you listen, marketers always talk about how hard it is to keep up with everything. It's all changing so quickly. How do I do it? So how do you do it? How do you keep up?
Theresa (40:50): Well, I definitely listen to a lot of podcasts. One of the things I love about your podcast is you get into the mechanics of things with people, especially when you're talking to people who have specific tools. You know, I just love that you dive right into exactly how did you do this? So I love listening to podcasts and reading articles and blog posts. And then I do monitor academic research because especially when it comes to analytics, because I find it useful to show me where things are going. One of the departments I'm involved with at Stanford is the management science and engineering department, which has a big analytics orientation. And so I try to pay attention to what our faculty are doing in that space. And then there's a great resource called ecorner.stanford.edu, which has lectures by different thought leaders in Silicon Valley.
Theresa (41:50): And while not all of it relates to marketing, it is another, a lot of these are up and coming, for example. It's also part of put on by one of the groups in our department. And we had Mark Zuckerberg back when Facebook was just getting started. We had the Google founders when Google was just getting started. So they have a real knack for seeing what's coming down the pike. So I, again, I like to listen to that and look at what companies seem to be coming along and what they're talking about, because they're often on the front edge of things.
Kathleen (42:25): That is a great suggestion. And yeah, and when I have not heard about before.
Theresa (42:29): And then, you know, actually one more is political campaigns because they are, the stakes are so high. I like paying attention to what they're doing and what tactics they're using because a lot of times they borrow heavily from marketing, but they can also be borrowed from. And then my students in the Stanford marketing group are often at the front edge of what's going on out there. So I, I I like to watch what they're doing as well.
Kathleen (42:55): I love that. Well, that sounds like a lot of really good suggestions. And of course, as always, I will put the links to all of those, into the show notes. So head there, if you're interested in checking any of those out this has been a lot of fun and really interesting. Theresa, thank you so much.
Theresa (43:11): Thank you. This has been fun for me too.
Kathleen (43:15): Yeah. Now of course you're going to want to go out and get the book. So I'll put the link to the website in there as well. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this week's episode, please consider going to Apple Podcasts and I would love it if you would leave the podcast a five star review so that others can find it as well. And in the meantime, if you think of somebody who would be a great guest, tweet me at @workmommywork. I really do check out those recommendations. And a lot of people who come on the podcast come by word of mouth. So let me know if you think that there's somebody who would make a good guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Theresa.
Theresa (43:53): Thank you. Thank you. This was really great. Thanks.
ow did GeoFli help Onyx Maps almost double its website conversion rates?
This week on the Inbound Success podcast, GeoFli founder Kyle Pucko talks about the benefits of website personalization and shares examples of companies that have used geotargeted website content to significantly increase website conversion rates.
Check out the full episode to learn more about geotargeted website content and how implementing it on your own website can help improve conversion rates.
Resources from this episode:
- Connect with Kyle on LinkedIn
- Check out the GeoFli website
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Kyle Pucko, who is the founder and CEO of GeoFli.com. Welcome Kyle.
Kyle (00:21): Thank you, Kathleen. Great to be here.
Kathleen (00:23): Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. Maybe you could start off by talking a little bit about your story, who you are, what GeoFli is and how you got to where you are today.
Kyle (00:32): Yeah, absolutely happy to do it. So like you said, my name is Kyle Pucko, founder GeoFli. We are based out here in Missoula, Montana, so big sky country for those who haven't made it out here. It's a beautiful place to visit even this time of year, which sounds a little funny to say. And so my story Kathleen really starts in marketing with higher education. So I spent almost a decade in higher education marketing. So colleges and universities. Worked at a small liberal arts school outside of Chicago and then made my way West to the university of Montana. And really during that time, you know, when we talk about inbound marketing and all the tactics that you've talked with your guests about over a hundred plus episodes not many of those existed when I started in, in higher ed.
Kyle (01:20): So it was a lot of traditional marketing. It was a lot of trade shows. It was a lot of sending packets and it was a lot of in person meetings and talking with students about just why they should go to this university. So, you know, fast forward and of course I'd be at these trade shows and I would see a lot of students holed in the corner looking at their phones, right? So the question became well where are these students spending a lot of time and attention? And I just started to really focus on, you know, if we are going to spend 10 hours a week marketing, where can we work? Can we have the best results? And so I, that, that transitioned into a more traditional marketing role into a, into a digital marketing role. And I was, at least according to LinkedIn, the first and only digital marketing manager at any university across the country.
Kyle (02:10): And I think this was in 2013. So really cut my teeth and, and learning things like Google ads, Facebook ads. And now, now we're getting into a lot of the topics that you cover with your guests. And then in 2015 you know, I started GeoFli and I, and I left the university full time to go full time entrepreneur. And what GeoFli does is it allows anybody to easily change and replace website content based on physical location. So somebody visiting a university website from California would see different content than somebody visiting that same website from New York. This was, this was a product at the university. We have students from all over the world visiting our homepage and getting the same one size fits all content. And so it was a problem. I looked for a solution, couldn't find it. And when I couldn't find it decided to do it myself.
Kathleen (03:04): Interesting. So, I mean, I think that the concept behind it makes total sense and I feel like that's the direction that the world of marketing is going generally is personalization and the ability to hyper personalize. You said you looked out there at the market and you couldn't find a solution. I would imagine when you think about building a solution for delivering personalized content on websites, it's not as simple as it may sound just because websites are all built so differently from each other. You know, there's different CMS's, different kinds of code behind them. Let's, maybe we can start just by talking about how GeoFli works. Like, does it work with every website?
Kyle (03:46): Yeah, so that's a, that's a really good question. And the first thing that, so I, I co founded the company with somebody that I worked with for five years at the university of Montana. He was the web manager there. And so he was really the, the, the technical side of building this out. And the first question we had to answer was is this even possible to do? And the way that we figure that out is we you know, we created this simple website and somebody would click on a link and a dot would appear on a map. And it would say, does this dot represent where you are located? And I think we posted on Facebook had a hundred people click on the link, had a hundred dots on a map and our accuracy was really great. So yep. There or somebody like, Oh, you're like a couple of miles off.
Kyle (04:32): So the way that GeoFIi works is we use IP address and then combine that information with latitude and longitude. So, you know, 99% of the time it will work really great. Somebody is using a VPN, that's going to be a little tricky. But you know, we've been able to mitigate those problems, you know, anytime they've, they've come up. And then, you know, from a technical side early on, like any like any early startup our product was clunky. It was difficult to use our, our value proposition was that anybody could do this, but that promise wasn't resonating when somebody would log in. So we ended up doing a lot of the work for our clients very early on. Today, GeoFli allows anyone regardless of technical background to log in. So there's a, a dashboard. You simply add your URL, select the element that you want to change, and then you can make that change depending on what region you want to do it for. And your question about kind of, does this work on any website? It does. It works on Wix. It works on WordPress. It works on custom content management systems. So as long as you can add the GeoFli script onto the back end of your website, GeoFli can personalize your site.
Kathleen (05:49): That's pretty cool. So, so the notion of personalization, I think it can sound really appealing to a lot of businesses. When you think about who is this right for how do you, how do you talk about that?
Kyle (06:04): Well, you know, I, I sort of alluded to our, my experience in higher ed and it might help to think about where the idea to do this sort of originated from, and it, and it started with Google display advertising. I was a counselor based here in Missoula working for the university of Montana. And occasionally I would get sent to college fairs on the East coast. So there was a college fair in Boston. Well, I was also managing the digital marketing. So, you know, in between traveling to Boston, I was setting up Google display ads and Facebook ads and purchasing keywords on search. So I launched a display campaign and I did a simple 50, 50 split, simple AB test. And I targeted the Boston area. So a 50 mile radius of any student in Boston that had any interest in Montana.
Kyle (06:54): They, there were retargeting audiences. There were interest based audiences, demographic based audiences, high school, students and parents. So one of the ads read, learn more about why UM is right for you and the other ad read Montana visits Boston meetup, and that's the button. The call to action is meetup. So the click through rate for the learn more kind of the generic message to New Englanders was 0.18% click through rate. The click through rate when I used personalized language was 0.3, 3%. So almost double click through rates still low and that's to be expected on display ads, but that, that happened before any idea or any code was written for GeoFli. So it, it became really clear that when people hear their local, their local region, or when it's personalized in some way based on location, there's there was a result at least in display ads.
Kyle (07:53): And so if you're out there and you're thinking, you know, all of my customers are exactly the same wherever they're located, then GeoFli probably isn't a great option for you. Personalization, you know, might be not the best use of your time. Most people though will, will say that, you know, they're when they start breaking down their personas, I'm sure there's demographic personas. You know, we're going to communicate. We want to communicate differently to 18 year olds than we do to 28 year olds. The same is true for location. If you have customers all over they're going to behave very differently. I mean, I think about an auto dealer that is based sort of on the outskirts of a city. You know, you may even want to communicate differently to folks that are living in a dense metropolitan area versus somebody that's visiting your dealership from a more rural or the outskirts of the city.
Kyle (08:44): You know, they might be interested in more compact cars if they have to parallel park every day, versus if they're coming in from out of town or from, they might be able look at the full size or the, or the SUV. So that's just one example. And I'm sure if you're listening, you can think about many more, but colleges is where we started, but today we work in e-commerce, we work in tourism, you know, if you were in Missoula. So it's a, we like to say, Montana is not on the way to anything. And so if you are looking to travel to Montana, you might be thinking, well, it's really hard to get to, you know, instead maybe if somebody from, where are you based out of Kathleen?
Kathleen (09:27): In Maryland.
Kyle (09:28): In Maryland? So Maryland to Montana is going to be a tough trip, but maybe if somebody from Maryland visits, you know, destination Montana or visit Montana, there could be a quick message that says something like, Hey, we're actually not that difficult to get to. Like, check it out. There's this direct flight from Chicago. If you can get to Chicago, you can get to Missoula. So just meeting people where they're at and you know, maybe it's a road trip for people from Washington state. Hey, have you ever thought about a road trip to Montana? So if you saw that message in Maryland, you'd be like, no, I have not thought of a road trip.
Kathleen (10:02): Well, I can totally see it too with like weather related content. Like if you're trying to say beat the heat and somebody's not in someplace that's hot or, you know, things along those lines, I could see a lot of applications for that. Not only in tourism, but in, you know, any companies that sell products that have to do with climactic changes. There, there's a whole host of things I think that you could use it for.
Kyle (10:31): Totally, totally.
Kathleen (10:33): Now is this, you know, I think the other side of this is there's the possibility of who could use personalization, but I've run into this as a marketer. I think personalization sounds so great to a lot of people, but then they, and they might even get a tool that lets them do it, but then there's the actual execution of personalizing. And, and I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit, because I feel like, I feel like it's the kind of thing where you could put all of your time into simply creating personalized messages. Like you could, you could go crazy, but I don't know. I don't know the extent to which the value would be there. Like what's, what's the right way to approach your strategy for personalizing because there has to be an element of bang for your buck involved.
Kyle (11:22): Absolutely. and anybody in marketing has probably tested or downloaded a software that they quickly think to themselves. There are so many features in here that I will never, ever use. And they might've heard the analogy of, you know, you're, you're driving a Ferrari, like you never drive a Ferrari over 20 miles per hour because just need the fire to get to point a to point B, you don't need to race it. You don't need so with GeoFli, you know, we want it to be the best in the world at geo personalization, at changing content based on location. And so when we, when we do onboard new clients, you hit the nail on the head, Kathleen that they, they immediately get excited. Like I can change the footer link. I can change this. You know, I have 127 pages on my website. I can change every word on every page.
Kyle (12:12): We, we usually pull back the reigns if you don't love to do, but we do that early. And we say, let's focus on, we call it three, three, three. So let's focus on three pieces of content on your website that you, that you want to change. What we usually recommend is anything above the fold on the homepage is a good place to start. You know, we don't really need to look at in depth, like, like scroll depth charts to understand the most eyeballs are going to be on these few sections. And that can be, we can change your homepage hero image. We could change videos. So video is a great, is one that we usually go to and say, do you have different videos of maybe your sales team for regions? Or just like we talked about some of these examples before. So we picked three pieces of content on, on on your website.
Kyle (13:05): Then we pick the three regions that you want to personalize content for. So I'll use a university as an example, the university of Oregon, you know, when, when they started working with us we chose Oregon. So the local audience, we chose California because that was the, they had the most amount of students come into the university of Oregon from the most amount of, out of state students coming from the state of California. And then we chose an international country. So Japan. So students coming from Japan to the university of Oregon, what is their website experience like? And that was really the first, the first two threes. And then the third three is we, we picked two more pages. So you have three pages total. So maybe your homepage, your contact us page and your about us page are the, are the three personalized pages.
Kyle (13:51): And that's where we stop. We set you up with the analytics, we integrate directly with Google Analytics. So if you're using Google Analytics, you will GeoFli analytics will work just fine. And then we wait 30 days and we see what were the results. And then based on those results, we make additional changes. So that's really how we start with folks. And we're right there with you. I think that's one of the differences you mentioned. Yeah. You get this tool and then it sort of collects dust. Virtual dust, right. I'm doing air quotes. It collects virtual dust. Charges, your credit card. And you're like, Oh, I gotta cancel that. Like that, that made no sense for me. We really make an effort to make sure that GeoFli does have a positive impact on your website. And if it doesn't, which has happened, then we'll cancel. But most of the time the results show that you know, things like bounce rate decreases, time on site improves, and conversion rates, if you're tracking that or any event type conversion, improves as well. So that's our strategy.
Kathleen (14:52): I like the three, three, three approach because that really does make it manageable. Can you give me, like, walk me through some examples of, of where you've implemented this either for yourself or for a client and what the results have been?
Kyle (15:08): Certainly. So we worked when we first got started here with a company named Onyx Maps. They're hunting software. So stereotypically there there's some things that are stereotypical Montana. For example, the first Uber I ever took in Montana was like a three 50 diesel. Sometimes stereotypes do turn out to be true. So we're working with a hunting application company based here in Montana and hunting for those that aren't in the world of hunting. You know, it's very state specific. Somebody in South Dakota is going to get it. Most hunters in South Dakota, or at least on a percentage basis are gonna hunt for pheasants versus somebody in New York are going to hunt for like white tail deer. So it's very state specific Onyx maps wanted to use GeoFli to showcase and to surface different images based on where people were visiting from.
Kyle (16:01): If someone's visiting from Florida to get a hunting permit, they're going to be a little dismayed when they see a giant elk. They're like, well, I can't hunt that elk in Florida. Like that makes no sense for me. So they personalize imagery and then what they also did was personalize testimonials. And so wherever you were visiting the website from, and this was specific to a landing page, you would see a state based testimonial. So if I'm visiting from Texas, I'm going to see somebody else from Texas that has purchased the app, download the app and have had success with the application in Texas. And basically what the application does is it tells you where the public and private land that you can hunt on is where those boundaries are. And so we ran a really statistically significant test where we would drive people to a specific page using Google search.
Kyle (16:51): So, you know, all the, all the ads were set up like hunting applications, hunting permit. And what we found was before using GeoFli or any of the non GoeFli'd pages that we, that we sent them to. So the default page the conversion rate for app download was right around 3% with. GeoFli'd pages, it was 5% across the board. And so that might not sound like a huge lift, but, you know, at a percentage base, it's, it's tremendous. And when you're spending a lot of money on those paid search ads it really made a positive impact. And so that was a really simple way. I think we changed an image and a quote, and it probably took for each state, you know, maybe five minutes to set up in a, in a really clean way. And that had a tremendous impact on, on the business and on the effectiveness of those, of that advertising campaign.
Kathleen (17:44): That's really interesting. And I definitely would agree. From three to 5% is a big, it is a big shift. Have you ever seen situations where it hasn't worked? I'm curious and, and like why, why would it not?
Kyle (17:56): Yeah, good question. You know, typically what will happen is the analysts on the analytics side, it can be difficult to prove that, that GeoFli is working if you haven't set up a conversion. And we help people do that. For example, tourism might be, might be one. So we worked with an economic development company that wanted to showcase different tax advantages to people in state versus out of state. Well, we set this campaign up and we felt like it was really strong, but at the end of the year, you know, when, when we asked the question, well, what impact did GeoFIi have on total businesses? Kind of moving or moving the needle on getting businesses to move to this specific city. It was just, it was difficult to prove, you know, we could show an increase in time on site. We could show an increase in pages per session to GeoFli versus non GeoFli visitors.
Kyle (18:51): But it's hard to say, trust us, it's, you know, it's, it's having, it's having a positive impact on your, on your ultimate conversion. But for those really long tail conversions in digital marketing, and I'm sure your audience can, can attest that it can be difficult. And the same is true of higher ed, really that a sophomore visiting your website from California you know, and they see a personalized message and alumni in their area. It's hard to tie that back to because of GeoFli that student three years later attended the university, the university of Texas.
Kathleen (19:30): Yeah. it, I think that's a great point. So what can you talk me through? How do you need to set things up so that it is trackable? So that, cause I think this is a mistake. Marketers make a lot, they jump in, they do these things, but they haven't put in place those fundamental building blocks, either the analytics or setting up the tech correctly and they might get further down the road only to find out they can't prove what they think is true, which is so frustrating. Cause you, you know, you have data, you just don't have data. That's usable. So what does somebody need to know before they start a process like this?
Kyle (20:09): I would refer to a book and I forget the author, but it's titled How to Measure Anything. And it talks a lot about removing layers of uncertainty. And so when we start with a new client, whether, you know, regardless of the size of that client, we want to meet them right where they are from an analytics standpoint. So if we ask them, you know, what is your, how many page visitors does your website currently get? And they sort of scratch their head and I'm like, well, that's a really good question. Like that's where we start. Okay. Let's set up analytics so that we can figure out how many page visitors you actually get from these different regions. Like, does it make sense to personalize for Texas if you only get a hundred visitors a year or a month? And then, you know, we, we then look at what we call third column metric.
Kyle (20:53): The first column metric is always impressions. And that's just how many people visit your page. The second column metric is sort of how many people actually, well, this is more based on an ad side, but how many people will click on your advertising? And then the third metric is how many people take the action that you want them to take on your page? And that to me, Kathleen is really the key. If you can get a third column metric and the key is metric, not dozens of metrics like, Oh, we want to know how many people watch this video. We want to know how many people clicked on this phone number. We want let's split, let's focus on, does your one, does your homepage have one goal or one action that you want people to take? And then what we do is we, we set up a Google data studio report for them.
Kyle (21:34): So we will actually go in and build you a custom dashboard. And we can help you do this. You become the owner of this dashboard. We set up all of the GeoFli regions. So again, three, three, three, usually it's three regions. So maybe you're targeting California, Texas, and Japan. So we show all the traffic from California, Texas in Japan. And then that third column metric actually becomes the second column next to the location and visitors from Japan. What is their conversion rate visitors from Texas? What is their conversion rate? And that can be purchase if you're e-commerce. That can be forms, submissions, if you're B2B, or it could honestly be like time on site, if you're if you're, you know, if you just want people to spend longer on your website. So that's our third column metric becoming the second column. I know this is kind of difficult. Maybe I can send you our template to put in the show notes.
Kathleen (22:28): Yeah, no, that's, I mean, it sounds like you have a pretty good format though.
Kyle (22:32): Yeah. And then the last piece is all other content, excluding the regions that you're GeoFliing so that you can compare okay. For non-GeoFli'd regions, the conversion rate is 2%. For GeoFli'd regions, it's 2.5%. And then you have to ask yourself, does that make, is that a big enough lift for me to keep GeoFli and continue to grow GeoFli? Or do I want to just stay where I'm at or do I want to cancel? And usually it's much greater than 0.5% difference and we will help figure out like, okay, now, now that we know this is working for these regions, let's pick three more regions.
Kathleen (23:08): I want to go back for a second and talk about data integrity, because you touched on this at the beginning, but I just want to dig a little deeper. And you mentioned that you're able to target geographically based on IP address and then longitude and latitude. And IP address targeting is, is interesting to me because in some cases it can be very accurate. You know, you're coming through a company IP, and it's very clearly denoted who it is. But in other cases, you know, you have people using Amazon web services or, you know, some kind of an aggregator for an IP, whether they're working from home or, you know, traveling, et cetera. And then, and then there's the whole topic of VPN, which that's a whole different ball of wax, but like to what degree is the data really accurate?
Kyle (24:00): We, we say that, you know, GeoFli is 95% accurate at the city level. So if you're targeting Chicago, you're going to have 95% of visitors that visit your website between 95 and 99% of your visitors are going to see the Chicago content. The other 1%, if you're targeting Chicago. It's important to remember that that 1% that maybe their IP addresses pinging from Denver well, they're outside of your targeted area. So they're going to see your default website, the same website as it exists today. So, you know, the question is, is it better for 95% of visitors to see personalized web personalized content and 5% of visitors to just see your website as it exists today? Or is it better to have a hundred percent accuracy wherever everybody's sees your, just your default site? And we believe that it's a, it's a better experience if 95% of your visitors are getting from Chicago are getting a personalized experience.
Kyle (25:04): Even if 5% of them are sort of, you know, left out of the personalization party. We also think we're, we're kind of ahead of, you know, we're early in this and the technology continues to improve. The accuracy continues to improve. You know, we're, it's something that we're constantly looking to get better at. Even at 95% though, we do feel like we are the most accurate tool out there when it comes to geo personalizing. You know, you'll find this feature in tools like Optimizely, but it's sort of buried under their enterprise plan and you have to pay thousands of dollars more to get access to it. And even then it's sort of an afterthought for them. This is what we study. This is what we look at. We, you know, we look at it every day. So the data integrity piece, and then if you're targeting at the state level or even at the country level, you're actually is going to be of course much, much higher.
Kathleen (25:59): And is there any variation in terms of desktop versus mobile users and how that renders data?
Kyle (26:06): There is. Yeah, mobile is usually a hundred, closer to a hundred percent accurate. So, you know, we, we've added a feature where on desktop, you can, you've probably seen it before, allow, allow this website to use your location. If you add that prompt, then we are of course, a hundred percent accurate. Without that prompt, that's when it drops you closer to 95%. So you can opt into asking your website visitors if they want to do that. So that's an option that you have.
Kathleen (26:33): And then I guess there's the data integrity thing can, can work both directions, right? As you mentioned, you can have people who are in your targeted area, who don't your targeted content, because they're not recognized as being there, but how often do you have cases where somebody is not in your targeted area or they might have, for example, I might be from Maryland, but I happen to be on a work trip in Los Angeles. I go to a website. It, it recognizes me as being from Los Angeles. It might even cookie me and then think every single time I come that I'm from Los Angeles. Like, how do you deal with that? Or do you?
Kyle (27:13): Totally. We, we call that the airplane problem, you know, and somebody lands at a different location. Of course their IP addresses is going to change. We've run into that the most in New York city when people are trying to target boroughs. So they, they treat Brooklyn as a city and they treat Manhattan as a city as they should. But those two are separate by a river. And so somebody in Brooklyn will see occasionally Manhattan content and, you know, that's, that's one of the issues that we run into is, is New York city being those boroughs, being so close together. But outside of that, you know, if somebody really, if that's if that's a real concern for folks and they, and maybe that surfaces, then we really recommend they prompt for location. Users have gotten used to it. My guess is that listeners out there have seen GeoFli'd content.
Kyle (28:01): They just don't quite know it. That's the other piece is we want GeoFli to feel like we don't want it to be an interruption, an intrusion, a popup, a GeoFli exists on your site. It's elegant. And so we want that experience. You know, we don't love asking people for location prompts because it's another click or it's just sort of an intrusion and it kind of goes against our vision right now while the technology is still advancing. And the IP address targeting is still, you know, we're still honing that in to be a hundred percent accurate. We would recommend you use the location prompt and just avoid that.
Kathleen (28:39): And then I guess one of my last questions before we shift gears is really with things like GDPR. I imagine that could be a plus and a minus. It could be a plus for you because you could theoretically use GeoFli to determine who is in a GDPR covered region. And then, and from that, maybe, you know how you need to treat them on the website. But I also imagine that on the flip side, if you're using it on your site, you're collecting geographic location based information, like is that somehow subjected to GDPR requirements? Like talk to me a little bit about GDPR and GeoFli.
Kyle (29:19): Yeah. GDPR and GeoFli. When, when every company in the world was sending the GDPR emails to us we, you know, we were, we were in that bandwagon also, or that, that boat also. We thought, okay, what, what impact is this going to have? Because it was so specific to location. And, you know, we sort of default to if you, if you have a GDPR notification and you're running and you're collecting cookies and you're collecting data on your website, visitors, like you, you just need to have it. We don't police our clients to make sure our customers to make sure that they do have it. You know, that liability is on them to make sure they do that. In our case though, you know, we've had some folks ask you. Yeah. So I could show this to, so I could surface GDPR to these countries and not these? And we don't love those conversations. We, we don't recommend people do that.
Kathleen (30:15): Can I ask about that? Because I would think there would be people who'd say couldn't I use GeoFli to determine with whom I needed to make sure I was being GDPR compliant.
Kyle (30:26): You certainly could. And, and you're spot on that people have inquired about that. And we usually deflect those and say, yeah, just, that's not what this tool is designed to do. Yeah.
Kathleen (30:37): Yeah. I don't blame you. All right. Well, switching gears there's two questions that I always ask everybody who comes on. The first being, we talk a lot about inbound marketing on the podcast. Is there a particular company or individual you think is really doing it right these days?
Kyle (30:56): Yeah, I, in, in preparation for this for this question, I was thinking, you know, I always like, as most marketers do to think about what marketing has worked on them and like gotten me to conversion or purchase. And it's funny, I recently purchased a GoPro. I never thought I would say that, but GoPro, that, that was my company that I came up with. I had been following along with GoPro for, Oh, probably the better part of seven years. Just kind of following them on Facebook and I'm looking at their images because I always thought they were really cool, but I always thought to myself, like, I, I don't do really cool things like that. I have no need for GoPro, but they've really done a good job of expanding their customer base and showing just how GoPro can be used in a day to day.
Kyle (31:40): And you know, us as a, as a marketing team and as a software company, I think there's a lot of use cases for it. We use it as a second camera when we're doing any sort of interviews or just capturing moments around the office. And so GoPro, you know, they are masters at sort of the jab jab, right hook strategy from Gary Vaynerchuk, which is like, we're going to show you seven awesome images of in that, you know, none, none of them are going to have a call to action. Oh. And then we're going to take 50 bucks off of our recent GoPro hero eight. So, so that's what ended up getting me and maybe it had something to do with quarantine and just like a retail therapy, but I purchased a GoPro recently, so well done GoPro.
Kathleen (32:23): Nice. All right. That's a good one. Second question, everybody in marketing seems to always complain that things change so quickly and it's really hard to keep up and, you know, there's so much information to absorb. So how do you personally stay educated and up to date on, in the world of digital marketing?
Kyle (32:42): Well, you mean aside from this podcast, I definitely, that's a really good question cause it does change so fast. And if you tried to keep up with everything you would, you could spend 40 hours a week just keeping up whatever with everything. Our team has a meeting every Friday, we call it just a strategy meeting where we actually bring something to the table that each of us has learned. So, you know, this week I'm really excited to talk about like Hulu's new self-serve ad platform which is a big one. So maybe we're not going to go in and design and build an ad campaign today. But just knowing that, Hey, they've opened this up to small businesses or maybe it's a beta version. I actually don't know, but I saw some headlines on it on SearchEngineJournal.com. And that's just something that I want to talk about.
Kyle (33:27): Is it something that we could use? Do we have some video footage we could put on there and test this? So you know, becoming a thought leader as you alluded to is so huge in, in the marketing space and, and it's funny because you don't actually need to spend that much time to know more than 99% of marketers into what's going on. It seems like that bar is kind of low. So I bet if we pulled a hundred marketers, maybe five of them would know that Hulu came out with a new ads self-serve platform. But so it allows you to just be keep on that cutting edge and reduce that crappy click through rate syndrome that can happen with, are you guys do using Facebook, newsfeed ads are pretty powerful. Like they're, you know, that's, that's been fatigued, so you have to,
Kathleen (34:15): Yeah. I love the idea of having a meeting with your team and everybody having to bring something to the table. I think the best marketers I know are the ones who are just insatiably hungry to learn and, you know, make institutionalizing that as part of the process is a really smart way to go. Yeah. So, great idea. So if somebody wants to learn more about the stuff you're working on or connect with you online, what's the best way for them to do that?
Kyle (34:41): Yeah. GeoFli.com, and then Kyle Pucko, you can find me on LinkedIn. So I don't, I don't know if there's too many other Kyle Puckos out there. Shoot me a message. Happy to, happy to get in touch.
Kathleen (34:57): Awesome. I will put those links in the show notes. So head to the show notes, if you want to connect with Kyle or learn more about GeoFli and of course, if you're listening and you liked this episode, please take a minute to head to Apple podcasts and leave a five star review. It makes a huge difference. And of course, if you know someone who is doing kick ass, inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next interview. Thanks so much, Kyle. This was a lot of fun.
Most marketers consider a decrease in MQLs to be a bad thing, but for Lessonly CMO Kyle Lacy, cutting MQLs in half led to a 10X increase in marketing ROI.
This week on the Inbound Success podcast, Lessonly CMO Kyle Lacy explains how his team achieved a 10X increase in marketing ROI by redesigning the company's website, redefining what constituted a marketing qualified lead, and refocusing the efforts of the sales team.
It's a case study that holds lessons (no pun intended!) for anyone who is using inbound marketing to drive organic growth. Check out the full episode to learn what Kyle and his team did, and how you too can apply this approach to get better results with your own marketing.
Resources from this episode:
- Connect with Kyle on LinkedIn
- Follow Kyle on Twitter
- Visit Kyle's personal website
- Check out the Lessonly website
- Check out some of the resources Kyle mentioned:
- Listen to the Inbound Success Podcast interview with Dave Gerhardt
- Learn more about Anthony Kennada of Front and Kathryn Loheide of Formstack
- Learn more about The Revenue Collective
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And my guest this week is Kyle Lacy, who is the chief marketing officer at Lessonly. Welcome to the podcast, Kyle.
Kyle (00:27): Thanks for having me.
Kathleen (00:28): Yeah, it is a, it is a funny time to be, to be doing these podcasts with everybody stuck at home and, and interesting stories of trying to work with, with dogs and children and spouses and construction noise and all the things that happen when you're stuck working from home. I will say I have two dogs in my office, so they may bark while we're talking.
Kyle (00:49): I also have a dog who may bark.
Kathleen (00:52): Yup. We're just going to roll with it. I'm sure everybody who's listening is dealing with the same thing. No, I was really looking forward to talking with you. I I've been following, I think your career for a while now, since I became part of a group online that you're in. And I'm really fascinated by the work you're doing with Lessonly. So maybe before we jump into that, you could take a minute and tell my listeners a little bit more about who you are, what Lessonly is and how you came to be doing what you're doing.
Kyle (01:21): Yeah, sure. I'll spare the early career comments mainly just because I worked at an agency, I started an agency and then I failed miserably. So I think that's another podcast for another time.
Kathleen (01:35): Had I, I had an agency for 11 years. Yes!
Kyle (01:39): Mine was five and it, we did okay and then it started going downhill. But because of that agency, I had the opportunity to go work for a software company in Indianapolis called ExactTarget. And at the time ExactTarget was the largest email service provider in the world, email marketing platform. I was, I was one of, I think 600 people hired that year in 2012, but it was my first foray into software. And it's where I fell in love with software. So I spent three years at ExactTarget where we ran, I ran content marketing as well as the thought leadership team there. And we IPO'd, bought by Salesforce. Spent a year at Salesforce. Realized that the large corporate company was not for me even though, to be very clear, Salesforce, Salesforce is large. Corporate culture is not what you would expect.
Kyle (02:32): It's actually really cool. I just could not, I could not work in a, in a company of 20,000 people. I realized that I wanted to be a marketing leader. I definitely wanted to be a CMO sometime in my future. So the best bet for me, I believed, was to go work for a venture capital firm. And they recruited, a company called O-, firm called OpenView Boston, which is, they have a little over a billion under management and they invest in series B, series C in B2B software companies. Spent two years there. Basically got my MBA in software. I mean, it's the best learning you can possibly do is to be on the other side of the table, especially with the venture capital firm. And Lessonly was looking for a market leader. And Lessonly is based in Indianapolis. My wife and I wanted to move back from Boston. And it just made sense. Lessonly was a portfolio company of OpenView and everybody that was important to my network was involved at Lessonly. So I've been at Lessonly now for three and a half years and started as the VP of Marketing and now Chief Marketing Officer.
Kathleen (03:39): That's great. And tell me a little bit more about what Lessonly does.
Kyle (03:43): Lessonly is training software for sales and customer service teams. So everybody from large telecom companies to small software companies.
Kathleen (03:51): Great. And, and you had an interesting year. One of the reasons I was fascinated to talk with you is that you were telling me last year, you guys actually cut the number of marketing qualified leads you were bringing in, intentionally. I feel like when you talk to marketers, that's not normally something they set out to do, but you set out to do that. And that resulted in actually a big jump in revenue for the company. So I want to pick this apart and, and I guess start with like, why, why did you set out to reduce your number of MQLs?
Kyle (04:25): It was kind of haphazard, to be honest with you. We, we knew that we had to blow up and redesign our website from the ground up in August of 2018, because we started seeing a drop in organic traffic because our site load time was just pathetic. And so Google was starting to ding us on load times on the pages of our site. So when we overhauled it, we were looking at our marketing qualified lead definitions and realized that, I realized something that I hope most marketers realize in the near future, is that it was pretty much BS, right? Like we were sending, we were working thousands of MQLs, and you could be breathing and becoming a marketing qualified lead for Lessonly. Right? And so what we basically said was, we're going to get rid of all of our forms, all of our content downloads, except for a few.
Kyle (05:16): And then our demo form is going to be the main form on the site. So if you fill out a form and you use a work email for a demo, you become a marketing qualified lead. So you can imagine that we cut them, I mean, it was over 80%, I think, of our SQLs. And the one thing that that did was that it highly qualified the people we were sending to the inbound team, the inbound SDR team. It also allowed us to spend more time working those deals. And it, it created a closer alignment between sales and marketing because sales actually started trusting the inbound opportunities that were being sent over. So for us, what happened was we cut MQLs over half and we, we, I mean, we significantly for, I think we, I think that over a year we four to five X'd inbound revenue that was direct sourced from our website.
Kyle (06:17): And it was pretty much the, the idea that, hey, marketing marketing should own a revenue number and all this crap about, hey, we influenced revenue, which most marketers talk about. I think it was just complete BS. It's like, yeah, you should influence a hundred percent of closed revenue. Like you're marketing. Yeah. I don't care if it's expansion. I don't care if it's net new revenue. Right. So for us it was, it was, it was the opportunity to control our destiny when it came to what we were direct sourcing. And we significantly improved revenue just because we've cut down.
Kathleen (06:53): So this topic is particularly interesting to me because it may or may not be hitting home. It's just something I'm dealing with at the moment. I've always been a big believer in ungating stuff, by the way. Like I always, every time I've done it, I've, I've seen actually conversion rates have, if anything, gone up because people like to see the content and they're like, Oh, now it's totally worth getting, you know, giving you my email address. So I, I've never had a problem with ungating content and removing a lot of forms and things like that. What I think is interesting is that, and I'm dealing with something similar to what you described right now with the company I'm at, where historically the sales team, you know, has, has been handed every single person that converts on anything on the website, as a lead, which in my book is not your, it's not a lead.
Kathleen (07:43): As you say, if they have a pulse, they're a lead in that scenario. And, and I'm working towards doing something kind of similar to what you described. But what I think is interesting, being in the middle of it is, you know, there's the whole notion of buy-in that needs to happen at that early stage. Because it's one thing as a marketing leader to be like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to like remove all these forms and, or I might have forums, but I'm not going to pass the names of the people who fill them out over to sales. Like for me, it's a contact us or a request a quote form for you. It was a demo form. You know, when that first happens, I don't have to tell you your conversions go down. Your sheer number of people converting goes down and on paper that can look really bad. And I know, you know, I've gotten comments like why have our leads decreased, what's happening, what's wrong with our marketing. And so I'm curious when you guys decided to do this, how did you navigate in that early stage, the communication around, and did you, I don't know, did you like, did you start out by saying this is what's going to happen? And here's why, and here's why it's okay. Like how did that work?
Kyle (08:51): Yeah, what we tried to do is we had a lot of conversations with the sales team, especially myself and the directors of sales and our president who basically is our chief revenue officer and, and our CEO. We had a CRO at the time as well, actually, if I remember correctly and we just had long conversations around that, like, here's, what's happening now, everyone, your conversion, I don't care what the lead to MQL conversion rate is. I care about what the MQL to opportunity created conversion rate is, and it is terrible right now. So what we want to do is while we decrease MQL is what we did was we just forecast it out. We said, all right, if we take our best qualified MQL, here's what the conversion rate could potentially be over the course of the fiscal year. And here based off of our average contract value and our conversion rates, here's what we can expect and would still like, it still was rough.
Kyle (09:50): The first three months, the first couple quarters, three to six months after we did it. But what happened was once we got through our sales cycle and found that more revenue was converting, more, a more reps were getting to quota. It's, it, it became more aligned. We also move the BDR and SDR teams under marketing. So we were forcing alignment because marketing was controlling 70% of meetings for the sales reps outside of there, outside of the channel and partnerships and like referrals and self source, like those other, those other channels. The one thing I will say, which, which we can put a pin in and talk about later, if it's not, if it's not contributing to this conversation, but we have found that, that at a certain point of scale, it's really important that you're building a database, even if you're not handing the people off to sales.
Kyle (10:51): And I think that's a mistake that I don't know if it was a mistake necessarily. But we are now is trying to figure out, all right, now we need, we've got to scale pretty significantly outside of our scope. And because we let all these people just read content and didn't download it, then we don't have a place for them to, we don't have, we don't have a database for us to park it to. Now, the other side of the coin was say, well, you influence them. They're going to come back when they're ready. It's just really hard to play it around that.
Kathleen (11:27): Yeah, no, I think it's totally germane to this conversation because it really speaks to the whole, like the whole construct of how we think about the people that are in our sphere of influence, right? Like I think as marketers, we're trained to use the word lead to refer to anybody who converts, but really there's, to me, there's like a lead and then there's just a contact, you know?
Kyle (11:54): And I think that, I think the difference is, what I'm finding is that in the first, especially for SaaS companies in the first between one, and let's say 10 to 20 million, 10 to 15 million in revenue to be very surgical in your go to market, you have a very specific group of people. And I think after that, when you're trying to grow it 70 to a hundred percent off of 20 million revenue, you've got to build a community of people. So it's like a, it's, it's, it's, it's moving more thought leadership oriented into the market, instead of it being very, very tactical and surgical. I think those are the two that's the transition that we're making.
Kathleen (12:36): Yeah. And I guess the question becomes like, how is there a way for you to lay the groundwork for that scale in the early stage, without compromising what you're doing?
Kyle (12:46): Yeah. I think gong, gong, gong.io is a great example of a company that's done that they, they did not send over an MQL or whatever, a contact that filled out a form for an ebook. They never sent it to anybody. It was, it was just a newsletter, right? They were telling them about their webinars. Like it was never sent to sales until it hit, you know, till they hit it. I'm assuming they had a specific score and then it's sent over to sales and then if they need a demo or something.
Kathleen (13:18): The other thing I guess, that I, that I wonder about as you decided to make this change is is the whole culture of sales within the company. And it's interesting that you mentioned you moved BDRs under marketing, because when I think about, you know, the experience I'm having right now of a sales team, that culturally is used to getting these leads that are really just, as you say, like they converted on an ebook or they downloaded a case study. You know, how you follow up on that kind of a lead is, is culturally. Like it builds a culture that's very different than the type of culture you need to be successful in an organization where you're only working. People who've declared their intent. And so maybe, maybe that was solved by moving BDRs over. I don't know, but how did you handle that?
Kyle (14:06): Well, it's the difference between volume and, you know, working, being tactical with deals that actually matter, right? So, you know, our inbound SDRs, they handle all the inbound, inbound demo requests and chat on the website. That's definitely a volume play. Our BDRs are more surgical, right? They are they're outbound. And they they have specific accounts that they're were reaching out to based off of our ICP. So it's, it's mostly around the outbound sales effort that then hands these opportunities over to the account executives, they know exactly the accounts they need to hit. We give them lists, there's re like we have ads going out like that. It's a very account based marketing approach. They're inbound, it's organic, it's Google ads. So it's more volume. So an account executive that has to deal with everything from an ebook download, which is what shows no intent whatsoever, other than, Hey, I'm interested in whatever you wrote about to somebody that is, is working demos. It's a very different account executive and account executives in my mind, other than their ability to self source, which they should is there. They need to move a demo through the sales funnel to close one, not try to figure out if these 500 ebook downloads are actually worth anything, because that's why we have Marketo. That's why we have HubSpot. That's why marketers are good at personalization and working deals that and, and, and pushing them through the pre sales motion before they're ready for a demo.
Kathleen (15:48): Yeah. I think though it can also create a terrible prospect experience. If you just like you're on the website for the first time you convert on an ebook and all of a sudden you have somebody trying to hard sell you. It's not, it's not a great experience.
Kyle (16:00): Yeah. Imagine, imagine being well, we're all consumers, right? Imagine going to Wayfair and like down like reading a guide on how to clean the certain couch that you want. And you've got a sales rep, like emailing you, asking you like, Hey, do you want to come see the couch? Do you want to come see the couch store? I could see the couch. Like, it'd be terrible. So the way that we think about it as let's try to, let's try to be as consumer marketing oriented as possible, right. Let's make the buying experience as easy as we possibly can and try not to force the people because people, I don't know why we, we thought that was a good idea to begin with.
Kathleen (16:38): So I always like to say that, like, as you say, we're all, we're all people, we're all buyers in our lives, but for some reason we come to work and we put this marketing hat on and we forget everything that it is to be a human being. We do the opposite, right.
Kyle (16:52): Experience is all that matters experiences that either have a good experience or a bad experience. And you're going to choose to buy based off of that.
Kathleen (16:59): Yeah. So you, you, this was prompted by the need to redo the website and that gave you a window of opportunity to change your approach. And you were removing a lot of your forms and really then kind of relying on the people that filled out a demo request for your MQL. I would assume that there, that you did some things on the website to try and really ease the path for people to get to that demo request a motion. So can you talk a little bit about that? How did you optimize for that?
Kyle (17:32): Yeah. The biggest thing we did was a product tour. We built a product tour. If you go to Lessonly.com/tour, or I think, or you can go to the main page where it has the tour button it, you pick which use case you are, are you a customer service? Are you sales, are you talent and then walks you through the product and then you can sign up for a demo.
Kathleen (17:53): So is that product tour different based on the use case? So you're speaking to - okay.
Kyle (17:58): Like a business outcome oriented basically. Right. So, you know, a sales, sales and customer service use cases are going to be somewhat some of the different, right. So that was the main thing other than just rebuilding the site. So it loaded correctly all the time. Right. Like, and, and redoing the brand and cleaning it up and just things that we had wanted to do. But that was the main thing was that products who were, and we created a demo video. It was a two minute demo video that you watch after you fill out the form.
Kathleen (18:29): So this is an interesting question. And I get this sometimes from people like um, the role of having an on demand mini demo video versus like an actual guided demo over the phone or zoom, or what have you from a sales rep, how do you think about, like, what, what place, what role do all of those individual things fill and how do they fit together?
Kyle (18:52): I mean, we just, I don't, honestly, I don't really know. I do know that we wanted to give somebody something after they filled out the form to kind of wet their appetite before they had a call with an AA. And I think that there's, there's, we definitely could do click rate optimization tests and say, and tests like whether or not the demo video should be included after the forms filled out. Right. But for us, it is you go through products or you fill out a form, you have the opportunity to watch the video if you want. But then the goal is, is that our inbound SDR is going to try to get at you on a call with an account executive. And sometimes they do a demo walkthrough. Like sometimes they do a software walkthrough on the first call. Sometimes it's a second call. It depends on the discovery that happens on that first call with the account executive.
Kathleen (19:42): Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about numbers. You started from where you started to where you got to with these changes, what was the impact and how did it, how did it evolve?
Kyle (19:55): I mean, we, we saw, we saw, I mean, it took about three months. So moving our, you know, we redesigned the site, we were done in September. We launched it end of September. And we started seeing revenue impact by January, February. Cause our, well, yeah, January, February, cause our sales cycle is 30, 60, 90 days. And it's over the holiday as well, which, you know, impacts all sales. But so by, by the end of last year, 2019, I mean, we had, we had went with four to five X to inbound revenue, closed won revenue because of, and it was because of that change. And it was because we just decided that, Hey, inbound reps are going to focus on the things that matter. And the rest of it's going to be automated.
Kathleen (20:48): And your MQLs were cut by half. Is that right?
Kyle (20:50): Yeah. If not more than that.
Kathleen (20:52): Okay. I'm trying to do the math now. And I'm definitely not a big math person, four to five X increase in inbound revenue, 50% decrease in MQL. So that's like a 10 X ROI.
Kyle (21:04): Yeah. Yup.
Kathleen (21:07): In three to four months.
Kyle (21:09): Well, no, I'm sorry. We, it, it was over the year, but we saw, we saw like we were doing five X, the revenue in Q four of 2019. They, what we were doing in Q4 of 2018.
Kathleen (21:23): Wow.
Kyle (21:24): So it's actually, it's actually more than that. You could tell on my, my, my teammates would tell me that I am not the math wizard.
Kathleen (21:34): Yeah. This is why we all went into marketing, which sadly now has become a math game.
Kyle (21:39): If we were doing 200 grand in Q4, we were doing our Q4 2018. We were doing a million in Q4 of 2019 as an example to dumb down the math, but it was, it was significant and it was a step. It was a stair-step right. It was a stair-step Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, to do that in 2019. But it was because of the website overall.
Kathleen (22:04): Now, did you put in place anything new to nurture the folks that were downloading the eBooks, but that you now are no longer passing over to sales?
Kyle (22:16): No, because we didn't, we didn't have any ebook downloads. And then we start, what we have been doing though, is starting to build nurture tracks and using, I think we moved over to Marketo beginning of last year. I don't know. It's all new. It's all
Kathleen (22:33): Right. 2020 is it feels like 10 years long. So of course,
Kyle (22:38): So it's, so yeah, we have nurture tracks running and, and we're, we're kind of evolving our marketing playbook now to say, we need to introduce webinars series. We need to introduce some things that are more database building, where we can just hit people randomly with content, because we have really good content, right. We spend tons of time and energy on this content. So we might as well start sending it out on a regular basis because before that we weren't, which is why my point before on the surgical go to market compared to the community building side. So we're lucky that we had thought leadership going on for the past two years with a book that our CEO wrote. So now it's, now it's up to us to say, all right, let's continue growing this community and, and 10 X that community instead of the revenue, it, but we hope that both of them happen. Right. I mean, that's yeah.
Kathleen (23:29): Yeah. I would love to talk about that for a minute. So as you make that mental shift, you know, you've done the website, you've, you've narrowed down your definition of an MQL, and now you're focused on community building and, and getting a larger audience really to get your content in front of how are you thinking about tackling that?
Kyle (23:49): Oh man, it's it's testing. I mean, it's testing for our, for my team on the demand side is like bread and butter. I mean, as we do it constantly, so it's testing, it's, it's introducing a webinar series, it's introducing webinars series with paid ads behind them to make, you know, to drive signups it's testing on what a monthly or weekly email newsletter would do. It's testing. Like, should we sponsor sponsor more virtual events where we're not necessarily working those leads, but building more of a database, what do we do with all the contacts that are already in our Salesforce instance? Right. So I think, I think the, for the next six months for us, it is testing. It's trying to, like we did, we sponsored morning brew the newsletter at the beginning of the year, and that went really well. And that was great. We loved it. So it's like doing those types of things to say, all right, let's dip our toe in the water. What should we do with analysts? Right. Which should we do with analysts firms, with the Gartners, with the Forresters of the world. And that's something that we had discussed in the past, but we're really putting pen to paper now and implementing it.
Kathleen (25:00): And do you have an actual, like, formal community in the sense that, okay, and where is it?
Kyle (25:07): Yeah, we do. It's called Llama Nation and it's actually a customer community. We have not opened it up externally. And as of right now, we have no plans to do that at the moment. And it lives on a, it's a mobile app.
Kathleen (25:22): So now you just gave me the perfect segue, because one of the things I wanted to talk about in this podcast interview was the llama. Because I, I love what you've done with it. And there are, I'm sure are people listening who are like, what the heck are they talking about with a llama? So maybe you could explain why llamas are significant when we talk about Lessonly.
Kyle (25:46): Well, I mean, it was, it was before my time that Ali llama showed up at Lessonly, but it was basically a chalkboard drawing that just kept showing up and the cofounders were like, we're not going to have llamas as a mascot. They kept putting it off. They kept putting it off and all, he just kept showing up. Ali's the name of our llama. And so eventually it just became part of the culture. And that led to a cus, a employee award called the golden llama that we give out quarterly to an employee the best best lives our values as a company. And then it turned out, and then when I came to Lessonly, we decided just to double down on it in all of our marketing, our 404 pages, our direct mail, it all includes Ali the llama.
Kyle (26:38): And it has worked extremely well for a lot of reasons. I think one of them was just llamas became cool in 2019. Target released a llama line. Like you could go find little, little gold figurines at Target of llamas. Like it just became pop culture. Right. It was. And so we, we just doubled down on it. And the one thing that we did that worked extremely well was that we took the golden llama and scaled it and said, we want to send gold llamas out to prospects. Right. And our director marketing, Ben Bataglia had that idea one day. It's like, why don't we just send golden llamas prospects? And so we bought, there's this company up in Northern Michigan that produces these three inch llama figurines that I think we've probably kept them in business for like two years. But we bought, we bought 500 of them. I spray painted 500 llamas, golden llamas, and I'm pr-, I'm probably going to die young just because I inhaled it.
Kathleen (27:38): So many gold spray paint fumes.
Kyle (27:40): So we, and we started sending them out and all it was, was a box of the golden llama. And it had a card in it that said that, Hey, we get, it told the story of, of what we do with the golden llama at Lessonly. Lessonly gives this to a teammate that exhibits the values of your company. Had nothing to do with the product, have nothing to do about Lessonly. It was just recognize a teammate for great work. And we've sent out three to 4,000 of these llamas since 2018. And it is, it's just a fun way to, to tell the Lessonly story. So we use it in direct mail where we will dress up plush llamas with racing gear, for reaching out to a racing company, or we'll put them in a Ford truck and direct mail. And for trying to, if we're trying to get into Ford motor company, so we involve the llama in everything, everything we do.
Kathleen (28:34): I love that. What is the response then?
Kyle (28:37): Oh, it's been great. I mean, it's cute. Number one, I have a very talented group of designers, right? I mean, we do, we do some great stuff. It's not corny. It's just cute. It, it's not overwhelming. I think there's a lot of times people use mascots where you show up on the homepage and it's like the mascots right in your face. And you know, it's subtle, but it works because it, it makes sense. I don't know how best to explain it other than we did a very good job implementing it. And we have right now, not sure when, when we're going to publish this, but at this, at this moment, we're recording. We have Better Work Week, which is an entire week at Lessonly, that's devoted to celebrating people that do great work. And we had a zoom call on Monday where all the actual Ali llama showed up to the zoom call.
Kathleen (29:31): That's awesome.
Kyle (29:32): Ali llama lives in a farm out in New York state, upstate New York.
Kathleen (29:38): So what advice would you give to somebody who was thinking they wanted to incorporate a brand mascot?
Kyle (29:48): Man, I, I, I was very lucky that I inherited Ali when I got to Lessonly and my, at ExactTarget, we had a color, it was orange. We didn't have a mascot. So I think that the only the thing that I know works out of those two instances is make sure that your internal community, your stakeholders, your teammates, and your customers get involved first, it's gotta be cultural. And it has to be loved by employees and by customers before you could ever bring it to market to say, Hey, this llama was part of our culture. So the goal, like the llama at Lessonly for the first three or four years, it was just an award. And it took that long. And then we said, all right, let's, let's, let's introduce it to everybody else. And it worked because the employees believed in it. And the same thing went with the orange culture at ExactTarget.
Kyle (30:51): You went through an orange onboarding, right, as an employee. And it didn't matter if we were 2000 employees, everybody understood what orange meant and because of that, it seeped into the customer base. And because the employees loved it, the customers loved it. The customer's peers loved it. And it created a community outside of just our, our first degree network of employees and customers. So I would say if you're going to do it, make sure that you include people around what the mascot is, what the color is, what the mission is, right. Get a committee of people that are involved and then start introducing it into the internal culture of the company. And if it hits and it works, then you can talk about introducing it outside of it.
Kathleen (31:34): That's good advice. Yeah. We we have, the Attila's logo has always been a gorilla who's named Attila the gorilla. So that's one of the things that I've been like, trying to figure out is what do we do with Attila? So there may or may not have been a little selfish inspiration behind that.
Kyle (31:52): Well, you got, I mean, you can, you can introduce a ton of stuff like plush gorillas, like just things stickers that people can put on there. Like there's just a lot that, that you could do with that to see if, and as long as you're not forcing it, then, you know, people should like it.
Kathleen (32:09): Yeah. Well, fascinating story again. I love, I love what you're doing and there's so much creativity behind it. And I can't wait to kind of see where you take it with Lessonly. Especially as you look to build your audience. I'm gonna just shift gears for a second. There are two questions I ask all of my guests. And I'm curious to hear what you have to say, especially because you've had this interesting combination of like agency, VC and operator background. This podcast is all about inbound marketing. And is there a particular company or individual that you think is really like setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer right now?
Kyle (32:48): Man, I, I I've been, there are two that I respect a lot, but they're there, they're usually the ones that people say, which I, so, so I'll give you three.
Kathleen (33:03): Alright deal.
Kyle (33:04): So Dave Gerhardt at Privy is probably the best inbound marketer that I know hands down. I steal things from him all the freaking time. And my team steals things from Privy's team all the time. Anthony Kennada, who was the COO of Gainsight and is now a COO at Front, he, he is extremely good at category creation that then drives the inbound for sure. And the other one's Kathyrn Loheide, who was VP of marketing at Formstack and Formstack is a local company in Indie, the remote, like a remote culture. But she is, she is the, one of the better demand gen leaders. Well, Mar I mean, marketing, I'm not even gonna, I'm not gonna say she's, she's a marketing leader. Like she has all the facets, but she's very good at the demand gen side of it. Very good at the process and the science side of it. I just can't get her to get on a podcast with me. She's too busy working, right?
Kathleen (34:06): Yeah. Well, that's always the challenge with the good ones and that's, those are really good ones actually. So I have interviewed Dave Gerhart and I totally agree with you. And funny enough, his is the name that comes up the most for a reason, obviously. But I didn't, I haven't heard of the other two. So I love when I get those answers. Cause now I have two new ones to go check out as does everyone who's listening and maybe I could convince them to come on podcast. Although it sounds like Kathryn, probably not. Cause you're gonna hear.
Kyle (34:32): Yeah, I can. I can, I can, I can try to set that up. But I would say like the, the marketers that have the ability to scale companies are the great marketers. Anthony is an example of somebody that was early in his career and helped Gainsight scale to a hundred million dollars in six years. And there are very few people that can do that. And it, it shows a lot of rigor, a lot of process and a lot of creativity and those people should be continuously celebrated because there are very few that will stick with a company that long to see it through most of the time you see people jumping every one or two years, but the great marketers in my opinion, will stick around and try to try to push people past their comfort zones to grow revenue
Kathleen (35:18): Well, and I agree with you because it's also a very special person who is able to be successful as the company scales, because I have found, and you talked about like liking to work for a smaller company versus a bigger company. You know, some, sometimes it's just people, people don't like to be in those, like you get bigger and by definition, they're not happy in that environment. So somebody who is able to like chameleon-like shift and be successful in all of those situations, that's really unique.
Kyle (35:47): Absolutely. As long as long as you know that the time to leave, if you force it and the company struggles because you're forcing it then you need to make the decision it's fine to move companies. Every two or three years, sophomore is not an easy job, right? It's very stressful. It's very fast paced and it's okay, but you need to know like, Hey actually, somebody I'm a shareholder, you know, and Anthony said this on a conversation I just had with him on he's he's a shareholder of a company. He wants the best person in that role to grow the company bigger than what he did, but he had the, he had the wherewithal and the personal insight and integrity to say, it's my time to move on and do this again at front from Gainsight, because he knew that somebody would be better at this next stage of the company's growth.
Kathleen (36:45): That's great. I love that story. All right. Second question. The biggest pain point I hear from marketers is that digital marketing is changing so quickly that trying to keep up as like drinking from a fire hose. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and, and stay on the cutting edge?
Kyle (37:04): I actually disagree with that comment. I don't think that it's changing that dramatically. I think that marketers who try to figure out how Tik Tok and drive leads are just looking at the next shining object. There is nothing has changed since I've been, I joined ExactTarget and I've been doing digital marketing for 15 years. Nothing's really changed. Email ads, direct mail events. So maybe, maybe social is more of a communications play, right? Like it's not changed that much organic. So, you know, I think that, that I think you have to get, you have to truly, we spend way too much time chasing these new things. And we don't try to understand how customers are buying our prospects and want to buy, right. And it might be that you just need a great email newsletter to drive our business. And you don't need to try to figure out how to build an AI artificial intelligence engine on the front of your website to change content based off of who's visiting, which I think is really cool, but you know, maybe you don't need that and you don't need to chase the shiny objects and you you're, you aren't selling, you know, a product to a bunch of tweens, right.
Kyle (38:24): And if that's the case, then you need to understand how tweens buy right now. Right. So that, sorry, I'm on a soap box. But that being said, if I, the way that I stay in front of things is through the group that you and I are in, which is Revenue Collective. I mean, if you could find a community of people that are, that are the best at what they do that are constantly sharing content with each other, that's where, that's where I learned about things to test.
Kathleen (38:49): Yeah, I totally agree. That's been an amazing group for me as well and well worth it. So check out revenuecollective.com if you want to learn more.
Kyle (38:59): 2010 people were saying email marketing is dead.
Kathleen (39:03): People have been saying email marketing is dead since email started, let's be honest. And I think marketers also like to say things are dead because they know people will read whatever they're about to say.
Kyle (39:13): I mean, I have a, I have a slide deck on my LinkedIn page that says marketing is dead.
Kathleen (39:18): Yes. Everything has died many times, you know? Well this has been so much fun. If somebody wants to learn more about you or connect with you online or learn more about Lessonly, what's the best way for them to do that.
Kyle (39:34): Kylelacy.com. Lessonly.com. I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter, Kyle P Lacey. And that's the best places to find me.
Kathleen (39:43): All right. Well, I will put all those links in the show notes. So if you're interested in connecting with Kyle head over there to check that out. And if you're listening and you learned something new, of course I would love it if you would head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast a five star review, because that's how other people find us. And if you know somebody else doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Kyle.
Kyle (40:11): Thank you for having me.
Lots of marketers talk about "big data" and its promise for improving the way marketing decisions are made, but few have truly explored the full potential that data holds.
This week on the Inbound Success podcast, MDT Director of Digital Marketing Don Seaberry talks about how he is using R programming language, SQL, and Python to create advanced models for extracting insights from large volumes of marketing data.
Don is a self taught data scientist, and explains how he learned to code, and why and how any marketer can do the same.
Check out the episode to get the details on how Don is using data models, hear examples of the ways that it has changed how he approaches marketing, and what it takes to level up your game as a data scientist.
Resources from this episode:
- Connect with Don on LinkedIn
- Visit the MDT Marketing website
- Check out some of the resources Don mentioned:
- The Measure School YouTube Channel
- Think With Google
- Search Engine Watch
- Follow Fernando Machado on Twitter
- Check out Cory Henke's interview on The Inbound Success Podcast
- Visit Joe Martinez's website
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Don Seaberry, who is the director of digital marketing for MDT marketing. Welcome Don.
Don (00:22): Thank you. Thank you very much. Glad to be here.
Kathleen (00:24): Yeah. Welcome to the podcast. I would love it if you could tell my listeners a little bit about yourself, who are you, how did you wind up doing what you do, and what does MDG marketing do?
Don (00:37): MDT marketing is a marketing agency primarily focused on digital, but we also do print marketing. Based in South Florida. We've been in business, this is our 25th year anniversary. And we work primarily with higher education clients. Colleges, universities career schools, that type thing. I've been with them somewhere between four to five years. So, so you know, I'm getting a little long in the tooth with them, but I actually have one of the shorter changes 10 years, cause we probably average 10 to 11 years as far as just tenure with the company. People come and they stay.
Kathleen (01:18): Wow, that's impressive.
Don (01:20): Yeah. I've been in marketing about 15 years. I actually started, I was in sales and a law firm hired me to do inbound business business development. Had no idea that also meant manage, they had a raging out of control, $40,000 a month Google ads campaign. I didn't even know what PPC was. So I learned on the job. I had a knack for it. I liked it. And it was a really good way to do something online. And you get out of the rat race that was sales. Because I did that for a long time before this. So I basically fell into it, which I'm sure most people were at that time probably were falling into it.
Kathleen (02:00): Yeah. And what do you do at MDT today?
Don (02:05): So I basically manage digital strategy for our clients. You could say all digital with the exception of social. I kind of stay out of that world a little bit. We have a specific name for that, but if you're talking Google ads, Yahoo Search, Bing ads, Quora ads, your Reddit, anywhere else, you can do Hulu, Pandora, anywhere that you can, you can do any type of digital marketing, I pretty much drive strategy for that.
Kathleen (02:33): Great. And one of the reasons I was really excited to talk with you is that you are highly analytical at what you do. And that has really helped you to be able to leverage data more, I would say, than, than the average person, certainly more than I do in my day to day. Analytics is I, I mean, I can, I I'm decent at it, but I'm certainly not on your level. And specifically, like, doing some custom programming to extract data and really use that in decision making. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what you're doing and what you're working on.
Don (03:12): Sure. obviously probably like most, I came from Excel work, and Excel is a great free tool. It has this one limitation with stuff. And one is one limitation is the ability to handle large data sets and large amounts of data. One of the things that I wanted to do when I initially got to MDT just as a senior analyst before my current role was just be able to go back and look at years of data and be able to just try and determine correlations between different pieces of data. Is there really a correlation between, you know, cost per conversion and when I run in this area of the country at this time of day? But I wanted to be able to see that across all the clients, kind of get a snapshot of it, then be able to break it down and just, you know, determine trends. So we started, I had a little bit of SQL background. I took the SQL courses in college. So I started in SQL, a little bit clunkier because you have that database piece of it where you have to pull the data in first and then you can write queries to do the analysis that you want. So I had a, a genius of a mentor named Travis Sari, who his masters I think is actually in statistics or data science.
Kathleen (04:28): Oh my God. I feel like that's my worst nightmare. Those are the classes that were the hardest for me.
Don (04:35): I hated them. Fortunately, I had a friend who was a professor of mathematics at Spelman university who helped me survive statistics class. One on one tutoring was awesome with Travis. You know, he kind of turned me on to Python obviously. And I, I was a little bit more comfortable with the programming language just because I just felt like it's a little bit more intuitive. So we're using that a lot to really just kind of get through large data sets right now and do analysis on them. And with the eventual goal, there are machine learning applications, artificial intelligence applications. Is there a way that we can take all of the data that our sources do give us, as we know the Googles, the Bings, they only so much data, but there's a mountain of data that is there. So is there a way that we can take those and start to do predictive analytics to kind of return if we do this, what can we expect as a result of that? So that's the direction that we're heading right now. We're really more focused on using it for just data analysis, looking at trending and using it to inform, you know, not only day to day how we manage but now, we're starting to look at it to inform how we actually build things from the ground up.
Kathleen (05:47): Now I am sort of blown away by this. And I guess my first question is really, you know, given that these platforms do provide us with so much data, right? You mentioned Google and Yahoo and Bing. And they have some built in like native tools to look at that data and, and extract insights. And then of course, they're, you know, as you mentioned, there's Excel, there are plenty of third party platforms that are built to help you crunch these numbers and figure things out. What, why is it that those platforms are, do, won't do what you need to have done? And instead you've gone the custom programming route.
Don (06:29): They have their limitations, right? You know, I actually like Google Data Studio. There are things that I had built in Google Data Studio. Like if someone comes to us and they say, we want to do a PPC audit, we have a built in PPC audit that as long as they give us access to the Google ad words, account.
Kathleen (06:51): Just press a button and spin it up, right?
Don (06:54): Just connect the data and boom. And instead of it taking, you know, it used to take hours, you know, sometimes days to do that same you know, to do the analysis required to come up with the results or to give them feedback. You know, now we do that in like five to 10 minutes. So it was a definite time saver, but it has its limitations. I'm a huge proponent of granularity. I wouldn't get as granular as I can't get as deep into it as I can. And when you start talking about the type of data sets that we're looking at, the potential, you know, millions and millions of rows of data you know, you want a program that's robust enough that can look at everything and just spit it back out. And you don't want to start your application and step away and come back to it two days later because it'll take us that long to finish the work, if it finishes at all without just throwing up all over itself. So I like the granularity. I also can like to understand how things work. So it's one thing for you to spit the data out for me. It's another thing for me to understand the code that was behind. I feel like I understand a little bit better when I understand what actually caused that analysis to take place, if that makes sense.
Kathleen (08:07): Hmm. That does. So give me an example of like something that you would want to know that you would need to create a custom coded solution to figure out the answer to that question.
Don (08:19): Well, I'll tell you one thing, one of the things that we're working on, you know, a big time suck for any agency is campaign set up. So if either you bring in a new client very often, you have to build out campaigns for them. So one of the things that we're looking at, especially with Google, for example, Google ads, PPC, is we went back and we're going program by program. So, you know, a lot of our schools have the same type of programs where there's surgical techs and medical sonography, that type thing. So we're going in, we recently went in, we looked at six years of data at program level and things like we're trying to develop what we call it. So are there keywords that have proven to be successful year over year, over year, over year, as far as the cost per conversion and number of conversions, what ad copy, what combinations of ad copy have proven to be successful?
Don (09:19): When you talk about a Google where you can do a responsive search ad with, you know, 15 headlines and four descriptions, and then you multiply that over different programs, over different schools over time, that's a mountain of data to get through, right? That's not something you want to pull into Data Studio, or that you want to pull into Excel and spend hours and days trying to figure out. So what we did is we, we downloaded it at the program level across the entire MCC, six years of data, let's say for keyboards. And then we went in, we trimmed that too, by conversion type, we sorted it back in version, count, trimmed that by year and match type, top 20 performing keywords by match type by year. And then we merged all of those into one data set, spit it out to a CSV. Now we have a keyword bank that we can use.
Don (10:14): For example, if we need to build a surgical tech campaign. And we also sped out, we gave ourselves an idea of you know, what the average cost per click was just to kind of get a sense of maybe where we need to start as far as bidding, or when we set it up. We did the same thing with ad copy. The ad copy was really interesting. Cause there was just thousands on top of thousands on top of thousands of pieces of data. Once we got the custom coding written and R spit it out, like nothing.
Kathleen (10:43): Like what did you learn about ad copy? Give me some examples of takeaways.
Don (10:47): The big thing that we're looking for, really a couple of things. Number one, what combination of ad copy tends to work the best and what resonates with students the most? So one of the things that we found is I would have expected things like online.
Don (11:07): You know, you, you start to get a sense of the things that now I can address in my landing page content based on what they interact with. We started to find that people, students wanted to know what was in it for them. Can you help me with job placement? That was really successful. Can you help me with financial aid? They wanted it to be easy. They wanted it to be simple. They wanted to know that they weren't going to have to go into the poor house. Well, you know, right off the bat, that there'd be a way for us to actually be able to go to school. And we started to see that combination of those types of things. And students really love the hands on piece of it. So we started to see what they reacted to. And it was typically always coupled with, is the school accredited? Cool. Is my degree going to mean something or my certification going to mean something? And they want it.
Don (11:56): They, in most cases they had some sense of what the brand was and that helped as well. So we started to get a sense of what's actually important to the students. So we know going forward, I need to continue to leverage that, but I need to also make sure that I take that in the other content, not just ad copy, but landing pages. If we're doing direct mail to them, which we often do now, we make sure we bake that type of information into direct mail because it's important to them. And the end result is, you know, we see greater engagement on the front end and it helps us to improve return on investment on the backend once they actually engage with the school and they're trying to get them to start.
Kathleen (12:36): So that sounds amazing. And it sounds like information that any marketer would want to have. Can you speak to, how hard is it to set this up? How long does it take? Like is, is the juice worth the squeeze, I guess, is what I'm getting at?
Don (12:53): I'll answer that this way. Yes. The juice is definitely worth the squeeze. One of the things that we have actually used it for, we don't always get to connect to the client's CRM and see the final disposition of a lead, you know, does that person become a student? Do they graduate? You know, we don't always get to see that, but we do have a couple of clients that we get pretty good visibility where we can be, you know, they'll typically maybe once a week or once a month, something to that effect, they'll actually send us back enrollment data. So because of how we tag things on the front end, we actually know what channel that came through. So we've been able to use R to determine, okay, is this a channel that actually drives return on investment? You know, we market to return on investment first.
Don (13:45): Then we back into efficiency, things like cost per lead and then cost per click. That type of thing. The most important thing is did it make the client money, period. You know, return on investment. So because we have the ability to dump it into a script and us, they send us that information back. We have a script that we can dump it into. It will match it up based on the source that it came from. So we have, let's say, for example, Google ads, then we have a lead management tool that goes into first and it had this lead ID in this information. So we have a script that takes that lead management tool data, and the data that the client sends us. It matches it up. And then we start to see, okay, is this something that we need to continue to run for this client?
Don (14:28): Do we need to reduce budget or just cut it out? We actually had one client. Well, we stopped the channel that was actually driving conversions on the front end, but over a year, the return on investment just didn't make sense. So in that case if I'm talking about, you know, kind of being Hippocratic in my approach, you know, do no harm to my client, then the juice is definitely worth the squeeze. The biggest piece of it really is just the patience. You have to have the patience to do the work, to get comfortable with the scripting. But honestly, you know, R programming, Python, any of that. There's so many places you can go online that are giving you a jumpstart and it's not, you know, it won't be an issue of, I have no, I don't know where to start. I don't know where to begin. If you go on YouTube and you put R for data science, you're gonna find a mountain of information on that. And a lot of, a lot of times, same thing with just internet searches, you will find the information that you need. And a lot of times what you're looking for, you'll find that someone else has already done it and put it out there.
Kathleen (15:30): So, okay. Real talk for a minute. Like, I know I can find these things on YouTube, but for somebody like me, who's intimidated by statistics, who, you know, I mean, I get basic analytics, but the notion of learning to code scares me. And you know, is it realistic to think that somebody like me could go online and really learn this? And, and how long does it take to learn something like this? Is this like a week, a month, a year?
Don (15:59): Okay. I'll tell you what I did. If you have, if you have some comfortability with, you know, custom functions in Excel, for example, you're gonna probably be a little bit more comfortable when you get into the SQLs and the Rs of the world, because you just kind of understand the way the architecture, if you will, works. I understand how a database is set up. I understand what I'm trying to query. That kind of carries over to R. You understand a little bit more of what you're trying to query and the information that that you're trying to get at? I think any reasonably intelligent person can do it. You have to have one, really the will to do it. And just the time. You might spend a week, if you just kind of pick and poke around and find the pieces that you need, you might spend a week figuring that out.
Don (16:53): But the beauty of it is, kind of, once I figured it out, a lot of times once you've done it, like these two scripts, we've written, the one where we dealt with return on investment, I can just pop the information in now. Boom, once it's done, it's done. The asset database, it probably took me, I'd say a day, right? Each one of those scripts, one for the ads, one for the keywords. But now that I've got them, all I have to do is drop in whatever data I'd want. There might be a couple of changes that I make to it. That might take me 15 minutes and boom, it does the work. So once you get past that piece of it, you go.
Kathleen (17:31): So why don't you think there are more off the shelf tools that can do this for you? Cause it seems like from what you've said, it seems like the insights you're able to extract are pretty darn useful in terms of making decisions about your campaigns and optimizing your ROI and even optimizing other campaigns that have nothing to do with PPC. I'm sort of surprised that there isn't a commercialized like, software product out there that that makes it easy for people like me.
Don (18:01): You know, there probably is. Because we have a genius of a guy in our marketing tech department who develops all of our like reporting products. And he primarily Power BI to do that. Genius. I mean the stuff he can drill down to, absolutely genius. Obviously there is a learning curve about a power BI, or you're talking about a Tableau or something like that. I kind of take the approach, again, I like granularity. So the more granular I can get, the better. The more cause you know, the more, you know, any solution or any analysis is only as good as the data that you put into it. So the more points that we can pull together and we can give that algorithm time to kind of work through, the better. So you probably, you probably have some, I'm just kind of, I kind of nerd out on that stuff. I like that stuff. And again, I kind of like to understand how it works and I have an idea in my brain most of the time of really where I'm trying to go. And I'm just, I'd rather just have control of where the levers are a little bit more than necessarily on the box, but I'm sure there are some that will do it. But I'm sure there's, there's probably ways.
Kathleen (19:17): So who do you think should, should think, can seriously consider doing something like this or learning how to do this? Because I have to imagine that it's not really right for every marketer, you know, you have to be dealing with, I would guess, certain volumes of data. And, and you obviously need to have the ability to like put what you learn into some form of action otherwise, who cares, you know? So like talk me through, if you were talking to other marketers, which you sort of are through this podcast, like who should really think about something like this?
Don (19:55): Definitely a person, like if you live in the numbers every day and by living the number, I mean, you're actually pulling the levers on campaigns every day. A lot of platforms are pretty much forcing us more and more towards automation. So, you know, some of those day in day out practices that we would have really been engaged in you know, keyword bid management, you know, average position, Google and tools like it can sunset. So you can't even, you know, that that's not even a metric you can get to anymore. But a lot of those, those day to day things that we used to do, those things are going to go away, what it won't do. And actually it will actually write ad copy for you if you want it to the places you can do that.
Don (20:48): This is going to give you the ability to focus on what's important. Ad copy and creative and your keyword less than blah, blah, blah, and all and all of this stuff. So if you, if you're living in the weeds every day you definitely should be learning some of these data science tricks. Absolutely. No question about it. You should get comfortable with it because if we're doing less day to day management, that means we have more time for analysis and we can start to dig deeper and do a bit. And I would say if you're director level, you know, kind of the level I'm at, I still think there's value in it because one of the things that you want to start to consider is, okay, is there any way that I can use you know, data science to understand what are the things we're talking about?
Don (21:39): Is, is there a way to use it to figure out what combination of channels works the best together? So if the person comes in through Google ads and doesn't convert, do you know, do I see conversion rates go up if I send them email or if I do direct mail or not just through Google ads, remarketing, are, am I seeing better numbers of ads, Google ads, YouTube then being remarketing, you know, is there a way to determine what channels work better using data science? Those are some of the things and that one's a little trickier because you have to be able to track that lead all the way through so that, you know, there's something to think about there. But I would say anyone probably at least from director level and down that lives in this world, especially in agency world, you should be learning this.
Kathleen (22:28): So earlier you mentioned that you're now using this for some predictive things. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you mean by that and how you're using it?
Don (22:39): Right. So, so one of the things that we're trying to figure out and, and the coding is kind of still out there. We have to, we have to figure this piece of that out. But let's say for example, we're in Google ads, we're in Google ads. And, you know, if you have, you know, 20, 25 accounts you live in every day, you're constantly making changes and you're constantly trying to track those changes. One of the things that we're trying to determine is, is there a way that we can start to pull change history and to, to, you know, master spreadsheets. Pop it into R, use Python and then say, okay, here's what I'm going to determine. This type of program. When I made this type of change across the MCC, historically, what have we there's as far as maybe if I change the bid strategy, and if I switch from this particular bid strategy that, that particular bid strategy, what did I, what have I seen historically? Is there a trend that I can see across accounts that says switching from this to this, I tend to get better results. So kind of trying to predict future performance based on what we've seen in the past, just on that body of data.
Kathleen (23:56): And it sounds like really trying to extract some best practices.
Don (24:01): Absolutely. Yeah.
Kathleen (24:03): And as you mentioned in an agency setting, I can really see where that would be useful because having owned an agency myself for about 11 years, you know, one of the big challenges is always, how do you disseminate information about what works and what doesn't across different people in teams. And so I could see where that would be really valuable.
Don (24:22): Definitely
Kathleen (24:22): So interesting I'm, I'm like intimidated and intrigued all the same time as I imagine, many people are.
Don (24:32): But you have to start somewhere.
Kathleen (24:33): So, yeah, and I would say the other thing I was going to say is if this is something that interests you, if you're listening, I actually shared this with Don, a great community for conversations around analytics is Christopher Penn's Analytics for Marketers Slack group. You can probably Google it and find it, but I will put the link in the show notes to it.
Kathleen (24:53): And Christopher is also another amazingly accomplished brilliant data scientist. And he started this community just for other people, interested in analytics and you don't have to be as experienced as Don. I'm in the community. And I am a complete amateur. But it's great. It's a great resource. And you can ask questions and learn a lot there. Shifting gears, Don, I have two questions I always ask all my guests and I'd love to hear what you have to say. The first of which is really we talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really kind of setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days?
Don (25:37): There's, there's, there's a couple of people in digital world. One person that immediately comes to mind and I think, you know, him is Cory Henke. Especially because video is so important. And if there is a video Yoda, there is probably Corey Henke. Incredibly, incredibly intelligent guy. There's another gentleman that I follow quite a bit. I actually met him at Pubcon. He presented and he presents quite often. His name is Joe Martinez. He really lives in digital world, especially on the PPC. And he has just, you know, stuck his toe in everything where there's Google ads being as Apple ads, Quora. He's a Quora evangelist of sorts at this point because that platform, he really believes in it and they have definitely improved that product. I can tell you that. So I follow Joe. His company has a, they have a blog that they typically put out.
Don (26:45): So if you connect to Joe, he'll, and he'll normally like you know, let you know when a new blog comes out and this year, another young lady that works with him as well, I believe her name is Michelle Martinez, is also really, really smart. My, my hidden little gem, just really more so for the way that they think, is Fernando Machado and the team at Restaurant Brands International. They own like, Popeye's. They own Burger King. There's all these chains that they own. And they're just, it's just genius to just, you know, stalk their LinkedIn feeds and just see how they think and the difference in the way that they think, especially as it relates to driving social engagement. And you know, if you think about the craze over the Popeye's chicken sandwich and the way that went bananas, and then the way Popeye's leveraged that, that was Fernando's team behind that. And they've done the same thing with some things I've seen. They put out the moldy Whopper, where they were showing that that is organic, that it will mold over time. That it wasn't like the McDonald's cheeseburger that three years later looked the same. Fernando Machado was behind that. I just loved the way that they thought.
Kathleen (28:06): That's cool. I had not heard of them. So I'm going to have to check them out. And I love learning about new people to follow. So that's great. And also now I have a craving for a Popeye's chicken sandwich, which I have not had yet. I keep hearing about how great it is. So I'll have to add that into my rotation this week. Second question is that the biggest pain point I hear from marketers is always that it's so much to keep up with so much changes, and it's really hard to stay educated on best practices. So how do you personally stay up to date and educated?
Don (28:41): I'd definitely start since, I mean, we all have to be on, it was an 800 pound gorilla in the room, right. Especially as it relates to digital. So obviously, subscribe to the Think with Google blog if for no other reason than to just try to stay out in front of what Google is doing. I'm a huge fan obviously of Search Engine Watch. Well, most people probably think of that just in the context of PPC, but it's actually a tremendous amount of information. You can actually go on there and find articles on what we've talked about today. R programming, machine learning. There's even an article that actually shows you how to write a machine learning algorithm for your campaigns based on weather patterns.
Kathleen (29:30): Wow.
Don (29:31): So there is so much information on those three sites. Love those sites for just pure data science and learning. There's a channel that I particularly like on YouTube. The gentleman's name is Ken Yee. And he just, he just breaks it down to basics, and there's a lot of good how to's and information that you can learn from him. And then tracking and tagging, conversion tracking, it's all about Measure School for me. Measure School YouTube channel.
Kathleen (30:06): Oh, I will definitely put links to this in the show notes for all of that. Very cool. Well, if somebody wants to learn more about you or reach out and ask you a question or connect with you online, what's the best way for them to do that?
Don (30:18): Probably LinkedIn you know, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. That's how we connected was on LinkedIn. You know, just look me up. Don Seaberry. I'm there. I'll probably accept the invitation. I connect with as many people as I can. So feel free to reach out
Kathleen (30:37): True story. That is how we connected and how Don wound up on the podcast. So check him out on LinkedIn, Don Seaberry. And if you're listening and you liked this episode, or you learned something new, please head to Apple Podcasts and leave the podcast a five star review. That is how we get found. I would love it if you would do that. And of course, if you know somebody else doing kick ass inbound marketing work the best way to get them on this podcast as the next guest is to tweet me at @workmommywork, because I do find my guests through word of mouth. So reach out to me and let me know who you think I should interview. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Don. It was great talking to you.
Don (31:15): Thank you for having me. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
What goes into planning a world class product launch marketing strategy?
This week on the Inbound Success podcast, Foursquare Senior Product Marketing Manager Naike Romain shares the process she has used at companies like Wistia, Localytics, HubSpot and Foursquare to successfully pull off major new product launches.
From why so many marketing conferences lack diverse audiences, to the lack of diverse options when it comes to stock photography, the importance of precision in how language is used, and how the way we write job descriptions can inhibit our ability to recruit diverse teams, Chere and Kathleen cover a variety of topics that influence diversity not only in the people who work in marketing, but in the marketing campaigns and assets they develop.
Check out the full episode to hear more about Naike's process and learn how you can apply it to the development of your own product launch marketing strategy.
Resources from this episode:
- Connect with Naike Romain on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Naike Romain, who is the senior product marketing manager at Foursquare. Welcome Naike.
Naike (00:29): Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.
Kathleen (00:32): I am really excited to have you here because first of all, you have such an interesting career as a marketer. You've worked at a lot of different companies that that are, you know, from, from HubSpot to Foursquare. And you've really kind of dug deep into product management and, or marketing rather, I should say. And we're going to talk about something that I am really interested in at the moment. So selfishly as the host, I get to do these things and steer the topics in a direction that, that helps me with some things I'm working on and that topic is product launches. But before we get into that, can you tell a little bit about yourself and your career and how you wound up where you are now? And then of course, I think most people know Foursquare, but just in case they don't, maybe you could give a quick update on that.
Naike (01:18): Sure. So I'm going to give you the really abbreviated version of how I got here, because it's a long story as my LinkedIn page will tell you. But essentially I started off working in tech support and little by little figured out that my niche or the things that I, what I've liked a lot about working at software companies had to do with understanding how products got developed, but also being able to flex them creative strengths and ability and product marketing seem like they're really a really good fit for those skills or those passions. And so from, I went from tech support to account management and then really decided to make a swing at becoming a product marketer. And so I got my first product marketing role at Wistia where I was the first product marketer they'd ever hired. And it was my first product marketing job.
Kathleen (02:12): Wow. Yeah, no pressure there.
Naike (02:14): Yeah. it was a steep learning curve on all around, and I'm excited to talk a little bit about that. And then made my way from there to Localytics. And then HubSpot and now Foursquare, and for folks who are unfamiliar or forgot Foursquare, it started out as like they invented the check-in. So if you remember, a couple years ago, like 10 years ago, when everybody was checking in to different locations, lots of restaurants and places it was like sort of a social app where folks would engage with their friends a little bit, know where they were and sort of keep track of their comings and goings and all these really interesting places. I work on the B2B side of the business where we focus on we've focused on business use cases for location data. So for the folks who are interested in supporting their marketing with another layer of context, like they use location information to do so. So that can go into measuring the effective effectiveness of your ads on, on people coming to in store visits, or if you want to develop applications that are, that require location context. So if somebody is calling for an Uber and they type in the name of a venue, that's calling on Foursquare's API to support that.
Kathleen (03:34): Oh, that's so interesting. I will confess, I did not know that that is the space that Foursquare was in these days. Because I was a huge Foursquare user back when it was the check in tool. And I can't remember what they called it, but like I was the, what was it? The King or...
Naike (03:53): The mayor.
Kathleen (03:55): Thank you. I was the mayor of several locations and my house, fun fact, to this day I live on a road called state street and we I have four kids and we also sponsor a midshipman from the U S Naval Academy, which for people who aren't familiar with the service Academy is basically that just means that you sort of like unofficially adopt these kids who are going to school there for the four years, they're there and you give them a place to go and crash when they have free time.
Kathleen (04:20): Cause they don't have a lot of it. And so on any given weekend, we have like eight people laying around our house, watching movies, eating food, playing video games. What have you. So it's totally, and we have two dogs and eight chickens. So it's crazy here. It's very chaotic. And so we live on state street, we have this chaotic situation. And so our, our location on Foursquare was called state of chaos. And to this day, that, to this day, that term like has lived on in, in other ways that, that we use in all started with Foursquare. So fantastic. I love that. That is my, my little four square story. So, so we, you and I talked and, and I know, you know, I was really excited to chat with you because you have been involved in so many different product launches and that's something that I am deeply involved in planning for at the moment. And you know, I, I've always done demand gen marketing, but not necessarily like, like traditional product marketing. And so I would love it if you could just maybe walk me through when you know, you're going to have a new release. How do you think about product launches and how do you kind of mentally organize yourself and plan out a strategy for those things? Big question. I know, start wherever you want.
Naike (05:43): Sure. I mean, I think that one of the early things that I figured out needed to be done with sort of work for myself was organizing launches in terms of expected outcome or impact. So I would be thinking about launches in terms of, is it an awareness launch. Is this a revenue launch? Is this a retention launch? And sometimes it's a combination of all those things and you just need to prioritize them. But I try to at best court categorize is this is this for awareness retention or revenue. From there, I would then try to think about what, what strategies or what tactics we needed to do to support these overarching awareness goals. So, I'd start by just drafting out a list of like, what awareness things do we need or what retention things do we need, or what revenue goals do we need to hit for this launch.
Naike (06:28): And then I would go about identifying what tactics we need to work on to get there. The key to this though before taking, before I say anything else is, is really alignment. And so my best, my best guess at what these goals were means nothing if it's not in line with what the product leadership or executive stakeholders think about the launch, and I've made the mistake of launching ahead with a plan to be told, Hey, I thought we were going to be going much bigger than this, or that's not exactly what I had in mind. And so I think before we even say like, Hey, this is how I was start get, I do start with those buckets and then start to try to come up with goals. But alignment is critical, especially at the very beginning.
Kathleen (07:14): I love that you brought that up. I agree with that. And, and, and I would love it if you could maybe talk me through how you get that alignment and who needs to be involved in those conversations.
Naike (07:27): That's, it's really hard. I think that the more folks you invite in the more likely you are to be making decisions driven by consensus, and that's a hard thing to try to resist, but it's important that you do it. So getting folks to make decisions. I personally think that if it's a big launch, you need all the way up to the CEO. But I'll say that the, if there's an executive sponsor for your launch, like a product leader somebody on the C level, those are the folks that you need to agree that the launch is going to take, you know, it's going to be aligned on budget and aligned on goals. And then typically they'll let you decide on tactics yourself, but making sure that, you know, we, we hope to reach X many people or we expect to see X percent increase in growth in this product or adoption to increase by this much.
Naike (08:21): Like those are the things that you really need to get get executive visibility on. It makes sure that they agree. And then before moving forward, and for me, what that's look like is a series of feedback loops. So essentially I would go so far in a plan and say, okay, let me start with your schools. And then come back and say, are these goals like what you were thinking? Let's talk about this. Okay. Now I'm going to go a little bit farther. And all right, now I don't think I want to do a video shoot. I want to have some blog posts I want to do press, are, are these the tactics that you thought you were thinking, or should we have an, should we go bigger with this and, and go back and get that feedback? And then I can then go rally internally and present the plan to folks and get inputs and start working.
Naike (09:05): But the other, the other thing that I learned is that you shouldn't go all the way to the end of all of that, and then try to get, and then try to get executive or stakeholder feedback one, because it's hard to get their attention for that long. It's easier if you can do it in small bites and say, okay, we've already committed to this. Now I'm just going to take it a step further and get some more input and then work, which feels like it feels like a roundabout way of doing things, but it's really, it's in my opinion, the most effective way. If you can to like, say, I'm going to just go so far, get this feedback and then take it a little further. Because I have done the thing where I've developed an entire plan and sent it out, it's going to ask for feedback and people have been like, sure.
Naike (09:43): Yeah. Okay. And then didn't really fully read the document or weren't fully present in a meeting and didn't really catch on to everything. And so this is another product marketing thing. You can fall victim to the executive swoop and poop easily. This is something that that it's not a knock on executives. Of course, it's just, it's more to say that they have a ton on their plates. Their attention is limited. You really need to be the owner of these outcomes. And so making sure that you're actually getting engagement and you're, they're engaged in what you're telling them and that they understood what you said and are onboard do that. If you can, if doing it in smaller bites is easier than that's the best, just the best way to go.
Kathleen (10:27): Now I have a bunch of questions about this, I guess the first one is let's, let's actually rewind to what I would think of as sort of the beginning, which is some of the strategic decisions that need to be made in order for you to even begin to do things like set goals. And I was having a conversation about this with somebody recently, like how do you, where does ownership for strategic decisions around things like we have this new product? Are we going to keep it under the same brand name? Are we going to totally spin it off? Are we going to keep it on our website or create another microsite? You know, like those strategic decisions, is it going to be, is it going to be freemium or is it, are we going to go out right away and try to sell it? You know, where do those decisions get made?
Naike (11:19): I think it's a little bit of a gray area. A lot of, I think that it usually comes from the top, but with the input of marketing leaders, product marketing and product to help sort out where, how we'll be best positioned in the market. So a product marketer might have some input there for sure. And should feel comfortable. I would hope to make some recommendations in terms of how does this set us up in the market? What are our competitors look like in this space and how can we best position ourselves? Is that as a new brand or does it hurt us to start something fresh? Yeah. so I say that that starts with like operations and execs and with the input of marketing leaders, product leaders product marketing.
Kathleen (12:00): That makes sense. And then you talked about goal setting, so you have your three categories of launches and you identify what bucket it falls into and then you work on setting goals. I imagine that once you've been in a product marketing role for a while at a particular company, that gets easier because you have some historical data, but talk me through how you go about goal setting. If you're either new to a role, or like you talked about at Wistia, you were the first product marketer. So like, what do you do in those cases where you're kind of creating this out of whole cloth?
Naike (12:36): You guess there's not really a science to it, essentially. I would be, I would take whatever data we had about the product and look at the things that we're trying to influence and make a best guess. So if this is a product, if we were looking at a product update that was for retention, for instance, and we know that this is addressing a problem that our customers have had for a little while, the number I would look at is like support tickets and say, okay, we've had, you know, six complaints about this every single month for the last six months. I want to see that there's a market decrease in complaints about this issue once you've released this product and just go from there. So I'm, you know, you, sometimes you have to get unconventional. That's not like customer support. Tickets is not a typical marketing metric, but you have to, you have to measure what you can otherwise.
Naike (13:28): It'll be hard to say what you've actually accomplished. And so making sure it's a, it's a sig-, the support tickets is a signal that folks actually learned about the update that they've leveraged it, it tells it, it tells you a lot. And so you make your best guess and say, okay, I'm going to assume that this is going to lead to a reduction in support tickets, or we, our blog sees X amount of traffic per month. I'm going to make an assumption that we're going to see maybe a 10 to 15% increase and just aim for it. If you don't, if you fall shy, that's okay. Measure it and continue to grow on it for the next one.
Kathleen (14:01): Yeah. And, and do you have any kind of personal rule of thumb for how many different goals you set?
Naike (14:08): I try to, I try to limit them, but I think that they're, I try to, I don't have like a, I don't have a rule of them. I look at the bucket and then I put a couple of metrics under them, maybe, maybe four or five, just things to keep an eye out for at the beginning. It's not a disaster if you don't hit them, it's just a way to keep track of like, okay, this is where we started. Let's see where we can get, let's try to do some benchmarking while we're at it.
Kathleen (14:36): And talk to me about timelines. Like, you know, how much time is enough time to plan a launch. And I'm sure the answer is, it depends, but I would love to know like what it depends on and
Naike (14:47): Sure. Yeah, I you're Def you're right. It totally, I think that being embedded with the product team and working really closely with them helps a lot with that. So if you're sitting, if you're, you don't ever want to be in a position where our product team is sort of tossing a finished product over to you, and then you have to start, ideally you're aligned really closely with them. So you can start to see the formation of the product. You can start to envision and learn a little bit about timelines from being close from, from that point, that's when you should start to develop things like you shouldn't be developing positioning after the thing is built, you should be in the room thinking about it, figuring out how it fits into the market and contributing those perspectives along the way. So as you approach launch, and you need to get consensus on goals and you need to rally the rest of the cross functional marketing team to support by creating content or developing assets, things like that. You need to, then that part in it's honest own, like getting the message out takes a couple of weeks, like a week or so, and then you need to stay on top of it to through completion. So I think, you know, the optimal time is like six weeks, six weeks from, we have consensus on goals. We have we're all on board with the positioning and the narrative, and now we have time to execute and test everything before we release. That would be my ideal if I could always get six weeks.
Kathleen (16:11): Yeah. And and how much time do you generally need for like, what happens before that six weeks that planning that, that, you know, coming up with the goals?
Naike (16:23): Well it takes me probably like a couple of days. It takes the team, probably it probably takes maybe two weeks with all the back and forth. And it, and it also depends on the size of the launch. If it's just like a feature release, you don't need to go through all of this. You're not necessarily repositioning or introducing anything, ground shaking. But for something big two weeks or more to hire it out, all the kinks about what this about how this changes the positioning of the company, or do we need to make sure that we're in alignment with the rest of our brands and the goals for the business for the year?
Kathleen (16:58): Yeah, that makes sense. So you, you go through that planning process, you get your consensus on the goals, and then it's time to really start rolling up your sleeves. Can you talk me through, do you have any kind of a framework, a planning framework or, or taxonomy of like the types of assets that you generally create for product launches? How do you approach that?
Naike (17:21): What I, what I have is sort of like a menu there's just like a list of all different types of things that we could potentially create. And the list gets shorter depending on the tier of the launch. So for a tier one, you have lists of like maybe 50 things and you don't have to do every single one, but there's a lot that goes into that. And so you want to make sure that you have all your bases covered and as a way to make sure that you're not inventing to do you have an easy, easily referenceable list of things. So obviously with a tier one launch they're going to want a webpage. You're going to want maybe swag or you're going to want to do internal comms, a really strong internal comms campaign and make sure the entire company is ready to support it for like a tier three where you're just, you know, you're announcing something to customers. You want to make sure that you have your docs updated. You send an email, you maybe have some messaging, and that could be the extent of it. So I use this list to sort of just as like a, as a, as a reference to say, okay, did we do all that we could to get the word out? Are we supporting this to the best of our ability?
Kathleen (18:34): And then one of the things I I'm always interested in is how do you time things when it really comes down to like, this product is ready to go? What is your thinking around, you know, when do you publicly let people know something's available? Because I feel like there's this tension between wanting to drive anticipation and excitement and interest ahead of the launch, but then also this, you know, the, the fear, especially in the tech or the software world of like, well, we don't want to let the cat out of the bag too soon cause somebody could scoop us. So how do you, how do you approach that?
Naike (19:13): I think that that two things one is that it's really important internally that we separate product readiness from launch readiness. They're not the same thing. They don't need to perfectly match each other. You shouldn't be, you know, holding a bag, waiting for product to say this is ready and then running off to tell the market about it. It's OK to let something be ready. Use the time between that. You can use the gap between product readiness and launch readiness for betas, for feedback. There's a lot that can be done in that time. We don't have to immediately run to let's go tell the market. And the way, the way that I think about it is making sure that we're ready when everybody and ready, everybody internally is ready to support. So if the support team's not ready, then the marketing is not ready. If the sales team's not ready, then the marketing's not ready. We haven't done all the things that we need to do internally to make sure that we're aligned. And you don't want to see the launch fail because you invite hundreds of thousands of people to try something and then you're not ready to support it. And that falls on product marketing's plate as well.
Kathleen (20:22): Yeah. so tell me a little bit about some of the more successful product launches that you've been involved in. I'd love to just hear examples of times when you felt like it really went well.
Naike (20:36): Sure. so one of my all time favorite launches that I got to work on was for a 360 video product at Wistia. So we did, we developed this proprietary way to support hosting 360 videos and measuring where folks interact with the video, if they look left or right, or, or scroll, you can track that. And so this was this really unique thing that I'd never in a one, it's something that I'd never seen before myself, but also the market I'm sure had, was not ready for something like a lot of people were not using 360 video yet. So it was an opportunity to do something really unique. And in thinking about this launch, we were developing this demo so that folks could try it out on the webpage. We did a number of really unique things.
Naike (21:28): So one would be was this demo. So anybody could go to the webpage and test out to play a video, look at it and then watch as the tracking developed alongside your movement. That was really cool. Separately, I in trying to understand the subject better joined, joined a friend at a 360 video and VR a meetup. And so I went to the meetup to see, like, what are people in this space like talking about? Is it, are they thinking about it as video? Like where do we fit into this landscape? And I ended up meeting the organizers and I was like, you know, what, if we hosted an, a meetup, what if that, like, could that be cool? And they were like, huh, well maybe we typically already have our venues, but I convinced them. And so we got to host ahead of the launch.
Naike (22:12): We hosted the VR meetup at our office and we got to bring the community into the space and got to see all the really awesome things people were doing with, I mean, beyond just like the demos of all the cool VR stuff we did, we did some presentations, we presented our product with, to them and got some really cool feedback on to see what folks in the space for doing. And then at launch, it felt like we were really well primed. So we had, we invited, we invited the community in, we had been developing this really interesting demos. So folks who, who wouldn't necessarily be in the loop, got it. When you interact with the demo, you immediately at the sense of like, Oh, I see what they're doing here because it's novel. And then we released the regular launch assets and that was really cool. We also partnered really well with our customers who are doing 360 video. So we had a lot of follow on content about how folks were leveraging it to give folks context. And that was really, that was really awesome and really special.
Kathleen (23:10): Yeah, no, that, that brings me to another question, which is around content. I mean, I think there's a delicate dance of, you know, you, you want to, when you have these launches ready to go, you want to have enough content, all ready, ready, so that not only can you support people who are interested in the product, but you can generate interest like almost this full funnel strategy. But then I would think you also want to kind of tee some content in advance. Maybe that doesn't mention the product, but that talks to the pain points that it's solving that begins to build an audience for it. So can you talk me through how you think about that?
Naike (23:46): Sure. I think that it's part of the planning when I do a big cross-functional meeting and I say, okay, this is the thing that we're releasing. I invite the cross functional teams, the content teams. So the folks who are working on content currently. So talk to me about what they think makes sense. So I try not to lead with, we need six blog posts and we need a webpage and please just like deliver all this stuff. I try to invite conversation about what they think would work best. What's already on their schedule. How can we tailor some of the things that they were thinking about to support the launch? And so we look at the calendar together, we talk about what the dependencies might be for developing content related to this launch. And then I dig in with them. So if they're like, okay, I think we can fit in three posts before launch, and then we can slot in these others.
Naike (24:35): I'm like, great. What do I, how do I help deliver on that? And sort of take a production role I'm like doing, do you need time with an engineer? Do you need time with product, like doing me to like bring in some other domain experts so that you have what you need to create this. And that's typically how it's worked really well. I think that if you, if I were to come in top down and say like, Hey, I, what I see is like over the course of six weeks, we need six blog posts. So deliberate. You're not gonna make any friends and people weren't hugging to be excited about the launch. And that's not what you want. So inviting folks to share their expertise with you and let them and let you know, like, Hey, I've seen other companies do this really cool thing. Do you think we could try it this way? I'm all ears. I want to hear that because I can't pretend to be the, you know, the master of blog content or other types of interactive ways we could, we could get in touch with our prospects and customers.
Kathleen (25:25): Yeah. I feel like that's a lesson for marketers in general and not even just product product marketers is, is the attitude that you go in with. You're so much more well-served if you think about the other parts of the company as your customer as opposed to, you know, them needing to give you things like, I need a blog, I need this, I need that. You know, I, it's more like, how can I help you? How can I make this easier for you? That is such an important little mind shift, a mindset shift that makes a massive difference anywhere in marketing that you work.
Naike (25:59): Totally, totally agree.
Kathleen (26:01): So what are some things that you wish you knew when you started out in product marketing?
Naike (26:07): Woo. Everything, all the things I feel like if there is a product marketing mistake I've made it. But I think really, I wish I wish somebody had told me that the, I think the key of being a good product marketer is being curious about the product. I think I knew that inherently, but when you get busy when you get sales asking for things and you have launches on your plate, it's easy to sort of distance yourself from what's going on and focus on making sure that you're delivering. And because you're a marketer, there are actual tangible assets that people expect from you. But your job is to really remain curious and remain close to the product don't ever get too far away from it. And what are some ways you do that that means like going to standups and asking questions and asking people to explain things to you.
Naike (27:01): I'm fairly new in my role in Foursquare. And after I do the regular, one-on-ones where I meet everybody on the marketing team and I meet sort of execs. I do the same with a CS and engineers. And I'm like, can you explain this to me? Like, how does this, how did these things work together? How does this make us different? What would you change? I want to know those things from the people who interact with the product every day. I want to know why the thing that they're working on, like, why is it important? Not just like what they're doing, but like, why does it matter? And continue to, that's how you build those relationships. That's how you continue to stay close and understand that, you know, it's hard to predict product work. It's really hard to, it's hard to predict when something's going to be ready, but when you have those relationships, you can go in and say, okay, so we thought this would be ready two weeks ago, what's changed.
Naike (27:50): And you, and you don't have to have that conversation from like, I'm coming down on you, places like you're my friend. We, I understand how, what it takes to build this product. I want to understand what we need to do to help you to launch it. So having those relations and trips and remaining curious and remaining close is like critical. And I think that there have been times in my career where I've just been like, I have to get this, this one pager out. I need to develop this specific, this pitch deck, blah, blah, blah. And well, that stuff's important. It's not going to be as good if you don't have those close, you don't have that closeness and that curiosity.
Kathleen (28:07): Yeah, absolutely. Any advice for product marketers out there when it comes to product launches, anythings that you think are really critical for them to do or keep in mind?
Naike (28:35): This is probably more of like a personal thing than like a task thing, but I think keeping a cool head things are going to go wrong. Things are going to slip. That's normal and it should not be taken super personally. It should not be taken really hard. The reality is, like I mentioned before, it's really hard to predict product stuff. And so you may find yourself already on launch day and something happens and you're not able to like, there's a bug that prevents you from going from everything, from being shipping out. Or you have folks waiting for your, you have, you have press, that's waiting to be published and you have to tell everybody to wait, it's worth it to do that. Calmly. It's worth it to not freak out for your own wellbeing, but also for everyone else. It's your job as the person in the middle to clear the fog to make, to make sure that things are being communicated well, but also keep a cool head. I think you'll be better for it. And the, and everybody else around you will be too, cause I've definitely made the mistake of freaking out and setting things off in the wrong setting, off, sending out the wrong tone. And so keep a cool head because are going to go wrong and that's okay. You'll make them better. You'll communicate clearly and you'll get the launch out.
Kathleen (29:47): You just actually raised another question in my head, which is communication cadence. Cause you talked about communication. So do you have a certain cadence that you maintain of like, how often do you give updates? Who do they go to? You know, are those updates by email, by video, do you hold a meeting? What does that look like for you while while preparing for launch?
Naike (30:06): I typically do a biweekly depending on how much lead time there is. So if we are, you know, we're way ahead of lodge, maybe like every two weeks I touched base with the cross functional group, that's working on it to talk to them about where things are and how we're like, if there are contingencies, if you know, design is waiting on copy, what's happening with copy so we can support getting things, you know, through the pipeline. And then as we get closer, we'll do a one week meeting with that same cross functional team, just more of a status update. I know those are the worst kinds of meetings, but they actually really do help as a forcing function to make sure that everybody is getting the things that they need and catch any red flags if things are falling behind.
Naike (30:52): So I'll do a weekly meeting and then day of launch, I like to do an internal only company meeting that says, Hey, these are the things that we're releasing today. This is why they're so important or so excited. And these are all the people who worked on it to give a big kudos to the folks who supported it and have been putting in long hours for the last six weeks or so, trying to get these assets out the door and then obviously including tweet, copy, or social copy for folks internally to support the launch in that email.
Kathleen (31:22): That's a great point. You know, how do you, how do you mobilize the team to do its part in gaining momentum around the launch? I feel like Wistia is like the masters at this because I remember, I can't remember what it was they did, but there were there just their use of video throughout the whole team was unbelievable. But how do you approach that? I mean, you've worked at a couple of different companies, not everybody's Wistia, so
Naike (31:46): Right. I mean, yeah. So I think the easiest thing to do is just make it easy. So in those emails I would send out like copy that folks could remix on their own and images that they could include and people would happily take exactly what I wrote or change it up and they would heed the call it's asked. So it's one important to just ask them to do that. A lot of companies don't and then it just, you don't get that sort of surround sound effect when the company launches and there's like 20 people all talking about it, you get that from your employees being engaged and sharing. So you want to encourage them to do that and you can tell them, Oh, I mean, that suggests nicely. And then beyond that other companies that I've worked at do like internal contests that's for the most social clicks and shares or tools that actually support these types of internal campaigns. So like what tools for example, Oh my goodness. I'm going to forget the name.
Kathleen (32:40): Sorry. I know I totally put you on the spot there.
Naike (32:42): There is, there are tools that do the sort of internal like, I don't want to call it gamification, but essentially it like contests inside your company. So you, they like share the posts that they've posted. And then in the tool keeps track of the volume of visits or shares or clicks, and then you could reward the person or people who got the most, so it encourages those types. And so if you offer something cool, people will be more likely to engage lots of teams that I've worked on, have a little celebration there's in the office. So the entire company is invited to like celebrate the release of this thing. You get to celebrate your coworkers. And also just again, bringing that awareness. And at that time you can also encourage folks to participate by sharing on social or other places.
Kathleen (33:29): That's great. I love that idea and getting the whole company involved and excited and kind of building momentum for that. Well, all right. We're going to change gears here. And I'm in very interested to know what you're going to say in response to my first of my two questions I ask everybody the first one is, and I'm going to give you a little bit of a twist. So the first question is I always ask people, is there a particular company or individual that's really like setting the standard for what it means to do inbound marketing? Well, right now, and the twist I'm going to give you is you cannot answer with any company that you've ever worked for because it's too easy to say, HubSpot or Wistia or any of these. So you have to pick a company you have not been employed by.
Naike (34:14): Okay. Then my answer is, and I've been thinking about this, is Zendesk. I think they do really great inbound marketing. They have these really beautiful blogs it's you can tell that it's really well cared for, curated, and they almost have like a lifestyle brand for like, for folks who work in support. So it's not just like, these are our products and these are the ongoings of our company, but they also really care about they also really care about the community and they create content specific for that community. And it's really fantastic. So I really love if you go to their blog, it's really multiple blogs. They're fantastic. And they look great. And I can imagine being, if I were to support that this would be the place that I want to hang out for sure.
Kathleen (35:01): Oh, I definitely need to go look at that. We're a Zendesk customer, but I haven't looked really closely at their blog. So I will be looking at it as soon as I get off with you. Question number two is that most marketers I talk to say their biggest pain point is just keeping up with everything that's changing in the world of digital marketing. It's so much. So how do you stay educated? How do you keep up with all the changes?
Naike (35:29): Goodness, I think what I, what I, I really rely on LinkedIn surprisingly have a lot of connections that are super, super active. I'm not super active there, but I do have a lot of connection that are super active and talk a lot about what they're what they're finding interesting and what their resources are. And I follow a lot of that. I also, with regards to product marketing in particular, I like Pragmatic. Pragmatic Marketing is obviously, like the they're, they're really experts in the space. So I look at them. I also follow April Dunford really closely.
Kathleen (35:53): I have to get her on this podcast.
Naike (36:01): Oh my goodness. I would love that. She's fantastic. And I read her book and I think I saw her at a conference in Toronto a couple of years ago and I was just stunned. I was like, this woman just gets it. She knows. She just, she's just on top of it for sure. And really impressive to like hear her speak, but also just like really smart. And I, so I follow her really closely when she has something to say, I like definitely pay attention and listen.
Kathleen (36:35): Yeah. I heard her speak at HubSpot's inbound conference and was blown away and she talked about positioning and it was, it was amazing talk. And then since then I've followed her really closely on Twitter, because like you say, every time she proverbially opens her mouth, like great stuff comes out. So April, if you're listening, come on and be a guest. And I would be remiss if I did not give a shout out right now to Mark Amigone and Nick Salvatoriello, who both suggested Naike as a guest because they had worked with her at HubSpot. And so if you're listening, I always end the podcast by saying, let me know if you know, any other kick ass inbound marketers. And I really mean it because this is how I find guests. So it's a lot of it is word of mouth. So if you, so thank you, Nick and Mark for the recommendation so much. And thank you Naike for coming on.
Naike (37:20): This was great.
Kathleen (37:22): If you are listening and you learn something new, which I mean, I definitely did. Please consider heading to Apple podcasts and leaving the podcast a five star review. I would love it and it would help us get found by other listeners. And as I said, if you know somebody else doing great inbound marketing work, please really do tweet me at @workmommywork, because I really would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Naike.
Naike (38:04): Thank you. Have a great day.
Why is it important to have diversity in the world of marketing?
This week on the Inbound Success podcast, HammerTech VP of Marketing Chere Lucett joins host Kathleen Booth for a candid conversation about diversity in marketing.
From why so many marketing conferences lack diverse audiences, to the lack of diverse options when it comes to stock photography, the importance of precision in how language is used, and how the way we write job descriptions can inhibit our ability to recruit diverse teams, Chere and Kathleen cover a variety of topics that influence diversity not only in the people who work in marketing, but in the marketing campaigns and assets they develop.
Check out the full episode to hear what they had to say about diversity in marketing, and why it is so important for every organization to consider.
Resources from this episode:
- Connect with Virginia on LinkedIn
Chere and Kathleen recording this episode
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Virginia Chere Lucett, who is the VP of revenue for HammerTech. Welcome.
Chere (00:22): Thank you. Thank you for having me. This is exciting.
Kathleen (00:25): I am really looking forward to talking to you because you know, we are having this conversation at an interesting moment in our world and lots of conversations happening around diversity and all of the different aspects of that. And, you know, I think diversity in marketing is a fascinating topic and I thought you brought a really interesting perspective to it because of your particular situation. And, you know, you're, you're a woman working in a very male dominated industry. There, there's all different dimensions to this. So maybe to kick off this conversation you could tell us more about yourself and your story and how you got to where you are today. And then also what HammerTech is.
Chere (01:13): Perfect. So I will, I will say that I am a Latina who got to this position through, I would say probably blood, sweat, and a lot of tears sometimes. And I've, I've been in marketing. I started in marketing 20 plus years ago and all the different avenues that sort of surround marketing or that are directly related to marketing. And then, you know, as marketing has evolved, you know, all the different niches I've, so I've been able to kind of see the change in our industry over a long, a long period of time. So that that's been helpful. And I, you know, I graduated with a degree in English and which was really sort of, it's, it's, I think one of the best degrees you could have, but at the time, the question is, what are you gonna do with a degree you're either going to go into, you're going to go into something that's going to be like, you're going to go into a legal career, or maybe you're going to go to be a teacher.
Chere (02:14): And I really found myself in, in marketing, on accident and it came through content and writing and, and being able to have that skill that was able to help drive me through. And it opened a lot of doors for me. So that's how I sort of ended up in marketing. It was never my, my first focus, but, you know, as many of us do and working, we, we tumble into the, into the career and then, and then we're lifelong marketers, and now it seems like we're going to be moving maybe more into revenue as, as you know, what I do. And so I've seen again, that evolution is interesting. So that's a little bit about me. HammerTech is a construction safety SaaS platform. Obviously the focus within the construction industry is to help keep people safe. And with construction being one of the most dangerous occupations in the world, it's something that is very near and dear to our heart. And we're a very purpose driven company. And the purpose is just to help people, keep people alive, save lives. And so that's a little bit about, about HammerTech as well.
Kathleen (03:21): And I will say, spoken as someone who was a political science major and now a marketer, amen about the story and how we sort of fall into it. Yeah. And funny enough, and with political science too, it was like, what am I going to do with this degree? And everybody I knew went to law school, except for me. So I think we could have a completely other conversation about that, probably. So you, you have this really interesting kind of mix of factors that, that are playing into, you know, who you are as you show up in your role every day. You are a Latina, as you said. And you're a woman. You're in a male dominated industry. Although, interestingly, I feel like marketing is by and large female dominated. Construction is male dominated.
Chere (04:12): Construction is male dominated. So when looking statistically, while it may seem that women still sort of are, you know, kind of we're the majority. It's, we're still showing that we've reached parity. Like we may be at 45% to their, to their 55%, funny enough, but we aren't, we aren't anywhere near 75 or 80%. Not saying that that's what I want. I'm not saying we should take over the world, but yeah. I mean, we seem that way, but we're still sort of, we're still sort of getting to that 50% when it comes to just being a female. And then when you talk about being a female, being in higher leadership position, its false.
Kathleen (04:55): You still see a lot of male CMOs. Yeah, yeah.
Chere (04:59): Construction. Yes. It is a very male dominated industry. And I've been in mostly male dominated industries throughout my career, which has been really interesting for me. Because it's, it's just, it's sometimes difficult to be taken seriously to have your voice heard. But you offer a very different perspective than your male counterpart, counterparts often do. So, and then yes, being a Latina within construction is also really interesting because when you look across the board, when you look at some of the larger contractors, even some of the smaller contractors, you're talking about mostly white male founders, board members, company owners, VPs, C levels. You're starting to see more women rise to the, rise through the ranks and take on those positions, but very, very rarely are you seeing anyone of color in those positions.
Kathleen (06:04): Yeah, that's interesting. You know, and, and there's so many things running through my head right now, you know, and I think the first question somebody might have as they listen to this episode is, well, why are we talking about diversity on this podcast? Because the podcast is usually about, you know, people doing successful marketing campaigns or, you know, who are experts in certain strategies or tactics. And you and I talked a lot about this, and, and I mean, I have certain opinions about this, which I'll share. And by the way, if you're listening, we, Virginia and I both agreed that, that we're, we're going to go there. We're going to talk about things that are uncomfortable and tough because there's really no point in having this conversation if you don't. We, otherwise we might as well just talk about, you know, pay per click ads or something like that.
Kathleen (06:53): But you know, my, my I've been asked many times in my career, why is it important to have diversity in marketing? Meaning if you have a marketing team of 10 people, why is it important that that team be diverse? So I had a similar conversation with somebody about marketing conferences. You know, speaking only for myself, I go to a lot of marketing conferences and, and my anecdotal observation is that I walk around and it is a sea of white faces. Now, maybe I'm just going to the wrong marketing conferences, which is entirely possible. But you know, while, while at least anecdotally again, I see a lot of women, I don't see a lot of racial diversity in marketing, at least in the places that I've been. And, and so that question has come up several times to me. And my response has always been that I do feel like it's important and, and I have certain reasons why, but I'd love to hear your take on this. Why do you think it's important to have diversity in marketing?
Chere (07:56): Here's, you know, I am a very, like, I have a strong creative side, but I have a very logical side. So I like to break it down by numbers. If you're a performance marketer and you look at the population at large, right? So Hispanics, Latinos make up, Latinos, sorry, all of us make up about 18% of the population. Blacks, African-Americans 13% Asians, 9%. We'll just take those three minority groups, right? So you add that all up and you're looking at a pretty hefty percent of the population. Now you look at media spend and how much dollars are spent towards those populations. And you're looking at like, you know, for Hispanics, less than 4% for blacks, African-Americans, you're a little above 1%, a percent of media spent and Asians, I believe are around maybe 5%. So let's just talk about numbers. Let's talk about performance and how your media is performing against those cultural groups, right? If you don't have enough spend towards them right now, you're not going to see as great of results. And you're talking about almost what, what does that almost 40% of the population that is not Caucasian and they have different socio, socioeconomic differences. They have different cultural norms. If we want to be better marketers, we have to be more diverse. You will see better performance of the money, of the dollars that you're spending, when you can be more empathetic towards the individuals you're marketing to.
Kathleen (09:40): Yeah. That's a great point. And you know, it's interesting. I think this goes back to that notion of unconscious bias. Like I think a lot of marketers would say that they're, they're not biased. You know, they don't, that they feel that they can, can create marketing campaigns that are for everyone. But I think there's so much that we don't realize we do. You know, for example, when we're designing our websites and we go to stock photography sites and we pick images, you know? By and large, a lot of the images you see on many sites are white people, or they're the Benetton ad, which just looks, you know, I don't know. Sometimes it looks very forced to me. But the reality is in some cases it's because we choose those things. In other cases, it's because there isn't a supply of good diverse photography.
Kathleen (10:29): You know, I was involved for, for several years in planning a large marketing conference, and we had this conversation about our speakers and why is it important to have diverse speakers? And, you know, there was some pushback. Somebody said, well, shouldn't we just have the best marketers and the best speakers? And yes, of course I would like to believe that we can find a diverse group of amazing marketing speakers. But beyond that, you know, I remember I worked with somebody who was a person of color and she said you know, we're not going to attract a diverse audience if the audience can't see themselves in, in our speakers. And that affects, you know, how you sell tickets. So I think there's a lot of that. It's very unconscious in many cases. It's, it doesn't have to be this deliberate thing, but deliberate or not, it is equally as impactful in terms of the results to me.
Chere (11:18): Right. So what, what, it somewhat amuses me when it comes to marketing is, is a good part of our job is to understand psychology, right? We need to understand sociology. We need to understand anthropology. And if you're a really great marketer, you're constantly trying to put yourself into the shoes of the individual that you want to have a conversation with or that you want to attract, right? And when you, when, and when that's a big makeup of what you do is in marketing, it's almost sometimes, I wonder, why are we not thinking that way then? So if, if somebody is trying to market to me, that has no true understanding of what it's like to be a Hispanic in the United States, it, it can become very stereotypical and offensive. And that's never what any marketer wants to do. I think when you start stepping back and, and, and, and doing the human to human marketing and putting yourself in other people's shoes, you start to become very aware of how ill-equipped you might be to truly talk to different multicultural, diverse groups, without having some intimate knowledge of what they might be going through.
Chere (12:34): You'll be more effective when you can have more voices in the conversation that allow you, and they give you the deep insight that make what you do more impactful.
Kathleen (12:44): So what would be like an example of that? Because I think for a lot of people, this is such an abstract conversation. They need, almost need to have like concrete examples to be able to understand how this plays out.
Chere (12:56): So, I mean, even right now, and I think you see it a lot, the sensitivities of, of advertising, it's a very difficult position to advertise to multicultural groups right now, if you are not someone who has had in depth conversations. Like not understanding what, what gaslighting is. Not understanding the value of, of like what, what of knowing moreso the emotional impacts of how, of different scenarios. And I'll speak from the Hispanic side. If you don't understand the deep family connections with Hispanics and that, you know, it is a very, that just culturally, how, how women are. How women have worked through, you know, the cultural Hispanic, like way of thinking of what women do and what women don't do. If you don't understand a lot of the dynamics of being a first generation American and an immigrant family, those are very difficult things to speak to., And they can come off very surface uncomfortable, very I guess, what's the word?
Kathleen (14:09): Glib?
Chere (14:09): Yes. Almost like you're, it's almost like you're, you're making fun, right? Stereotypes exist because there's some truth to them, but mostly they can be very painful because they're trying to pick at something that somebody just does, culturally feels very natural for them. And so if you're creating an advertising campaign and you don't understand some of these deep rooted socio cultural norms, you can make huge missteps. Right. So please don't, you know, assume, like, I think I told you that I've walked into a building for, for a job interview. And, and, you know, I was asked if I was part of the cleaning crew. And I had to say, no. Although you know it, because there's a stereotype to that. Right. There's a, and there's, there's nothing wrong with that. I cleaned houses to get my way through college, but you know, that's not what somebody, when I'm going into a job interview wants to, wants to feel like, right. So when people make inferences about a culture that aren't necessarily true, that's where the danger lies.
Kathleen (15:14): So how else have you seen that play out? Like, what are, what are some common mistakes that you see marketers make?
Chere (15:23): The, I, and this goes back to kind of what you're talking with, the Benetton ad, the token, the token pictures of people of color being placed in scenarios where there's like, there'll be three white people. There'll be one Mexican, one Asian and one black person. And you're okay. That's yes, that's great. But that's not what we're really, that's not what it's like, right? It feels really unnatural. It feels unnatural to just try to straight translate Spanish to English when the connotations are very different, the meanings are different. You can't just, you just can't just take one language and translate it to another and think that's okay. You know, there's, there are so many of those little intricacies when it comes to understanding culture that are so, so important, that could be so offensive to people. And so I would say like straight translations without really thinking through what it might mean in different cultures. I don't know if you remember long ago, the Chevy Nova.
Kathleen (16:31): Oh, yes. I even know this story. I know this story, but you're going to tell it, you tell it.
Chere (16:38): No. Perfect. That's a perfect example, right, too? If you're going to try to advertise a car that translates, and translate in Spanish "no go," don't expect us to be the first people lining up to buy your vehicle.
Kathleen (16:52): Right. It's, I used to teach a class on, on this kind of stuff. And, and I, I would tell the story and I'd be like, it seemed like a great idea, right? Because when you have a product name that you're going to sell globally, you want something that's easy for everybody to say, no matter where they are. So simple words that, that work in any language and Nova is something that's pretty easy to pronounce, right? And it's like a star. It seems such a cool idea, but yeah, it does mean no go. So basically like your car is a lemon.
Chere (17:21): Those are the things that you have to be careful of. And I'm, I am actually very sensitive to to pictures and to what I see. And, and you're exactly right. If I, if I see somebody marketing and I see the majority of their marketing imagery does not reflect me or a very diverse cultural base, then, then that's also, that's very difficult for me. Because then I think, how do you know me, if you, if you don't have anyone sort of, you know, you're not showcasing that you'd know about me and about, you know, the way we interact and the way we like to, the way we culturally, you know, network and, and, and work together.
Kathleen (18:05): Yeah. You know, I've, and I've for sure been guilty of this because, you know, I look as a white person, it's not something you have had historically to spend a lot of time thinking about. And definitely something that I, I feel I need to work on more. I know there was one company I worked for where I was head of marketing and we were posting pictures of a conference that we had put on and we were marketing the next year's event. And we had just, honestly, it was like candid photos of the crowd at one of the happy hours for the past year's event. And they were great shots and we put them up on, I think it was Facebook, and some Facebook ads, and somebody commented like "nice sea of white faces". And it's true. You know, like I didn't look at it through that lens. I didn't look at it and think, what does this represent? It was just like, Oh, here's a great picture of a bunch of people at happy hour. But then as soon as somebody pointed it out, I was like, Oh yeah, that is all white people. How about that?
Chere (19:03): That's such an uncomfortable conversation. I can, I can, from both sides, right? It's difficult for someone like me to point it out because also being sensitive, I want, I, it's not maybe something that you, that you all understand the differences. The lack of, there's a lack of real talk, a lack of real education, right? Between us. Why does it matter so much to us? It's a difficult conversation for you to have on the other side, because also I don't think, and I could be very wrong again, it's that unconscious bias? I don't think there's a good majority of people that don't intentionally, they're not intentionally trying to hurt, right? I don't feel that way. I might be the minority of minorities. I feel like it's a matter of sitting together and having people, and there is some positive discrimination that I think has to happen to allow people to open some doors, for people to step in to some of the, to some of the positions, to step into marketing, to have these opportunities.
Chere (20:07): But it really is just a lack of, of, of conversation and really being open to understand each other. Why is it important to us to feel reflected in, in the conversation within the imagery we see? To have our voices in there. What are, what are our, what are our true differences? It's okay to be different. And we should talk about what our differences are so that you can understand the next time that you have this, this marketing group and it's, it is all white. Like, it's not for you to feel bad. It's just to understand that we want in too. Maybe it's not been as easy to get in, and we really need your help also to help pull us in, into something. And we, to be a little bit more intentional.
Kathleen (20:49): Well, and I think the most, the greatest thing that came out of that particular instance was that it got us thinking, well, why is this a picture of all white people? Number one. And the answer is, well that's because 98% of the people who came to the event were white. And then the next question was, well, why is that? Why does it seem to attract that, that crowd? And you know, that, that was where that conversation started about, well, when you look at who's speaking, that's really what that looks like. It's a lot of white people, you know, and, and then it became a question of, well, how can we make us a more diverse event from top to bottom? And does it need to start with the people that we invite in as speakers? Does it need to start with how we do our outreach to the business groups that we promote it to? That sort of thing. You know, and I think it just goes back to that, the point I made earlier that like, some of it is like ,where you sit is where you stand.
Kathleen (21:45): You know, you notice the things that first, you first, you notice the things that affect you the most. And so I've always been highly aware of like situations where it's all men, because I'm a woman. And so I, I see that. It's just something I see more readily. But I think that's, that's why going back to the, the first kind of point I was making, like, that is why it is important to have diversity in marketing. Because if you have a team of diverse individuals, where they sit is where they stand and they are going to see different things that not all of us can see, you know? And I, I think it was actually you and me, correct me if I'm wrong, but when we first spoke, was it you who, who alerted me to the Twitter account Manels and Wanels?
Chere (22:29): No.
Kathleen (22:29): Oh my gosh, this is great. Okay. So I don't know who I was talking to, but somebody pointed this out to me. There are these Twitter accounts, Manels and Wanels, I think they're called. And Manels calls out on Twitter, panels, panel discussions, or conferences or events or webinars where all the speakers are men. And Wanels calls out the same types of events, where all the speakers are white. And somebody pointed this out to me, and I was like, okay, this is really interesting. I have to go check this out. And then as soon as I did it, I, I have a big event I'm planning for my job next week. It's a three day virtual summit. And I went back and I looked at my lineup of speakers. And I was like, okay, it's not all white, but it is all men. And I mean, I'm surprised I didn't even see that at first as a woman. Right. But I didn't. I was just sort of going along my merry way and picking people I thought would be great speakers. And then I thought, well, this is ridiculous. I'm sure there are great women speakers in this case on IOT security. It's not like there's no women experts in this domain, you know? And so, and so it is, it is that awareness that I think is sometimes lacking if you're not sitting in and walking in those shoes all the time, seeing that.
Chere (23:46): Absolutely. And I guess this whole thing for me now that we have our eyes more open to it, and we're willing to have the conversation and to be willing to have the conversation is a huge step because you can see that a lot of people are taking it personally. Like, like they're getting defensive. Like it's not my fault. I didn't, you know, I didn't, there's that sort of defensiveness in some people and other people are going, wow, I never really realized, right. Because like everyone else, you go about your day. You live in your bubble, you, you, you don't have the same experiences or challenges. And so you often take for granted that those challenges or experiences exist. And now it's not only this openness to say, okay, there's a problem. There's an openness now. Okay. Have a conversation. Now, there has an open, there has to be an openness to be intentional about making sure that we are, we're providing room for all the voices to join the conversation.
Chere (24:43): And it's been, it's been interesting. So I will say that my husband is, my husband is white. He's, he's Irish and Irish American. And we've been together for 20 years. And over 20 years, I've, we've gone through different difficulties being a mixed race couple. Even being Hispanic and white, it's more common. But there, there have been subtle differences. And after this has all kind of come forward and we've had hours of really in depth conversations, because I used to say to him, I feel very uncomfortable in here. I don't feel like I belong, or I'm being watched or followed in a high end store. And it feels very uncomfortable to me. And he's never really understood what it felt like. Well, this week, just a couple of weeks ago, while all this was happening, we'd had a lot of these instances before, couple of weeks ago, when this was happening, we were sitting at a table at a nice wine bar and it was in California.
Chere (25:47): And in the central coast and we were having a lovely afternoon and there was a couple who was an, unfortunately, you know, it was a white couple who came from an area, and they were complaining how the area had gone, had, had been turned over and had gone really bad and became a crime ridden area. And they started talking about how all of the minorities had moved in and taken their nice neighborhood and really turned it. And people are steeling now and people like, right? And then all of a sudden I looked at my husband and they started whispering because they saw me. And then they started whispering and it was like this people, right. And I said to my husband, it's not the overt issues that bother me as much as it is these, these, the, the micro racisms that happen. And that's kind of how I about like, the imagery.
Chere (26:45): That's how I feel about, it's, it's subtle, but it's, it's death by a thousand paper cuts. And that's kind of the things that I, I think that we can look at and we can, we can change, right? And sometimes you just can't help people, but those are the things that really kind of get under your skin when you're a multicultural person trying to exist in an environment that you're not overly represented in. We can look at some of those little, those micro things and we can make those changes that make us feel more comfortable in different surroundings.
Kathleen (27:19): So one of the things that I think people tend to question when they hear something like this is you know, how do, how, how do I go about making that change? And what does that really mean? Because, you know, look, I've hired a ton of marketers over the year, and over the years, and I've seen hundreds and hundreds of applications. I would say the vast majority, 75% have been white, white people. You know, and so I think, I know I've heard some people say, well, do I just, you know, do I have to hire somebody who's not qualified? Or, you know, how do you respond to that? Because that's interesting. It's such an interesting conversation that people then get into where they feel like they have to sacrifice something in order to get to that level of diversity.
Chere (28:15): That's such a great, I mean, that's such a great question because it, it's not easy. Well, first of all, hiring is never easy, right? We've, same thing. I've hired a number of people. When you look at a resume, you really have to understand what exactly it is you're looking for. But at the same time, you have to read between the lines, right? Not everybody had the same educational capabilities. Not everybody had the same opportunities in different companies. So when you're looking to be more diverse, diverse, and more inclusive, and you're intentional about it, when you're going to hire, there is a lot of talent out there that may just didn't have, they didn't have the guidance, they didn't have the opportunity, but they're driven. And the, one of the most difficult things about, you know, hiring off of resumes is you really just don't know what you're getting until, until you, until you change the resume process, where you allow people to do some video resumes, where you ask some different types of questions that get to the foundation of the person.
Chere (29:15): Because if you're just looking at opportunity and you're looking at career, they're not, it's not going to be one to one. We don't have the same opportunities all the time to go to school. We don't have all the opportunities to get the same experience, to get the same internships, to work under the same bright people. So the resumes aren't going to be as glossy, but the people probably are. And they're probably just looking for, to come in and say, nope, you may not have the same experience, but do you have the same ability? That's something that really, if you just, even if you looked at my resume, the ability would outshine the work that you've done, that, that you can list on a sheet. And I would hope that anybody would look at, would look to talk to me to get a sense of what I know and what I can do and not be judged about whether or not I had all the chances that everyone else did. Because I certainly didn't, you know, I had to work really hard to get through school. And I had to fight my way into every position.
Kathleen (30:20): Yeah, this is, this is a really interesting topic to me, you know, and I come at this as, as a woman who probably spent too much on her education. I literally just paid my student loans off a few weeks ago and I am, I'm not going to say how old I am, but it's, it's way too many years. I did two graduate degrees. You know, I have no regrets. But, but that's you know, that is one end of the spectrum. But then I really think back, because somebody said this to me. Somebody was like, we should stop requiring college degrees on applications. And, and you know, I don't have anything against that in general. And then I really started thinking about like, who are the best marketers I've ever hired? And three particular people came to mind. Two of the three didn't have college degrees when I hired them.
Kathleen (31:12): Interestingly, one of them I hired and I barely looked at her resume. I just, I knew her writing work and it was outstanding. And I just thought, I need this person on my team. And then I found out after I hired her that she didn't have her college degree. And I was like, well, it doesn't matter because you're amazing. You know, and she wound up earning it like on the side over time or whatever. But it wouldn't have made a difference to me. And the other one, and this goes back to your point about like grit and determination, the other one didn't have it. And I knew she didn't have it. And I actually ruled her out. This was for a lower level marketing position, kind of more entry level marketing manager. And I ruled her out initially because she didn't have any degree, let alone a marketing degree and she didn't have any relevant marketing experience.
Kathleen (32:00): And I was like, you don't, you don't have the qualifications. I had a lot of other applicants who were more qualified and she came back and she was like, okay, but I really want to work there. Is there, do you have anything? I don't care if it's a marketing job, do you have any role in the company? I'll take it. I want a foot in the door. And I did. I had like a project manager position for something that had nothing to do with our marketing work. And she came in, she took the job and she was unbelievable. And within something like, I don't even know, six months, we had moved her into the job that she originally applied for and she wound up being one of the best people to ever hold that position, you know? And, and eventually she too got her college degree like over time at night or something. I don't even know, but again, it wouldn't have mattered. And so that really opened my eyes between the two of them. I was like, maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong. You know, and, and and, and she, she actually was funny. The second girl posted something, when she finally got her degree, she was like, no looking back. Salaries over sororities, you know? And I was like, man, you're smart. I don't know it was, it was eye opening.
Chere (33:11): I think it's a, that's a, I mean, it's a fantastic conversation. When you look at just some of the socioeconomics of, I'll just say the Latin population, of the Hispanic population, the ability to go to college isn't always there. However you have just as like, just as any percentage of the population, statistically, you're going to have brilliant people within that, but just don't have the finances. Don't have the capabilities or, you know, can't leverage their parents or, or savings to really go. And maybe they'll go to junior college, you know, and be able to get an AA, which is a more affordable opportunity. But then when you have these requirements on your, on the job application, or excuse me, on the, the job posting, it automatically tells people, you know, I'm probably not good enough for that position, when the truth of the matter is they, they re very much could be.
Chere (34:07): And I often, I don't, I don't hire based on the bucket, based on whether or not they have a degree or not. Or if they have a degree that fits with marketing, because we're both living evidence that that doesn't matter. It doesn't, you just learn a one to one thing. But when you, when you do have that, it limits them. I like not having that because I want to see who who's going to come with the most creative minds, who's going to bring the most diverse experience and ideas. And it doesn't even have to be multicultural diversity. It's just diversity in a way they go about things. I mean, that, that makes you a really great marketing team is when you have people that don't always think alike, but you get them into a room and you start to get them to collaborate. Just like the great, best advertisements come from just these great minds working together, who come from different perspectives. Some people are driving or some people are just great writers, some people are visual thinkers. You put them all together, they share their experiences and you come up with something fantastic.
Kathleen (35:06): Yeah, I agree with that. And I also think it's really interesting. Sometimes hiring for the degree can backfire on you. And the example I'm going to give, and maybe this is maybe this is prejudiced thinking in and of itself, but I'll say it because we're going there today. You know, I think there are definitely cases where you hire somebody who has the marquee degree from the amazing university and who has worked at like a big name company. And in reality, what happened was, you know, they had, they came from money, they had family connections. They were able to get into a good college because, you know, either have a family legacy or a donation was made. I mean, we're coming off of a year of college entry scandals. So they got, they got into, you know, the Harvard or the Brown or whatever.
Kathleen (35:51): And once you're there, you are in a network of other kids who come from those backgrounds, very powerful, very privileged. The network in and of itself is one of the values of a, of a degree from a place like that. And so that gains you entry into, you know, early career jobs that, that have also got marquee names. And you get those because you came from the great university, you have the power network. So you wind up with this really strong resume earlier in your career, but is it because you were the best person for the job? Is it because you're the smartest? Is it because you're the pluckies and the hardest worker, or is it because you were in circumstances that that made it easier for you to, to, to be in those places? And so I think sometimes you hire those people and, and they haven't had to work as hard. They haven't had to hustle as much. And let me just tell you these days, especially at a time like this with COVID, great marketers have major hustle. You know, they don't follow a playbook. They do whatever it takes to get the job done and to bring in the results. And that requires some hard work and some grit.
Chere (37:03): Absolutely. Also, you know what I, and where I come from, you know, I didn't come from a lot, but street smarts when it comes to marketing, man, there is something I give in sales to street smarts will get you a lot farther in my thought than a textbook education on marketing techniques or sales techniques. What I like about you know, about individuals who've had to, to your point, they've had to hustle, they've had to find another way, is they're not afraid. And when you don't have fear, because you haven't been sort of, the pedagogy has informed you, you have to believe this way. You have to do it this way. They're the ones who are really expanding the industry. We're coming up with cool ideas. We're bringing things to the table that are changing the way we market, the way we look at things.
Chere (37:56): They're, they're really, really shaking things up. I love that about, you know, that scrappiness, because then you don't have to have these big million dollar budgets. We've seen great things happen with budgets of like a thousand bucks and its viral because somebody just knew they were at the pulse of something. They understood how to follow that pulse. They understood how to do something that could step outside the norm. They weren't afraid to fail. And then you have this now, this new phenomenon, right. That we all end up going as marketers, Oh, that's really cool. Somebody came up with that. We're going to start doing that too. So I do think they're the ones that are really pushing the envelope that are making us all better.
Kathleen (38:36): This is awesome. I've loved this conversation. I feel like I could go on and on forever, but we are going to run out of time. So if somebody is listening and they are in a position where they feel they need to go to their boss or the leadership of their company and say, it's really important that we have more diversity in our marketing. Like, how do you suggest they approach that conversation?
Chere (39:02): Well, like any, any time I approach my C level or even the board, I always go back to data. If you want us to be higher performers, if you want to see more out of your marketing dollars, then just look at the numbers. And I'll go back to the start. You can't, you can't you can't put out 40% of the population. You cannot just, Oh, like you have to be very specific with what you're doing with them. If you want your marketing dollars to, to help advance, if you want a good ROI. I've just, that to me is always looking at the numbers. If you have 18% of the population, that's Hispanic, we should be really looking at what can we be doing here to make sure that we are, we are absolutely hitting that 18% where they, where they're gonna feel like they want to be a part of what we're doing and whatever industry you're in.
Chere (39:55): You're going to have a certain percentage of individuals that are within that industry always looking to see how can we be the best marketers for that subset always is, that's a performance objective. And that's one way to go about it, right? The best way to go about it would be just from the moral standpoint. I mean, it, it doesn't from a moral and ethical standpoint, it doesn't make sense to not have a diverse group of individuals in your company. It just, you know, we're not doing well by each other and creating a truly collaborative, open, you know, environment. So I mean, those are two ways. I, I always go back to numbers because I am a numbers person, but at the same time, when you go to the C suite, when you go to the board, they're numbers people too.
Kathleen (40:41): Yeah. I think that's really smart. I mean, it's because the message you send is this is not a rubber stamp thing. This is not a check the box thing. We're not just doing this so that we said we did it, or because we have to, we're doing it because we literally cannot afford to not do it.
Chere (40:55): Yes. We can do better. We can. And talk about just, just from when you go back to the numbers and you say, look at the opportunity we have in front of us to really gain mind share, to really grow as a company. Just look at the numbers. If we did it the right way, imagine what we could do as a company from growth and scaling. It's yeah. It's phenomenal for every company. It's the opportunity every company has right now..
Kathleen (41:21): Yeah. Well, I'm fascinated to know what people who are listening think about this. And I think this is one of those episodes that really lends itself well to a conversation. And so, you know, I would just encourage you, if you are listening. And if you have a question or if you have a different viewpoint on this, or if you totally disagree with us you know, let us know. You can certainly tweet me at @workmommywork. And I would love to see those comments and get a discussion going. Because I think, you know, Virginia, as you said, we have to have these conversations. That's the starting point, you know, for any changes, just talking about it and, and acknowledging it. Shifting gears, we can't end without doing my usual ending segment, which is two questions. I always ask every guest, the first being, the podcast is about inbound marketing. Even though today, we talked all about diversity, which I think is very important to inbound marketing. Do you think there's a particular company or individual that's really killing it when it comes to inbound marketing these days?
Chere (42:28): So this is always a tough question for me because you never really know if, if they're killing it or if it just looks like they're killing it. Okay. Because we don't know their data. We don't know what's coming in. We don't know if this is the right inbound. Right. So I will say though, I'll say two companies that I just love. Because I think that they're, they're really doing well to gather mind share and bring in, bring in the right eyeballs. And I will say Drift and Outreach. Those are two companies. And funny enough, I don't use their technology, but I love them so much because they have really relevant conversations at what feels like, just like to the right people in the right way. And I think that the content they put out there, really understanding like who they're talking to. So to me, I feel like they're killing it. I don't, you know, I don't know the numbers, so I'm not for sure, like I said, I'm a numbers person, so you never know, but I really like what they're doing.
Kathleen (43:22): That's awesome. And I think that's the truest testament to the, to the effectiveness of what they're doing is that you are not a customer. Doesn't sound like you plan to be really soon, but you know, you're just a fan and that's awesome.
Chere (43:35): Yes. And I'll think twice. I mean, we, we have, we've looked at both technologies. We're not at a place where we're there yet, but when we are, I'm going to be the first one calling in and saying, don't bother showing me the system. I already know everything you guys do. Just sign me up.
Kathleen (43:48): Yeah, that's great. I love that. Well, second question. Most marketers that I talk to, their biggest pain point is just how quickly the world of digital marketing changes and how hard it is to keep up with everything. So how do you personally keep yourself educated?
Chere (44:02): Well, I, in like you are a part of the Revenue Collective, I think that's, that's huge. That group of individuals is so important to me because you get such fast and engaged marketers who share a lot of information. Women in Revenue. I demand, demand or excuse me, Digital Marketer. Saastr. I have a lot of different places that I go read. A lot of books, podcasts. I love what you're doing. I like that you're functional and very specific so that I can go I'm, we're having a problem scaling like, like the one you had, I want to move from 1 million to 10 million, what's the best growth team to have. I mean, I think it's fantastic. And then Sales Hacker is always really good for me. I think in marketing, the more you can know your brethren over in sales and really incorporate and integrate into what you're doing, the better marketer you'll be. And so I, you know, I tell my team that come in, get very familiar with learning all about sales and take take some calls, do some, do some outbound prospecting, because you're going to be much better marketers. So I always advise them, to give them the get some education around, around sales. And so that's a lot of the stuff that, that I go to.
Kathleen (45:21): That's such great advice. I could not agree more. I, I have spent six months working in just a sales role. I mean, I've always done sales because I used to own my own business. And when you're a small business, you're, you're the CEO and the, you know, dishwasher and the chief sales person. But I did spend six months after that working in a purely sales role. And it was the best thing I ever did for my marketing career because it gave me so much more empathy for salespeople and such a better understanding of what they need in order to be set up for success. So totally spot on with that.
Chere (45:53): Yeah, no, I love it.
Kathleen (45:56): So before we wrap up, if somebody wants to learn more about you or connect with you online or check out HammerTech, what's the best way for them to do that?
Chere (46:08): Well, please connect with me on LinkedIn. I, I don't always post as much as everyone else in the world. And I read all the time, like, you know, from Kevin Dorsey and Justin Walsh and everybody, you know, you build your brand and yes, I'm going to be doing that. But please connect with me on LinkedIn. I love having good conversations and that's Virginia Chere Lucett. So LinkedIn is the best, best place. And if you want to check out the company, it's, it's HammerTechglobal.com.
Kathleen (46:35): Awesome. Well, I will put those links in the show notes. And again, if you're listening and you're interested in this conversation and you want to take it offline or well off, off podcast, I guess you know, tweet me, send Virginia a LinkedIn message. You know, I think it would be really interesting to keep this conversation going and to kind of start, start a broader dialogue within the marketing industry about diversity. It's so important. But having said that, that is it for this week. If you are listening and you found value in this episode, or if you're a regular listener and you regularly find value, I would love it if you would head to Apple Podcasts and leave the podcast a five star review because that's how other people find us. And if you're listening and you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, definitely send me a tweet at @workmommywork because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Virginia.
Chere (47:31): Thank you for having me.
What's the secret to getting big results from YouTube ad campaigns?
This week on the Inbound Success podcast, Variable Media founder and CEO Cory Henke covers everything you need to know about YouTube advertising, from who it's right for, to what types of ads are available, how to create impactful ads, how to choose your bidding format and budget, and much, much more.
Cory has an impressive career, having helped brands like Purple Mattresses scale through the use of integrated digital ad campaigns, and he is arguably one of the top YouTube ads experts out there.
Check out the full episode to learn everything you need to know to get started - and get big results from - YouTube advertising.
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the Variable Media website
- Connect with Cory on LinkedIn
- Follow Cory on Twitter @coryhenke
- Email Cory at cory[at]variable.media
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Cory Henke, who is the founder and CEO of Variable Media. Welcome Cory.
Cory (00:22): Hi, thank you. Thank you for having me, Kathleen. And it's a, it's an honor to be here.
Kathleen (00:26): I am really excited to have you here. You have such an interesting background and I love what we're going to talk about today, but without spoiling it first, can you tell my audience a little bit about yourself and also Variable Media?
Cory (00:42): Sure, sure, sure. You know, Los Angeles native, but now live in Utah. And so, you know, got started right out of college, working at agencies and then found an awesome opportunity to work at Yahoo, you know, and that home page and that and that, and they were doing really well. I think in, you know, the mid, mid, the mid thousands of the two thousands. And then from there really, you know, stuck with small companies and so getting a chance to work at a small agency in Utah. And then, you know, when coming out to Utah and working at a small agency, I decided, you know, it's time to develop my own and I'm in developing, you know, our own and working really hard the past, you know, three or four years, we've been able to have some success. And so, you know, it's a, it's a real big confidence builder and I'm, you know, I enjoy what I do every single day. And you know, we wouldn't be, we wouldn't be here without, you know, so many, so much of the the experience to the jobs and the advertisers that we got to work with along the way.
Kathleen (01:35): I love it. And as somebody who used to own an agency for 11 years, I know firsthand how hard it is to build an agency. And so I really, you know, kudos to you for doing it. Side note, if you're listening and it sounds like there's, you know, a freight train in the background, that is a massive thunderstorm that is choosing to hit right as we're recording. So we have this really interesting, like if you, if you're into white noise and rain sounds on your sound maker, careful, this podcast might put you to sleep. But we're going to roll with it. So, so Variable Media, does - you guys do a lot of different things, but one of the things that you're really good at that I am just interested in, because I'm not an expert in it, and I always love to use my podcasts as an excuse to learn more, it's YouTube advertising. And you know, I think it's one of the reasons I'm so interested in it is, obviously YouTube is just this massive search engine. You know, it's getting used more and more. I have a 13 year old. I think it's like the place, maybe aside from Reddit, where he spends, spends the most time. And I think that that's only going to be more true with younger generations. And so, beginning to understand that platform better, I, I feel is very important for any marketer. So you know, I'd love to just hear what you guys are working on. I mean, this is a big topic. So maybe we start with who is YouTube advertising right for?
Cory (03:03): Got it. YouTube advertising is right for every single advertiser. There is not an advertiser that it is wrong for. It is very similar to search, you know, like you mentioned, right? Like if you want somebody to experience their product or service, right? If you want a chance to get in front of them as they're searching for something, whereas they might be in, you know, an in market segment you know, YouTube or Google is the, Google search is the place to do it. I just think YouTube has the advantage because of our short attention spans. The cell phone, video content and the speed of delivery, like you know, we can search for anything and solve something, but to watch somebody do it is very different. And that is the, you know, the majority of, from a search perspective, if somebody's trying to solve a problem. But in my, in my experience, people come to the platform of YouTube for three things, either for entertainment, education, or inspiration, right. And personally, I use it mostly for education. And when you talk about your son, you know, I wonder, you know, which one his would be, right?
Kathleen (04:06): It's 100% entertainment because I can tell you it's either he's watching a gamer play a game while he plays a game or, or he's watching like old episodes of, of, you know, animated TV shows.
Cory (04:22): Yeah.
Kathleen (04:24): I wish it was for education. Maybe we'll get there.
Cory (04:28): I think it will be. It's my, it's my primary source for where I learned so much, you know, as YouTube is learning from peers, learning from conferences. And so I think YouTube will be the democratization of education because, you know, when you can learn from somebody else, you know, through YouTube, it's a, it's a really valuable experience. Because, you know, what did you have to give up for that? You know, potentially five seconds before you hit a skip button.
Kathleen (04:52): Yeah. And especially, I think now with, when we, when we think about COVID driving, you know, kids home from school, they can't be in person, parents trying to homeschool. I've been there. It's not easy. And also just companies, you know, I, it was really interesting. I'm a member of several like Slack groups of people from all different industries and overwhelmingly the feedback I'm hearing is that companies are just not going to go back to what they were before this. And a lot of, a lot of companies were saying, they're going to go 100% remote. And training takes on a different format when that happens. And so I, I couldn't agree more with you that I think that it's only going to grow.
Cory (05:31): Yeah. And if it wasn't important to advertisers before, imagine how important it is now, when somebody can't walk down the street. It's like, how do I get in front of them now? Well, you know, pay a cent, you know, pay six bucks, you know, to reach a thousand people in your neighborhood, you know, via YouTube video, you know, YouTube advertising. So I think, I think it, I think it only grows based on the current climate that we're in.
Kathleen (05:53): So what do you say to someone? I'm putting back on my agency owner hat, cause this is the type of thing I would have heard all the time. What do you say to somebody who says, but my audience isn't on YouTube? I'm trying to reach, you know, an executive level B2B audience and they're not on there.
Cory (06:09): Sure. I think that's when we, you know, get into the strategy of your audience. Right. And as you mentioned, it's a very small audience, it's a CEO. And so my first question is, have you tried, have you tried LinkedIn advertising? Right. And the response could be, yes, I've tried it. And I'm saying like, okay, so, you know, you see the CPMs at $30, you see the CPMs at $6. Right. And that's what it takes to attract them. So once they click through to your website, why don't you set up, you know, every targeting via YouTube and pay a $6 CPM and maybe a dollar click. And then there, you can run your 20 minute, you know, really sales pitch or your 32nd, you know, come back sooner. Right. There's so much opportunity there, you know, to capture, even if it's still, you know, a small audience. So I think there's, you know, again, opportunity for every advertiser. It's just about, you know, how you use it. But I believe every audience, you know, is on, is on YouTube, but I don't believe every person is on YouTube.
Kathleen (07:03): So when somebody comes to you, or a company comes to you, and they're looking for help strategizing their, their paid media program, obviously, as you just pointed out, YouTube, you know, you don't necessarily do it in isolation as part of a broader strategy. But if somebody comes to you and says, I want to advertise on YouTube, how do you, like, what's your thought process? How do you go through kind of conceptualizing what it, what campaigns would look like, how you're going to target audiences and also how YouTube fits within the broader landscape?
Cory (07:33): Sure. I think you know, the big thing that they, for me and my experience working with eCommerce and B2B is that like, it's a lot of direct response. So they're looking at that conversion, right. Sometimes as you mentioned, that conversion can, can can be small, right. I'm only dealing with a couple of purchases right. Versus thousands of purchases. And so then you take it a layer back and go, okay, how is search performing? What are the CPMs on search? How did those CPCs compare? How does Facebook compare? How does LinkedIn compare? It's more of a comparison type of platform where you're trying to find the value in it. Does it work better for retargeting? Am I reaching an in market segment? Because I'm able to leverage Google's search data, right? Maybe you're looking for somebody who's having a life event, you know, graduating college, they're about to get married, right?
Cory (08:19): So you leverage that Google search engine data, but you're using it from a YouTube standpoint, you know, to reach them. And so it would really depend on the audience, the right strategy that I would give them, but I would look at the creative. I would say, what do you have? You know? And talking to founders, it's like, are you willing to get in front of camera, you know, and sell something? That is an important piece of it. If you can do that, man, does that put you in a better place in terms of building multi variation creative to begin to test, and then it's like, you know, how much emphasis do we want to put on this? And what I mean by emphasis is that I work with a lot of baby brands that are female 25 to 34, right. Much better to find them on Instagram. And so it's like, how much energy do you want to put towards YouTube if you are finding more value in those other areas. And so it's really going to depend on client audience spend and just how bad you want that place to perform. And we usually see more advertisers move there when they're trying to scale, Hey, Cory, I've maxed out Facebook brand search, maxed out. How do I get YouTube to work? Okay. Let's take these strategies, let's implement this. Let's implement that.
Kathleen (09:21): And talk me through what are the different formats of YouTube advertising?
Cory (09:25): Sure, sure, sure. There's so many and it's growing, it's on. I, I'm going to miss a few, so no YouTube expert get on here and give me crap for it. But I think the two main ones are in-stream skippable and non skippable. So your non-, your skippable is going to be the ads that, you know, allow you to skip. And those are probably the most popular. And then they recently released the ability to do non skippable. And so they insert those in between ads as well as before them. But they can only be 15 seconds. You usually see higher CPCs cause nobody really clicks there. They want to see their content, but you get a hundred percent completion rate. It's kind of the advantage of the non skippable. So you also have a bumper ad, which would be a five second ad. And so it's not great from an introduction to a brand, but if you're trying to retarget somebody, right. Usually comes about one third the cost of something that is like skippable or non-scalable, but that's only a five second ad. And then
Kathleen (10:24): Skippable and non skippable, always at the beginning.
Cory (10:27): No, you could have a non skippable be in in between and then your skippable is always in the beginning.
Kathleen (10:34): And what about the bumpers?
Cory (10:36): The bumpers will always be in the beginning.
Kathleen (10:38): And what's the difference between a bumper and the other formats? I'm going to ask a lot of dumb questions.
Cory (10:42): No, you asked all the necessary questions. So a bumper is only five seconds. And so it's very quick, you know? So you're looking at like more of a $3 CPM versus like a nine. And so you can reach a larger audience with that, but with five seconds they better already know who your brand is. So you usually find like a, like a tier one, like a Coca Cola or like a Nissan using something like that to really stretch the region and apply that impression. Almost like a billboard. Right.
Kathleen (11:10): So is it a bumper, is it distinguished as a bumper only, just because of the length of time that you're going to? Okay. And then just from listening to you talk about skippable and non skippable, it sounds to me, and I could be making the wrong conclusion here, that if that I would do a non skippable ad, if, if my goal was to like tell a very specific story or expand my brand reach, whereas I would do a skippable if I wanted the click through, if I wanted the conversion.
Cory (11:41): Yes, yes, yes, exactly. There's a lot of advantages to skippable, like and put the bumper. And with non skippable, you're kind of finite, right? Five, 15 beginning or middle with the, with the skippable you have unlimited LinkedIn video. I've run a video for DenTek. That was 20 minutes long where you went into, where you went into like a Vinyasa yoga after like, you know, doing like a little skit. It was, it was a, it was a great creative. We did it, the first agency that I moved out to Utah with. Molio. And what that did is, you saw that wow, 10% of people completed that. You got people calling corporate and saying, wow, thank you so much for creating this app. And it was just the fact that we were able to do it. You could run a 20 minute ad there. You could take your podcast, upload it to YouTube and just run it as an app.
Cory (12:28): That's literally the possibility from a skippable standpoint. And then the great thing about the skip is that you only pay for the user after 30 seconds. And so if they decided to cut out in between five or 30, you'd never paid for the user. Only after 30 seconds, you're charged on a cost per view and that's somebody getting past 30 seconds. And so we've always said zero to 30 seconds. You have such an amazing opportunity. So really brand educate, tell a story, solve a problem, reintroduce the brand again, and then see if they want to continue.
Kathleen (13:02): Certainly speaks to the importance of like coming out strong from the gate. So we have skippable non skippable bumper.
Cory (13:09): Yup.
Kathleen (13:11): Anything else?
Cory (13:11): We have, I'm blanking on the name and it makes me want to open up Google ads.
Cory (13:19): This this feature allows you to place a video based on what video, what, what interaction they had with the video before. So if you run a skippable ad and somebody skips, you can choose what video that person sees next. Or if that person stays tops 30 seconds and becomes a view, they might get a different video. And then based on that video, they could get one video or a different video. And so sequential messaging, that's what it's called. And so you can do sequential messaging, which I think is really great for B2B. We use it a lot for B2B, which is just like, okay, they stayed through this video. This is great. Okay. They skip that video. Let's show them something funny again and see if they can read, they get back and engage with our brand. Okay.
Cory (13:59): Let's take it down this funnel. Very, very, very cool tactic. I think one of the more newer you know, features, and again, this isn't like it's a, you know, YouTube is very unique in terms of their placements, but they just came out with the lead form. So you can add a lead form to your video now, so you can fill out that lead. Right. As you know, you're watching the video and this has been game changing for B2B brands that we've been working with. I think a new one is that they used to have like shopping cards, like on the video and they would show products. But now you can drop down that feature and it'll carousel the products. And so you can see more. And so you can see YouTube advancing. Some of the other ad units that are on YouTube is you have like a small bar that goes kind of like a cross in the video.
Cory (14:51): And you would usually buy that in like more of the display area, but it comes in on YouTube. You have the, or you used to, they don't really have that placement anymore, but there used to be a square placement on the top right. I don't think they do it anymore.
Kathleen (15:06): I remember that.
Cory (15:07): And then before you had to call Google to place those 15 seconds, you know? I always get confused. Non skippable, right? You used to have to call Google. Now you call Google to place that hero ad when you go to the YouTube homepage. And so that's one that you can, that you can pay, you know, half a million.
Kathleen (15:27): That's like the Superbowl ad of YouTube.
Cory (15:29): I have to call my friends in Los Angeles. We work on big brands, you know, to really get the insight on what those cost. But that would be, you know, the collection of them. Oh, and then there's a new one, which I am super excited about because I've always felt that YouTube has a lean back format, very similar to TV. I go there for video, everything in feed. Like Instagram and Facebook to me is more like a slot machine. Right. I'm leaned forward. I don't know what's going to come next. And so I'm just scrolling, right? And so when you take YouTube from a lean back and move it into lean forward, because you have a feed in YouTube, you have your own feed of your subscriptions and you have like the home theater and you have the trending feed. You're now able to put ads in there. And so it's interesting how you can take somebody from lean forward. Right? I just want the slot machine. I just want content. Like, I get the algorithm. You know what I'm watching. Give me something I want. And then you stick an ad in there where it's one click to a long form video. I don't think that's been done yet. You know? And so that's one teacher that we're really focusing on is how to really maximize that discovery feed and drive them either to a video or take them potentially offsite off platform.
Kathleen (16:36): There's different formats. How does the cost differ between these formats? Are there certain that have dramatically higher CPCs or CPMs?
Cory (16:48): Sure. I think in focusing just on like view metrics, like cost per view, which is what you're going to pay on when buying YouTube and like CPM, your most expensive is going to be your non skippable 15. That is probably going to be your most expensive, and you're not going to get a lot of engagement. You're not going to get a lot of clicks. And so, you know, you're really using that as a brand tool. I think after that, you know, you're probably looking at a skippable being the next most expensive. But again, there's so much inventory that you can make that pretty cheap. But you'll never get that as cheap as probably bumpers will be at five seconds, you know? And that's really good.
Kathleen (17:22): How does the cost on YouTube compare to other platforms? Like, is it less or more? Cause, I mean, I'm assuming LinkedIn is the most expense.
Cory (17:29): The problem is, you know, Kathleen, is that there's no fair comparison and that is the sucky part about it is that like when you're in the feed and you get hit with the video on Facebook, you're in a lean forward environment. So you're going to engage for a smaller amount of time. Like, you know, you go to, you go to YouTube strictly for video, you know, your mind is just to spend time there. And so it's hard to compare like that 30 second skippable versus like a 30, somebody watching 30 seconds on Facebook. I would say the person watching 30 seconds on Facebook, far more engaged, you know? To get them to stay for 30 seconds, it's much harder, you know, than I think that it is on YouTube. And so I hate that it's a, that you'd have to compare these two, but I would say if you want somebody to stay with your video longer, if you want somebody to engage with your brand and watch your video, you would put that on YouTube.
Cory (18:17): If you want somebody to see your video and then click through, you would more likely put it into the feed. But you can make each of their rates comparable based on what tactic you take because before YouTube and YouTube, well, Google specifically would only really give you one way to buy things. You can buy things on a cost per view, but now you can do target cost per action. You can do maximize conversions, a lot of different bid types, which can affect the cost of things. And so it works the same way on Facebook video views versus conversion campaigns versus traffic campaigns. And so you can manipulate them to get them really low, but ultimately it's going to depend on the advertiser's goals. And you've worked in agencies enough to know that in the great words of any advertiser, well, it depends. Right?
Kathleen (19:02): Right. I mean, that was gonna be my next question is, how do you know which bid format to use?
Cory (19:09): You know, testing. And that's the big thing that we do nowadays is really test different bid types. And it's been one of the keys to driving better performance. I think in my consulting relationships, the past six months have been optimizing the bid types and learning from just the statistics that YouTube can give you.
Kathleen (19:29): And how many, like when you're starting, I guess it's, again, it depends on budget, I'm assuming, but when you start a campaign, how many different tests are you generally running in parallel in the beginning?
Cory (19:42): Sure. I think we take, like, we look at like first level and second level variables when we start. Now first level, now the variables really depend on like what's most important. And so my first level of variables that I'm going to look at are type, device, age and maybe household income or another one that made sense specific to the brand. And then second level variables would be more like, you know, the, the the audiences, right? Like I can, I got thousands of audiences that I can choose from, you know, unless something is particular. So, and market versus customer affinity versus search audience versus going placement specific. Those are kind of second level. And so at the first level, I'm really trying to say, okay, can I meet my advertisers' performance? Can I exceed it by just maybe going desktop or mobile only, or mobile, California, Texas, New York. They're better in big States and with household income above 10%. Right. I take the first level of variables that really drive the best performance. And then we move onto the second level. Once we have that, like really buttoned up, bid type would be the first one that you would want to look at.
Kathleen (20:48): Have you seen any drop in mobile viewing with people stuck at home more with COVID?
Cory (20:57): No, I haven't seen a drop in mobile, you know, viewing. I think the thing that I've seen probably over the years is it, is an improvement in mobile conversion. We used to see the desktop used to convert a lot and now they convert about the same. And so we can see that there's more people that have I think advanced their understanding of how to purchase online via a mobile device. Yeah.
Kathleen (21:20): Yeah. That's interesting. So somebody, somebody comes to you, they're all bought in. They're ready to go. Obviously this is YouTube. So you're advertising with video. Are there any best practices that you talk with people about in terms of when they are creating their video assets for advertising?
Cory (21:41): Yeah, there is absolutely a number one best practice. There's a number one best practice, and I don't want anybody who listens to this to miss this if they decide to do YouTube advertising, and that is variation testing. If you're going to build for you to at least build two versions, but this is the most important part, make sure that there's variation in the beginning of the video. Okay. Do not give me a variation at the end of the video, there's a fraction of people that are going to end it. Everybody starts it and don't make that variation, you know, something similar, make it a little bit different. So you see the difference. You want one of the D rates to be at 15% and you want the other one to be at 35%. You know, you want to see that variation. So make sure they're a little different. Wildly different.
Cory (22:22): Maybe you might say because you want to see that difference, but that is the number one thing that you want to do because not only are you going to improve performance because there's going to be a winner between those two, right? If there's a difference, I'm going to say, okay, that one, it's a higher view rates, cheaper costs. Let's go with that one. But you learn more about your YouTube audience. That is the key is that the money's going to pay for the impressions, the clicks and whatever performance you get out of it. What, in addition, you get from YouTube versus any other, you know, search let's say, right, because there's no visual, there is that you'll learn what your audience gravitates towards. Right. Is it you speaking face to camera? Is it this type of intro? Is it this music in the beginning? Is it, you know, you being funny with this opener? Was it that opener, right? That is, I think is the goldmine of YouTube is the consumer research that you're able to attain by going after different audiences, these very variables and the data that you get back. So when you find that 54 plus, 10% household income watches completes your video at 19% at age and 18 to 24 completes our video at 7%, it really shows you a different interest level. And when the audiences are so different in terms of their time in life, it's like, okay, I know a little bit more now. Right.
Kathleen (23:38): That's so interesting. And is there any target that you tend to shoot for with video completion rates or is it just completely like a metric?
Cory (23:47): You're obviously going to get higher completion rates, you know, with 45 second videos or minute videos. And the longer the video, the lower, I think it's really gonna depend on the content, but I think what you'll want to look at for a barometer is view rate. And so that's people making it past 30 seconds. And so if your view rate is below 25%, you can work on that. You know, like that can get better. You can convince somebody to stay a little bit longer if you have your rates at 25% or below. But if it's above 35%, that's about average. If you're reaching your rates around 45%, 50% of people are making it past 30 seconds. What are you doing? Give me a call. You know? So no, it's it's exciting. And I, I encourage people to focus, focus on the view rate because that is what I think affects your pricing, is that the higher your view rate YouTube looks at like, okay, this is a good ad. We want to keep this on the platform. People are staying with this ad past 30 seconds. When people say less than 30 seconds, I feel like YouTube goes, okay, let's charge them a little bit more, you know, this isn't that great. You know, people aren't staying past let's, let's, let's do that.
Kathleen (24:49): And how should people think about managing their YouTube ads? Like how closely do they need to watch them? How often should they be checking in and changing things, et cetera?
Cory (24:56): You know, I mean, Google would probably tell me not to do this, but you know, we optimize all the time. You know, we look at it, you know, daily, you know, like every few days, if we're managing the accounts. Some of the accounts I consult for, you know, I jump in once a week and I give them feedback. And you know, I think you should at least be looking at it once a week at the least. But I think, you know, every few days I think it's important to get in there because there's learning attached to it. You know, you'll learn about your audience. And, you know, I think making tweaks that are important, although from the, from the clients that I talked to you they're upset, you know, leave things on, don't touch them. You know, I don't know. Maybe I'm the optimizing guy who just likes to get in there and make a bunch of changes, but you know, things work out well for us. So I don't think there's one right way or another, and that's why we base everything on the data that we analyze.
Kathleen (25:42): So what about budget? Is there a minimum amount that you think an advertiser needs to be able to commit in order to just have enough data to come to any?
Cory (25:52): I don't $5, $1 tomorrow. Yeah. You have a YouTube video. You have a YouTube channel get started, you know, because what you're going to do is you're going to be surprised is you're going to say, wow, I didn't know somebody would stay that long. This was an ad happens every single time. And it's just, I think we put a lot of hurdles in front of ourselves. I think every human does, you know? Myself included, you know? Instead of just trying, instead of just throwing it out there and saying, Hey, what can happen? But I've seen it every single time somebody does it. There's, they're wildly surprised that like, wow, I didn't think somebody would listen to it. Well, you know, Google's targeted. We searched for everything. They know so much about us. They're going to find the right people. So I encourage anybody, you know, even if you spend $5 a day, a dollar a day, it's not a problem. You know, there's a platform there where you can do it.
Kathleen (26:35): And anything that, that advertisers should not do on YouTube?
Cory (26:43): Yes. Okay. So here's what, here's what not to do. If you're an advertiser and you are developing an ad and you're trying to sell a product where somebody needs to watch the video, then I don't want you to target any music channels. Okay. Do not target any music channels, because if the music is a part of your collection of who you're targeting, they could not be watching it. They could only be listening to it. And so we found that in an app that we were running, you know, is that, wow, you know, we're getting such high view rates on music, but they're not converting. And it's like, Oh, the high view rates, it's because they're just letting the 15 second play through, you know, they're not even seeing it or like anything. And so that's where you can sometimes find, you know, losses, you know. And sometimes it turns you away where like, Oh, this thing doesn't work. And it's just, you know, you gotta look at it. And so I would tell every time every advertiser thinks about music advertising because there's a lot of that on YouTube and they will sneak that in, you know, if you choose a broad audience. And so you know, make sure you exclude those music channels if you want somebody to see your ad.
Kathleen (27:49): It's a great point. Just thinking about how people on YouTube are interacting with the content that they're watching, where your ad is going to be placed, or watching or not watching, I guess I should say. That's a really good point. Now you've worked with companies in a variety of industries. Can you share any examples of clients or campaigns that you've worked on that have, that have done successful YouTube advertising?
Cory (28:14): Yeah. I mean you know, the reason, you know, why I'm here today? I think talking about YouTube is for, is because of Purple, you know, the Purple mattress brand. When I was working at my previous agency, you know, month, one, 50 K they're spending on YouTube. Month, three, half a million, you know? And so it kind of grew them, but it was a combination of efforts. You know, it was a great creative developed by the Harmon brothers. And then, you know, them coming to Molio for the data and analytics, we were able to put it together and make it happen. And after that, you know, starting my own company, I went to go consult for them for a bit and help them, you know, continue to excel in that area. So that would be one, I think, you know, one of the more unique ones was trying to get YouTube to work for a female baby brand.
Cory (28:57): You know, this was a unique one where I just couldn't get it to work. I couldn't get it towork. And then I started to see the conversions come in and I'm like, Oh, this is great. Right. And so, you know, when you start seeing the conversions come in, you're like, okay, I'm getting this to work, but it's still not great, but it's working a little bit. So what you do is you analyze a placement report. So what the placement report shows you is the contents that they converted on. Right. They converted on your ad, but the content that they were going to watch. Right. yeah. So just trying to learn more about like, why are they converting? Like, let me take these conversions and see what they were going to watch before I converted. Before they converted. And what I've found for this baby brand was the fact that all the women were in front of like hurricanes, CNN content. Yeah. And it kind of threw me for a loop. It was just like all this disaster content they're converting in front of. And so what it showed me was that the fear,
Kathleen (29:54): It was like trigger, triggering their, their mothering, like I need to prepare for the end of days stuff.
Cory (29:59): Exactly, exactly. And so that's why I said, there's so much consumer research tied into, you know, YouTube campaigns, but it's what helped so many other areas of their business. Like that was a thing, is that like, yes, Cory appreciate the insight. And while we couldn't get YouTube to work, I now know the messaging that I need for X, Y, Z platform in this path though. You know, there's case studies like that. I think you know, more recently we have a B2B brand that is spending, you know, a lot each month, and you know, they're in the education space and we've been able to take their CPA down. I think we cut it in half by just switching to, you know, a better bid strategy focusing on audiences and really looking at this stuff day over day. I think YouTube is one of the platforms that you can really optimize, you know, and I don't think anybody is you know, has made it kind of like their expertise yet. Like, I don't think like Facebook, everybody's a Facebook expert, right? It was in our feed all the time. And it's just, you know, I don't think anybody's talked through this this YouTube thing, but I think there's, there, there's opportunity there. So, you know, in the B2B space, eCommerce space, I think it's, I think it's good.
Kathleen (31:09): So one of the things I'm really curious about, with so many options, is I work with a lot of startups and they're, they're, you know, high growth companies that are, they want to be high growth companies. When you are, you know, when you're small and nobody's heard of you, maybe you have a great product and you go to advertise, how do you think about like correlating that with the format of advertising? And what I mean by that is, do you generally take an approach where you recommend they invest in like raising brand awareness first and then follow more with lead gen or the reverse? Or is it just always kind of a complete mix of both? Like, how does that make sense in terms of calibrating, the, the goals and the format of their advertising to the trajectory of their growth path?
Cory (32:00): Difficult question. But I mean, I would say, you know, to start with a multi-platform approach, you know? I think there's enough tutorials and there's enough stuff out here. I think for any founder or CEO, very smart people, you know, if they can build, you know a platform and app, you know, a company, I think they can do well enough to launch, you know, a Google ads account as well as a Facebook ads account. And so when you launch those two platforms, you get Instagram, Facebook, Google discovery, Google display, which stretches across so many different websites, premium, you get YouTube and you get Google search. That is six, you know, you put between like tier one and tier two platforms depending on the product or service that you have. And so I would say with those two platforms and Google analytics, how much can you possibly learn about your audience?
Cory (32:57): Even just spending five grand, you know, spending 500 per platform. But that's what I would put a startup. That's where I would put their growth if they did that for three months, you know? And again, the more money they have to start with the advertising. Again, the more they're going to learn. If you did that for three months, like how much more would, you know, right. You take that information, you go back, you retool and then you go at it again. And so I think it's kind of like a sprint and learn. Let's sprint, let's learn, let's sprint, let's learn. And then, okay, what do we know? I think a lot gets lost in the data. I think a lot gets lost of, Oh, let's throw in these campaigns. Oh, what did we learn? Oh, I don't know. We switched agencies. Oh, you know, so, and so is here.
Cory (33:33): We hired him as an intern. And so it makes, it makes us industry very elusive. But I still think that any founder, you know, I'm challenging those founders out there, you know, there's Facebook, UI, Google UI, Google analytics, three platforms, you learn those things. Even at a basic level. You can, you can learn so much about a brand because what I continue to hear more is that the marketing and advertising is the most important piece. Now it used to be the technology. And now it's like, no, you can have great technology, but if you can't market it, you know, this stuff. So that's what I would say is I would say minimal spend those two platforms. You can learn an extreme amount, you know, about an audience and you can reach as many people as you want. And small audiences, big audiences.
Kathleen (34:18): And how long do you, how long do you go before you abandon it? Meaning like, if you're trying YouTube advertising, you know, you're doing different experiments, but you're just not seeing results. I was just talking with a marketer the other day about exactly this, where he's like, pay-per-click is just not working for us. I've tried, I've tried, I've tried different messaging, different images, different platforms, different channels. How long do you let it go?
Cory (34:43): I don't know. You know, I don't know. I think you know, I, when I, when I think about marketing and what I've always told our advertisers, like personally, is that I can't guarantee results. I can't double your business. I might do it, but I, I can't guarantee that. What I can guarantee you though, is that advertising is an amplification. So what do you have to amplify, sir? You know, what am I going to amplify? And the brands that I see do the best, do their piece, you know? Like I can't solve the world. And so when I think about like, Hey, you know, when do you give it up? It's like, I don't think you ever give it up. You slow it down and you figure out how to make it work, you know, in my opinion. But you know, there was a LinkedIn post that came out the other day that said, you know, is there a brand that has succeeded without advertising? Brands or brand that have succeeded without doing paid ads? And I immediately responded. I said, absolutely not.
Kathleen (35:38): Well, there wasoOne in the beginning. I know Spanx. They didn't advertise at all in the beginning, but now they do. I mean, like at some point you can't avoid it forever. Right?
Cory (35:52): Absolutely. And they go through the whole list and there's really only one today that doesn't do it and that's Tesla, but Costco is another one back in the day that never did it, you know. And they do it now and everybody does it now. And because it's important. So I wouldn't tell a brand, you know, to give it up. I tell it to more. I tell them more to slow it down and then, you know, retool the product. How can we cut the product in half? How can we get more people to use it? Because I think the more conversions you see in the beginning, the more that you can eat it in the beginning. And see the conversions, the more you know about your audience, you know, for the next that's, what I've seen work well, is that like the brands that really know how to eat it in the beginning, take the lower conversion rate, take the lower return on ad spend, really take that one to one and not make the best amount of money, learn the most about their audience. And what a lot of advertisers fail to think about is that just because that impression didn't convert that day or that 30 days of just cause that clicked in convert that day, that 30 days you still branded them, they still saw it and they could come back one day.
Cory (36:47): So we failed to believe in those impressions and clicks and really focus on the conversions. But that's what I would say, you know, because I wouldn't give up on the advertising. It's, it's the one way to reach people. It's the one way to put your brand in front of people. We were having this argument the other day. We would call them. You want to call them.
Kathleen (37:07): Without advertising it's definitely winning ugly. That's for sure. Well shifting gears, because we will run out of time if I keep going on this and I could forever. There's so much to learn about YouTube. You know, on this podcast we're all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you can think of that that's really killing it with inbound right now?
Cory (37:32): I don't know. I'd say Joe Martinez and then Michelle I, you know, they've got their Paid Media Pros, you know, YouTube channel and you know, in my opinion, that's the best inbound marketing, you know? I remember, you know, recently I came across a guy that was doing, you know, just a live stream of him talking about, you know, mortgage rates. And I ended up calling him the next day or texting with him and it's like, this is, this is new. This is for it. Like, how did this happen? And so you know, I follow their channel, I watch a lot of this stuff. And I think if I was going to run any sort of media, you know, like that would be who I would go to if it wasn't somebody on my team. And so I don't think they're reaching out, but I think it's a very passive way, you know, to show education expertise. And the fact that I can get face to camera and tell you about my business.
Kathleen (38:21): Oh, that's great. I'll definitely put a link to that in the show notes. Second question is, all the marketers I talk to, their biggest pain point is keeping up with all the changes in digital marketing. You know, even YouTube is a great example. It's changing so fast. On this podcast, you mentioned like new ad formats and, and things that are changing. So how do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated?
Cory (38:45): I think you know, if you have a rep, you know, stay very close to your rep at these platforms. Ask them to send you, you know, new things. Ask to be a part of, you know, alphas and betas. I think when it comes to those, a lot of different YouTube channels, I think are talking about paid media in the right way. It is hard to filter through it in our industry because you have a lot of, you know, pay me for this course, pay for that course. But I think I find the most, most value in some of the you know, presentations that are posted to YouTube. Some of the podcasts, you know, out there that like, like your own. But the YouTube, I think, presentations for like media posts, you know, some of the European ones that I watch I think are just really good, you know, education sources for me.
Kathleen (39:34): Great. All right. Well, this has been so interesting. Cory, if somebody is listening and they want to learn more about Variable Media or they want to connect with you, what is the best way for them to reach out and connect with you on that?
Cory (39:49): It would be @Coryhanke on Twitter, and then Cory[at]variable.media, you know, if they want to reach out. But yeah, open book. Should be some questions.
Kathleen (39:57): And that's C O R Y for anybody listening. H E N K E. Again, I'll put those links in the show notes. So head there to check that out if you want to reach out to Cory. And if you're listening and you learned something new today, of course, I would love it if you would leave the podcast a five star review on Apple podcasts. That's how we get found by more listeners. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork because you never know, they could be the next person I interview. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Cory. This was really interesting.
Cory (40:30): Thank you, Kathleen. It's been awesome. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
How would you change your digital marketing spend if you knew with 100% certainty what was driving results?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Joel Maldonado of Path Interactive talks about the attribution modeling work that won Path Interactive the first ever Google Display Innovation Award.
Joel and the team at Path Interactive were working with their client iCIMS to improve the company's ability to understand the performance of its marketing channels, and as part of the project, they built a custom attribution model that tied various software programs iCIMS was using to Google. Using the model, they were able to determine that Google display advertising was actually driving 7x more results than they originally thought. Based on this data, the company increased its spend on Google ads and in conjunction with that, its marketing results.
In this episode, Joel breaks down exactly how Path Interactive was able to construct an attribution model that gave iCIMS complete clarity ab out what was driving its marketing results, and showcases why it's so important to get attribution right.
Check out the full episode to learn more.
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the Path Interactive website
- Connect with Joel on LinkedIn
Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Joel Maldonado, who is the Acquisition and Growth Lead for Digital Media at Path Interactive. Welcome Joel, how are you?
Joel (00:25): Doing well? How are you?
Kathleen (00:26): I'm great. I'm really excited to chat with you. And before we get started, could you tell my listeners a little bit about yourself? What's your background? What do you do at Path and what does the company do?
Joel (00:41): Sure. So I'm Joel. My background is I, I I've, I've been in the industry since 2011. So nearly a decade, which makes me feel old. But I went to school at Villanova University. So out of Philly, and kind of moved to New York immediately after, and I've been in the marketing industry ever since. I started working my career in a couple, a couple of startups, Target Spot and My Supermarket. And since 2013, I've been lucky enough to be at Path Interactive for the past seven years. And really, what we do is we're a full service digital agency. So we manage paid media campaigns. We have an SEO service channel. We also have an analytics team that does a lot of like pixel implementation, reporting infrastructure, custom integrations, which we might get into some of that today, as well as conversion rate optimizations.
Joel (01:38): We have a creative team that kind of does a couple of functions. They design and build websites, and they also really work as our in house creative to support any media campaigns or social engagements that we have going on. So its really just kind of across the board, a full service digital agency. We also do video production. So kind of covering all of our bases there at Path Interactive. I kind of wear a couple hats. So I am on the paid media team or service channel at Path. So I kind of lead my own team and have my own book of business and clients that I manage and those relationships and those budgets on a monthly basis. But I'm also, I also sit on the leadership team at Path, which really for us, that's more about really guiding the strategic vision of the company over the next couple of years, as well as trying to make sure that we continue to make Path Interactive a better place to work for our employees. So that's something that we do on an ongoing basis every two weeks to really hammer home those two goals.
Kathleen (02:49): That's great. And, and I got connected with you because you were doing paid media work for a friend of mine who's head of marketing for a company down in Florida, and she was just so impressed by the work you had done. So immediately I thought, I've got to talk to this guy. That's how I find a lot of my guests, is just hearing about the great work that they're doing, you know, and it's interesting. So you're on the paid media side and within paid media, there's obviously so many different channels. But then the company also does, as you said, all kinds of different things like websites and video and lead generation campaigns, et cetera. You know, one of the, I feel like one of the holy grails for marketers is attribution. At the end of the day, being able to report to the rest of the company, you know, how the dollars they're spending and how the activities they're engaged in are translating into revenue, but it's such a hard problem to solve, especially when you've got activities in all these different areas. And so I know you've done some work around figuring out attribution and you guys have actually won some awards for the work you've done in that area. Is that right?
Joel (03:59): Yeah, absolutely. So, and I think it was back 2017 or 2018, we won the very first Google Display Innovation Award for work we've done with iCIMS which is basically, they're a talent acquisition SaaS software company based out of New Jersey. And it's been a company that's grown a lot over the years. And they, they, they handle kind of a few different things within the talent acquisition space. Most of what they do is recruiting, but they also do what's called kind of recruitment marketing. And they, they had some acquisitions along the way. So, so now they have kind of extensions of, of some of their recruiting and talent acquisition products and services. So it's, it's definitely an interesting company that's, you know, they're based in technology. So they kind of understand the need for using technology to not just grow your company, but also improve your products. So I think it was, it made sense that we're able to work closely with them to kind of grow their, their customer base and their marketing budgets.
Kathleen (05:04): So can you tell me a little bit about kind of the challenge they came to you with and, and what was the work that you did for them?
Joel (05:12): Yeah, so the challenge with iCIMS, what we've been working with them for, I want to say six to seven years now. So they have been a long time client. When we started with them, they, they wanted to kind of grow their overall customer base but they were very focused in, on kind of last click attribution and, and really judging everything that they do based on last click attribution. And at the time they did have a sizeable display budget and based on kind of the current metrics that they were dealing with they, they kind of saw that display was, was almost this kind of wasteful spend. It didn't really lead to opportunities, which is really the way they grow their businesses is through opportunities. And based on their technology and their measurement capabilities at the time, what their numbers were, what they were telling them was that their display spend was, was unprofitable or, or was. So the challenge for us was to, to really understand what was happening with their display spend and, and understand if any of it was impactful and, and how it was impacting some of their search budget or some of their other marketing channels.
Joel (06:32): So we knew that we needed to really get better measurement tools in place and better attribution in place to understand how to tweak their display budgets and tactics to really grow their business. Does that make sense?
Kathleen (06:46): How did you go about doing that? And, and I mean, what, I guess, if you could get into also the tech stack behind it and let's get into all the gory details.
Joel (06:56): Absolutely. Yeah. So we started by building out our own custom integrations. So we have a few tools that we use depending on kind of what our client's needs are. So one of those is Marin software, which is a bid management tool. So we were able to build an integration from the client's CRM, which is Salesforce in this case, to Marin software, which was our bid management tool. So what we did there, was we essentially created a framework where anyone that gets to the client's website is given sort of this unique identifier. It's something that's not PII or personal information, its just, you know, an alpha numeric code or a number that's on there. And what we do with that is, when someone is assigned that number, as soon as they get to the site, when they fill out a lead capture form, we have some hidden fields and some technology behind the lead capture form that will essentially record that number.
Joel (08:01): And what that does is, you know, let's say they have Pardot or a HubSpot which, which is what powers their forms, that number will kind of follow them along the sales cycle at all of the different stages. And when it gets to any particular milestone that's important to us, such as opportunity stage, that information is sent from Salesforce back to our Marin software so that we can see from, you know, whether it's a channel level all the way down to the creative and keyword level, what types of creatives, keywords or tactics are really driving opportunities. And that, that was kind of like a phase one of, of how we really started to, to fine tune and grow their customer base. Now, the challenges with this piece was that you know, at, at that time, everything was still a click based model, right?
Joel (08:57): So you know, Marin's pixels and things like that, they, they really record all activity on the website, but it's all click based activity. So from there, once we were able to really fine tune their, their search budgets and their display budgets a little bit better from a last click standpoint, but more so less on what drives front end leads or lead captures and really emphasize on what drives opportunities. Then we really start to get an understanding of, of kind of what works on a last click basis. But we knew that, you know, display was still something that, that we needed to tackle and get underneath. And we knew that display is not just going to have an impact on your advertising from a click based standpoint. It's also going to have value from an impression based standpoint where people are seeing those ads and, you know, they visit the website you have through paid search, organic search or even direct.
Joel (09:53): And so display really wasn't getting credit for, for some of that. So we still had to find a way to, to understand more of the display side. And, and, you know, the limitations of that first integration weren't gonna allow us to do that. So we started looking elsewhere and we landed on using Google analytics to be able to, to try to tie back impressions to all of that, all that performance. So we kind of use the same methodology in terms of assigning this alphanumeric number to anyone that visits the website and, and using Salesforce to communicate that back to another system. And when we integrated that process with Google analytics, with Google Analytics 360, you are able to see not just click based interactions, but also impression based interactions and how that influences other channels throughout the entire conversion funnel. So, you know, we, we basically essentially created a second custom integration where we upload a, what we call offline data, which is just data that comes from Salesforce, and what happens to someone who reaches a critical milestone or, or stage such as opportunity. And we would load that back into Google analytics, again, marrying the marketing data with the CRM data. And that's when we really started to understand how our displacement was influencing our search span and even organic channels, email, and all the other channels. Yeah.
Kathleen (11:28): I have so many questions. I guess the first one is, all of this starts with this unique identifier, from what I understand. So I get the concept of, like, for example, I use HubSpot, and if somebody comes to the site, they fill out a form. I understand the concept of having a hidden field that they don't see, but that you've prepopulated if you will. So when they submit the form, that goes into their contact record. But how are you generating that random number for that field?
Joel (12:03): Yeah. So in the past, you know, we kind of just created our own using some, some code and logic. Most recently we've found it's been more efficient to use, what's called a GA Client ID or Client ID. So Google analytics essentially does the same, same thing. You know, when someone gets to the website, they actually try to assign an alpha numeric number so that they can you know, tie back all of these sessions and user behavior through analytics. So we just started to take you back off of, off of that and really use that as a form of tying everything back together.
Kathleen (12:40): So is, is the only way to connect those two things like let's say HubSpot and that Google Analytics unique identifier, the only way to do that through a custom integration, or are there any out of the box tools?
Joel (12:53): I did, I don't believe there's any out of the box tools that, that I know of. You know, if you think about Google ads that Google ads has like auto tagging, which they use a what's called a GCLID or a Google Click ID, and essentially the very similar alphanumeric number that Google Analytics knows how to kind of decode that and translate that into campaign creatives and keywords and things like that. But our integrations don't just work in the Google universe. They, they work outside of that which, which I think is very beneficial.
Kathleen (13:29): So basically anybody coming through from Safari or Firefox or any of any of the different browsers would, you'd be able to accomplish this.
Joel (13:42): Yeah, so we, we have the same information for Google as we do Bing, which, most of what we do for iCIMS is, is in Google and Microsoft ads interfaces. But essentially, you can adapt this to Facebook or LinkedIn and other things. And we also get data on their organic search behavior and what they're doing with email and things like that.
Kathleen (14:05): So you assign the unique identifier, which basically tells you from the first conversion you're able to identify, okay, this is, this is that particular unique visitor. And then that identifier, if you have a good Google Analytics set up and marketing automation set up that can carry through to all their different activities on the site. So you mentioned click and impression, and I want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly, because this is not my area of expertise. So I may ask some dumb questions. Like, as a HubSpot user, I know that HubSpot will cookie, as soon as they fill out the form, they're going to get cookied. And so HubSpot will, will follow everything they do on the site. But when you say you're tracking impressions, does that mean you're, you're tracking impressions of the ads and marrying that with impression data from the website?
Joel (14:59): So it's not more, it's that impression data, well, I guess more so you're talking about like the visit visitation data from the website. So what with the Google Analytics 360, if you're running Google Display Network and, you know, your display budget through that interface, because the Google ecosystem that will communicate to Google Analytics, if those products are linked together. So if Google ads is linked up with Google Analytics and so even before someone visits the website, you're getting that, that impression data right now, when someone actually visit the website, we're getting that client ID and passing it through. And then marrying that back into Marin in Google Analytics so that we can see okay, this, these opportunities began within with a display impression. They may have converted somewhere else, like direct or paid search, even branded paid search. But it all started with a display impression.
Kathleen (16:02): Wow. And so is the only reason that you're able to tie this together in a completely holistic way that is, is it because you're using that Google Analytics identifier and carrying that through all the way, and that's why you can marry everything they do before they get to the site with what they do on the site, as well as what they do after they leave the site.
Joel (16:25): Yeah. The, the identifier is definitely the key piece. And even if it's not, you know, within the Google interface you should you'll with that identifier, you'll be able to tie back probably the extra piece where if you're running your display advertising through Google, then you'll also get the impression data, which is going to be helpful.
Kathleen (16:49): Wow. So this is like crazy amazing for marketers, because it sounds like you're able to really see every single touch that you have with this person. But I imagine for somebody who's listening, it would might be kind of creepy for a customer to know that a company can see all of that.
Joel (17:15): Yeah, definitely the, the kind of the age that we're living in. But it's, it's critical for marketers to, to and advertisers to understand particularly around their, their display budgets and how that is influencing other things. I forget, I think it was Brad Wanamaker who said, you know, like 50% of my ad budget is wasted. I just don't know which half. So this is something that really allows us to understand what half or whatever the percentage is, is wasteful, so that we can really move that budget and reallocate to things that we know are working and driving opportunity value.
Kathleen (17:56): So you set this all up, you have all the data coming in. I'm really curious to know what you learned. Like, were there any big surprises that came out of the data?
Joel (18:07): Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So if you look at only a click based model about only 4% of opportunities are given credit to display but with, with this revamped attribution model, we actually saw that about a third, a third, really 33% of opportunities contained display impression, somewhere along that conversion path. And, and at least a quarter of those, 25% actually began with a display impression. So we understood that display has incredible value, and that's kind of how we were able to, to grow their budgets and bring in more leads, bring in more opportunities and essentially help them grow their business.
Kathleen (18:56): So am I right? That, that display actually accounted for somewhere between four and six times, the opportunities that you were originally thinking it accounted for based on the initial dataset?
Joel (19:11): Right? It's like seven and a half.
Kathleen (19:14): Wow.
Joel (19:14): A five X increase from what we thought and sort of a, a good cycle. And you get some momentum from that because once you understand the parts of display that are driving those opportunities, you can continue to reinvest and re funnel, kind of hitting on all gears there.
Kathleen (19:39): So did that cause them to change their budgets? I would. I mean, if it were me, I would think I'd want to increase my budgets
Joel (19:50): Kathleen, we'll see increases of anywhere from 25 to 35% year over year in terms of, you know, from where we started to three, four years later.
Kathleen (20:03): Wow. That's amazing. So that, that's the project correct? That you won the award from Google for?
Joel (20:13): Yeah, absolutely.
Kathleen (20:17): So is that, that obviously required a certain amount of custom coding in order to put in place. And, and somebody who has the, either the internal resources to be able to do that, or, you know, can work with an agency, could replicate that kind of of a setup. But do you have any advice for somebody that maybe doesn't have access to that, like as, are there other ways of improving attribution that are, that maybe are a little bit simpler or more DIY?
Joel (20:49): Yeah. So with iCIMS, we actually use three different integrations. Two are custom built. One was the first one that I talked about, which was Marin. So Google ads has had a Salesforce integration for probably maybe two to three years now. And, and it's definitely evolved over that time period. So it is a lot easier nowadays to integrate your, your Google ads in a way that doesn't take a ton of development work. Probably just, you know, five to 10 new hours of, of development work as far as like coding and things like that, to take your Google click ID and make sure that gets assigned in a hidden field to all the contacts and things like that. And to be communicated back to Google ads. And so, you know, if your main, if your main, a driver of performance or your main source of budget is Google ads that's kind of a no brainer to do well. If you're, if you know, CRM, Salesforce is your CRM and you want to get some milestone data based on kind of what you're seeing now, that is still a last click model or, or I should say a click based model. So you're not necessarily going to get the impression value, but at least you'll, you'll understand pretty easily what the opportunity value is of whatever you're, you're managing and Google ads
Kathleen (22:39): That is so fascinating. You know, and how, if somebody was to come to you guys and say, I want to set this up for myself for my own marketing, is that, you know, how long does that take to get set up? Is it, I, and I, I won't say how much does it cost, but like, can you give me an order of magnitude? Is this something that's accessible to most companies or is it crazy expensive to do?
Joel (23:02): Yeah, I think it is accessible to most companies. What we typically do is a lot of these integrations have just so many different factors based on what your tech stack is and your sales cycle and how everything works. So we typically start with, you know, what kind of technology do you use? How does your sales process work? We want to find out as much information as possible about sort of, you know, how your business operates and what your, your, your sales funnel looks like. And then we start to put the pieces together of, all right, you know, maybe you don't need this level of sophistication. You just need something that's a little bit more standard and XYZ is going to work for you. So there's going to be things that, that you don't need. There's going to be things that, that you might need, or maybe you, you kind of build it into a three year plan of our, I need this level of sophisticated laid out. So that in year three, I have you know, more insight into what could be more innovative tactics that we'll be able to do. But I just can't tackle that right now. So it definitely you want to understand kind of what your situation is and plan around that.
Kathleen (24:28): That's so interesting. All right, switching gears. I have two questions I always ask my audience or my guests. And I'm curious to know what you have to say. The first one is, we're all about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you have seen, that's really killing it with inbound marketing right now?
Joel (24:54): Yeah actually, I mean, to me, the first one when that comes to mind is iCIMs. I think they, they've been a great client and partner for us and in terms of the things that we've wanted to, to implement it and integrate and kind of what our vision was. So they've always, they've always been kind of willing to, to innovate and even outside of what we do, they have a good sales process and having good measurement and things like that. Mmm. And their, their level of sophistication has definitely evolved over the years. So with these integrations, we actually get down to some of the different company size segments that are important to them. So they have kind of company or sometimes different industries. And with all this technology, we've been able to not just look at this one big bucket and say, all right we're driving X amount of overall opportunities, but now we're to the level of looking at opportunities based on company size and industry and all these different factors that impact the growth of their business. So for, for them to kind of really understand that and, and work with us to, to implement those mechanisms, to be able to see that on all of that information on such a granular level to really plan out, you know, what their growth, that's kind of why I would think iCIMS is pretty much the first company that comes to mind.
Kathleen (26:29): I'll definitely have to check them out. And then the second question is, digital marketing is changing so quickly. And marketers, whenever I talk to them, they're always saying I can't keep up. There's so much new stuff. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and kind of on the cutting edge of all of this?
Joel (26:48): Yeah. I mean, there's a few publications that I read such as like Search Engine Land, PPC Hero, things like that. I'm also interested in SEO, you know, which is not my expertise, but I'm curious. So just learning about it in general. So at Path, we have a pretty great SEO lead, her name is Lily Ray. She's always out there speaking. She's very active on Twitter, speaks at a lot of conferences and things like that. So I kind of look to her for, for a lot of SEO specific information. But I think at the end of the day you know, we best learn by, by doing so if, if you're in the platforms every day and really trying to understand how they work, I think over time you get a better understanding of how, how you can innovate from what you have available to you.
Joel (27:49): And I always think it's important, especially in today's world, like 2020 has been the craziest time. If you're a company that is innovating and, and testing new things they're, they're, they're not going to be wasted and that will soften the impact of, of something like a pandemic or you know, all of the, the sort of like the racial justice protests and things that are going on in the world. Like, there's, there's going to be ways that like no one, no one can plan or prepare for something this crazy to happen. But I think if you always are testing and innovating you'll be able to, to find these, these little trinkets of, of areas that are gonna work well for you, because what we've found as marketers is things are always going to change what you've relied on as your bread and butter in the past, historically, who knows if that's going to be available next year. So why not test now and, and really future-proof and build that infrastructure for something that you might need to pivot to before you actually need to do it.
Kathleen (29:00): Yeah, that's a great point. And it has been just an insane year, from wildfires in Australia to pandemics all over the world, to racial you know, protesting, to murder hornets. It's just crazy. So you can't plan for any of that.
Joel (29:19): Right. And even now, you know, it was this July, Facebook boycott, that's going to impact potentially a lot of businesses, especially if the majority of your, your marketing spend is on Facebook. So it's going to be really tough, challenging if, if you know, a lot of advertisers boycott, where do you put budget and how do you continue to grow your business without a source of, of inventory that potentially was one of your biggest sources?
Kathleen (29:52): Yeah, absolutely. Well, this is so fascinating. If somebody wants to learn more about what you're talking about, or check out some information on the campaign that led you to the award, or connect with you and ask a question, what's the best way for them to connect with you online?
Joel (30:09): Yeah. So I'm on LinkedIn. The Path Interactive website does have a case study kind of detailing and really streamlining the conversation that we had today about iCIMS. So that's kind of on our website you know, but feel free to visit pathinteractive.com and go fill out a lead form and get in touch with one of our salespeople. So we can talk about how to partner and improve your business.
Kathleen (30:37): Awesome. Well, I will put all those links in the show notes, and if you're listening and you learned something new, or like what you heard, I would love it if you would head to Apple Podcasts and leave the podcast a five star review so that other people can find us and hear great content, like the stuff that Joel is sharing. And of course, if you know somebody else doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Joel.
Joel (31:07): Absolutely. Appreciate it.
How did two cybersecurity experts build a top 50 podcast?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Hacker Valley Studio podcast co-host Chris Cochran shares how he and his co-host Ron Eddings have used authenticity to build a loyal fanbase and grow Hacker Valley Studio into what is now a top 50 podcast
From his early career in the Marine Corps to working in threat intelligence at Netflix, Chris was never trained as a marketer but says the key to his success has been sharing his authentic self and being a keen observer of people.
Check out the full episode to hear Chris's story.
Resources from this episode:
- Check out Hacker Valley Studio
- Connect with Chris on LinkedIn
Chris and Kathleen recording this episode
Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Chris Cochran. Who Chris, I have to introduce, you normally introduce people by their titles, but I have to introduce you by your LinkedIn headline because it describes so perfectly why you're here. Security engineering by day producer and host of the top 50 podcast, Hacker Valley Studio by night. Chris is officially the director of security engineering at Marqeta, as well as of course, the podcast host and producer at Hacker Valley Studio and a program advisor at Heavybit Industries. Chris, you have such an awesome resume. Welcome to the podcast.
Chris (01:07): I'm excited to be here.
Kathleen (01:13): I'm excited to have you, especially because you know, I'm about 150 episodes into this podcast. And I'm at that point where I've really begun to see some kind of trends emerging about what makes for a top performing marketer. And interestingly, one of the trends is that a lot of the top performing marketers, I interview are not actually marketers either by trade or by training. Right. And you are one of those people. And, you know, I, I started working in the cyber security industry within the last year. And and so I've gotten this really interesting exposure to all kinds of new non marketers who are doing really great work at marketing. So with that as an intro, could you please tell my audience a little bit about yourself and what you do and about the podcast and what it is?
Chris (01:58): Yeah, so I started my career in the Marine Corps. I was in the Marine Corps for five years doing Marine intelligence. And that's what really kind of pushed me down the path of cybersecurity. I got out and I was at cyber command as a contractor for about five years or so. And that's when we were doing like really threat intelligence focused things. I had my own company for a little bit, you know, standing up threat intelligence capabilities and ultimately did the consulting route. I was at Booz for a little bit. I was at Mandiant but ultimately I ended up at Netflix on the West coast and that's when everything kind of started for me. I had largely been silent when it comes to content marketing and things like that. But when I got over to Netflix, I had a post that went viral on LinkedIn.
Chris (02:49): It was so what ha this is interesting story to tell. So, you know, on LinkedIn you can, you know, when you change jobs, usually it tells everybody, Oh, Chris just changed jobs to this and you wait for the applause. And everyone says, Oh, congratulations, you're doing so good. That didn't happen. So I changed jobs and I waited the whole day. And then I came back and I had like zero messages. And I was like, what? A tree that fell in the forest though? Is it here? And I was like, what is going on? And I was like, Oh, I had the thing that says, do not share when I changed jobs selected. And so I was like, you know what, I'm just going to put up a little post, you know? I'm missing my fanfare, but I'm just going to throw something up.
Chris (03:32): So there was a picture of me pointing at the Netflix sign. And I just said something to the effect of Hey, just started in my role at Netflix. If this, you know, you know, Jarhead Marine can do it, anyone can. And a couple hours later it had like 40,000 views. And I was like, Whoa, what, is this thing broken? The next day, it had like maybe a hundred thousand. And then ultimately it got up to almost a million views, like 10,000 impressions and things like that. And that really started the whole process. I was like, wow, there's something here, right? Because you can't go viral on purpose. I think that's really a hard thing to do unless you're like this marketing whiz. But that really got everything rolling. I was like, you know, I'm going to use this platform to start producing.
Chris (04:21): And so that's when the podcast came and my cohost, Ron Eddings, and I, we just jumped on mics and started having conversations. And what I did was, I carried that, that authenticity, that from that post, because I mean, I wasn't like braggadocious, like ha ha ha. I'm on Netflix and you're not. It was more of like, Hey, you know, I'm just, I'm just a regular guy, Marine. If I can do it, a lot of people can do it. And I just carried that with me through the podcast. We're just Hacker Valley Studio. And we focus on the human element of cybersecurity which I think is, is a, is a great thing to focus on.
Kathleen (04:55): So tell me a little bit more about the podcast and the traction it's gotten and the growth it's had.
Chris (05:09): Yes, it's been tremendous. So we started June of last year. I think it was June of last year, maybe it was April. And of course when you're first starting a podcast, there's no traction, but slowly but surely we started getting more impressions and more shares than a lot of the other podcasts, big podcasts out there with a much bigger following. And I think it's because of how Ron and I engaged with our audience. We, I would say it really picked up at the beginning of this year, around the January timeframe. But honestly, we're, we saw the most traction actually against conventional wisdom is we actually doubled production during COVID. One of the things we were focused on is, you know, what, what is a way that we can support people that are out there, they're sitting at home, they're not able to do much. We could double our production and that's counterintuitive because there are less people driving in cars.
Chris (06:08): So there are less people listening to the podcast, but we thought that this was a time to invest sweat equity into the podcast and also produce for the people that are our loyal fans. Right. And so we give them two episodes a week to listen to. And it's so funny because if you look at our stats, our, our trajectory is like this, then COVID happened and there was a little dip and then it just shot through the roof as soon as things started to open back up. But it's just been a phenomenal ride and I couldn't be happier with the traction it's been getting.
Kathleen (06:39): That's amazing. I just love that story because it speaks to something again that I think I've seen with some of the best marketers that have come on this podcast. And another example of that is somebody named Marcus Sheridan, who is a, who has in the past been a mentor of mine. I've worked with him. He started out as a guy that owned an in ground swimming pool company. And he's now like a huge marketing influencer. He's written books on marketing. He is on the speaking circuit. And I've always thought about him, kind of the same thing that I'm hearing from you, which is that he is a successful marketer because he innately understands human beings and how they communicate and how they make decisions. And, and it's the same thing I think with that initial post you did on Netflix, as well as the approach you're taking your podcast.
Kathleen (07:28): Like you're just a guy who understands other human beings and, and that comes naturally to you, which makes you an amazing marketer, even if you haven't like gone and gotten the marketing degree. So when you and I first spoke, one of the things that you talked about and you're really passionate about is this notion of authenticity and that really being the driving factor behind the podcast's success. So I think it's, a lot of people use that word gratuitously. Right. And it's kind of like a, a fun buzz word that marketers, like, we all have to be authentic. What does that really mean? So, so I'd like to dive deeper into that with you. For you, how does that manifest? What does it really mean for you to be authentic?
Chris (08:18): For me being authentic is showing as much of yourself as, as possible. Whether it's in audio, video, whether it's in prose, writing, anything like that. It's showing us as much of yourself, your thoughts, your feelings as possible that you can relate to other people. Because I think humans are unbelievably amazing at detecting when someone is inauthentic. So if someone's like a used car salesman or they're trying to like sell you a bill of goods that you don't need, people are going to pick up on that, unless you're like this, like unbelievably suave used car salesman. Right. But I think that for the most part, I'd say 90% of the time people can tell when someone is putting on a show or putting on a face. And I think that the more authentic you can be, the higher likelihood you're going to develop a connection with that person.
Chris (09:17): Because if you come on and like, so take, for instance, our podcast. I can't tell you how many times people have been like, you guys are so laid back on the podcast, you know, this, that, and the other. And at first I kind of thought, I almost took it as like an insult. It was like, no, you guys just don't care. But no, it's actually, yeah, but what people really appreciate is that we don't over polish it. Like I don't try to speak in a, you know, radio voice. And there, there's a place for that. But for our podcast, because we want to be conversational, when we bring somebody on to the podcast, we want to have a genuinely deep conversation. Because a lot of times people come on and talk about cybersecurity, but then we end up talking about like their, their childhood. We end up talking about, you know, their relationship with their father. We end up talking about how much they love their kids, or we talk about their insecurities. You know, we talk about all these different things and you don't get to those topics unless you're authentic, friendly, and warm and willing to, to bring someone else's guard down.
Kathleen (10:22): Now you talked about sharing as much of yourself as you can. And there's, I think that can show up in different ways. So you mentioned being like informal for lack of a better word. But then there's the other side of sharing as much of yourself as you can, which is opening, opening up and sharing things that you might not normally say in a professional setting or, or talking about topics that might be uncomfortable or controversial. Like what's your approach to that?
Chris (10:52): Yeah. So I share that stuff whenever there's a greater good to be had. So if, if I'm sharing a failure of mine, its because I think that other people can learn from that failure. And that, and the message is stronger than my vulnerability, if that makes any sense. So if I'm sharing something, like for instance, I did a talk for SANS and the first five minutes or so is talking about how I, I quote unquote, failed at Netflix, because it's such a unique company when I got there. And I had to rethink how I did my entire tradecraft for the work that I do. And so by telling people that I know that there are other people that have gone into their organization or tried to build something and it just didn't work, and it had to go back to ground zero and that's, and I was letting people know that that's okay. But if I, if I share something that that might be vulnerable, but it doesn't impact anybody, and it's just me venting, I think that that could have diminishing returns. So like, whenever you, whenever I share, I try to make it so that I either help somebody and help somebody know that they're not alone in whatever situation they're in or give them some nugget of wisdom that they can take with them.
Kathleen (12:07): What about talking about difficult subjects? I feel like, especially in the world we live in right now, there are a lot of those, and there's a lot of people, this is a big conversation happening in marketing. There's a lot, there's people on different sides of this issue. Like, do we go there or do we not go there? When is it appropriate to go there, what's the best way to do it? Like, how do you, how do you approach that?
Chris (12:30): Yeah. So, and I think we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. I think that when companies want to say something and they want to show where they are on a certain situation, I think as long as you are authentic, I think you're always going to be on the right side. I feel like if a company tries to capitalize on a movement or tries to just show face, just so they don't lose customers, I think it's going to show through. It's going to show through and their marketing is going to show through on their, their, their copy on their website. I think people will be able to see it. But I do think that, like I said, whenever you're, you're vulnerable for a reason, you think that you're going to enact change in either someone or in a situation and you're vulnerable in that state, then I think that's, that's a good thing to do.
Kathleen (13:24): That's good advice. Now, being as authentic as you guys have been, do you get any haters?
Chris (13:33): Not, not so much anymore. I, we, we got haters in the very beginning. I think our first two reviews on Apple podcasts was like a negative.
Chris (13:45): I think it was because we talk about the fringes of cybersecurity. So we talk about things like fitness and mindfulness. And we talk about leadership. Like we don't just talk about tech subjects. And so in the beginning, I think that kind of put people on a spin, like, well, why, why are these guys talking about this stuff? But now I think people get it. I think people are starting to get like, Oh, okay. This. So they're focused on the whole cybersecurity professional. Like what are all the things that can make them better? And, and so now we just get nothing, nothing but praise, at least, at least to our face. I mean, I don't know about closed doors, but yeah, it's been, it's been a phenomenal response so far.
Kathleen (14:27): You know, you just made me think of something really interesting, which is that working in cyber, it's definitely a, it's an industry that, that by nature is not known for opening up and sharing, you know? You're trained not to share information. And it also tends to be an industry that is a bit more you know, I would say at the corporate level, at least kind of formal and, and, you know, stiff, if you will. I come out of marketing, the world of marketing to marketers, and that's a much more informal, fun kind of kind of industry. And I think there's a lot of industries out there like cybersecurity, you know, you could think about like banking and finance or you know, tech in general, insurance, a lot of those industries, you hear people say, well, I can't, I can't open up. I can't be informal. I can't talk about these things because it doesn't fit with my industry. How would you respond to that?
Chris (15:32): That's actually a really, really tough one. Because I, I was listening to Gary V and they were talking about, there was, I think there was like a mortician in the audience and they were talking about like, I have, I talk, my business is a really serious business. Like how do I, you know, show color and things like that. In some cases you can't, I mean, really, depending on what your industry is there, there's just some things that aren't going to fit, but there are you know, 10 other ways that you can be authentic in whatever that business is. So like, if you're, if you are doing like, say cybersecurity and you're protecting against like really, really like serious threats, like maybe advanced persistent threat level things, I mean, you can, you can, you can have a little bit of comedy but if, if like you're doing something like, like you're a mortician or you are supporting, you know disenfranchised children or you know, people across the world that just are underrepresented, there might be some tact that you might have to have when you are sharing authentically. Maybe you go to a different emotion. Maybe you, you, you share the emotion of, of how passionate you are about this, a particular arena, because there are ways to be authentic without being weird
Kathleen (16:55): Or callous. Yeah. Yeah. Authenticity doesn't always have to be humor. It's just right. It's, it's sharing emotion and making an emotional connection, really. So, so what are some examples of conversations you've had in the podcast or topics you've covered that have really, I think, showcased this, if you will.
Chris (17:16): Yeah. So like I was kind of alluding to before we had a guy on, Daniel Mead, and he came on just kind of talk a little bit about his company and the things that they were doing. And, you know, it just in the middle of the conversation, he started talking about his dad because I, I think what kind of put us down that path is where does his authenticity come from? Because one thing that I've really appreciated about him is he's a sales guy, right. And he's, he's a sales guy. And every interaction I had with him was like a funny interaction. It really was generally funny. And I said, you know, where did that come from? Because that's, that's a rare thing to number one, have the confidence to try to be funny in every interaction, but then all the, also to actually nail it right.
Chris (18:03): There has to, there's something that happened in his childhood. And so I kind of poked him on it. I was like, where, where does that come from? And he started talking about his dad and it just completely changed the trajectory of the conversation. But those are, are my favorite favorite conversations. We also had a conversation with a guy named Wilson who was also in the Marine Corps. A leader. He was a pianist for the Marine Corps, which is really hard to do. Ended up in cybersecurity, started his own company, wrote a book that did all these amazing things. And so we started kind of going down the rabbit hole with him and he told us about a time that he was with a leader that was really, really hard on him, like in a, in a completely terrible way. But, and we just went so deep into that reaction and how he felt during that time and, and the positive outcome that came from it and almost got it, got too deep from the standpoint of like, we, you know, we try to be as positive and uplifting as we can on the podcast, but it went deep and we didn't want to end it there.
Chris (19:13): And so my buddy Ron is like, Hey, should we, should we just keep going? Just that. I was like, no, this is completely fine because he brought it all the way back around to how he used that, that negative situation into a positive. So yeah. I love those conversations
Kathleen (19:30): Going back to kind of the story of the podcast. You started out and it was you and Ron having conversations and they were different kinds of conversations than people were used to hearing in cybersecurity. How did you guys build the audience for your podcast?
Chris (19:44): Yeah, so I I'd say the other thing that really makes us stand out is that I know that, so some people use you know, other like platforms to kind of like, you know, push their, their stuff out there. You know, they, they use the automation, they use, they pay for, you know, advertising and things like that. And, and that's good, you know, especially if you have like a product that needs to get put in front of a lot of people, but fortunately for us, we, we didn't have to do that because I think as we've grown, like, I'd say we've grown fast comparatively to like a lot of podcasts, but in some podcasts, like we've grown really slowly. But the people that do come on to like the family of, of Hacker Valley Studio, that the fans of Hacker Valley Studio, they come and they stay. There is a, Jack Rhysider, he put out an article about how can you tell that the interaction between you and, and your, your, your basically your listeners.
Chris (20:45): And one thing is he, I can't remember what the app was, but if you took the app again, I think it was representative of 2% of like all podcast listeners, but the math still checks out. It's the ratio. So if you look at how many listens you have on that platform, compared to how many subscribers you have on that platform, you can tell how many episodes those people are actually going through. And he was saying like a good number is like eight. So that means like if someone listens to your podcast, they listen to a minimum of eight or an average of eight. On our podcast, it was over 11. So if you come to our podcast, people listen to like around 11 episodes. I think, you know, some of the greats, like Joe Rogan, I think it's about 20. And so like that tells us that we are on the right path and we're putting out good content that people enjoy. And that's why we get so much interaction on, on things like LinkedIn, because everything, everything we put out, it seems like it speaks to people on, on one level or another.
Kathleen (21:52): And what, how do you, podcast metrics are notoriously difficult to track. So how do you get that data? What platform are you using to get that?
Chris (22:00): So I, on that one, that was a specific podcast platform. I can't remember if it was Podcast Addict or one of the other ones, but the ones that we use is Chartable. Chartable is a pretty good one, they have pretty good data. And then also our, our main hosting site which is Pod Bean.
Kathleen (22:19): Got it. And, and is there anything, well, let me back up to, what do you attribute your growth in listenership? In other words, is it mostly organic? Is it somebody telling somebody else about it? Is it a certain promotion strategy you're using?
Chris (22:33): Yeah, it's mostly organic. We just put out as much free content as we can. We used to do the micro content with the videos, but that, that just got crazy because we started doing two episodes a week. But now that we've scaled back down to one episode a week, I think we're going to bring the micro content back. We're also going to be doing some like live shows and things like that on LinkedIn, but it's all been word of mouth and organic. We haven't done any promotions. I think we're going to do our first promotion on the other side of this move. Cause I actually just moved to Texas. There's like boxes all over.
Kathleen (23:08): Which probably makes for great acoustics, all that insulation and cardboard.
Chris (23:12): Yeah. So there, there were no boxes in here and saw I checked the mic. I was like, Oh no, this is terrible. So then I brought all these empty boxes in to help with the acoustics a little bit, still an echo, but not, not as bad, but yeah, I think we're going to do our first promotion here next in the next month or so. And I'll let you know how that goes, but everything else has been organic and word of mouth.
Kathleen (23:34): I love it. So in terms of the future of the podcast are you planning on just continuing with the same format or anything else you're thinking of changing other than the, you know, doing the promotion or where do you see it going?
Chris (23:46): Yeah, so, you know, it's funny you bring that up because I'd say about a month ago Ron and I, we, we had like a, an existential crisis. We were like, do we change the format of the show, like completely and almost do like a NPR, this American lifestyle? Like, you know, because then you can have additional control over the story. You can have additional control over the show. And maybe, maybe if someone, if you interview someone and they're closed off defensive and they don't share a lot, then you don't get to the story is as easily as you can. I do take responsibility for every show. Like it's on the host to make the show good. Right. But sometimes you do get those people that maybe are, they're a little shy and they don't want to share. And we wanted to look at ways to be able to, to share those stories and still make it enjoyable and entertaining and, and, you know, educational for everybody. And we were thinking about going that way and we said, you know what? Let's just stick to what we know, stick to what we're good at because I think what Ron and I really have is chemistry with each other. And we're able to actually bring those conversations to life with our guests. And I think if we did the NPR style, we would lose a little bit of that magic. So I think we're going to keep, keep with the secret sauce and just keep getting better.
Kathleen (25:04): Nice. When we first started talking, you mentioned that the, the post that kicked all of this off was you saying, if I can do it, anyone can. Paraphrasing. And along those lines, you are not a marketer, but you have become a pretty successful podcaster. So if somebody is listening and they are not a marketer and they're like, man, I've always thought about doing a podcast, but I've been too intimidated. Can you just share, like, as, as a non marketer, how did you teach yourself to podcast? Are there certain resources or certain things that you would recommend that person do?
Chris (25:40): Yeah, so I would say, just keep trying. Like, be yourself and just keep trying. And I think if you do those two things, you're going to get to as good as you're going to be. Maybe, you know, do some education, read some books. I didn't read any marketing books or anything like that, but I'm sure there were some really good ones out there. Obviously, listening to your podcast would be a good resource for people to listen to. But I think just trying, just trying things. So I'll give you a quick story. There was a time, I think this was like two years ago where I was, I was really heavy. I was at my, at my heaviest, I think I was like almost 300 pounds or so. I was like, Oh, I gotta make a change. And I was like, what, what do I need to do to get my butt into gear? And so I hired a film crew to do like one video a week, and this is all on my Instagram. One video a week. And what they did is, they followed me through this like entire fitness journey. And of course its really vulnerable, like being that heavy, working out, showing yourself running. Terrible angles.
Kathleen (26:44): I was just going to say, Oh my God, it's like my nightmare come true to have anybody film me doing any kind of exercise.
Chris (26:53): It was, it was rough. But I was like, I'm just going to keep doing it. I'm going to keep putting out content. And you would think this would be like this amazing you know, triumph story. I lost the weight, but the traction was not there. There, there were people that were, you know, watching that my friends and family are all, wow, that's so amazing, great videos, but I didn't, I didn't, you know, blow up on, on Instagram or anything like that. But what happened was, I, I did learn every time I did a post, every time I did a post, I looked at what I was putting out like, you know, what resonates with people and, and, and is it authentic to who I am as a person? And so all of those learnings from trying that thing on, on Instagram translated to everything that I'm doing on Twitter, on LinkedIn. And so it's not going to come overnight, it's it? It could take a long time, but you just put in the work and I think you'll get there,
Kathleen (27:49): Man. Talk about walking the walk and being authentic. Having somebody come and film you while you do that, that is brave. So kudos to you. Well shifting gears for a minute there's two questions. I always ask all of my guests on the podcast and I'm really curious what you have to say, especially cause you're kind of outside of the marketing industry. You know, the podcast is all about inbound marketing. And so I always like to ask people, is there a particular company or individual that you've come across that you think is really killing it with inbound marketing right now?
Chris (28:22): That's a good question. I'm gonna, this might be a newbie answer, but as an individual, I think, and I guess as a company as well, Gary V is doing amazing. And the content that he produces, the way he puts out his content and the bite size pieces, that was really, you know, the blueprint we copied in the beginning with Hacker Valley Studio. I, I think he, he pulls just so many people and people just like to, to hear him talk about any, anything. He has so much life advice and career advice. And I think just by knowing who Gary V is like, you're more likely to do business with him because he puts out so much stuff for free. A company, and in full disclosure, this company is a sponsor of our podcast, but I like what they do in the sense that they're called Thinx.
Chris (29:12): And what they do is they do canaries, which are these little canaries in a coal mine for if your network gets attacked and this thing gets taken, then it notifies you. Right. What I like about what they do is they also don't do like the big marketing thing. What they do is they actually put out free tech for people to use on a, on, you know, just for free. And they can actually use that tech to secure their, their network, that can help secure their home, everything. And they put a lot of work into that. And I was just like, what, why wouldn't you charge for this? Because this is such a, an amazing thing that you're doing. And they just said, they, they just want, they, they want to put out free stuff of value to people. And that's what it is about. And you know, the stuff that we're doing with a podcast and stuff, the Gary V does, the stuff that thinks does is they're putting out valuable things for free, but they also have products that are on the books. Okay. And so when you meet with that, that free, that valuable thing, you're like, Oh, wow. If they're doing this for free, can I get from them if I actually give them my money and build a relationship with them?
Kathleen (30:23): Yeah. It's a real pay it forward mentality. And you definitely captured, that's really at the heart of what inbound marketing is. I liked that you mentioned Gary V because he is also not trained as a marketer. Right. so we have an awesome theme going here. Also somebody who just innately understands human beings and has tapped into that. So there's something there. Now I should say, because I have a lot of marketers in my audience, this is not to say that you shouldn't go get a marketing degree or it's not going to have one, or you're not a good marketer. If you're trained as a marketer, it's just that the best marketers, even those who were educated as marketers, still need to be people who are, who very much want to and are dedicated to understanding people and what drives people. So just wanted to make that clear. So Chris, the second question is, most of the marketers I know, the biggest challenge they face is that digital marketing changes so quickly and there's so much to keep up with. And you know, you're a podcaster and stuff is changing in the world of podcasting pretty quickly. Like how do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated on things?
Chris (31:30): To be honest, I watch people. I watch people. I see what people are doing well, I'm really good at seeing the tradecraft in a post or seeing the tradecraft in a, in the video. I'm really good at picking out like, Oh, I see what they did there. And that's really intelligent. So really just keeping my eyes out in a broad perspective on, on Twitter, LinkedIn would have you YouTube. So really just keeping an eye on what people are doing really well. And then if you're smart, you steal it, right?
Kathleen (32:04): Yeah. Shamelessly copying. Yeah. Well, I think that's the perfect answer. Given the conversation we just had. So if somebody is listening and they want to check out the podcast or they want to learn more about you or connect with you online, what is the best way for them to do that?
Chris (32:20): Yeah. My favorite place to be is on LinkedIn. So you can find me there pretty easily. And then the podcast is Hacker Valley Studio. That's the website. Just go to it, check us out, and let us know what you think.
Kathleen (32:33): Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me this week, Chris, this was really fun. If you're listening and you liked what you heard today, or you learned something new, of course I would love it if you would head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast a five star reviews so that other people could find out about awesome episodes like this one with Chris. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next interview. Thanks again, Chris.
Chris (33:02): Thank you so much.
Billion dollar companies rely on competitive intelligence to stay ahead in their markets. What lessons can the rest of us take from how they use CI to make better decisions?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Cipher Systems VP of Marketing John Booth talks about what competitive intelligence is, and how companies can use it to inform decision making.
Cipher's customers are some of the largest companies in the world, and they have highly specialized units dedicated exclusively to competitive intelligence. Not every company has the budget, or the team, to support that, so John explains what the rest of us should be looking at, and how we should use information about our competitors to develop marketing and business strategies.
Highlights from my conversation with John include:
- Many marketers use the terms data, information and intelligence interchangeably, but they are very different things. Intelligence is the product of analyzing information and data, and it requires people to do it.
- There's also a lot of confusion around the difference between business intelligence, market intelligence and competitive intelligence. BI is the information you have within your own business, whereas MI is the information about what is happening in the market.
- Competitive intelligence is information about your markets and also your competitors and how that influences your ability to sell within your markets or deliver the services that your business does.
- There are three kinds of software tools used in competitive intelligence: 1) Generic tools like Sharepoint or Google Alerts that can be used or many things: 2) Specific tools like Klue that are built to fulfill a very particular need, such as sales enablement; and 3) Purpose-built tools like Cipher's Knowledge360, which are built specifically for competitive intelligence professionals.
- Before any business engages in competitive intelligence, it should start by developing a deep understanding of its differentiators, strengths and weaknesses.
Resources from this episode:
- Connect with John on LinkedIn
- Visit the Cipher Systems website
Listen to the podcast to learn more about competitive intelligence and how businesses both large and small can use it to get an edge.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm Kathleen Booth and I'm your host. This week, my guest is none other than my husband John Booth. Welcome John.
John Booth (Guest): Well, I mean, it only took 150 some odd episodes for me to get an invitation.
Kathleen: Saving the best for last. So I don't know if my listeners know this, but John and I, so John and I used to own a marketing agency together for 11 years and somehow miraculously, we're still married. And when people ask me what he does now, I always say he does the same thing I do just at a different company. He is also a vice president of marketing. He is VP of marketing for a company called Cipher Systems, which is in the competitive intelligence space.
So John, for those who may not know you, who may not know Cipher, can you just tell my audience a little bit about yourself as well as about Cipher systems and what it does?
About John Booth and Cipher Systems John: Sure. So as Kathleen said, I was a part of our digital agency for about a dozen years or so. And before that I held different sales positions started out in the staffing world and then held lots of different positions there. But since Quintain, I have joined Cipher systems and Cipher is a small, there's probably about 20 of us now, competitive intelligence firm.
John: And we'll give to the definition of that because it's, I think it's very important. I see a lot of similarities in the competitive intelligence to what I saw in the content inbound marketing world maybe 10 years ago.
So it's it's a, it's a developing industry and I think more and more people within the organizations, particularly certainly larger organizations are finding the need for, and using competitive intelligence today. But so we have a classic kind of services side of the business. And, and then in addition to that, we have a technology or a software side of the business where we have a software platform.
It's a cloud based competitive intelligence platform that acts as a knowledge management system, as well as the competitive intelligence tools for all of your competitive Intel and dashboards and reports and newsletters and, and information like that.
Kathleen: And what kinds of companies does Cipher work with?
John: So Cipher works with large organizations. So our ideal buyer has more than a billion dollars in revenue. Typically at least 5,000 employees, they're headquartered in the United States and they operate in industries that have one or one of two key kind of characteristics.
The first is they're either highly regulated. So think financial services, insurance, healthcare, or the industries are incredibly competitive. So think about things like technology government contractors those types of industries. So those are, those are kind of the, the ingredients that make for the need for competitive intelligence.
Kathleen: So side note, I just think it's really funny this doing this interview because I am interviewing you like I don't know the answers to these questions already. But everyone listening doesn't so I still need to ask them.
So one of the reasons I wanted you to talk about who you work for or with the kinds of companies you work for is that, it's the thing that I have found interesting, kind of watching as you've worked there is that prior to you working at Cipher, you know, I was familiar with the field of competitive intelligence, you know, roughly but there are such different levels of it, right?
I mean, the stuff that you guys do, like you were saying, it's really big companies that have, you know, the stakes are high. They have a lot to lose. It's highly competitive or regulated or this or that. It's serious business.
And they have teams of people whose jobs are just to do competitive intelligence. And then you have like the kind of competitive intelligence that, that smaller companies do where you're like, I've got a Google alert on my competitor, you know, that sort of thing. And so it's, it's very interesting to me the different shades of it.
So segwaying from that, you mentioned defining competitive intelligence. So like how do you guys see it? What is it, how do you define it?
What is competitive intelligence? John: So so there are a couple of key definitions, just so the audience and, and the two of us are on kind of the same page here. So the first one is the difference between let's define data, information and intelligence.
So an example of data might be the number three. Okay. So that is data. Alright.
Information is a series of data pieces. So an example, a pretty example of information is a streetlight. So a streetlight has three different colored lights, right? Red, yellow, and green. All right. And so when red is on, I stop when yellow is, I slowed down or hit the gas. And when green is, I continue on my way. So that is, so that is information. So there's several different data points there. There's the number of lights, what the, the, the meaning of those lights.
Intelligence is the product of analysis. So intelligence requires people today. So so you might hear a lot of the impact of artificial intelligence on competitive intelligence and market intelligence and things like that. So today, intelligence requires a human being to perform some type of analysis and deliver some types of insights to the business that's intelligence.
And that is that's what has value. So just simply gathering information, there's no value that's delivered to the organization. It's not until a person actually applies the filters and understandings and kind of teases out what this might mean that there is any value delivered, and that is intelligence.
So then I'm going to define three other terms that are often kind of used interchangeably. And they shouldn't be much like a, when we had our agency often found that people would use marketing, advertising and PR interchangeably, when, as marketers, we all know that those are completely different you know, services and they mean different things, but to the lay person, they kind of get interchanged interchangeably.
So competitive intelligence market intelligence and business intelligence are often interchanged kind of the same way.
So let's use business intelligence. So business intelligence, we define that as the, the information that the business intelligence is based off of information on your business. So if you think about if all of the information that we have within our four walls of our business, that is our business intelligence. Okay. So if you manufacture something that might be how many widgets that you can manufacture in an hour and how many people you need and the profitability of those widgets, et cetera.
So business intelligence really means focused on your business, right? No external sources or information, it's all internal data.
Market intelligence is just that it is the market. It might be trends in the market. It, it might be consumer behavior and how consumers are responding to certain trends or, or things along those lines.
And then competitive intelligence is information about your markets and also your competitors and how that influences your ability to sell within your markets or deliver the services that your business does.
Kathleen: So earlier you mentioned that competitive intelligence requires people, but you guys sell competitive intelligence software. So like, how does that work?
John: Because software, obviously it doesn't have people in it, but so think of it as think of it as this. What's a good analogy?
So if I am a marketer and I have a tool like HubSpot, which we love, because it allows me to host my website, allows me to post and schedule my social. It allows me to have my content and edit it and do keyword work. All of that helps me with my marketing strategy and deliver a strategy. So you wouldn't buy HubSpot and say, Oh, well, HubSpot is going to do my marketing strategy. It's, you know, it's going to, you know, help me be a better marketer. Yes. But it still requires people to deliver that strategy.
You know, you you're using a tool. Yes. but the tools can never, they, there are at least the tools today can not replace what an analyst, a researcher, a strategist, a person, a marketer, could be a product marketer. You know, what a person does.
What kinds of tools are available to support competitive intelligence? Kathleen: And I feel like there's this vast array of tools out there for competitive intelligence. Like I mentioned earlier, it's everything from a simple Google or all the way up to a platform like you guys have that is used by huge corporations. So maybe you could speak to like, kind of what that landscape looks like.
John: Right. So one of the one of the things that we're trying to educate people that are looking for tools are the different types of tools.
We believe there are three different kinds of tools out there. There are what we call generic tools, and those are tools that are typically they've been built for a different purpose, but they're often adopted or adapted to a competitive intelligence use.
And a good example of that is SharePoint. So SharePoint wasn't built for competitive intelligence, but SharePoint is, it can be an adequate kind of knowledge management source. It can, you know, you can have teams adding information to it and downloading information. You could even, you know, use some of the collaborative features there, et cetera. And so that's like the use of a generic tool.
And then you have your your second type of CI tools, a tool that is built for a specific really for a specific person purpose. And, and an example of that is, so there's a company, one of our competitors, Klue. And they do a very good job of sales enablement. So if you have a large sales team and you want to empower your sales team to close more deals, and you want to give your sales team the resources that they need to have the right information at their fingertips, when they're on calls and and kind of, and, and sell against other competitors, they're a great tool for that.
And then you have the third category, which is kind of that the tool that is built specifically for competitive intelligence and, and those are tools that do primarily three things. They gather information. So they're going to allow you to aggregate information and that information could come in from newsfeeds. It might come in from subscriptions to information, the research that you have it, it might be internal documents that you have kind of those business intelligence documents that we talked about. It might be information that your sales or marketing team uncovers maybe during the course of their day.
So one of the things that, that we help companies with is most companies have just, just dozens, if not hundreds of nuggets of information within the organization, but they just don't have the ability to give it visibility.
So, you know, it's, you know, the salesperson that knows what he's up against for a particular deal, because the prospect shared this with them and it's sitting within his inbox and he's the only person that has access to his inbox.
So the product marketing team that is getting ready to do the roadmap for their product, can't see what the customer, the prospect is looking for because they don't have access to this information.
So that third tool allows all of this information to go into it.
And then with our tool, we use artificial intelligence and natural language processing to automatically tag this information. And we use semantic learning for it to identify things like location company and individuals by reading through and analyzing the, the, the content that you're adding to the system.
So, there are those types of tools and, and it's interesting.
We did some research a couple of years ago. The pharmaceutical industry is by far kind of the most advanced commercial, competitive intelligence kind of industry. Most other industries, they're still kind of developing CI practices and, and most outside of the pharmaceutical industry. And I kind of call that life sciences. So not strictly just pharmaceuticals. Most organizations have I think it's like 1.2 people working on their CI. So not big teams, not, not at all.
How can marketers use competitive intelligence? Kathleen: Yeah. It's so interesting. It's such a specialized field. I feel like you know, now coming back to kind of, the focus of this podcast obviously is inbound marketing. So a lot of marketers are listening and this can seem very unapproachable because like, for example, if you guys, you work with really large companies and they have these dedicated people let's start with what, how are those companies using competitive intelligence and how is that helping them make better business decisions or get better results from their businesses. And then we can kind of bring it back down to, for smaller companies, what are ways they could begin to approach this? So let's begin some like actual examples of how this plays out.
John: Okay. So so I think that that, that the marketers marketers today, this is, this is my own belief. I believe they're, they're waking up to this need for competitive intelligence because your inbound marketing is no longer delivering the results that you were seeing before.
So for just about a decade or so, we have as marketers, we've been really focused on the content I'm creating and attract, creating content, solving problems, answering questions, et cetera. And we've been rewarded with that with prospects and customers and results, and kind of the, you know, Marcus shared approach. They have questions kind of, you know, answer their questions and, and, you know, you'll be rewarded well.
In the beginning that was really, really successful because there were fewer people doing it and, and the people that were doing it for the most part were really doing it.
You know, it's not until much later that you're downloading the ebook and it's actually just 18 PowerPoint slides with two bullets on each slide and has nothing to do with an actual book.
So we have to, as marketers look for things that are going to give us results. And so, as we were focused kind of internally on what we're talking about, what our prospects and customers are talking about, we're really ignoring what was going on in our market and our competitors. And so we were ignoring these macro issues.
And so competitive intelligence is kind of the other side of the equation. So you know, you've take your prospects and your customers, and that's one piece of success. And then, but, but you can't do that in a vacuum.
Those that do SEO work understand that. So you find out what your teams are, you know, what you want to rank for and what your competitors are ranking for. And then you do SEO work to help change those rankings.
Well, your competitors, don't just sit still. They're also looking at what's going on in the market and looking at the actions that you're doing. And so, you know, we found this need to to address, well, how do I understand what's going on in the marketplace and how do I position myself against my competitors or the other options that that my prospects and customers have.
So that's a long roundabout way of explaining how companies are using competitive intelligence to better deploy their resources.
And so when, when you're doing this before, you can get to actually doing competitive intelligence work, you have to have a really clear understanding of your differentiators and, and your vulnerabilities. So that's where, you know, somebody who wants to begin doing competitive intelligence work, I would challenge them to to, to sit down and do the, the work on how are you different from your competitors, you know, and, and where do you have overlap and where is that overlap? Where does that lead to, or where could you be vulnerable because of that overlap?
What impact does competitive intelligence have on businesses? Kathleen: So the larger companies that you guys work with, obviously have that part figured out. They, you know, they have their teams in place, they understand their differentiators. So when they undertake competitive intelligence, how are they using it? Like in practical terms to get better business results?
Do you have some case studies or some success stories or anything like that that you can share of how, like, how does competitive intelligence produce better outcomes for these companies?
John: Yes. So this was this was a very kind of rude awakening coming from the marketing agency world where you know, you have clients and you're working with clients and you're doing great work for them. And you ask your clients, Hey, you know, would you mind providing a testimonial, a quote, being a part of a, you know, a white paper case study you know, sharing your experience and, and usually it's, Oh yeah. You know, they're very supportive of that when you are in the competitive intelligence world, nobody wants to talk about the tools that they're using, what you're doing for them, because by nature of it, you are, you know, you're giving away intelligence for your competitors to use against you.
Kathleen: You know what other industry is like that? Cybersecurity. I know that, of which you speak.
John: So let me, I can talk in some kind of in general terms. So we estimate and Cipher has been around for 20, 25 years.
We estimate that most most people doing CI work spend about 70% of their time gathering and organizing information. If we go back to the definitions that we had of data, information, and intelligence, data and information add zero value to the business.
So you're spending 70% of your time on things that have no value add to the business. Only 30% of your time is on the analysis, developing the insights, you know, all of that information that your CI consumers, whether it be your sales teams, your, your C suite, your product development team, your marketers, they all need this information, but the bulk of your time is spent gathering it and, and organizing it.
And, that is because your business is complicated and information comes in lots of different forms, and some of it is structured. And some of it is unstructured. You know, you have information internal reports. You have, as I mentioned before, you have emails that are received from salespeople. You have teams that are out in the field and going to trade shows and seeing you know, what your competitors, their messages at their trade show boots, you have competitor websites that are changing and messaging.
And so so what our tool does is it automates a lot of that. For example we have many customers before they started using our tool Knowledge360, that would have 18 number. And some of them would have more that would manually go out to competitors' websites and look at their websites and look for changes in their websites.
And that could be pricing changes if you're in an industry or, or, you know, a market that is price sensitive, you want to know about those changes. And, you know, it could be messaging changes.
So by using a tool like Knowledge360, we can automate that. And so the tool goes out, it gathers the information. It says, Hey, this page has changed. It highlights the, the, the new information, you know, and, and that's, that's there in one color, it highlights the information that has been changed or removed and another color.
And now an analyst can take a look at that and say, Oh, this is really meaningful. You know, so that's, that's an example of how are a tool like ours or how anyone can use competitive intelligence.
So, to monitor the messaging that your competitors are using, or if they have a pricing page, you know, you can, you can monitor that for changes in their pricing.
How do companies use competitive intelligence? Kathleen: So it sounds like the tool itself can be used to save time to streamline the process, but like, what are these companies doing with this information? How, like, why are they spending all this money on competitive intelligence? What is it doing things successful?
John: So if you think about this so it's helping them be successful by giving insights and providing this intelligence that your decision makers are looking for. And ultimately, hopefully you're, you're enabling them to make better informed decisions. So if you think about think about someone that has you know, you're wearing glasses, but they have blinders on, and you can only see right in front of you. And you're making your decisions based on your field of vision that is just in front of you. Now, you take those away and you have a wider field of vision, and you have more information. You may, you may make a different decision.
Kathleen: What's an example of something, a marketing thing that I might do differently based on the information I would find?
John: So here's, here's an example. So if I have a, let's say I'm a nationwide company and I compete with someone on the East coast. Okay. And they're a good competitor. I went against them. Sometimes they went against me sometimes. But I have offices on the East coast and also on the West coast.
Well, if I had a CI department, one of the things they might be monitoring or looking for is job postings with my competitors. So if all of a sudden, one of my competitors is posting a sales manager position in the Seattle market, and they're not in the Seattle market. And one of my key customers is in the Seattle market. Oh, that's something that I want to know about because it looks like my competitor is coming into, if they're going to invest in building out a sales team, putting an office in Seattle.
Now, all of a sudden, my sales people that have only had to deal with maybe the competitors that were in that local market without this East coast competitor, they now need to be aware of this new competitor coming into the market. And that may change how we position ourselves. It may change how we price things. It may change, you know, the terms of her contracts. It could have all types of different information, you know, of, of business decisions that we make.
How Cipher uses competitive intelligence for itself Kathleen: So I'm assuming that you guys are, as I like to say, drinking your own champagne, because I don't like the phrase eating your own dog food. So how does Cipher use competitive intelligence?
John: So so we use this fantastic tool called Knowledge360. It's very comprehensive.
We have several dashboards that we use. And one in particular that is called our competition crusher. And so with our competition crusher dashboard, it's a feed of news announcements on it's a feed of social. It has intelligence that our salespeople gain talking to prospects and customers.
Our marketing team will add information like messaging changes that we might see and all of this battle cards. So if we know we're going up against a particular competitor, we want to, you know, we want to draw attention to these benefits of using our product. And, and if we know that there are gaps, you know, we want to ask our prospects about, you know, the gaps that we know our competitors have.
So, that's one example of how we're using it to kind of gather all of that information, organize it in a way, you know, and the beauty of using something you're using a tool that provides dashboards is the dashboards are updated in real time.
So unlike, you know, most people, if they have any experience or exposure to CI work it's typically a part of the, you know, quarterly sales meeting. And there's somebody that comes up that says competitor ABC is doing this. And then, you know, they share the PowerPoint deck and, you know, a quarter later another report comes out, but there's a lot of time and a lot of change that goes on between, you know, the publishing of those two different reports.
And, you know, you may make different decisions having a dashboard that's always on always available, always monitoring. You're always getting the most up to date information.
And so we share that with our leadership team, our sales team, marketing team, customer, all of them add to, and, and consume information from those dashboards.
Prediction markets and the future of competitive intelligence Kathleen: And then real quickly, because I feel like this could be an entirely other podcast episode. I feel like with competitive intelligence, you're looking at things that have already happened, right?
You guys have something I find fascinating, which is this other side to your business where you can do much more predictive stuff. It's super cool. And you have something called predictive markets. So can you, somewhat quickly because we are coming up on our time, just give people a sense of what I mean, cause that's really like competitive intelligence looking into the future, if you will, or trying to figure out what's gonna happen in the future. So how does that work?
John: So that is really cool stuff and it is relatively new. So Cipher systems and another company Consensus Point, we merged towards the end of last year.
Consensus Point is a a research company. So as competitive intelligence professionals, they gather information and they do research.
You have two primary types of research yet. Primary research and secondary research, secondary research being research that's available to anyone and those might be market reports or things that are publicly available and anyone has access to those or they're not restricted.
Primary research is research that you do, you hire someone to do on your behalf and that's information that you have. And that if, if done correctly and on the appropriate things could be a competitive advantage having this primary information or more information about a particular topic.
Well, what you're talking about is predictive markets research. So if you think about primary research, most people are familiar with polls and surveys. And so that is a traditional kind of primary research method that is it's, it's very effective for certain things.
It's also riddled with problems for other things, for example human beings in general, we are very poor predictors of our own performance. So you know, just ask anyone with a child and ask them how bright their child is. Nobody is going to tell you that their child is below average average, you know, they're Oh, you know, top 1%, 10%, 5%. Well, that's not true because most of us are average.
Kathleen: That's why it's the definition. 90% of us are not in the top 10%.
John: That's exactly right. So what a prediction market is, is it is think of a market, probably one of the most common is the stock market.
So, you know, the stock market is a platform where people have are placing wagers on whether or not, you know, the value of a company is going to increase or decrease.
So if you think about this, and this is a great book that I'll have to give you. It's by a poker player. I'll give it to you so you can add to the show notes, but basically if you ask somebody, you know, do you think Apple stock is going to be higher than it is the value of it is going to be higher in one month from today's point you know, you might say, yes. Okay, well, how much are you willing to bet it's up? So if you put real money, your hard earned money, like how many shares of Apple stock are you willing to purchase at today's price?
Check out "Thinking In Bets" by Annie Duke
John: You know, and it is, are your beliefs, do they change? So a prediction market is, you are using the social behavioral characteristics of individuals and their collective kind of wisdom of the crowd, thinking about whether or not the probability of something becoming true or taking place.
And so that is a much more accurate indicator of actual events that happen than simply asking someone in a survey or a poll.
So now, what we're so excited about is the two of those together.
So now you know, our platform, not only do we help aggregate information that you're gathering and do that analysis on it, we are now adding this research component to the tool as well, so that you can do your research. You can, you know, you can store it within one central repository and you can make it available to the organization as it needs to be
Kathleen: Cool. And I know you guys are using it for things like trying to predict what the world post COVID is going to look like and all kinds of other really interesting forward looking applications. So thank you for sharing that.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: We are now coming towards the end of our time, so I wanna make sure I squeeze in my couple of questions that I ask everybody. The first is, of course we are all about inbound marketing on this podcast. So is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it with inbound marketing right now?
John: Let's see, you know, I I just recently became aware of a tool MarketMuse. I think that they're doing a very good job with their messaging, kind of very classic, kind of inbound marketing freemium model, et cetera. So I would say that they're one company that does a really good job of inbound marketing.
And I have to say then another one that comes to mind and you know, full disclosure here, I'm a customer and and a big fan of Databox. I think Databox, and Pete Caputa's doing a phenomenal job there. He cranks out more content and they use their chat panel to support customers and are really all about helping customers solve problems. And they're, they're doing a fantastic job. I think, of inbound marketing.
Kathleen: Yeah, Pete's awesome. And fun fact, he was a very early guest of this podcast. So if you want to get some insight into how Pete does marketing, you can listen to that episode with him. And I will put that link in the show notes.
Question number two. The biggest challenge I hear marketers share with me is that so much changes so quickly in the world of digital marketing. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and up to date on everything that's going on?
John: I have a hugely unfair advantage being married to a fantastic marketer who is constantly scouring the interweb for the latest and greatest tool and slacking me at home because yes, we have our own personal Slack channel for our youngest son and Kathleen and myself. But, selfishly I rely heavily on what you share with me.
Kathleen: Well, that's a valid answer and it's true.
I mean, it's so funny. So we're sitting here, it's during the COVID pandemic and of course we're still working from home. So I am up in my office, which is on the second floor of our house. John is in his current office, which is smack dab in the middle of our kitchen. And we are Zooming with each other from two rooms away and yes, we Slack each other from two rooms away all week long.
So we are the big old marketing nerds that do that.
How to connect with John Kathleen: All right. If somebody wants to connect with you learn more about Knowledge360, ask you a question about competitive intelligence. What is the best way for them to connect with you online?
John: I would say the best way to connect with me is via LinkedIn. John Booth, like the guy that shot Lincoln, but not related. And if you want to learn more about Knowledge360, you can go out to Cipher-sys.com or TryK360.com and learn.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: Awesome. I will share that in the show notes. Thank you for joining me, John. I know you have a busy day. We are recording on a Sunday and I'm pretty sure there's like some kind of house project that you want to be working on instead of recording a podcast with me.
And if you're listening and you learn something new and you like what you heard, please, head to Apple podcasts, leave the podcast at five star review. That is how other people find us. And I would really appreciate it. But that is it for this week. Thank you, John.
John: Thank you, Kathleen.
Kathleen: And happy father's day. Because we are recording on father's day. You're the best for doing this for me. Thank you. Alright. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening everyone.
With 54% of product searches taking place on Amazon, it is now the world's largest ecommerce platform. What types of brands is Amazon right for, and what do you need to know to succeed on the platform?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, ROI Swift founder Carolyn Lowe shares her advice for brands considering selling products on Amazon.
Carolyn has a long track record of success developing marketing and advertising strategies for companies selling on Amazon, both as an in-house marketer who helped 5X revenues for a baby brand, and now as the owner of an Amazon agency.
In this conversation, she covers everything from who Amazon is right for, how to set up your product listings, and how to develop and manage your advertising strategy.
Highlights from my conversation with Carolyn include:
- ROI Swift is a digital agency that focuses on three to $50 million companies. They are a Facebook agency partner, Google agency partner, Amazon advertising partner and Klaviyo email marketing partner.
- Amazon is a good place for brands that sell products beyond their website (ie. in stores), and are not direct to consumers.
- The exception to this is brands that sell things that are "heavy and cheap."
- Unless you have complete control over your product distribution channels, odds are that your product will end of up being sold on Amazon by someone else, whether you choose to list them there or not. So it's better to sell them there yourself and take control of the channel.
- One of the risks of selling on Amazon is that they can see all the data about how much product you're selling, and who is buying it. In some cases, this has led Amazon to create and sell its own private label versions of successful products.
- Another risk is that you become dependent upon Amazon for the bulk of your sales and something happens that causes Amazon to delist your product.
- Amazon isn't just for B2C brands. The platform has a growing number of B2B brands, particularly in the office products space, that are selling successfully on it.
- Due to the fees that Amazon charges and the cost of shipping, Amazon is not a great place to sell products that retail for under $15.
- You can either fulfill your products yourself and just pay Amazon a referral fee of eight to 17% depending on your category. Or you can pay the referral fee plus pay the FBA fee, fulfilled by Amazon. That will get you Prime shipping which in some cases, gets you same day or next day shipping if you have enough inventory with Amazon around the country.
- Amazon actually has a calculator that sellers can use to determine the profitability of their products based on their price and weight.
- Before you get started on Amazon, you should begin by doing keyword, market and competitive research, just as you would if you were advertising on Google.
- 69% of the searches that take place on Amazon are not branded, meaning people are searching for a product type, not a specific brand name. This offers brands a great opportunity to gain market share if they have a solid strategy.
- If you have a US PTO trademark for your product or brand, you can get access to Amazon Brand Registry, which unlocks a host of tools and analytics.
- When you list a product on Amazon, you get a 2,000 word description and 7 images, one of which can be a video. Carolyn advises brands to use that opportunity to include a 20 second product or unboxing video in their listing.
- Amazon's algorithm is based on the relevancy of your search and velocity of your product, which means that the more product you sell, the higher you will get listed.
- That's where Amazon advertising comes in. Amazon now earns more than $4 billion in advertising every year through on-Amazon and off-Amazon ads.
- Sponsoring your product can help ensure it gets seen when someone is searching by including it in the three sponsored product spots at the top of search results.
- Cost per click on Amazon can vary dramatically, from 30 cents to $11 depending upon the product category, but Carolyn generally sees ROI on Amazon at 5X what it is on Facebook.
- Sponsored brand, sponsored product and product targeting are three common ad formats on Amazon.
- Amazon DSP allows you to retarget customers off of the Amazon platform.
- Amazon is now launching local news podcasts which will provide advertisers with new options for geotargeted ads.
- The first 30 days of a product listing on Amazon are critical, and building momentum through sales is important, so advertisers should consider strategies like using Facebook ads to drive traffic to their listings, or sending out email blasts.
- Reviews are also vital, and Amazon offers a variety of options for getting reviews in ways that comply with its terms of service.
- One of the biggest mistakes that companies make when they sell on Amazon is they structure their pricing in a way that is not profitable.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the ROI Swift website
- Contact Carolyn or the team at ROI Swift by emailing hello@roiswift.com.
Listen to the podcast to learn which business Amazon is right for, and how to create a marketing and advertising strategy that will drive results on the platform.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Carolyn Lowe, who is the co founder and CEO of ROI Swift. Welcome Carolyn.
Carolyn Lowe (Guest): Thanks for having me, Kathleen.
Carolyn and Kathleen recording this episode.
Kathleen: I’m excited to have you here for a couple of reasons, one of which is, we're going to talk about something that we really haven't covered on this podcast yet. And I'll tell you, in almost 150 episodes, it's hard to find those topics. So I'm really excited to talk about it, but also for the fact that, you know, you're someone who has been in marketing roles, but you've also been in roles where you've really grown companies. And I think that's such an awesome combination.
About Carolyn Lowe and ROI Swift Kathleen: So really looking forward to picking your brain, but in the meantime could you please tell my audience a little bit about who you are and what ROI Swift is?
Carolyn: Sure. Thanks Kathleen. Happy to.
So I started my career in marketing many, many years ago, but I'll just go back 20 years to Dell computers. Dell technologies, in 1999, moved me down here from Boston to Austin to help run the consumer marketing division. People were buying their first computers and it was all done through direct mail and catalogs and phone, believe it or not.
So I really loved that small and emerging part of Dell. We were last in market share. We were behind a company called Gateway that's now out of business. So going from virtually nothing to number one, I really enjoyed growing that part of the business. And then I went on to run other divisions.
And after that I worked for a global market research company and then I had two kids, and it's hard to do global travel with little ones.
So I took some time off and just consulted while my kids were young. And then I went back to work for a mom and baby company in 2014 and really loved helping them grow. I ran their e-commerce and their Amazon business.
After a year of doing that, I decided I wanted to do that for more companies because it just felt so good. So I started ROI Swift about five years ago with a focus on three to $50 million companies really working on their Amazon. We're a Facebook agency partner, we're a Google agency partner, we're an Amazon advertising partner and we're Klaviyo email marketing partners.
So that's what I've been doing for the past five years. And we've helped over 102 companies grow. Our goal is to help a thousand. So I have 898 to go until retirement.
Kathleen: I love that and I think you have dramatically undersold yourself because when I read about you, the mom and baby company that you worked on, you grew that dramatically in just 18 months, correct? What was the actual revenue growth in that time?
Carolyn: They are a private company and they did get acquired by Reckitt Benckiser so I don't know if that number is public, but I can say we were 5X from the time that I started until the time that I stopped working. It was considerable.
Which businesses should sell on Amazon? Kathleen: I saw that and I sort of sat up and said, "Oh, I need to talk to her." So Amazon, that's really what drew me to having this conversation because we haven't talked about it much on the podcast. In fact, I think the only real conversation I've had with anyone in the past 150 episodes about Amazon has been about publishing content through Amazon direct publishing and Kindle eBooks and that sort of thing, which is awesome also, but really here, we're talking about marketing your products on Amazon.
So to kind of lay the groundwork for this conversation, let's start by talking about who is right for Amazon, and who should be looking at selling on Amazon.
Carolyn: That is a great question because Amazon isn't the right platform for everyone. It's definitely for brands that are sold beyond just their website. So if you're carried in Target or Walmart or REI or any of the other big retailers, someone's going to put your product on Amazon.
I'm mentoring, pro bono, a beauty brand right now - an emerging beauty brand. And even though they don't sell on Amazon, they only sell on their website, their products have made it to Amazon. So we highly encourage folks to own that.
And then the folks that shouldn't are the folks that are 100% DTC and control their channel and they can own that customer. There's no reason you need to give up margin or, or give up the customer to Amazon.
So those are, I think, the two, and then the products that don't work well on Amazon are a lot of times what we call heavy and cheap. So, think about a case of sparkling water. It's harder to make money on than, say, a $40 blouse.
Controlling your brand presence on Amazon Kathleen: Absolutely. Now I have a couple questions on that. You peaked my interest. One is, you mentioned companies finding their products on Amazon. I think for a lot of people, you know, who might be heavy Amazon consumers, but not experienced Amazon sellers, that might sound a little confusing.
So how does your product wind up on Amazon if you're not selling it there?
Carolyn: Good question. So Amazon, as you know, is a marketplace and their goal is to bring the best value to the customer. So as long as it's legally the same product, it has the same UPC code, Amazon doesn't care.
They want the lowest price for you, the customer, because they are all about customer trust and customer value.
So we see people all the time in like CVS or target with these little scanners, and they don't work for CVS or Target. They're scanning real time. They're called retail arbitrage. And they're trying to find what's the lowest price, or they'll find products on Target and they'll buy them all up and then resell them.
So many times that I've worked with folks and asked, when I sent the seller an email as a representative of a brand and said, "how did you legally acquire our products? We have no record of selling to you" and they'll send me, nine times out of 10, a Target receipt that shows that they bought stuff on clearance at target and threw it up on Amazon.
Kathleen: Wow. It reminds me so much of the early days of eBay.
Carolyn: Yes!
Is Amazon right for B2B brands? Kathleen: It's interesting. So the other thing that I wanted to ask you about this is, what about B2B? Because you said really anything where you have, let's say, over a $15 transaction value and that's not D2C I always think of Amazon as being a B2C play.
Is it a good place for B2B companies who have products to sell?
Carolyn: It is, especially in the office space. So about six years ago, I was invited to Amazon headquarters. There were 250 women. They invited the top 250 Amazon women's sellers in the country.
And so it was a whole day with the leadership team at Amazon's headquarters. We met with the heads of global marketplace, the head of B2B, the head of launchpad for emerging brands.
And so B2B was just getting going, and you used to have to have an invite. Like, six years ago, you needed an invite to be in the B2B part. And now, as you can imagine, I've worked for Dell as a public company. When you're as big as Amazon, finding new revenue streams, you've got to think big. And so obviously, now international expansion is big for them and the B2B side is big for them.
You know, they want to overtake OfficeMax and Staples and all of those things. And so Amazon now does have a great B2B offering and a lot of folks can give discounts for bulk quantity. So I worked with a company that sold compostable coffee cups and they did a great B2B business on Amazon.
What's the risk fo selling on Amazon? Kathleen: Interesting. Now the other thing I've heard from people who have sold on Amazon, or have thought about it, is that they get really nervous. It's like a double edged sword. They're like, I want to go and sell on Amazon because I can reach a huge audience and it's great exposure, but I kind of don't want to go and sell on Amazon because as soon as products are successful, Amazon starts to sell it. And you can't compete against the platform itself. So what's the story there?
Carolyn: That is definitely a concern. Amazon has launched a whole bunch of private label brands in the supplement category. In the wellness category, they have Solimo, which is their own brand.
They also have a competitive advantage because they know what everybody's buying and they know where the holes are. They know what everybody's searching for and what they're not finding. So they have the best product market research out there because they have all your data.
And so that is a concern, but I also warn brands, don't just put all your eggs in the Amazon basket. Definitely build your brand outside of Amazon. There's plenty of folks that have built seven figure businesses on Amazon and just are on Amazon and that's fine. But then you're beholden to Amazon.
We've had clients who do eight, 9 million a month on Amazon and they get a shutdown by mistake. Amazon makes a mistake and closes their listing and they're out millions of dollars.
That's why Amazon is a double edged sword. It's a great place -- way, way cheaper than going out through radio and TV and digital and spending a bunch of money. But there are some risks if you are just on Amazon or more than 50% of your revenue is on Amazon.
What to know if you plan to sell your product on Amazon Kathleen: Now I know we need to get into how to market on Amazon, but I do have one other question, and I don't even know if this is one that you can answer. I don't know if this is within your area of expertise, but I advise one company that made a product for children and families. It was like an actual hardware product that was geared towards positive parenting, and I learned a lot from the CEO and the founder of that company.
He talked about how, when you're going to sell on Amazon, there are ways, if you want to make it super easy, you have to have your packaging a certain way so that it can be Prime shipped.
Are there other things that companies who are saying, "Hey, I think I might want to sell on Amazon" should know that go beyond how you market, how you package or how you actually create your product to kind of optimize it for sale on Amazon? Does that make sense?
Carolyn: Yes, that does make sense. So I had a very interesting and similar experience. I advised a friend who had a product for toddlers. And what we found was that he wanted to sell them and they were $5 each. And I said, "You're never going to make any money. So you have to do a three-pack, put them all in one package, do this packaging." There's all these different tiers of fulfilled by Amazon.
So you can either fulfill it yourself and just pay Amazon a referral fee of eight to 17% depending on your category. Or you can pay the referral fee plus pay the FBA fee, fulfilled by Amazon. That gets you Prime shipping. In some cases, it gets you same day or next day shipping if you have enough inventory with Amazon around the country. And so I said, "Well, your products do need to be $15 at least to make money when you're done with all these fees. So let's do this."
And then I've also worked with another company in the natural cleaning space where those fees are based on weight. So you want to get the highest price you can for the lowest weight.
So we said, you know, you're paying more for a two pound something when, if it's four pounds, you're only paying 30 or 40 cents more for those extra two pounds.
So there's that sort of sweet spot. And I always advise people, before they launch something, to go into the Amazon calculator and it'll spit out and tell you exactly what all your fees are.
So before you launch, we like to have clients do a P&L and say, "Okay, can you make money based on your margins, based on all the Amazon fees? Does it make sense before you jump in?"
Getting started on Amazon Kathleen: That makes a lot of sense. So it seems like there's some real homework to do on the front end before you make the decision to wade in.
So assuming someone has done that and decides that Amazon is a really good platform for them, where do you start when it comes to thinking about how to market your product and how does that even work on Amazon?
Carolyn: That is why we exist, because Amazon doesn't make it easy. Sometimes I think you doing your taxes yourself is easier than selling on Amazon.
Kathleen: Oh, that sounds terrible.
Carolyn: That's why we exist - to help them out. And so I think the first place to start is to do keyword research and marketplace research, just like you would if you were going to launch a product. You want to look at the competitive landscape. You want to look at how many people are even searching for this on Amazon. Do I have any searches for my brand?
69% of searches on Amazon are non-brand. So the good news is, only a third of the folks are looking for products by name. So that's really helpful. A lot of folks will just look for, like if you're pregnant, a pregnancy test or something like that, and they're not looking for branded ones.
Kathleen: Is there a keyword research tool baked into Amazon? How do you know if somebody is searching for your brand? Is there a way to know that?
Carolyn: There are some third party tools we use, and then we also have access as an Amazon agency partner to some beta tools that a lot of sellers don't have access to.
So a lot of this, you can get if you have a brand registered. So Amazon is really helping brands now by this brand registry process. So if you have a US PTO trademark that's live, you can get access to some additional tools.
And then we have access to third party tools and then some additional beta tools as a partner. So we'll do that keyword research. Just like you go on Google and you do keyword research, it's the same thing on Amazon. There's a couple of good tools. And so we'll do that.
And then we'll also inspect the competitors. There's other third party tools where you can inspect what they are ranking for and what terms they are ranking for and how should I write my copy and how should I write my description?
So that's usually the first thing we'll do is assess the market, and find out what people are searching for. We also will skim reviews to see what people like about competitive products or don't like about competitive products and really sort of weave that into the product description.
You get seven images and those seven images are key, so use a killer image playbook for those seven images. There was someone who was a little too small for us to work with. They only had a few products, so I told her what to do with her listing and she came back two weeks later. She said "My conversion rate doubled from 15% to 30%."
Kathleen: Wow.
Carolyn: That is just so rewarding to hear that the actual data and science, and there's probably seven or eight other companies that we can easily point to and say, these are the changes we made on their listing, and their conversion rate went up 30, 50, a hundred percent.
Kathleen: So let's get into this a little bit deeper. It sounds like, from what you're saying, the first thing that a company needs to do, if they want to sell on Amazon, as they start to take the steps of getting their brand presence set up, is register their brand. Is that right?
Carolyn: Yes. Through Amazon brand registry. You don't have to do it first, but it's probably easier to set up your seller account first and then, go ahead and do your brand registry.
After that, selling on Amazon, you can do a professional account for $40 a month. So you set up your seller account and then they have a separate tool that you just go in, you put in your information, you put in your trademark number and it's really great because it allows you to have more control over your listings.
Carolyn: If you are the registered brand owner, Amazon gives you more leeway with who controls, since there's so many people that could sell your product. It used to be whoever the best seller is versus, as a brand owner, somebody else could be making changes to your listing. And it's really nice that over the last three to four years, Amazon has given brand owners more control.
Kathleen: So when you set up that brand registry, what are the things that you need to have ready so that you can set up a really great presence on Amazon?
Carolyn: So the brand registry itself is pretty easy. You just need to go out to US PTO and grab your serial number and your registration number and have all your information. Where do you sell your products? And usually then they go ahead and they'll send an email, like a verification code, to the lawyer on file with the trademark.
So you just have to get that verification code from your trademark attorney and input that into Amazon and boom. All of a sudden you'll have brand registry, which means you can add much better content to your listings.
So at the bottom, there's a description. And usually you just get 2,000 characters. That's it. Like, a paragraph. With a brand registry you can do enhanced brand content. So you can go in and it can be about the company, there can be more videos, there can be comparison charts.
So you get a ton more access to that. You get access to sponsored brand videos and you get access to some of those tools where you can do market research. You can put in your product code and see all the competitors. And you could see click through rates and conversion rates on search terms.
Best practices for building out your product listing Kathleen: Wow. That does sound useful. Now, in terms of videos and photos and things like that, how do you advise companies? When they're thinking about starting to create those assets, what should they be doing to optimize their presence?
Carolyn: That is a terrific question. We see this all the time because people will come to us and they'll have maybe four or five photos, and they'll just be different shots of the product. And really, you want call outs, you know, you can have six, and then if you're a brand owner, your seventh image can be a video.
So we highly suggest a 20 second product usage or unboxing video. The other great thing too, is that a lot of times people will be searching when they're in their office, so they have their sound off.
And so we always advise folks, when you do video, make sure you have that text over so that when people do have their sound off, they can still watch the video and get the content. So those are some key things to winning on the images and the videos.
Kathleen: So that's the brand listing itself, but what about for product listings? Are there any best practices or things that you see people trip up on when they set them up?
Carolyn: Okay. Yes. I'm sorry. And I was talking about that for the product.
Kathleen: I'm sorry.
Carolyn: That's okay. It's videos across Amazon. Amazon has also launched video in search results. So instead of just having products in search results, you can now have a video and we've seen great success with that for some of our clients where it stops them and you get more than just a listing. It's a video. And we know that folks are clicking more and more on those videos.
So we're seeing better return on ad spend on those videos. As you're scrolling down, say you're searching for a picture frame and you scroll down. And instead of just a bunch of listings, you see an actual video? And you can put a video and say why your picture frame is so much better? You know, it's white, it stands up on its own, the clips don't fall off, whatever, those things that drive people crazy about most picture frames - you can put all those in your listing.
Developing your Amazon marketing strategy Kathleen: Great. So how does marketing work once you have your listings set up? Where do you go from there?
Carolyn: It's a lot like Google, so you don't just put a listing up and show up on page one the first day, right?
As you know, that organic listing takes time and the way Amazon's algorithm works is, it's based largely on relevancy of your search and velocity of your product. So it's a vicious cycle where you need to sell more to show up on page one, but you can't show up on page one until you sell more.
Kathleen: So it's "the rich get richer."
Carolyn: So that's where Amazon advertising comes in. Amazon has now surpassed Microsoft in terms of advertising revenue. They recently announced that they had over 4 billion in advertising revenue.
So again, when you're a company as big as Amazon, you need to find big revenue streams and advertising is a big revenue stream. So there's on Amazon and off Amazon advertising. For folks that are selling on Amazon the best way, and the most efficient way, is to run those sponsored products.
So when someone searches for picture frame, there's two to three results that show up first above the organic listings. And that's how you do it, just like Google paid search ads.
Kathleen: And how do prices compare to Google ads for example?
Carolyn: Well, it's interesting. We've seen cost per click as low as 30 cents, and we've seen it as high as $11, so it's really category dependent. What we know is that the return on ad spend is so much better.
Typically, your return on ad spend on Amazon is four to five X for most products in a 40 or $50 price point. So that's really good. We usually see that advertising cost of sale around 20% is pretty good. So, you're paying 20% of the revenue to get the sale, but that also helps increase your organic because more people are finding you, more people are buying you.
We've also seen the reverse happen where if you run really inefficient advertising, it actually hurts your organic results because you send a whole bunch of people through that don't buy. Amazon does not want to send anybody to a listing where the customer doesn't purchase, just like Google.
Amazon advertising formats Kathleen: Yeah. So what are the different advertising formats on Amazon? You mentioned a sponsored product. Are there other ways that you can advertise on the platform itself or is it really just getting the product higher on the listings?
Carolyn: So there are a few different ways. The first one at the very top is what we call a sponsored brand. So there's typically only one of those and it'll highlight two or three products depending on whether you're on mobile or desktop. And then that can send you through to your brand storefront.
And that's where you can showcase all of your products. It's almost like your own mini website. There's some great ones out there. Prana sports product clothing has a terrific storefront. A couple of our clients have fabulous storefronts that we really love.
So that's one. The other one is the sponsored products where you can buy search terms or you can run an auto campaign and Amazon will match and show your product in the search results when it looks relevant or it's in the same category as another one.
Another one we really like is product targeting. So a lot of times we will find the competitors in the space that are rated below in terms of ratings and maybe priced at or higher. And so those are ones.
So when you go to, say, the product page for your competitors' picture frame, yours will show up and you have maybe four stars. They have three and a half stars and yours is priced maybe two to $3 below.
So we can do this really honed in targeting by individual product, which is really, really nice.
Managing your Amazon advertising account Kathleen: That's so fascinating. So when you look at managing an Amazon advertising account, what percentage of your time is spent setting it up versus the ongoing tweaking? Because from everything you're saying, there could be an incredible amount of setup just to get those granular targeting options in place. But then it also sounds like when you set it up that way, it sets the stage for a lot of ongoing management.
Carolyn: Yes, it is. It's not like a set and forget. It's like Google, right? You can't just throw a Google AdWords campaign up there and leave it and forget it. We've seen so many people do that, both with Google and Amazon.
We actually just had a call yesterday with a client. We said, "You know, you wasted about 30% of your spend."
On-Amazon vs. off-Amazon advertising Kathleen: Wow. So you mentioned that there's on Amazon advertising and off Amazon advertising. What is off Amazon advertising? I don't even know if I was aware of that.
Carolyn: So Amazon has had it for a while. It's gone through many different names. It used to be Amazon marketing group, AMG, and now its Amazon DSP, so display.
And so Amazon will help you do two things. If you want to retarget off of Amazon, you can do that as well. So someone goes to your product listing and they don't buy, and then Amazon will serve up your ad around other properties around the web and follow them around. So just like you would do retargeting on your own website, you can do that with Amazon as well.
And then they also have display prospecting, so you can set up your product and they know everything about everybody who's bought your product. They know everything else. They know all of their interests.
So you can also do display prospecting through Amazon. Those are typically not as profitable as on Amazon where the people are searching. But it's definitely better. We've had some clients do tests with off Amazon advertising through DSP, and then also through the trade desk. Amazon doesn't have quite the reach of trade desk, but the targeting is so much better because they know so much more about the person.
Kathleen: Wow. It's just awesome. But also so creepy to think about how much they know about us.
Carolyn: So scary. The latest is the Amazon podcast launch. Amazon is going to be launching local news type podcasts. And I think the really interesting thing about this is, as you know, Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. And Amazon knows everything about you.
So from an advertiser standpoint, when you buy podcast advertising, you may only know, here are the types of people that listen to Snacks Daily, which is one of the podcasts I listen to, and here are the people that listen to this podcast. But now Amazon knows who are the people that listen to this podcast and they buy children's snack food.
So if you are a children's snack food brand, you can just advertise to those people on that podcast who are listening to, who buy children's snack foods.
Kathleen: And if you're local to a certain geography, all of a sudden it opens up the possibility for brands that are geo-targeting to get even that much more specific.
Carolyn: Geo-targeting is perfect because you might be a brand that's only sold in certain regions and your demographic might be different in the South versus the East, et cetera. So I just think that Amazon has probably so much data on you that you're going to start to see Amazon go beyond just a marketplace.
Retargeting with Amazon Kathleen: Well, it's inevitable. They're going to take over the world. It's a good thing that you're an Amazon agency. You're well poised to ride that with them. Is there any way, like with Google, you can put pixels on your website and you can then retarget from your website off to Google?
Is there any way, with Amazon, to link someone's visit to your website, to the way you advertise to them on Amazon?
Carolyn: There's a couple of different ways. Amazon recently launched attribution and so you can tag outbound links and you can get reporting on that. Depending on your category, it's cheaper to actually run Facebook ads to Amazon than it is to run on Amazon advertising. It typically doesn't convert as well as sponsored products, where people are actively searching, but it is great to drive.
And then those first 30 days are really critical for Amazon in terms of how your product ranks. So what we have found is that when we run Facebook ads, the nice thing is, we can tag them now and Amazon will report on that attribution.
Gaining momentum in your first 30 days on Amazon Kathleen: Oh, that's nice. It sounds like, from what you're saying, in your first 30 days of listing a product, it's really important to think of your marketing slash advertising strategy holistically and not just as "what I'm doing on the Amazon platform." Like, so I'm here at a new site, you're driving traffic to it from Facebook. Are there other methods that you use to get that momentum going in the first 30 days?
Carolyn: So for our brands that do have good sized email lists, we will suggest that they go ahead and send out an email campaign with maybe like a 20% off coupon for an introductory offer for their folks. A lot of our brands will do that.
What role do reviews play in your Amazon marketing strategy? Kathleen: That's great. And then this is the other question I've been dying to ask you, which is, what role do reviews play in your Amazon marketing strategy?
Carolyn: Well, that is a good question, Kathleen. So when was the last time you bought a two star product on Amazon?
Kathleen: Never.
Carolyn: Right. So I think you just answered your question.
Reviews are critical. The magic number is between 21 and 26. That's about where people start to say, "Okay." When you only see a few reviews, you're like, "Is this a new product, or is it a lousy product, or is nobody buying this product?" Right? So if you only see a few reviews, you try to figure out why there's only a few reviews.
So I think reviews are critical. One of the board members I know for a natural products company, she worked with one of the women from Oxo. They make everything for your home and they had a great mantra, which was, if your product is not four stars or above, take it off. Go make it four stars and bring it back.
A lot of brands just don't do that. Reviews will kill you. You can live for so long at three, three and a half stars, but longterm, you're not going to make it because people are going to find out and do the research and say, "Oh, you know, this is a three and a half star product." I can make a better product and people will come out with a better product.
So unfortunately, we've had a couple of brands who had product quality issues. And so they had a three and a half star product. And for years they never fixed them. And then, you know, competitors came on and made it better and cheaper.
So reviews are critically important and there's legal ways to get reviews and there's illegal ways. So we want to warn people, do not mess with Amazon. When it comes to reviews, don't do fake reviews. Don't pay people for reviews. You will eventually get caught. You may not get caught today, but they will suspend you.
Kathleen: So I feel like this is a chicken and egg situation though, because you need reviews. It's kind of like you were saying before with the rich get richer, your velocity of your product sales are going to drive getting seen more. If you have more reviews, you're going to sell more, but until you sell more, how do you get more reviews?
So how do you advise sellers to get those reviews? And, hearkening back again to the company I advised, I recall there is a strategy for getting those reviews before you do your big push or your launch. How do you handle that?
Carolyn: So there's a few legal ways to get reviews. One is Amazon's early reviewer program. So for each SKU, they charge you $60 and they will go out to the customers who have bought your product in the early days, like in the beginning, and solicit reviews. It's up to five reviews or up to a year, they will try to get five reviews for you. So that's always been helpful.
Most of the reviews we've seen from early reviewers are four or five stars. They're legitimate reviewers or people who've tried the product and Amazon has vetted them.
There's also Amazon Vine, where you can now only do 30. That used to only be available to people who sold directly to Amazon. But now you can do it through seller central and you can have up to 30 of your products sent out to Amazon's vetted product reviewers.
So they will say, "Okay, great. We have this new product. It's a picture frame." People will sign up for it, they'll get a complimentary one. And you know, Amazon will just ship it from your fulfillment inventory at their warehouses. If you have a four or five star product, those reviews tend to be four or five stars.
And then there's also some third party review services that plug into your Amazon where you're allowed to send one product review email. So, we like feedback. We like the HTML format where you can put a picture of the owner and the founder of the company in it. You have to ask as if you're asking as Amazon. So it has to be objective. You can't say, "If you didn't like the product, don't write a review," but we we've had a client get slapped for saying, "Just respond to this email instead of writing a review."
And they got slapped on the wrist for that. So like I said, it's not worth it if you get caught, but those are the three legal ways that we use to get reviews.
Nurturing your Amazon customers Kathleen: And then correct me if I'm wrong, but when you sell on Amazon, you have people who buy your product. What is your level of access to their information? Normally, if you're selling on your own site, you get people's contact information, and you can nurture them for follow on sales, for reviews, for all kinds of things. Are you able to email these people? Can you export their information? What are the rules around that?
Carolyn: Legally, Amazon owns the customer. We've seen folks put stuff in the boxes. Not our clients, but I've ordered from Amazon. I got some energy gels for running, and I got a QR code in the box. And it said, if you'd like three free gels, sign up for email and you scan the QR code and sign up for their email list.
So that's how they did it. Not quite within Amazon terms of service. You're not supposed to market to Amazon customers, but this was inside the box. And so there's sort of gray lines that people use to get some information or learn more about those customers.
Kathleen: So if you don't have anything like that, are you then sort of making a deal with the devil, when you advertise on Amazon, that you're not going to be able to reach out to your customers at all? Or is there some limited ability through Amazon, or that's it?
Carolyn: Yes. It's Amazon's customer. So yeah, they really don't like you to put marketing materials or anything that drives them off Amazon into the box. You can put it on the packaging though, you know?
Top mistakes companies make when they sell on Amazon Kathleen: Yeah. Interesting. So, what would you say are the top three mistakes you see companies make when they sell on Amazon?
Carolyn: The first one is definitely, people sell unprofitable products. So again, we worked with a natural cleaning company. We've grown them about 10x in two years on a month to month basis. And they were selling $8 products that were heavy, that didn't make money. So we went through and we said, okay, stop selling all these products. Let's bundle these together, make a profitable product, and go from there. So they're off to the races.
So one of the first mistakes we see is that people sell unprofitable products.
One of the other mistakes we see is that people don't get a hold of their advertising. So we'll do a free audit for any brand that's doing like 20,000 or more a month on Amazon. Usually there's enough there to audit. If they're doing less than 20,000, we can't really audit because there's not a lot of data, but if they're doing more than that, we'll do a complimentary audit. And more times than not, we'll see a whole bunch of wasted spend on Amazon, in advertising.
So that's the other big mistake we see.
And then the last one we see is just the listings themselves. We'll see people put good products with bad listings and they won't even know what numbers matter.
So to us, the two things that really matter are sessions and conversions, how much traffic is coming to your page and how many of those people are buying. It's just like your website, right? How much traffic and what's your conversion rate? And those are really the two levers that you can use on Amazon.
Carolyn's advice for companies thinking of advertising on Amazon Kathleen: Interesting. So any advice to companies that are thinking about going forward with this, who don't have experience with Amazon advertising?
Carolyn: I would say definitely talk to someone. Talk to someone like us, or like our agency, or an individual that knows what they're doing, and ask them those questions. Ask them how big is my market share? What are my competitors doing? If they can't answer those questions for you, you probably shouldn't be working with them.
So if you're going to work with an agency or you're thinking about talking to an individual, ask them how many searches are there for my product a month? Are there any branded searches? What are my competitors doing? How competitive is the market? And, how big is this and how much do you think that I could potentially make?
We don't have a crystal ball. We can't say "You're going to make X," but we can say "There's this many non-branded searches. And yes, this is a good category." If we see non-branded searches of less than 10,000 a month or less than 5,000 a month, it's a really small category and it probably doesn't make sense. You can do it, but you're not going to make a million dollars a month in this category.
Brands that are successfully selling on Amazon Kathleen: Got it. Now, I feel like it's easy to go on Amazon and see examples of big brands with big budgets doing an amazing job. Are there any smaller brands that you can think of that are great examples of companies who have awesome Amazon strategies that somebody could go and search Amazon and see what they're doing?
Carolyn: Yes. When I was with UpSpring as an employee and then as their agency they didn't have a big budget.
And the nice thing about Amazon is, it's all pay to play. It's cost per click. It's not cost per thousand. So, you know, you could really scale.
I mean, we were doing low, low, low five figures, barely five figures, and on Amazon, and now they're a seven figure Amazon store.
I would go and look at what the folks in your space are doing, pull up some of those competitor listings and read their reviews and see what people like and don't like.
But as a small brand, it's easy to get on. But it's also easy to make a bunch of mistakes. So a lot of times we'll see that people have set up their products all wrong or set up their account all wrong. And so, a lot of times it'll take two to three months to unwind the messages that were made.
It's a little bit better now with brand registry, but that's why we like to work with brands from the onset or from the early days. So before things get too out of control.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Yeah. That makes sense. You don't have to clean up somebody else's mess. Shifting gears for a minute, on this podcast we're all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it with inbound marketing?
Carolyn: Right now, there are a few that I can think of. And there's a few that I think are doing what you're doing, which is terrific, which is having podcasts. I think that a lot of folks that I've seen do it and do it well, are doing what you're doing with podcasts and really delivering value to folks. So I really love your podcast.
And in terms of other companies, there's Austin Brawner who has an eCommerce podcast, which I think is pretty good too. And from what I hear, he does pretty good with inbound on that.
Kathleen: Oh, well, I'll have to check that out. Now. The other question is, most marketers I know suffer from the same challenge, which is that digital changes so quickly and it's completely overwhelming and they often feel like they're drinking from a fire hose. So how do you personally keep yourself up to date and educated?
Carolyn: Good question. We have a paid search team, paid social and Amazon team, and all of those folks listen to podcasts. You would be amazed what you can learn. And they follow Reddits. And then we also, because we're a Google and a Facebook and an Amazon agency partner, we get access to a lot more insights and what's going on and what's coming and betas and things like that.
So I think it's, it's a little bit of a little bit of folks staying on top of the industry. And also, we're blessed and lucky that we have agency partner status with a lot of the partners, so we know what's going on from the inside.
How to connect with Carolyn Kathleen: That's great. All right. Well, if somebody is listening and wants to get in touch with you and learn more about what ROI Swift does or ask you a question about something that you talked about today, what's the best way for them to connect with you online?
Carolyn: Well, you can go to our website, and don't judge us because we are the cobbler with no shoes. The best way to get ahold of us is go to our website and fill out a form. We'd love to talk to you. You could just reach out to us at hello@roiswift.com.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: All right. I'll put that link in the show notes. So head over there if you want to check that out. And in the meantime, if you are listening and you did learn something new, which, I mean, I learned a ton, please consider heading to Apple Podcasts and leaving the podcast a five star review. Just like on Amazon, podcasts need reviews too. So I would love it if you would do that.
And of course, if you know someone else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest.
Thank you so much, Carolyn. This was a ton of fun. I learned a lot today.
Carolyn: I enjoyed it immensely. Thanks Kathleen.
How can brands stand out and drive incredible customer loyalty?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Katie Martell talks about what it means to find your "exceptional truth" as a brand, and why that should be the guide for everything you do as a marketer.
As Katie says, "the only thing in the middle of the road, is roadkill," and brands that fail to speak their truth get lost in the crowd.
In our conversation, we wade into the controversial waters of whether and when brands should speak out and take a stand, and how to do it in a way that keeps you tightly aligned with your customers.
Highlights from my conversation with Katie include:
- Katie says it is the job of the marketer to understand what is happening in the world.
- Marketing controls brand perception, and brand perception influences whether someone will buy from you.
- If you're in marketing, you have to understand where your brand fits in the world of your buyer's identity.
- When you know what your buyers care about, you can align that with your brand values, and you have an opportunity to take a position that will strengthen your place in the market.
- Katie says that brands that don't take a position get lost in a crowded marketplace and are not a part of the conversation.
- By taking a stance about what you believe, you can change the conversation in your market and, in doing so, become a market leader.
- Katie says brands need to find "exceptional truths" - little kernels of truth that get buyers to stop, pause, and rethink the way they see the world.
- When you've created that seed of doubt, buyers are open. They're leaning in, they're listening to what else you have to say. And that is when marketing works at its best. That's when they're more receptive to your pitch.
- This takes knowing buyers so well that you know where they're misinformed or what they don't know or what they don't understand so that you can challenge that.
- This approach is based on the concepts outlined in the book The Challenger Sale, which is typically used in the sales world but has a lot of application to marketing.
- Marketers need to be confident to convince the organizations they work for that this type of challenge is the right approach.
- This can be hard because marketing is a "voyeuristic" profession - meaning that everyone can "see" marketing so they think they are an expert and know how it should be done.
- As a marketer coming into a new company, its important to determine what your exceptional truth is and then find ways of rolling that out across your marketing in a way that makes your brand unique and different.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit Katie's website
- Follow Katie on Twitter
- Connect with Katie on LinkedIn
Listen to the podcast to hear Katie's take on why it is so important for brands to find their exceptional truths, and how to use that in your marketing to gain a competitive edge.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Katie Martell, who is an on demand communications strategist based out of Boston, Massachusetts. Welcome Katie.
Katie Martell (Guest): Hi Kathleen. Thank you so much for having me.
Katie and Kathleen recording this episode.
Kathleen: I am excited to have you here. For everyone listening, I heard Katie speak at Marketing Profs B2B Marketing Forum in, what was that? September or October? October of 2019.
Back in the days when we still went to conferences in person. And I was just so blown away. She gave such an amazing talk on Rabble Rousers and it really not only struck me for the content of the talk, but also, you were just an amazing speaker.
We can have a separate conversation about that. But anyway, that's why I wanted to have you on and share some of your amazing wisdom with everyone who's listening.
So I could go on and on about you. but before I go down too much of a tangent, I would love it if you would explain what an on-demand communication strategist is and what you do, and also a little bit of your background and how you wound up doing that.
About Katie Martell Katie: I would love to, and I have to start by saying thank you for the kind words about that talk last year.
So the title of that talk was something like "Market Like a Rabble Rouser" and it came from this fascination I have with the world of politics and persuasion mixed with what I do as a marketer.
So I've been a marketer in the B2B realm for 11 years now. And what's been interesting is, I've been marketing to marketers for the majority of my career.
And that was first at a B2B data services company. We were an early sponsor of the Marketing Profs event. That was a startup that I grew up to acquisition. And then it was a PR firm, an analyst from my own MarTech startups.
So I've kind of lived multiple lives, worn many different hats, but always marketing in this world of B2B tech, and MarTech specifically.
So I've been a student of marketing in a time when it's completely changing from what was the kind of capital M marketing that we've known it to be.
And so this talk was just honestly, they had asked me what I wanted to talk about, which is a moment in time where you go, "Oh, that's a dangerous, that's a dangerous ask of me." And I was honest. I said, "Let's talk about what's happening in the world of misinformation, persuasion." I'm talking Russian trolls, I'm talking campaign interference. I'm talking all the stuff that, you know, you read on the headlines, on whatever news outlet you choose to follow. And let's talk about what marketers can learn from it.
So I get up on stage. I give this talk. It went over a little bit of time because that's, hello, it's me. Well, people were absolutely polarized in the audience. We had half the room, a little more than half, I will say, who were like, "Yeah, we got the takeaway. This is great. Thanks so much." And the other half that I just think, I don't know what, didn't go across as well for many, because I presented a lot of information about Russian trolls and some of the exact campaign ads they used and it was pretty incendiary stuff, but that was the point. I was trying to get people riled up and hey, achievement unlocked.
Kathleen: But I also think, isn't that polarized response just such a perfect reflection of why that talk was needed in the first place?
Katie: I hope so. I was encouraging folks to really, you know, rouse the rabble, you know,? Create emotional responses, shake things up, and that's kind of what I did on stage.
Kathleen: Well, and to be clear, just to interject, your talk was not an inherently political talk in the sense that you weren't taking sides, you were presenting facts, right? And people can take that and do with it what they want, but I just wanted to put that out there.
Marketers need to pay attention to what is happening in the world Katie: Well, I appreciate it. And let the lesson and the takeaway here be that we need, as marketers, to pay attention to what's happening in the world.
I mean, the world around us, look at this past week and today's date. I don't know if you're going to give the date here. It's June 1st. So we are coming off of a weekend of civil unrest, Black Lives Matter protests. It is a time where, if you check social media, you're bombarded with hashtag activism and names and everybody from brands to individuals getting involved in this current conversation.
We as marketers should be watching this and learning.
Kathleen: Yes. I mean, actually, it's interesting that we are having this conversation today because I literally, just this morning, was online on social media and I saw one person saying something about how you have to speak out and you have to make your positions known. And another person's literally saying "I'm not going to support businesses that don't say anything."
It's interesting. There's so many different sides to what's happening right now, but it really doesn't matter what you believe about the current situation.
The fact is that the world around us is going to make judgments and make personal buying decisions. And they could be different ones, person to person, but they're going to be made based upon what you do and or do not say right now, right.
So if you're not paying attention as a marketer, you're not doing your job
Katie: Because this is our job. It is our job. Marketing controls brand perception, right? Brand perception is the reality for consumers. They make a decision about us before they engage with us by the way we act through marketing.
That's the kind of inherent "duh" that we know about our jobs, but what that means at a time like this and what it started to mean over the past, I would say, decade or so as the world of social movements, identity, and brands and corporate world they've started to intersect. And so what that now means is, if you're in marketing, you have to understand where your brand fits in the world of your buyer's identity, whether they believe in the Black Lives Matter movements, right? These kinds of areas that were kind of gray areas before of, we don't want to get political.
It's not appropriate for every brand to have a comment on what's happening. For example, we're talking about the treatment of African American individuals in the US, if your brand happens to live values that embrace diversity and inclusion and have large representation from that community and you take steps to make sure that their employee experience is great and yada, yada, yada, you might as well leverage that in marketing. You might as well show the world that you're on the same side as the giant movement that's now building in States and cities around the world.
My God, this is a great opportunity for marketers, which I know sounds dirty to say out loud, but it's absolutely a time to take advantage of the global zeitgeist right now, and be part of the conversation, be part of the narrative, earn trust. It might help you differentiate.
It is a way of saying to the world, "This is where we play, this is what we believe, this is who we are as a brand" that may go well beyond what your product or your service does.
That is an opportunity.
Kathleen: I agree with you. This is such an interesting conversation. In the past year, I had a conversation about this with someone who I've always considered to be very much a professional mentor/idol/role model. I've come to realize as I've gotten to know this person better that they feel very strongly about keeping all politics, all commentary on social issues, completely out of business. And that is their personal belief.
It has come into focus, I think, with this last election cycle, and we had a big debate where the person was saying companies should never post about politics. I personally don't believe that, nor do I think every company should post about politics.
People will disagree with me and that's fine, but I think that it all comes back to really understanding your brand. And in this case, especially for privately held companies, brands are very inextricably interwoven with the person that owns the company. This is going to come right down to the owners of the company and what they personally believe in.
There are some companies where the person that owns it is never going to talk about politics because that person, as an individual, doesn't talk about politics even in social settings.
But then you have companies, and there's some examples I'd love to cite, like Penzeys Spices. They are a spice company out of the Midwest. I had discovered them years ago because I was looking for some really niche spices. I like to cook and I had followed them, and then I started seeing this stuff on Facebook and they come out really, really strongly.
This is a long story, but I got into a really big debate with this person. And the person was saying, you are going to lose customers and that's not good for your business. And you're going to alienate people and that's not good for your business.
And my feeling is, that might be fine. If you're somebody who believes that you want to live your beliefs and you want your business to live those beliefs, you may lose customers, but you will probably have the ones you keep drive tremendous loyalty and you may gain as much, if not more, than you lose.
So, diatribe over. You're the guest, not me!
Katie: Oh, please! I love your point of view. I'm honored to be here because I think you are just brilliant and I love your work.
You hit on something really polarizing right now which works at multiple levels. It also kind of hearkens back to the fundamental truth that not all marketing advice is going to apply to every company. And I feel like that's an important disclaimer, because we tend in marketing to say, brands should do this, they shouldn't do that.
It's really, to your point, what is right for your business, your customers, and most importantly, your goals.
Now that spice company, I don't know them, but I guarantee their goal is not to be the spice for everyone.
It sounds like they know exactly who their buyer is and they know exactly what that buyer wants from them. They want a spice company that stands for more than spice. Great.
Not all car companies are going to be a car for everybody, right? Just like with Patagonia, right? If you're buying a jacket to go skiing and they have a set of brand values that they know aligns with the subset of the total market, but that subset will be inherently loyal to them because Patagonia is an example of a brand that's been consistent against their values.
For years, they've always been kind of counterintuitively anti consumption. They sell retail products. They need to drive consumption. Remember that famous ad that was like, "Don't buy this jacket"? You don't know it. You have to Google it.
And it's Patagonia saying "We cause too much waste in our industry. We build products that may cost you a little more, but they're sustainably made and we want you to wear them for longer. We're going to help you repair them. We're going to give you some tools to make sure that you can make sure you get the most out of them. They're longer lasting."
These are brand values that the buyer can relate to because the buyer also shares those values.
So this really isn't a new marketing problem. We like to think it is because of social media and hashtag activism and all the propaganda that's happening. But this really isn't old school marketing best practice. Know your buyer, know where you fit in their world.
Bill Bernbach has a great quote that's like, "If you stand for nothing, you'll find some people for you and some people against you. And if you stand for nothing, you'll find nobody for you and nobody against you."
Which is worse for a marketer? To be completely out of the conversation or to be clear about where you sit and stand and who you're intended for?
I love old time radio. There's a great Sirius XM station about the radio shows from the era of when that was entertainment. Somebody had this quote in the old timey accent. They were like, "The only thing you find in the middle of the road is roadkill my dear."
Right now, today, brands do not have to have a comment on who should be president.
That is politics. That is up to the individual. We each have a right to vote. Stay out of it unless you're relating to the campaign or you're lobbying for a certain group.
Honestly, we need to have a say about issues that matter for our buyers. That's it. If it doesn't matter to your buyers, it shouldn't matter to you and your marketing.
If you're a founder, I'm going to kind of disagree with you on this, but if you're a founder trying to lever your organization for your own political, personal views, that's a mistake because not everyone in your company is going to agree with you. Just like not every one of your buyers is going to agree with you.
You have to find middle ground. That's what this is about.
When you canvas for a political campaign and you're going door to door for, I don't know, Bernie Sanders, you don't open the door and knock on the door and say, let me tell you why you're wrong about insert political candidate. You find common ground. You say, what do we share? What are we aligned on? And how do we then move forward together?
It's not about polarizing. It's about recruiting people to see the world the way you do. And those people likely bring the same set of values that you do.
Kathleen: To be clear, I should say because I probably didn't explain this, I'm not advocating that businesses come out and say "Vote for so and so." I'm more coming out and saying that the context that came up when I talked about it with somebody, was that there were things happening politically that impacted other issues, whether that's the environment or social issues, et cetera, there was like a trickle down. And there were businesses that at the time were coming out and standing for or against those environmental or social issues. That was what sparked the conversation.
It's very interesting to me because the things that swim in my brain when I get into this conversation are, there is an increasing amount of data that started to come out, particularly with younger generations, that they are actually much more likely to buy from businesses that are willing to say what they stand for.
Again, I'm not talking about politics, I'm talking broadly about things that you stand for. And I loved your statement about the only thing in the middle of the road is roadkill. Because you know, you look at social activism and business today and you see companies like Tom's shoes, which stand for something, and Patagonia, which stands for something. These businesses are doing very, very well, particularly amongst a younger demographic.
And so I think part of it is knowing who you sell to, as you said. Part of it is also recognizing that over time, things are going to change as this younger demographic ages and people follow them, who knows?
I don't know what will happen with the next generation, but today's 20 year olds are going to be the 30 and 40 year olds of tomorrow and the next decade, et cetera.
And so as our customer populations age, their preferences come with them as they do.
It reminds me of the conversation that I've had with people about niching down as a business. I used to own a marketing agency and agencies talk about this all the time. Should we be the agency for everyone? Or should we declare that we are serving this one niche?
And the fear that everybody always has when you get into that conversation is the fear of having to say "no" and turn people away.
What most data shows, and most people find when they do it, is that when you niche down, you actually thrive. You make more money because you really find the right fit customer and they have a higher perception of you. They stick with you longer, et cetera.
And so, there's an echo of that going through my head as I listened to us talk about this.
Understanding your brand promise Katie: Absolutely. And again, it comes back to branding basics.
You have to know the promise that you're going to make to anyone. That's what brand is. Brand is a promise. When they engage with you, they want to know that they're going to get something that you've promised them.
You don't have to take a stance around hot button issues. Stay away from hot button issues, unless you're ready for that, unless that's really core to your business and your values and live throughout the organization.
There are many examples, from our history, of B2B companies that stand for something in their industry. This is where this needs to be applied to B2B. B2B listeners might be thinking, this doesn't apply to me because I sell, I don't know, refrigeration.
And I'm here to tell you, there is, within the world of refrigeration, a company called Stirling Ultracold, that was kind of a smaller player within this world of refrigeration. They would sell to pharmaceutical companies, and we're talking commercial grade keeping stuff cold, right?
That's the extent of my knowledge, but they are ultra low temperature freezers that companies need. This is a great example of a company in a world that we would think, what is controversial about this space? The way they were disrupting their own industry was just with this idea of sustainability and energy costs and carbon footprint -- these things that their product enabled companies to decrease. They saved something like 70% of energy costs.
Energy and sustainability and carbon footprint was never a consideration point for this buyer before. They just didn't look at it along that list of criteria that they're making their decision against. It didn't matter.
Suddenly, here's a company who comes forward with a great PR program, really strong thought leadership, a leader who says, "I believe we have a responsibility to have a smaller carbon footprint. And guess what? My products enable you to have it."
It suddenly changed the entire perimeter of an industry.
That is the exact same advice that you and I are preaching right now. Just take a stance in what you believe in your own market. That's how you're going to change the conversation in market. That's how you're going to find buyers that are aligned with you around this value that now matters, and in a broader sense, you know, to the world, but really in this industry. And that's how you're going to differentiate and earn that trust, is when you declare "Here's what we're about."
And you do that with confidence, because that allows the buyer to look at you and say, "I know exactly what I'm signing up for."
Change the conversation in your industry Kathleen: I love that. And it reminds me of a talk that I heard by April Dunford.
Katie: Love April Dunford, high five.
Kathleen: I heard it at HubSpot's Inbound conference. April Dunford is an expert on positioning and she gives this talk about the four different ways you can approach positioning for your business.
And I don't remember the nickname she has for it, but the example that she gives for one of the ways is about changing the conversation. And she talks about Tesla and how before Tesla, the leader in the electric car market was the Prius. And the whole conversation in electric cars was about battery life. How long could you drive before you needed to recharge?
You could substitute refrigeration, but the bottom line is that, as a new entrant, if you think about coming into an established market, you're not going to have the first mover advantage. You're not creating a category per se. So how do you catapult yourself to the head of that market? You do it by changing the conversation.
And so she talks about how Tesla came in and totally changed the conversation by saying, "Yeah, whatever. Battery life. Of course, we all have battery life. It's really all about how sexy is the design and how fast does the car go?"
And now, you see a completely different dialogue happening in electric cars. You see Tesla as a front runner. And you see a lot more electric car manufacturers focusing on design and speed because they made it sexy. And that's the new conversation. And it sounds like that's exactly the same thing this refrigeration company did.
Finding your "exceptional truth" Katie: They had to. And this is really where I think, and I know I'm a little biased. I come from a communications background. I've seen the power of content marketing and PR and all of that working in tandem to lift up brands.
I mean, I'm a startup girl at heart. When you can't be the loudest voice in the room and you can't be the dominant player of which, by the way, there's only one in every industry. So the majority are not dominant players.
All of us need to figure out how to get more strategic with the way we leverage PR and content. I think we've fallen into a bit of a trap, and I'll use that word gingerly because of the rise of inbound marketing, because of the rise of the tools and tech that allow us to publish a lot of content.
What we've sacrificed are the kernels of little ideas that we're using to seed the market. We've become really good at publishing education tips and best practices, which are great and necessary. This podcast is a great example of one.
The issue is that we've lost sight of what creates movements, what creates change in people. It's that little kernel of truth.
I call them exceptional truths that get people to stop, you know, pump the brakes and go, "Wait a minute. I've been thinking about things all wrong."
And when you get a person, a human being to stop and kind of pause, you've got them, that's it.
When you've created that seed of doubt, the way that they saw the world may not be that capital T, truth, they're open. They're leaning in, they're listening to what else you have to say. And that is when marketing works at its best. That's when they're more receptive to your pitch, to your ideas and your path forward, but it takes knowing the buyers so well that you know where they're misinformed or what they don't know or what they don't understand so that you can challenge that.
This is drawing from, everyone knows, The Challenger Sale.
Applying The Challenger Sale to marketing Kathleen: I was just going to say, I used to be in sales and in the sales world, this is The Challenger Sale.
Katie: Yes. I don't know what happened. I mean, how can The Challenger Sale extend its way to marketing? Not to say that it hasn't, but you know, is that a puppy?
Kathleen: Yes. I have two who are laying at my feet and every now and then they lift their heads up and say, "Wait, there's a world out there!" They're getting excited about The Challenger Sale.
Katie: They probably are just as confused as I am as to why The Challenger Sale didn't work its way into the world of PR and content marketing. To me, we need to challenge the way the buyer sees the world. I think very few brands do that.
Kathleen: It's very true. I have worked in sales before and when I was in that job, I read The Challenger Sale. I used that approach in sales and it made me very successful.
And you're spot on. That has so much applicability in marketing.
I owned an agency for 11 years and I worked with a lot of different companies and there is, in marketing, this lemmings syndrome where we see the lemmings running ahead of us and we want to follow them off the cliff. If they're doing it, it must be the right thing to do.
And it extends from everything, from messaging and the way we talk about what we do, to things like brand colors. I used to do websites for attorneys and they all wanted forest green and maroon and these very stodgy, old attorney colors.
And I remember I had one client and I was like, "Let's just do something crazy." And they were like, "But nobody else did that." And I was like, "Precisely."
There's this inclination both amongst marketers and within the business world to play within the lines. And I think that does hurt us.
There's a sea of sameness out there and it's the content we create, it's the colors on our websites, it's the way we message. It's, you know, "Hey, you should or should not talk about this in our industry. We don't talk about that so I'm not going to" and I really think that that has tied our hands behind our backs,
Katie: I have a lot of empathy. I mean, I'm a Pisces. I'm gonna look at every situation from both sides. And it's empath to the Nth degree over here. But I do have a lot of empathy for the modern marketer.
And this comes from being one, but also selling and marketing to them for 10 years. I've been on the megaphone side of MarTech vendors back in the day when there was a hundred of us, marketing solutions in a world of digital marketing that was now starting to shift.
Don't forget, 10 years ago, we now had to be good at becoming top ranked on Google. We now had to start using social media to develop a two way dialogue. We then had to automate everything. Then we had to start measuring everything.
Now we're trying to leverage AI. It has moved at such a pace. It all happened in nine years.
It has moved at such a pace that the marketer, the poor beleaguered marketing ops person and lead gen new roles that are being created because of this ecosystem in MarTech have inherent uncertainty, an inherent doubt and inherent fear because thinking about it, you and I work, we do marketing for a living.
This is our income. How are we going to support our families? This is more than a job and an industry, buyers and marketing.
I always had this kind of point of view when I was marketing to marketers. The buyer is more than a director of marketing at an IT company. They are an individual who's just trying to figure it out.
And a brand like a HubSpot who comes out right at the turning point of an industry in flux to say, we have 10 ways that you can do this better. And five tips for this and seven strategies for success in that, that brand is going to win.
That fearful buyer who's like, I just need a job, and I need to keep ahead. The biggest fear for the marketing buyer is falling behind. If we fall behind, we're no longer relevant. If we're no longer relevant, guess what? There's some 23 year old who's going to come up and take our spot because they know Tik Tok.
I'm being hyperbolic, but that's constantly on our minds. And so we have to have empathy for that marketer who's like, we are going to do the things that work and copy the things that work because they work and we need a win.
It's really those organizations that can allow their marketing team to do what they do best. That means leave them alone. Let them understand the buyer and the market, the way that they're supposed to.
The challenge of being a marketer Katie: Somebody else said to me that marketing is a very voyeuristic profession. Everyone can see it. Unlike finance, unlike R&D or engineering, or even sales, to an extent. Everyone can see marketing. Everyone in a business thinks that they're an expert in marketing because they see marketing all day. They see billboards. They see ads. They feel like they know the science and the practice of marketing.
That creates a lot of pressure on the marketing team to kind of do whatever everyone else thinks they should be doing.
So we have a department that's not only fearful of falling behind, but also facing pressure from the business to do things that may be counterintuitive to what marketing should do.
To your point, the lawyers with the maroon versus doing something different.
The telling of exceptional truths, the disruption, the rabble rousing, it works on teams that allow marketers to operate with confidence and hire marketers that are allowing them the space to push back and say, "No, this is what marketing does. Our job is to understand who the buyer is, what they need and why we're uniquely fit that market. And that may look different than what you expect, but that's why you hired me."
If you're listening to this and you're young and you love marketing, but you're unsure of the path ahead, that's the strongest thing I think you can do is to hone this sense of what marketing does for business and the sense of confidence that you need to bring to every meeting. You almost have to defend your job at every go, but the more you do it, the more resilient you get, the better you get at it.
Kathleen: Well, I think it also points to what you should look for in a place of work. I completely agree with everything you just said, and, and I don't often talk about where I work now, but I'm at this company Attila Security, which is in cybersecurity.
I knew I had landed in the right place and I had this sense when I interviewed. When I got into the company and I met with the CEO and I presented him with my 90 day plan and strategy, this was about 30 days in, he said, "Yeah, just do it. I hired you because you know what you're doing", you know? "You don't need my permission." And I was like, "Wow, what a great feeling".
When you're interviewing, that's a thing to really watch for and to dig into and to see if that's a trait that you're going to find amongst the leadership team of the company that you go and work for.
Katie: I wonder how to ask that in an interview. I'm a startup girl who's just been at companies where inherently, there's no one to tell me what to do. What would you ask if you were interviewing?
Kathleen: As somebody who hires a lot, I've always been a big believer in behavioral based interview questions. Those are basically, you don't ask people "What would you do?", you ask, "What did you do?" And you ask people to talk about actual experiences.
So I would probably ask something along the lines of, you know and it depends on if it's a company that's had marketers before. I would say, "Tell me about a time when a prior head of marketing proposed something that you weren't sure about or didn't necessarily agree with, what did you do?"
And if they haven't had marketers before, if it's a startup, I would probably ask them something about being at a prior company. Or I would say, "Tell me about a time the head of sales proposed something," or somebody else in the company presuming that there are other leaders. Because I think past behavior speaks better than hypotheticals.
Everybody can come up with the right answer, hypothetically.
For what it's worth, that's kind of the approach that I've taken, but some of it is also just a feeling that you get from talking with people.
And I think that's something that you hone over time as you work in more places and you're exposed to more different types of people.
Standing out in a world saturated with marketing content Kathleen: But one of the things I was thinking about as you were talking, you mentioned HubSpot and how they solve for something very specific at a time when it was a real need. And, it got me kind of circling back to a little bit of what we started with here, which is this need to tell exceptional truths and should companies go there? Should they not go there?
One of the things that I started thinking about as you were talking is that the interesting unique moment that we live in right now is that content marketing has become so commonplace. And there are so many companies creating content that there is this saturation.
There's just a lot out there. There's a lot of blogs. There's a lot of newsletters. There's a lot of video out there. We're all busy. Nobody has the time to read all of it. So how do you choose what you're going to consume?
And this applies to anybody, any buyer out there has this dilemma whether they're actively searching for something or not. And it seems to me that one of the factors that's really affecting what works now in marketing is that one of the most effective ways to stand out amongst a very saturated world of content is to have a point of view.
We've talked a lot about in the marketing world about authenticity, and a hot topic lately has been email newsletters and getting really real in your email newsletters and showing personality and individuality, even in company newsletters.
And the reason that that's working so well, I believe, is because it is different. Just the fact that it's different and just the fact that it doesn't sound like everybody else, people gravitate to that.
So I'd love to know kind of what you think about that.
Katie: I a hundred percent agree. Mic drop because you said it yourself.
This idea that everyone is a publisher, everyone can produce content - it makes it more important than ever to do what we were suggesting 20 minutes ago, which is to know exactly who you're talking to, what they value, the ways you share that value and just be confident that that is the niche that you have decided to own.
You cannot be all things to all people. I'm hearkening back to my marketing undergraduate. This was a long time ago now. It's the one thing I learned.
This is not new, right? We just have a proliferation of information now available to us. It makes it more important than ever to have not only a clear point of view, but first a very clear intended audience.
You cannot be the solution, in your case, for all CIOs. You're the solution for all CIOs that are extremely risk averse or something.
There's something about your buyers that you are really aligned to. Well, many companies fail to understand what that niche looks like and where that alignment happens.
I have a newsletter. I call it the "World's best newsletter." I started it when I started consulting, frankly, honestly, truthfully as a way of reminding the world that I wasn't gone. I was leaving a startup at that time that I had co-founded and I was the public face of, and I needed a way to take that momentum and transfer it into my consulting, speaking, whatever it is that I do, practice.
So I started a newsletter. I had no intentions with it. I had no best practices around it. I probably break every rule in the book.
People love it. And what I do with it is what I've done from day one. I collect the things that hook my attention throughout the week, that I believe more people need to read, and I send it out weekly. And I say, "Here's what is important to me".
I am a human being with other other interests outside of marketing. I'm a fierce advocate for feminism, and I'm a fierce advocate for human rights. And I have a documentary coming out about the intersection of marketing and social movements. And all of that is jam packed into this little newsletter, seven links and a quote of the week.
It makes no sense. If you were to tell me, as a marketing consultant, it wouldn't make any sense. There's a lot of marketing stuff in there, but sometimes there's a really important New York Times cover story about racism in America.
It works for me because people know what they want from me. It's neat.
I have been really reticent to do that. It feels wrong. It goes against everything I'm taught as an email marketer, but you know what? It performs.
It might be because it's real. I think it's because it's honestly what people want from me. I think that's really what matters. And they come back to it week after week because it serves that need and it's fresh. They don't get it from other people.
Finding your unique brand voice Katie: If you're a business, trying to figure out what to send in your newsletter, think about that first. Just like a product and the way that you develop a product, look at the consideration set. What are you up against? What are the other emails looking like from your competitors or even others in the same general industry? Do something different.
Maybe it's just doing it shorter. Maybe it's coming at it from a totally different angle, right?
Content and thought leadership should be treated like product development. Not only is it something new and different, but it's like this muscle that you have to work on.
You've gotta be really good at coming up with the processes to uncover those insights from inside the business to say, "This is what we believe, what we know." And then really, really good at delivering that in a fresh and new way.
That's what makes the job of content fun and hard. But it's not what most people do. Most people opt for the easy ebook, the 10 tips, best practices. And then they wonder why isn't this performing?
How to find your exceptional truth Kathleen: So true. So if somebody is listening and they're a marketer, who's come into a company and they're thinking about - and let's talk about startups because I think that's the best way to illustrate how this works. If you come into a startup as the first head of marketing, it is a green field, right? You get to shape the clay. If you're coming into an established company, that's a different story, but it's still, the challenge is still there. It's just how you navigate. It might be different.
Putting on my hat as head of marketing at a startup, I'm coming in, it's the first time we're going to have a marketing strategy. If I wanted to come in and really mine the richness of what you talk about as exceptional truths, what is the playbook for doing that?
Katie: Well, good luck finding a playbook. The place to start, in my mind, is to ask yourself the question, just like you would if you were starting a movement and activism, "What is the change that you want to see in market?" What is that end result that you're hoping to get people to switch?
It could just be, you want them to choose you instead of a competitor. Great. So what does that mean? What belief do you need to shift? What misinformation do you have to correct? What new insight, to quote the Challenger model, do you have to bring to the table to get them to see the world a bit differently?
I'll give you an example from HubSpot again, because I think HubSpot did this so well. And it's an example that we can all relate to.
Your podcast. The name is a great example of the power of what they were able to do, how this came to market. I hate to say it, they were just a blogging, search engine optimization, social media, and eventually an email tool mixed into one.
They were not the only player doing this at the time. However, they thought about this brilliantly. They needed people to see the way they wanted things to change. They were advocating for us to use these tools instead of cold calling, billboards, et cetera.
The way that they got people to make that shift was to create a dichotomy or create an enemy. I actually presented on this at their conference two years ago, create an enemy. You can find it on their inbound library. And they saw the world in two ways.
There's inbound and outbound. There's the new way forward, Mrs. Beleaguered marketer, who doesn't want to lose her job, the way that you're not going to fall to irrelevancy. And there's the old way that you're going to fall behind if you keep using it.
They were extremely polarizing with this perspective. It was just one article that started all of this, right? They were like, "Here's the way forward. This inbound and outbound. One is good. One is bad. White, black, right? Devil, whatever it is." And 80% of the market was like, "Oh man, there's no way I'm going to go there."
They were pissed because HubSpot is over here, challenging the existing status quo, the way they sell. 20% saw that and went, "Oh, you're right. Let's opt into this." And so HubSpot now of course built an entire movement around inbound marketing.
It is a practice. It is a job title. It is a category in and of itself because they started with that kernel of what changes do we need to create. We need to figure out a way to get people to move from A to B, to go from what they think they know to what we want to advocate for. And then they brilliantly built a movement around it. And they did so with a ton of content ideas, a community of people that were proud to call themselves inbound marketers and this kind of repetitive, consistent muscle they use to push the movement forward, now extending years and a $125 million IPO and19,000 people at their conference.
It just has ballooned because they were smart about this kernel of truth that they've never deviated from.
Are you going to be the next HubSpot? No. This is right place, right time, right conditions and market. But, you do have to find and be willing to provoke, with purpose, the existing beliefs of buyers, and then be consistent about that. If you can do that, your startup is going to make a lot of noise. You're going to punch well above your weight. Even if you don't have the biggest budget, you're going to make waves and you have to be willing to do that or risk falling into irrelevance.
Kathleen: It's a really incredible story, that story of HubSpot and it's certainly not the only one.
You have Mark Benioff at Salesforce who famously picketed outside with a sign that had a big red X through the word software. And he similarly named the enemy and it was software and his solution was move to the cloud, software as a service.
That is an approach that absolutely works. I would say to go out and read The Challenger Sale. So many sales people read it, but so few marketers do, and I love that you brought it up in this conversation.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: We are going to run out of time soon so I want to make sure I ask you my questions. I could talk to you forever.
My first question that I always ask my guests is of course, this podcast is all about inbound marketing, and is there a particular company or individual that you think is just a great example of how to do inbound marketing in today's world?
Katie: I think Rand Fishkin and his work with Moz and now with SparkToro which he actually details really well in a book called Lost and Founder. It's a great book. If you're thinking of starting a company read this first.
It may scare you away, but he always was the example for me of somebody who was again, challenging white hat versus black hat, giving away all the industry secrets to become a trusted industry resource, to ranked the highest, but it really builds trust in his company and him as an individual. And I think it's just his consistency, Whiteboard Fridays, he was writing five days a week. That's still the best example of consistent inbound marketing.
Kathleen: You know, it's so funny because I could not agree with you more. He is somebody that I have followed really closely. I read his book. I read everything he does at SparkToro. I follow him religiously. And I have been very surprised. I think you might be the first person that has mentioned his name. I ask this question of every single guest and that has baffled me because I think he's amazing. So I'm really happy that you said that.
Katie: He's also the world's nicest guy. We both spoke at the SpiceWorld conference in, I want to say, 2018. Both of us were speaking in the marketing track and I'm sitting here backstage fan girling because I love him. Who hasn't read his stuff?
He comes off stage with the mustache. He's the nicest guy. He's just, you know, very down to earth. And I think that's the secret. He wrote this content to truly help others. And I think that genuine purpose behind the content is really what sets him apart.
More people should have mentioned him.
Kathleen: Yes. I agree. And maybe they will now because we'll turn them on to his stuff.
All right. Second question. You mentioned earlier that the biggest fear of marketers is falling behind. And the second question I always ask everybody is exactly that. It's like every marketer I talk to says, they feel like they're drinking from a fire hose. There's too much to keep up with. So how do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated?
Katie: 100% LinkedIn. I'm a huge advocate for using LinkedIn appropriately. I have a big following there, so I love it as a platform, but I also use it to consume a lot of best practices. I ask a lot of questions. I'm constantly looking through comments. It's become a resource that just, I find invaluable. It's a mess. Sometimes now people take advantage of LinkedIn to post some really nonsense stuff, but at the core of it, it's there.
Can I give two answers? There's a lot of Slack communities that are being built around specific topic areas. I'm not in marketing, but I'm part of a great marketing operations Slack group that keeps me knowing what's going on. I work with a lot of MarTech vendors still as an amplifier now and a community evangelist. I need to know what's going on. And so even on that, in the practice, these Slack groups are hidden sources of insight.
So if there's not a Slack group for your world, your community, build it, invite people. They will come. This is not field of dreams. They're desperate to connect, one-On-one, sometimes outside of the loud world that is LinkedIn.
Kathleen: That group would not happen to be the MoPro's would it?
Katie: No, but now I want to join that one.
Kathleen: I'll send you a link. A guy I interviewed once for this podcast has a marketing operations Slack group that I am in.
But I agree with you. I have a ton of Slack groups and there's only like, let's say, two or three of them that I'm religious about checking every day. They're just insanely valuable.
But, love all of those suggestions. Again, I could talk to you all day long, but we're not going to do that because we both have other things we need to do. Great conversation.
I'm sure people will have opinions, both ways, about what we said here today, but that's okay. That's why these conversations are important to have. If you listened and you disagree, tweet me. I would love to hear your perspective. This is all about learning and listening and I'd love to hear what more folks think about this.
How to connect with Katie Kathleen: But Katie, if somebody wants to learn more about you or connect with you online, what is the best way for them to do that?
Katie: They can Google me. I'm very, very, very Google-able. You can LinkedIn me. You can find my website. I'm just, I'm everywhere.
Kathleen, congratulations on over 150 episodes of this. This is a service to the community and we are grateful for it and it's a lot of work to put these together. So thank you for doing what you do and thank you for having me, really.
Kathleen: Well, I very much appreciate it. And I will put links to your personal website as well as your LinkedIn in the show notes. So head there if you want to connect with Katie, and she does produce some amazing stuff, so I highly recommend it.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: If you're listening and you liked what you heard today, or you just felt like you learned something new, I would love it if you would leave the podcast a five star review on Apple podcasts, because that is how other people learn about the podcast.
And finally, if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, please tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Katie.
Katie: Thank you, Kathleen. Everyone take care.
How can marketers use MRI data and neurolinguistics to develop strategies and campaigns that get better marketing results?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Hackstone founder and CEO Dan Hack talks about the process his team uses to incorporate lessons learned from FMRI scans in crafting impactful stories that really resonate with audiences.
Dan breaks down what he calls the "three brain framework" and shares a formula for using it to create messaging, campaigns, stories and videos that help viewers convince themselves to make a purchase.
Highlights from my conversation with Dan include:
- Hackstone is a video production company that acts as an outsourced creative team for agencies.
- Dan and the team at Hackstone use neuroscience research from FMRI scans to determine what taps into peoples' emotions, and they use that to develop marketing campaigns.
- Dan says most marketers make the mistake of leading with facts, when in reality, buyers are driven by emotion, and then look for the facts to back up their emotional decision.
- The three brain framework can be used to apply these principles. It segments the brain into three parts - the emotional brain, the logical brain, and the survival brain.
- The survival brain decides what information the brain will actually take in based on what is needed for survival.
- The emotional brain is where connections and associations are made, and where memories are stored and relationships are developed. It is what triggers the desire to purchase something.
- The logical brain is all about facts, and is used to justify the purchases that the emotional brain wants.
- FMRI data is used to determine what really resonates with people, and what they really want - as opposed to what they say they might want.
- The most important thing in developing marketing messages and campaigns is to determine what your customers want, but unfortunately most marketers start by identifying what they want to tell customers. Dan calls this selfish marketing.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Hackstone website
- Follow Hackstone on Instagram
- Check out some of the sources Dan relies on for neuroscience data:
- CXL
- NMSBA
- Journal of Consumer Research
- Journal of Advertising Research
Listen to the podcast to learn how to incorporate neuroscience into the development of your marketing strategies.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And today my guest is Dan Hack who is the founder and creative director of Hackstone. Welcome Dan.
Dan Hack (Guest): Thanks.
Dan and Kathleen hamming it up while recording this episode.
Kathleen: I'm happy to have you here and I am excited to talk about some of the things that you're working on which are really, really kind of cool and scientific.
About Dan and Hackstone Kathleen: Before we get into that, for those who are listening and might not be familiar with you or Hackstone, can you talk a little bit about your story and who you are and what you do and also what Hackstone is?
Dan: Yeah, sure. So Hackstone started out as a video production company. I started Hackstone like 12 years ago I think now. We've kind of developed into sort of an arm of an agency and it's been a lot of fun because we get to do the creative things we get to, we get to do different... our clients are all over the place, big and small. And we get to do a lot of kind of the creative part and work with agencies to come up with the creative, to recommend the creative to their clients and also to our clients.
And then we do a lot of testing. We do a lot of like, is this going to work, you know, testing storyboards and the creative and then also doing the, you know, we call them postmortems, you know, we're afterwards you go and see why something worked and why why it didn't work. Right?
So we're kind of a production company on steroids we've been called. So it's a lot of fun. We really like what we do.
What does MRI data have to do with marketing? Kathleen: That's awesome. One of the things that drew me to talking with you and having this conversation is that I learned that you guys are using actually MRI data and neurolinguistics to figure out more effective ways of tapping into emotions and developing narratives.
I will be the first to say, I'm a huge marketing nerd. And I think while many people think of marketing as this creative discipline, I'm always naturally drawn to the side of it that's a little bit more scientific, which is why I was like, Oh, I totally want to talk about this.
So tell me, what does MRI data have to do with marketing?
Dan: So nothing and everything all at the same time.
So basically what we're doing, and it's funny because you develop instincts, right? About what's going to work and not work. And there's always the chase of how do we know this is going to work and why did something work and why did something not work, right?
Like way back when, the reason I got into this whole thing was because I was young, I was creative. I had two projects that fell into my lap. They were really successful and creative people have a huge ego. And I had a ginormous ego, right? I became so arrogant when I first started this. I wanted to be a director, I wanted to affect the world with my product, right?
And then, you get to projects that don't work at all, right? That are just flops.
And the thing about a big ego is that they're incredibly fragile as well. Right? And then you become crushed and everything you thought you believed about yourself is wrong essentially.
So that's when I really got into the world of like, I wanted to find out why were these two projects after I've had this success, why did these projects not work? Right? Because clients give you their money when they give you their money, they give you their trust as well. They're like, Hey, we trust that you're going to make something that's going to blow the lid off of our KPI. You know? And, and that's a lot of responsibility and that's a lot of pressure as well.
So I was exposed to the world of testing pretty early on in my in my career and, and it just started with just asking people like, do you like this?
Do you, how did we do? Like, do you think this is something you would buy? Is this a good product? Like, how did you resonate with it? What annoyed you?
But there are a lot of problems with that and you find that, that people respond and oftentimes tell you they're really nice. People inherently are good, right? And they tell you what they think you want to hear.
So the information you get back from them is not entirely accurate all the time. So you go deeper, right? You go into like, okay, well we're going to use eye tracking technology, right, to figure out like where they're looking.
And then you go even deeper. You were going to use EEG to see how their brain is firing, which is, which are the like the probes you put on the head. Then you measure sweat glands and you measure pulse.
And basically stop asking them questions. It's like, Hey, we're not going to ask you any more. We're just going to see how you respond to whatever stimuli we put in front of you.
Kathleen: It's like a lie detector.
Dan: Kind of, exactly. Only less pressure for them. You don't go to jail afterwards hopefully.
But so then you get into all the way up to FMRI data, which is essentially putting somebody into an FMRI machine. And FMRI stands for functional magnetic resonance imaging. And what that does is it looks at your brain and tells you real time, with a few second delay, how your brain is firing or responding or what parts of your brain are using the most blood right? The most fuel based on what you're showing somebody. And it's like a light bulb.
It's super cool. Like you can show somebody a commercial and you can tell right away based on what parts of their brains are firing, whether they like it or not. Right?
Apple develops their products in FMRI machines where they show the different cases of the different screens of the different iPhones. And they can tell right away like, okay, well this part of the brain is firing and that means they like it or they don't like it or they're responding negatively or positively or whatever.
And really we've taken that, so trying to kind of sum it up here, they've taken that, we've taken that and sort of put that into a framework that we call the three brain framework. That tells you certain things like we know from FMRI data that people don't respond to facts, right?
But people don't buy cars because of the safety features, they don't buy cars because they have the radar you know, the radar cruise control on the highway or the leather seats or whatever.
It's all about emotion, right?
And that's why we always go back to how should it make you feel? Right?
That's how we start every single project. We have two steps. Number one, how should it make you feel? Number two, support that with facts, right?
A lot of people get that backwards. And that's what we know from FMRI data is that when you're selling facts, you're selling to a part of the brain whose only job it is to support the emotional decision that you've already made.
Kathleen: Right. It's to reverse justify what we like. First we figure out what we want and then we figure out how to justify it.
Dan: Right? Exactly. Exactly.
But here's the thing, like we don't even know we're doing it right? Like there's, one of my favorite studies is a smoking study back from the nineties. I think it was early nineties. The biggest FMRI study ever done where it was when the surgeon general started putting the warning on the packs of cigarettes, right? And researchers wanted to find out like, well, people are still smoking, but people are saying, right, we're doing these focus groups.
And people are saying like, yeah it's making me not smoke. Right? And they were like, okay, we need to put these people into FMRI machines and figure out what's going on.
So first they asked them, they said, do you think the Surgeon General's warning on the pack of, you know, any tobacco product makes you less likely to smoke or makes you smoke less?
And they were like, yeah, I think so. And then they put them in FMRI machines and they watched their brains as these people, number one smoked, and number two, were exposed to the Surgeon General's warning, right?
And what they found is super cool. They found that when people smoke, their brains have the same reaction as, it's the reward center lights up, it just explodes, as when they see the Surgeon General's warning.
It's the power of associations, right? So because when people smoke, what they usually do is they stop working, they walk down the hallway, they link up with coworkers, they have a conversation. And the last thing they see before they light a cigarette before this release of dopamine is they see the Surgeon General's warning, right?
Kathleen: Pavlov's dog, right?
Dan: And so they create that association, right? It really is. Yeah, exactly.
So in neuromarketing, what you're doing is you're trying to figure out how the brain works and you're trying to, you don't always have the budget to test every single project, but you're trying to figure out, you're trying to make an educated guess on how people are going to respond to certain things, right?
Kathleen: Sorry to interrupt you, but it's so interesting listening to you talk about this because I'm actually fascinated by the neuroscience behind all the anti-smoking campaigns.
And I had done some research on this as well. And a corollary, kind of additional story to the one you just told, which I think is so interesting is you know, for many years, depending upon how old you are, if you're listening, you may or may not remember for many years, the government used these campaigns that were these very scary images of like black lungs. And, it's interesting, they're starting to do this again now.
What they found, the primary focus of a lot of the antismoking campaigns was on teenagers because that's like, if you can prevent somebody from starting to smoke in the first place, it's a much better approach than trying to get somebody who's already smoking to stop.
Dan: Right?
Kathleen: And so they used to use those scare tactics and like, you know, just like the eggs and this is your brain on drugs kind of thing. And those did not work well.
It wasn't until they had something called the Truth Campaign where they started to see some success. What the Truth Campaign did, which you may recall seeing, is it scrapped all of those fear tactics.
What they did was they figured out, they really thought about like, why do people smoke? Right? Why do teenagers start to smoke in the first place? Is it because they don't understand it's bad for them? No, it's because they are rebelling against their parents. And that is a form of rebellion.
And so what the Truth Campaign did was it looked at, well, if we want to tap into that feeling of rebellion, how can we leverage rebellion to get them to not smoke in the first place?
So the messaging and the Truth Campaign was all around big tobacco wants to control you and has you in their pocket. So it was like rebel against big tobacco and don't fall for it essentially.
And that got a much, much better outcome than all the fear tactics. And I feel like that's kind of like the same thing that you're talking about.
All of these campaigns, you can pour a ton of money into them. But if you don't really understand at the very core what is that emotion that somebody is driven by, then you're not going to be successful.
Dan: Right.
Kathleen: So that was a long tangent, but I'm fascinated by this and there's so much interesting work being done in behavioral health that I think can inform marketing.
Dan: Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know, and the problem I think is that it's still kind of expensive, right?
Like there are research groups and there are subscription services and we subscribe to those where when researchers do this research to find out what campaign was the most successful in this last super bowl, right? And they do the FMRI studies and they're funded.
You can subscribe to that data and get that data and then use that data to kind of inform what you do.
In a perfect world, yeah, we would have, you know, when we do a car campaign, you know, put people in an FMRI machine to see like, Hey, are they most stimulated by the color? Are they, is that a red car? Is it a white car? Is that a black car? So, those are all the nitty gritty things that you get into.
But I think at the heart of it is exactly like what you said. You need to figure out who your audience is. You need to figure out what they want, and then give it to them. It sounds really simple and it kind of is, right?
And then all these tools, this neuromarketing is essentially, we use that to try to figure out what it is, what exactly is it that your audience wants and how do you give it to them?
Because a lot of clients come to us and they say here's what we want to say. Or, when you ask them questions like what causes a campaign to not perform well? And usually it goes back to selfish marketing, right? You approach that campaign with what is it that we want to say, right?
We want to tell our story.
Like, the word story, I'm an oppositionist. I get that. But, the word story drives me up the wall. It drives me insane because it's become this catchall, right? And it's all like, tell your story has become this romantic replacement to messaging, right? Or information or get your message out there.
What does that mean? Right?
So this is really a sort of a way to figure out what is the right story. There are a million stories. Like, nobody cares who started the company, right? Nobody cares why even necessarily you started the company, right?
People care about other things. And this is really trying to find out what those things are and then giving them those things essentially.
Kathleen: So I have so many questions for you.
Dan: I'll just go and go.
What is the Three Brain Framework? Kathleen: No, no, no. I warned you, I'm a huge nerd. And so like you've already seen through the smoking stuff, you and I could go for hours on this topic. But I want to break it down a little bit.
So first of all, you mentioned you have this Three brain approach. Can you define for me exactly what that, like what are the three brains?
Dan: Sure.
So obviously, there are more than three parts of the brain, but for our purposes, for this marketing purpose we divide the brain into three parts.
We have the survival brain, you have the emotional brain, and then you have the logical brain, right?
And we look at it as kind of a funnel. All three parts of those brains has its own purpose.
So you look at the survival brain, sort of like a club bouncer, right? He stands in the front with his arms crossed and he decides what gets in and what gets out, right? The brain is cognitive miser, right? So the brain tries to save calories.
He's the guy who decides number one, is this important to my survival? Do I need to know this information? Is this going to save my life? And then he also decides, is this new information? Do I already know this information or can we just radically summarize that?
So to put it on the shelf, and a good example of that is like your lawn, right? Nobody knows how many blades of grass they have in their front yard right now. It's not looking good for my yard. I have room for a lot. I've only had four like blades of grass or nursing them and, but everybody knows that you have that you have a lawn, right? You see a lawn.
That's an example of something being radically summarized and then you know, and then put on a shelf. So you have that.
Then if you do get through that, you have the emotional brain, right? And the emotional brain is the, we call it the mother, right? It's the mammal brain, if you will. You know, some people call it that. And basically that's where you create associations, right?
Like, Hey, last time when I touched that, it burned me and that hurt. And that's important to my survival.
And it does other things like memory. That's where your relationships are built, right? Like where do you fit in, in your tribe? And how do you advance, you know, in your tribe and, and you know, again, important for your survival.
And also you have some really cool things that happen in here, like synesthesia for example, which is like, which is where...
Kathleen: Is that where you see colors as emotions?
Dan: Yeah. Kind of. But it's like when you're watching a commercial. We use this in food commercials, right? When you're watching a commercial and you do a really good job in filming that and getting that across, the viewer will actually taste what they're seeing, right?
It's essentially you have these neuro pathways for like vision and for taste and for smell and whatever. And sometimes when they're really powerful, when you have a train, there's a train outside.
So that made me think of it. When you have a train like hurling down this neuro pathway, sometimes it'll jump the track onto another pathway. Right?
Kathleen: I feel like I totally know what you're talking about because when I go to the movies, my chain of cinemas locally, in the intro kind of footage that leads up to every movie, they always have the sound of the can of Coke popping open. And then the pouring into the glass with the ice and the fizzy sound combined with the ice clinking and the Coke filling.
And I'm like sitting there going, Oh my God, I need a Coke. And I can taste it right now.
Dan: I want that. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. So that's the part of the brain where those kinds of things happen, right? And those are the kinds of things we want to do.
And that's why you make food. Like your goal is to make the viewer taste the food, right? Pizza. Really close shots of the cheese pulls and those kinds of things. Right? Super important.
So anyway, the emotional brain is where we do most of our decision making, right?
Then you have the logical brain and the logical brain is sort of like, it's like, it reminds me of my dad, right? He's the accountant and he's the guy who basically, he's like the legal department, right? He's the guy who who ruins the fun essentially, you know, like, like you say...
Kathleen: We call that "the fun sponge".
Dan: Yeah, exactly. It's the higher processing.
Dan: And this part of the brain either supports what your emotional brain has already decided when it comes to purchasing or it overrides that decision, right?
So you can go and sit in a Ferrari and you smell that new smell of the Ferrari and you really want it and you feel that emotional connection to the car in that red and that tan leather, you know, or whatever. And then the logical brain comes in and says like, Hey, 2,500 bucks a month. Like that's more than your mortgage. There's no way. We're not doing that.
And really, that's the way it works. So the emotional brain is where you should be selling, right? When you create something, you should create it for the emotional brain and then create facts to support the logical brain in helping support the emotional brain in making that decision.
So that's why facts should come second. Yet most of our marketing aims directly for that logical brain, yet that's not where we make decisions.
Kathleen: Yeah, that makes total sense. Cause I totally know that myself, how I buy. It's like I see something I like and I'm like, I really want that. How can I justify it? It's the old saying buy the dress and then find the party.
Where to find neuroscience data Kathleen: So for somebody who's listening, I think if they understand this conceptually, you know, if it were me, my next question would be like, great, now how do I find this data to help me figure out what emotions to tap into? And you were mentioning there's ways you can subscribe to information about FMRI data.
So can you get into a little bit if somebody wants to learn more about this, get tapped into to that kind of data, where can they find it?
Dan: Sure. So I can send you some links afterwards if you want to put those in the show notes there on some of the places where you can subscribe to that. Publications, you can subscribe to even industry standard or industry specific data, you know, that apply directly to your industry.
But a lot of this stuff is really, it's not new information, right? You have to beat it into your brain to kind of remember that.
So, for example, the principle of the three brains, right? The fact that our minds look for contrast. There's this framework. Your mind looks for contrast, right? It's got to get into your mind first without being filtered out. And then you have certain principles that are kind of spread out. They're all over. And I think you have to make a decision.
So that's why you have neuro marketing firms who put that together for you if you don't want to think about it.
But I think it's important to become familiar with that. And then to put everything you do marketing wise, messaging wise through a framework like that. Does that make sense?
How to apply neuroscience to B2B marketing Kathleen: Yeah, it does. And, in my head I'm thinking I can see so clearly how you would use this. You used the example of a Ferrari. If you're selling a Ferrari or you're selling a food product or you know, clothing or some things that are more consumer facing, maybe more optional products if you will.
But my question is when it comes to, for example, like what somebody might consider to be a boring B2B purchase, like accounting software or you know, like I'm in cybersecurity. Walk me through how you think about developing an emotional tug for something that most people look at as a pretty boring thing.
Dan: Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing before we even get to that emotional tug, we have to remember, get through the bouncer, right?
So one of the things, and I had this super cool example, hold on, I might have it written down here, that that I pulled. Now maybe I don't. You get these emails where people use industry jargon a lot, right? You first have to think about how do you get through the bouncer.
So you have to make it easy to understand. You have to, you have to understand that you're super close to your industry. The person you're talking to might not be super close to your industry.
So understand that your brain immediately asks, do we even let this information in? Whether it's an email, whether it's a marketing video, whether it's a commercial, like whatever it is, whether it's a billboard even.
Should we let this information in?
And you have to then go to the emotional connection of how do you make that emotional connection.
So when we say emotional connection, you have to emote. What we mean is you have to think about how should this messaging make you feel.
So some questions to ask are, should this make the person feel like I'm an authority? Should this person feel afraid that you know, that somebody is going to hack their system or steal ransomware, viruses, those kinds of things.
Should they feel funny? Or should your messaging feel funny? Should they be amused? So you go back to that. How should it make you feel?
And then you take that information and that information should support that. Does that make sense at all?
Examples of marketing campaigns that have been developed using MRI data Kathleen: Yeah, it does. It totally does. So let's get into some examples because you guys have done work with some really interesting companies and I feel like this is especially one of those topics where you can talk about it conceptually and still not understand it. But when you dive into actual examples, it starts to become much more clear.
So can you maybe talk about how you've used these principles with some of the companies you've worked with to get really great results?
Dan: Sure. Exactly.
So car ads. So I'll take a local first. So we work with a local brand. It was a Ford dealership and they had done celebrity commercials in the past where they had an athlete say like, Hey, here's where I'm shopping.
And when we look at data, FMRI data, even with the, with the latest COVID, there's a lot of data coming out from COVID PSAs where they're saying a lot of these pieces are falling flat, right? A lot of this messaging from COVID 19 is falling flat, even with celebrities in it. Why is that? Right?
And then you get into like, it's not just a matter of getting celebrity, you have to put that celebrity in a, in a situation where it's authentic.
And what's authenticity? That depends on your brand.
So, a while back, we put an athlete into a set of Ford commercials. And the problem was that athletes can't act. Not only can't they act, athletes don't want to act right. And it was almost like, you know, having this athlete is working. It's okay, but we're doing it because we've done it in years past and it's sort of like people expect that from our brands. How do we ramp that up?
So what we did was we came in and we said okay, the athlete can't act, he doesn't want to act. He shouldn't act if he doesn't want to, so you don't have to. What does the audience want?
So we created this campaign where we took this athlete, made fun of the fact that he's in a commercial where he's being asked to act and he doesn't want to act.
And it was phenomenal, right? It went all the way up the chain to like, what are you guys doing? This is awesome. This is like the best campaign ever. The athlete had a lot more fun doing the commercial. The client had a much better response from that.
And that trickles down to now you have fundraisers with the athlete where now you have a better response to that. You sell more cars. People are talking about your brand more and most importantly, people remember your brand more.
Because ultimately it's about attention and it's about keeping the attention. And then, how were you remembered by the people who maybe aren't ready to buy now but are ready to buy in 90 days? Wherever they are in their cycle and their buying cycle.
And how do you stay top of mind for that?
Pizza, same thing. You know, in the celebrity line, we work with a pizza brand every year where they have an athlete who works with them to not only sell pizzas but also to raise money for a charity. A certain amount of your sales goes to whatever the charity is. And they had typically had this green screen and put the celebrity up. The celebrity image, let that just do the work. And people didn't respond to that. So we went back and said, okay, who is the audience here? Who are we really trying to attract?
And it's fans of this athlete, right?
So you look at the basic framework. You don't have to FMRI study this to kind of get that framework. We look at that information and we say okay, they want to be entertained.
And the best way to entertain them, and we know this from FMRI data, it's the associations, right?
So if you were to put a puppy on the screen, and then put the brand at the end, if that's the emotion you want to be linked to, you are already 75% of the way there, right? When it comes to commercials then you put in your messaging and you make it even better.
And we found in the past that when you take a product and you integrate it into a piece of entertainment, you maintain that audience attention. It's the sense parts of an advertisement.
So when I say ad, I mean like a video, even a video on Facebook for example. And you're trying to get a lead or you're trying to sell mattresses or whatever it is you're trying to sell, it's about keeping the attention, and especially how long a viewer stays in a video matters because that's how you retarget, right? That's how you recognize how interested they are.
We have a three minute video. They made it all the way to the end, they're super interested, right?
So it becomes like this capturing the attention and then maintaining the attention. So what we did with the pizza brand is we created a short film and we put this character, the athlete, which was Alex Ovechkin, into this pizza commercial where he was in these absurd scenarios. Like he initially moved here from Russia where pizza was the reason he moved, not hockey. He stumbled upon hockey when he was delivering pizzas, right?
And it was this absurd storyline that was just fun and entertaining. And you saw this athlete in a situation he's not normally in.
When you're selling, you're always asking people for their attention. When they're seeking you out, that's when it's okay to just give them the information, like on an iPhone, right? But when you're asking them, when you're interrupting their lives and you're asking them for their attention, you're saying like, Hey, we want you to buy our pizza.
Because when you buy our pizza, a portion of your proceeds go to whatever the charity is, you have to make it worth their while.
And we saw a a phenomenal capture rate. Not only that, but the average, I'm trying to think of like what it is now. So the average completion rates for any video for a long form video is about 15%. We were hitting 86, 87% completion rates because when somebody starts the video, they watch all the way to the very end to the logo and to the offer. Which is phenomenal.
And those are the kinds of things, more than just views, you can say Oh yeah, this got 2 million impressions, you know, which is great.
You can buy impressions. Impressions don't really mean a lot. Are they meaningful impressions?
Ultimately that's what you're trying to get to with FMRI, or with any neuro marketing, you're trying to get to the bottom of, is this meaningful to our audience? You're getting their attention. You're hopefully keeping their attention by creating a meaningful experience that is worth their time, which is ultimately the most valuable thing I think we have.
How to get started with neurolinguistics and MRI data Kathleen: That's so interesting. Throughout this conversation, you've sprinkled in things that are a good guide for somebody if they're thinking okay, I want to do this.
Can you kind of summarize, if you were meeting with somebody for the first time and you needed to tell them, here's how you're going to go ahead and use this concept for your own marketing, what are the steps they should go through? Where do they get started?
Dan: Sure. So we've got a framework, I can pull it up here real quick just just as a reference. We've got a campaign worksheet that we use for these when we go in that's based on our three brains.
So for example, we always ask, what's the purpose of your video? What's the primary goal of your campaign? And that's just the background information. So you say who's your customer? And then how are you going to measure success?
I think it's super important to figure out how are we even going to gauge if this thing is working or if it's successful or not? You'd be amazed how many people don't know.
A lot of times, especially with video, we find that a lot of people come to us and say like, Hey, the CEO wants a video. We don't really know what the purpose is, but can you just get it off my plate?
We call those box checker videos and then we're like that nerdy kid in class who's like, but we still want an A, right? So we'll get the A for you.
So again, we start out with contrast. So we say like, who are your competitors? And you take inventory of what your competitors are doing.
And again, through this neuro research, we know that it is better to be different than it is to be better. It's very difficult to quantify better. Like, what is better to some people, right?
So, for example, banks might say, and this is a common thing, when a customer comes into our bank, we know their name. We know them, we have that personal relationship. To me that's not better.
I love being anonymous. When I walk into a branch and they say, good morning, Mr. Hack, I'm like, Oh cool, I need to find a new bank. They know my name. That's not good. I don't like that.
So that's something that doesn't work for everybody.
So then you say how many competitors, what are your competitors doing? How do you not do what your competitors are doing? Because we know through the tests we do repeatedly that when you put a series of car commercials that all say the same thing, when you watch the Today Show in the morning and you see the lawyer commercials one right after the other that say, we're fighting for you, we're here for you, we're the tough guys. You know, people don't remember that.
People will watch that. We watch people watch those. It's commercials where we'll put like five or six of those in a row. We'll watch people watch them. We'll see them interact with them. Yet at the end of that run of commercials, they don't remember anything. They don't remember any of the brands.
Because again, the bouncer, right? The survival brain has decided like, Hey, you don't need to know this information. Even if you're in the market for that, you don't need to know this information. It's going to use too many calories to process it.
I'm going to put it all together for you, put it in a basket and put it on the shelf. You don't need to worry about it. People don't remember what they saw. They don't remember brands. They don't even remember the storylines at the end of that.
So the first thing we do is try to figure out, okay, what do we do that's different? We put that into our framework.
The next thing is simplicity. And this again is the survival brain. So for a long form video, you might decide what are the three points we want to make really well? Where for a commercial you may decide what's the one point we know, through testing?
When you try to make three points in a 32 second commercial, people remember generally nothing. It's like 0.5 when you average it out, right? When you put one point in a commercial, when you try to make one point, people tend to remember mostly that one point that you're making.
So you have to ask yourself, okay, like we want to get these 15 things across in our messaging or in our video. Is this the place for that? Where are you in the buying cycle? And right now when you're top of funnel, is this the place where you want to try to educate customers on your product? Usually, no.
So because it's just too much to remember at that point, what do you need to prove to your customer to convince them to buy?
So that's how you appeal to the logic part, because the logic part is going to ultimately support the emotional part. How should you deliver that information?
And then we look at the reward. The final thing is the reward. Why should your viewer keep watching? And when we test a long form piece, like with the Ovechkin piece for example, it looks fun and it looks interesting and it looks entertaining, but it's very thought out.
We went through and figured that in a piece like this, you have somebody's attention for maybe seven, eight seconds before their mind starts wandering. What can we put in there at the seven, eight second mark that is going to recapture their attention, draw them in?
So you have to do that throughout your video. And when you watch I don't know, like the Purple Mattress for example, is a really good campaign. That was done to repeatedly bring you back in those really good long form, like Dollar Shave.
Kathleen: I was just going to say that first Dollar Shave Club video that made them go viral, you couldn't stop watching because the pace was so perfect and you knew there was something more fantastic that was coming.
Dan: Yeah. So, and you have to remember that what's interesting to you is likely not interesting to your customer. And that's what we talk about as selfish marketing. What do they want to hear versus what do I want to say? Yup.
Kathleen: I love it. Well, okay, so any chance that I could share a link to that campaign framework in the show notes because that sounds like a super valuable document for people to have.
Dan: And then it's got other things too, which is super cool. What does your customer want? What's their internal problem?
Then you get into internal versus external problems and those kinds of things. What's keeping them from having what they want and how do you solve that problem? But ultimately, people remember how they felt when they watched your stuff or when they're exposed to your brand much more.
And again, FMRI data or not FMRI data, it comes down to the fact that people remember how they felt. They don't remember what you said.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: This is so interesting and it's been so much fun to talk about. I want to ask you two questions and then I want to get into how somebody can follow up and learn more.
So my two questions that I always ask everybody, the first one is, this podcast is all about inbound marketing. I'm curious, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really setting the standard for doing inbound marketing right now?
Dan: Yeah, I do. I think there's so many of them.
Most of the national long form ads that you're seeing on Facebook now are really well done. For example, Purple Mattresses, really well done. They have the bears, right? I think Geico, the Martin agency, Geico does a phenomenal job.
And I also think that Dollar Shave Club really was the kind of the groundbreaking long format that changed how long form ads work.
Even though you had that data, there's a disconnect between people know what the right thing to do is versus them actually doing those things.
Kathleen: I love those examples.
And then the other thing, most marketers I talk to say they suffer from this problem of what I call drinking through a fire hose. Digital marketing changes so quickly. It's really hard to keep up with best practices and new technology and all that. So how do you personally keep yourself educated?
Dan: So you know, there's certain people, certain things I follow. Some people follow Gary V - Gary Vaynerchuk. So people like that. You take those sources.
I have a ton of those sources that I use. And then in the morning I sit down and go through them to see what's happening. And then you decide what you remember and what you don't remember. I can send you some of those links.
Kathleen: Who are your top three sources? How about that?
Dan: Top three sources? I'd have to say, so I use a lot of the curated stuff like IAB, the newsletters. I use a lot of those. We use CXL. We use a lot of Harvard Business Review.
And then just staying in touch with people. I've got a lot of colleagues in the industry where we talk about what's happening, who's doing what? What worked for your clients, what didn't work, what did you find out? Did you hear about a new study that just came out? You know, those kinds of things.
How to connect with Dan Kathleen: Awesome. Well, if somebody is listening to this and they want to learn more about what we talked about or they just want to learn more about you or Hackstone, what's the best way for them to connect with you online?
Dan: Hackstone.com. That's our website. We're on social as well. We try to make our social a little more entertaining than the website. The team is a lot less ADD and a lot less all over the place than I am. So they typically will do the talking. So if you're lucky, you won't have to actually talk to me.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: Alright, well I think talking to you is fascinating. So if you are listening to this podcast and you liked what you heard or you learned something new, I mean, I know I did this time for sure. This was so interesting. Head to Apple Podcasts and please consider leaving the podcast a five star review because that is how we get found by new listeners.
And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, and I would love to have them as my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Dan. This was a really fun conversation. Thanks.
What role should LinkedIn play in your overall paid advertising strategy, and how can use it to drive highly qualified leads for your business?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Modern Media Advertising Director Anthony Blatner shares his LinkedIn advertising strategies.
From how LinkedIn should be used in combination with other channels as part of a holistic paid advertising strategy, to what ad formats perform best and how to work with your sales team to ensure any leads you get are being followed up with, Anthony covers everything he does to help Modern Media's clients get killer results from LinkedIn.
Highlights from my conversation with Anthony include:
- LinkedIn is great for targeting niche audiences at scale.
- The cost per click on LinkedIn is higher than it is on other platforms, so it's important that you have a strategy for following up on any leads you get from LinkedIn.
- In Anthony's experience, LinkedIn ads work well for company's with a customer lifetime value of $10,000 or more.
- Whereas the cost per click on Facebook is generally around $2, on LinkedIn, it starts at $4.50 and goes up from there.
- LinkedIn is best for top of the funnel advertising, where you can attract a new audience and then retarget and nurture that audience on other, less expensive platforms.
- Anthony has found that LinkedIn lead forms work well for his clients. They tend to have a higher conversion rate because prospects don't have to leave LinkedIn to convert, but when you use a lead form, you sacrifice the ability to cookie a contact.
- If you are concerned about GDPR compliance, there are a number of ways to use lead forms to secure explicit consent and stay GDPR compliant.
- Another LinkedIn ad format that works well are newsfeed ads. Whereas on Facebook, video works well for this format, Anthony recommends using images on LinkedIn because you are being charged by the click and not the impression (which is how Facebook works).
- There is a new LinkedIn ad format that uses chatbot-like functionality called conversation ads that is also worth checking out.
- Anthony says sponsored InMail can be an effective way to get more conversions for ads that are already tested and proving successful in the newsfeed.
- With many marketers cutting their ad spend due to budget restrictions relating to COVID, Anthony says the cost per click on LinkedIn is down 30 to 40 percent.
- He recommends setting a maximum cost per click when advertising on LinkedIn, and then playing around with lowering that number to see how little you can spend and still see results.
- If you are doing LinkedIn ads and not seeing great results, it is most likely due to your targeting. Anthony recommends that you go back and revisit your targeting strategy to see if that helps.
- The minimum number of emails you can target on LinkedIn is 300.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Modern Media website
- Connect with Anthony on LinkedIn
- Contact Anthony by email at anthony@modernmedia.io
Listen to the podcast to learn how the top LinkedIn ads experts are using the platform to drive leads, and how can, too.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host Kathleen Booth and today my guest is Anthony Blatner who is the advertising director at Modern Media. Welcome Anthony. Anthony Blatner (Guest): Hey Kathleen. Thanks for having me on the show.
Anthony and Kathleen recording this episode.
Kathleen: Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting into it with you today, talking about some LinkedIn ads. But before we start, can you please tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and about modern media and about really just how you wound up doing what you're doing today?
About Anthony Blatner and Modern Media Anthony: Yeah, absolutely. So modern media, we are a LinkedIn ads focused agency. We do a lot of B2B lead generation and all of our focuses on LinkedIn ads.
The way that I got to being here is I actually come at it from the tech and software development world. I originally started my career working at IBM, working on their consulting teams, working on big eCommerce stores. Really enjoyed that, got to travel around a lot.
I live in Austin, Texas and I also got involved with the startup community while I was here and ended up falling in love with that. So after a few years at IBM, I spun off to start my own mobile app development consulting company who would build mobile apps for for a variety of other companies, a lot of startups, some other like larger tech companies that we would partner with.
And when I was doing that, I saw that we were building all these apps and like some of these companies would actually have startups with build an app and launch and like do very well. And we had a number of clients that went on to get acquired or like Stallard technology.
And then we also work with some bigger partners who may have already had a customer network and they launched their app and it goes up to that customer network and does very well out of the gates.
Then you would have other companies who would spend all this time and money developing app their software and then they would launch it and without a good marketing plan in place, it would just sit on the app store. No one would download it. And you'd see how much time and effort these teams are putting into this.
And without, you know, without that marketing plan afterwards, then it was just, you know, it was dead in the water.
So I saw it, I saw the need for it and then we naturally got pulled into doing it, helping out with a lot of those. So from doing marketing for my own agency and for a lot of clients I ended up just really loving the marketing that I was doing, so a few years ago, transitioned to focusing solely on marketing.
So now Modern Media focuses on marketing. B2B lead-generation solely using LinkedIn ads.
Kathleen: I love how focused you guys are because I mean, I come from an agency background. I owned an agency for 11 years and you know, I think that's the big conversation in the agency community, right? Like it's easy to try to be all things to all people, especially when you're chasing dollars. But there's really something to be said for niching down and becoming, you know, the best expert in the world on the thing that you want to do, you know, and focus on. So I think that's great.
Anthony: No, it wasn't easy to get here. You know, it's a lot of trial and error along the way to where getting into the marketing. A lot of the apps that we started by marketing, no, sometimes we did start with like Facebook ads and Google ads.
So like I've, I've done a lot of all of that kind of advertising over the years. And just with my background and with the type of clientele we had, LinkedIn was just repeatedly becoming the best platform to market them on.
So we had done a lot of Facebook, done a lot of Google. I'll tell you a story of probably the first one that really stuck out for me. They were, they were, this was a company that we were taking on to do marketing. They were at big data, but they are the big data platform. They sell their tools made for enterprise companies. It's like thousands of dollars a year.
They were doing the traditional Facebook and Google marketing. But as we audited their account and looked at their lead list, a lot of the leads that were coming in from Google were like people looking for jobs, searching for jobs or students looking for research.
And they were, you know, they were following best practices for keywords and negatives and all that stuff, but you still get a lot of leads coming in. And then on Facebook it'd be a lot of people who are maybe clicking on the ad cause it had like a pretty picture in it or something that was attention grabbing. But a lot of those leads that were signing up were just not good fits. Their sales team was complaining that they were wasting a lot of time calling out these people and they just weren't qualified to buy.
They didn't have the budgets to buy the software. So we took him over to LinkedIn and you know, targeted like CTOs, data scientists at specific types of companies who would be had the, their platform was made for a few different industries. So chose those industries, chose companies I think like a hundred people and above and just right out the gates.
Those leads that were signing up were like the perfect fit for them and they're just like, this is night and day. Like the clear differentiator there. And since then it's just been like, I'm just an advocate of LinkedIn now for, for B2B for these industries that that's our focus now.
Who is LinkedIn advertising right for? Kathleen: That's great. Now I feel like when people think about online advertising, they have a lot of choices these days. You mentioned a number of platforms just, and you know, in the last few minutes I guess my first question for you is really who is LinkedIn advertising right for and where does it fit within that big mix of different options?
Anthony: That is a good question. That is a very important question to ask. So it's not, it isn't a good fit for everybody. I'll tell you a few things about it is LinkedIn is great for targeting niche decision makers at scale.
It is a more expensive ads platform to use than a lot of the other ones out there. So it's good for companies that have the resources to go work those leads that they acquire. It's going to be more expensive to acquire those leads than like most other channels.
So, you know, they're higher value leads need to work them when people are signing up. It is more expensive to acquire them. So you, your offer, your LTV for your customers should be high enough to make sense. What we'd like to see is an LTV of about 10k for that ROI to make sense.
You know, if your sales and marketing engine is very honed in, you can be less than that and still make an ROI. But that's a good rule of thumb.
If you're on Facebook ads, you can get CPCs under a buck, you know, they might be a dollar to $2 on average. On LinkedIn the minimum is about $4.50 in the US so right out of the gate, that's their floor and you're just going up from there.
And if you're targeting CEO's only, you know, that's gonna be even higher than that.
So just be prepared for higher acquisition costs.
And that leads to how it fits in with the ecosystem. LinkedIn is great for starting the conversation and for acquiring very high quality traffic. Once you acquire it, you know, you want to then nurture it on other cheaper channels or more cost efficient channels.
So once somebody signs up to be a lead, you know, follow up over email, outbound calling oftentimes we retarget with Facebook and Google ads. So we acquired traffic on LinkedIn and then well, retarget on Facebook and Google because it's a lot cheaper.
And you know, retarget those ads, retarget those leads to, we're doing lead generation on LinkedIn, and then retargeting them to maybe book a call on Facebook or Google.
Kathleen: Got it. So it sounds like from what you're saying, focused lists you know, not kind of throwing a bunch of darts at the wall and hoping one sticks. It's like if you know exactly who you want to target and you have some good targeting parameters around whether that's job title, what have you, and then the budget to be able to support a larger, potentially larger per lead ad spend the team in place to follow up on those leads. And then really from an expectation standpoint, using it at the top of the funnel.
Understanding LinkedIn ad formats Kathleen: So then knowing that if somebody is listening and they're thinking, okay, check, check, check, you know, all of these things I have, can you talk a little bit about LinkedIn ad formats and what you find performs really well? So like, what do you need to have in order to advertise effectively on LinkedIn?
Anthony: Yeah, so a few things. So approaching the LinkedIn campaign is a few things and I'll kind of tell you about our most common campaign we'll do for people is a lead generation campaign on LinkedIn using lead magnets.
So a lead magnet is some asset of value that your target market would be interested in. So a guide, a PDF, a checklist or something like that. Linkedin, like I said, this is starting a conversation with somebody, your target market.
So offering people guides and easy downloadables is the best way to start the conversation to get them interested. Most, you know, unless you're a major brand, most people have not heard about your company. So leading with like buy now or contact us isn't gonna do as well. We're gonna have a much higher cost per lead. So on LinkedIn use lead magnets to start.
As far as ad formats, we do often use the LinkedIn lead forms. They will auto-populate with the person's information. So the lead form is a little form when you click on the ad that'll open up right inside of LinkedIn, just like a Facebook lead form.
They work very similarly. But on LinkedIn you can auto fill that with information from the user's profile and it comes with information from your profile. While you know on Facebook it's usually personal email addresses. In LinkedIn you do get number of personal email addresses, but you also get like work email addresses as well.
I find that data quality is very high coming off of LinkedIn. And we also often use like job title and company name so we know who are these leads that are signing up. Or using the LinkedIn profile.
You are also going to look up those leads afterwards and you know that that gives you a lot, a lot more richer information about your lead. So you can see, okay, who is this person, where do they work? And understand, you know, understand where your leads are coming from.
Usually, you're setting those targeting criteria up front. So you know, people coming into your campaign are going to be part of that audience. But our average campaign or our most helpful one is, is using the LinkedIn lead forms, your lead generation offering a lead magnets to, to your audience.
Kathleen: So this is an interesting topic to me because I've heard this, that lead forms are more effective than trying to get somebody to like go to your website and convert. But I guess my question is really if you're using a lead form, What are you sacrificing?
I use HubSpot and so I can't, if I use a lead form, I can't cookie somebody. If I can't cookie them, then I am giving up the ability to see all that rich data about their behavior on my site, et cetera and things like that. But then you had mentioned also using LinkedIn leads or ads rather to then retarget those people on other platforms.
Can you do that if you're using a lead form? Because at that point, you're not having a tracking pixel firing on your website.
Anthony: Right. At that point we retarget based on the email.
Kathleen: Okay. So if, but if there...
Anthony: You lose some data you know, that is, it is different than going to the landing page and opting in. So we do often use both, but most common is using the lead forms. The conversion rate is just much higher.
Typically using the lead forms the quantity you're going to get is going to make sense. You will see a lower conversion rate for pushing people to your landing page.
But I do say, you know, there are times where maybe you don't have the sales team available to call all those leads. So it is more important for you to get fewer, more higher intent leads. And then at that point maybe a landing page is a better one for you to use.
Because we do have accounts where like, you know, if they have a large budget they can be driving a lot of leads through there. And if you don't have the sales team to contact all those leads, like, Hey, I'd rather have higher intent leads. So landing page opt ins would then be better with them.
LinkedIn ads and GDPR compliance Kathleen: Yeah. Now the other question I have about lead forms is, it relates to GDPR. So if you're driving somebody to your site, you have a lot of control. If you're trying to be GDPR compliant, you have a lot of control over how you structure, you know, your opt-ins and your GDPR language, et cetera.
I don't have a lot of experience with LinkedIn lead forms. So can you talk a little bit about, if somebody is trying to adhere to GDPR, can they use LinkedIn lead forms and if so, what kind of control do you have over being able to document that opt-in?
Anthony: Yeah good question. So we haven't seen too many issues with that on LinkedIn.
Two things with lead form that you can include is number one, you were actually required to include a link to the company's privacy policy. So usually you use the privacy policy which will cover, you know, all those terms.
You can also include a little blurb at the bottom of the lead form. Anything else that you want to make clear to the user as they're signing up.
So those two inputs as far as that we usually get involved, you know, we're, we'll use the privacy policy from the company. And any other information on the lead form that needs to be,
Kathleen: So am I correct that there's no explicit checkbox built in that would say, for example, I agree to receive other communications from company X,
Anthony: You can add a custom checkbox to do that.
Kathleen: You can, okay. Okay. So that would presumably then solve that issue if somebody was really being strict about how they complied with GDPR? Yeah. Great.
When should you use a LinkedIn lead form? Kathleen: So yes, there's this trade off then with lead ads and it sounds like it's important to understand your goals.
What I'm hearing, or at least what I'm taking away from what you said, is that if your intent is to really have a laser focus on your certain market or your leads that you want to attract and, and your goal if they do convert is to really follow up with a phone call from your sales team, then it doesn't really matter if you're driving them to your website and having them fill out a form because the goal is to get the sales team call them and or, and, or reach out by email. And so, you know, having a lead form would make sense there.
But then it sounds like if your goal is to either put them into, you know, a full funnel nurturing sequence where you're retargeting on Facebook or something or where you're going to do mass emails then maybe it might make sense to not use a lead form and instead to direct them to a form on your site. Is that accurate, would you say?
Anthony: Yeah, we've got the best results that we see are when we, when we use lead forms to drive the higher volume of leads and then the client usually has a sales team who's on top of those leads right away calling them, you know, it's like they say like the five minute after submission rules, like the best practice, you know, contact them soon afterwards.
But five minutes is very fast. But if it, Hey, if you're on top of your leads, call them right away. Like, that's where we should have the best results. The sales team do work those leads. If someone signed up, they've indicated interest and if you position your lead magnet the right way, then they should be very open to like a sales conversation or at least that introductory like discovery. Hey, how can we help you in conversation
Kathleen: Do you give your clients any coaching as far as how to follow up on those leads? Because I think the one thing I've noticed is that there can, there's the potential for a big mismatch. Like somebody fills out a form on LinkedIn to get a white paper there. They might not be expecting to get a phone call. So how do you advise your clients to follow up?
Anthony: Yes, good question. So LinkedIn is great for starting the conversation. It is top of funnel.
Be aware that these leads, this is probably the first time that they're seeing your company, they probably opted in to get your lead magnet. So yeah, I kind of joke about the five minute rule thing. I would say that it's very fast to contact them at the point where they have just for the first time seeing your logo and heard about your company. They probably haven't even come to it, had time to read that lead magnet yet.
So I, you know, I don't say within five minutes, contact them soon. But you know, some of it is like you want that lead magnet to help do some of the education and warming up with them. It might take a little bit of time for somebody to receive that email, to click through to read it or to receive that email and then go read it.
And then yeah, follow up with them, have them on an email sequence, follow up with them shortly after that and then have the retargeting funnel in place. So that's you know, if they sign up via email, if they click through and pixel them, then you can retarget them with ads afterwards.
So we do recommend like a multi-channel approach afterwards as many touch points as you can, you know, shortly afterwards, while while it is still top of mind for them.
And then there's a lot that goes into the lead magnet strategy as far as, you know, how do I pick the best asset? How do I create the best asset that's going to work here?
For companies and brands and topics, services, that's they are, that are, it's like the levels of awareness thing pyramid. If they are not very aware of what your solution is and you work that you want to focus on their pain points and make the topic about them. If they are more aware, maybe if you are a well known brand and maybe you can make the topic about yourself if there's something that they're interested in.
So for lower levels of awareness, keep in mind that this is the part of the first time the senior company. So that call, the way I coach people about that call is that needs to be very introductory, very discovery. How can we help you get focused?
Other LinkedIn ad formats Kathleen: Yeah, that makes sense. Now we talked a lot about lead ads. Can you talk through what are some of the other ad format options on LinkedIn and for each of them, you know, when would you use it and, and how does it generally perform?
Anthony: Sure. so the next, so as far as specific ad units in the newsfeed, so that's a sponsored content and you have image ads and you have a video ad there, you also carousel ads. And they work just like Facebook carousel ads essentially.
We actually start with image ads most of the time. So I know, you know, on Facebook everyone's about video and like video performance better on LinkedIn to start, we often, we always start with, we almost always start with image ads in the beginning because we find on LinkedIn you're usually paying per click. Whereas on Facebook, usually paying costs, CPM by impression.
So on LinkedIn you want to reduce the chance of any irrelevant clicks to your ads. So that in one way that is don't be misleading.
You know, on Facebook people tend to be very curiosity invoking of like drawing the click in. That could be flashy videos, that could be vague copy that's just curiosity invoking. On LinkedIn you want to be very direct about what's what it is you're offering, who you are, who you're targeting because you don't want people to just curiosity click, okay,
Kathleen: You're paying for that. Yeah, that's an expensive click. Especially when five bucks is your minimum. You could have bought yourself a latte at Starbucks.
Anthony: So, we're usually starting with image ads because you can instantly, somebody can consume images rather than watching a video.
We usually find, to start, videos tend to be flashy and like eye catching and they draw the click more often. So in the beginning we see images perform better. And then once you prove your audience, which audience you should be split testing a number of audiences, once you prove which audience is the best, which ad angle, which imagery is the best, then we can then go turn that into a video or create a video similar to that.
And then, at that point we do see often video can outperform images. So in in the newsfeed you have images, video next format that we most commonly use is probably sponsored InMail.
Sponsored InMail can be great. It can be expensive as well. So it's mostly InMail charges you per send. I think the minimum 5 cents per send. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a lot when you add it up over the size of an audience.
Sponsored InMail is great because we do see very high open rates of those messages. Keep in mind a lot of people that are opening those are probably just clearing out the notification. So the offers that work best in sponsored InMail are the ones that are like the, if you have a very appealing offer.
So usually we'll start by testing in the newsfeed and if an ad does very well there, then we will take that and go turn into a sponsored InMail ad. Because if it's performing really well in the newsfeed then that means the offer's proven and that we can go take and put in as much with InMail.
Sponsored InMail, you know, it's a one, it seems like a one on one conversation and if it's like, if it feels like a personal offer that you're making to somebody usually, you know, sometimes offer a free consultation there or like free gifts there are, do, do better. But it's, it's a good ad format to try out.
Next, Linkedin just released conversation ads, which are kind of the next evolution of sponsored email ads. This gets more to be more chat bot like so we do see LinkedIn does follow. It's tends to follow Facebook and a lot of different ways. And you know, we've seen how Facebook has evolved with the last few years. We've seen Facebook Lives, we've seen chat bots and stuff like that. Linkedin is kind of following along the same steps.
Kathleen: So can you actually explain how that would work? Cause I haven't seen that at all. I'm super curious about it. The chatbots.
Anthony: So it's not, it's not a chatbot, but I think LinkedIn's on their way to getting more towards this.
But conversation ads, you will create a chat flow. So instead of just a sponsored InMail message that you send to somebody, it is similar to that. You send the message, but then they have a few options that they can choose from and you can create a, a tree from there. So that if somebody clicks on option a, you know, essentially you can offer them multiple different things in the app.
So the reason why we've seen performance improve from it, because you can offer people, you can make multiple offers,
Kathleen: Right? It's like a choose your own adventure kind of a thing. Now, does that appear as a direct message in their inbox or how does that appear?
Anthony: Yes.
Kathleen: Interesting. I haven't seen that. I'm going to have to now search for it, find it in the wild. So, so many different options.
Who is finding success with LinkedIn ads? Kathleen: I know you work with a lot of clients. Can you share any examples of, you know, campaigns or companies that you've worked with who are using LinkedIn ads really successfully?
Anthony: Sure. so right now, well, just in general the HR space always does very well on LinkedIn. So I'd say for any space, any campaigns that I would highlight, like it's probably gonna be an HR campaign.
The biggest categories on LinkedIn are like, I think IT is number one. And I think HR is number two, and then it's like the rest of the tech software world and then like financial services.
So if you're in one of those categories, those are the biggest audiences. So those are probably gonna be great campaigns for LinkedIn.
I'm always surprised when somebody gives me a very niche audience to target how many people I'm able to find on LinkedIn. So, and pretty much any niche decision maker, any niche B2B targeting, go scope out what the audience sizes. And I'm always surprised how many people I can find in the different niches.
But to highlight any campaigns, HR, I'd say just in the last, especially in the last couple months since we've all been quarantined and at home, the HR category has been very active on LinkedIn. So not only have ad prices gone way down the last few weeks, they're down about like 30 to 40% in a lot of cases.
Kathleen: Now, I've heard that. I've heard that also for Facebook. And is that on LinkedIn? Is that because basically so many companies have cut their marketing spend and so the demand side if you will, has gone down
Anthony: Exactly. LinkedIn is an auction, just like Facebook.
Kathleen: Yup. Okay.
Anthony: So less, well, it's a combination of less advertisers and then also more eyeballs. Supply and demand there where we're all stuck at home. So everyone's spending a lot more time online.
Kathleen: Yeah, I've heard, I've heard a ton of people say they're spending way more time on LinkedIn these days.
How to structure your bidding strategy for LinkedIn ads Anthony: A random tip is I always recommend bidding max CPC. Do not use auto-bid on LinkedIn because you just, you say go spend wherever you want it and LinkedIn will go whatever it wants. Set max CPCs for most of your campaigns.
We've noticed that we can drop that max CPC all the way down, nearly all the way down to the floor. Each audience in each geography has its own floor so go test in the tool and see what yours is, but we dropped it nearly down to the floor for a lot of campaigns and I'm seeing cost per lead improve a lot.
Kathleen: Wow. That's awesome. Okay, so sorry, I interrupted you. You were talking about examples and you talked about HR. Any particular campaigns that you can think of that have done really well lately?
Examples of successful LinkedIn ad campaigns Anthony: Yeah, so there's two very specific HR ones I'm thinking about right now that, especially in the last few weeks, that they've done very well.
I mentioned how like lead magnet strategy is very important. They both release lead magnets that speak to kind of what's going on right now, how to hire in tough times and how to support your people during tough times.
And, you know, COVID messaging might be getting stale now, but especially over the last couple of months, it's been performing super well. So where they were traditionally between a 40 to $60 cost per lead, they're down below $30 per lead.
And then the other campaign, they were a little bit more cause they were targeting a higher level of HR people. And they're down below 50 bucks per lead.
So yeah, we've seen lead costs like almost cut in half in a lot of cases. And just like HR activities, you know, through the roof. So those ones have done really well.
Attracting high quality leads on LinkedIn Kathleen: And then would you say the quality of the leads - I know you mentioned doing almost the opposite approach from Facebook where you're trying not to be click baity cause you're paying by the click. And I'm interested specifically, because you talked about one example that was targeting very senior level people. That's an audience that's usually really hard to get in front of.
So can you talk a little bit about what your experience has been if somebody is going after like a C level audience, what are some good tips for being successful with that on LinkedIn?
Anthony: Absolutely. That's why you use LinkedIn. Cause a lot of these upper level people, there's just no other place or way to target them without, without buying an email list. Yeah, there's no other place. Linkedin is the best place with that kind of data at scale.
And LinkedIn's always the first place that people update their profile when they get a new job or get a promotion. So it's very high quality data and that's the only place, a lot of times, you'll see these people.
As far as targeting goes, the LinkedIn audience approach is the opposite of Facebook, I guess. Again, with Facebook you give it, you know, you tend to give it a big audience and you let the AI algorithm go find the best people for you and that audience. On LinkedIn you want to do the opposite because, because you are paying cost per click, you want to exclude any irrelevant ones.
So you want to be very niche, very laser focused on who you want to target.
As far as lead quality goes, you know, you're setting up your targeting in the beginning. What are the job titles I want, what are the functions with the seniorities? So if you're not getting those leads, the right leads coming through your funnel, go back to your targeting and tweak that up.
You don't usually have a problem with lead quality. The quality is always clients. It's always funny, like a client that has run Facebook ads in the past and like, we'll have like our lead tracker set up and they'll see the job titles and company names coming in and they're just like, perfect, perfect, perfect. And sometimes we'll get feedback of like, Oh, this title was a little bit off maybe because you said this, so let's go add this exclusion and then we'll go work that back in.
But, well, yeah you know, if your leads that come through on LinkedIn aren't a great fit, then just tweak your targeting a little bit. But you can set the specific job titles in specific industries and company size you want. So lead quality is usually awesome.
What is the minimum audience size for a LinkedIn ad? Kathleen: Yeah. now one of the things I've always been interested in and I feel like it's changed, what is the minimum audience size that you can target on LinkedIn because there are some crazy opportunities with LinkedIn ads. I love the idea of you're submitting a proposal to do something for a company and how few people can you target in that company with your ad?
Anthony: 300 is the minimum. It Is a little bit bigger of a minimum than Facebook. I want to say Facebook is a hundred for a minimum.
So in two cases is yes, it is hard to be that laser targeted in some cases. It's also a challenge when you want to retarget cause if you are building a lead list, you're gonna have to wait until you have at least 300 leads to go retarget them using the email method.
So maybe a simple alternative that is go connect with those people on LinkedIn and send them a message via your chat.
Anthony's tips for anyone getting started with LinkedIn ads Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Well, what tips do you have if somebody is listening and they're thinking they want to get started with LinkedIn ads? Is there anything you wish you knew that would have helped you avoid some mistakes?
Anthony: Hmm. Anything that I wish I knew. So I have a number of tips that I usually talk about, so I'll give some of those.
Well I'd say the biggest thing I wish, like even if I would have told myself this a year ago I probably wouldn't have listened, is don't ask for too much information from your lead in the beginning. You know, you're starting the conversation. They don't have any reason to trust you yet. Keep it as minimal as possible. And that's going to maximize your conversion rate.
You know, I go check out a lot of their ads just because I'm always interested to see, what are they advertising? What are they asking for? What does the lead form look like?
I opened some of these companies' lead forms. I'm just like, you have seven imports.Is anybody submitting this form? Questions and stuff like that. I'm like, I should reach out to you and be like, Hey, I know your cost per lead is terrible. Do you want some help?
That's the biggest thing is these people don't know you. They don't have any reason to trust you yet. Only ask for the information you need, which is usually like email address to send them the guide and then continue the conversation from there.
Various other tips.
I'd say the image thing is a big one. We get a lot of people who wanted to just have a folder of videos and like let's use these. Let's start with images first and then get those converting and then move to video afterwards.
Some other tips are I mentioned the don't auto-bid. Start with max CPC and bid low and then crank it up slowly until you find the sweet spot.
Short and direct copy usually works the best. So now on Facebook, a lot of people write these long copy and a lot of emojis and stuff like that. Short copy tends to do best. Keep it shorter than about 150 characters and won't trigger the "see more" button.
Most people don't click the "see more" button. I'm kind of, I advocate in both cases where you want your CTA, you want it to be standalone above the "see more". If somebody doesn't click the "see more" it should still be just as appealing. But for the people that do click the "see more", here's a tip that clicking the "see more" button does not charge you. So there's no harm in having more copy than the rest of your ad for the people that do click that "see more" button.
So split test both short and long. I do say, I will say we do see shorter, usually performs better. But there is usually no downside to having more copy there.
Kathleen: And then with images, I know Facebook has a limitation of how much copy can you have on your image? Are there any limitations like that in LinkedIn?
Anthony: Nope. Actually we use a lot more copy and images.
Kathleen: Okay. And then the other thing I've heard with Facebook is that you should have a very active page where you're posting often to sort of like warm up your audience, which I think is interesting cause I feel like nobody ever sees any Facebook page posts, but that's a different conversation for another time.
So do you ever, what kind of advice do you give people regarding their LinkedIn company page? Not their ads, but the page itself as far as how that should be used to support a good LinkedIn ad strategy?
Anthony: Yeah, good question. So you want to have the basics covered.
LinkedIn company pages people tend to have more, more connections and more followers on their personal page. So I'd say put most of your focus there, but you know, if you are running a company page, you should have that company page fully filled out. It should look nice and professional and polished and it should have some activity on there.
If you were gonna go hire a social media person to manage your profile, I'd say have them manage your personal profile because you'll have more activity there. Because you have more connections in your personal than typically a company page.
But have all the information filled out, have good imagery there, have all your links filled out.
And then, to bring back the lead magnets again, a lot of times in the headline or in the about section of the body copy, I recommend putting that called to action there. Download our guide. And while that link won't be explicitly clickable, we do see a lot of people will copy and paste it. Make it a simple URL. Mydomain.com/guide and then they'll go there and get it.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: That makes sense. Great.
Well, shifting gears I have two questions. I always ask my guests and I'd love to hear what you have to say.
First one is, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it right now with inbound marketing?
Anthony: So the company that has been advertising to me the most is outreach.io. So they're a pretty well known company out there, but they just, they must spend a lot on their ads because every time I log into LinkedIn I see them there and I'm always like, that's a good ad. I like that ad.
So I'd say that they do a very good job. I think I've probably signed up for a few of their lead magnets because I always scope out what other people are doing. Their content's good and their ads are good quality.
And if I was to give people any tip, it's you can go see the ads run by any LinkedIn page out there just like you can on Facebook by going to that company page. On the left hand side, on desktop, there's a little navigation bar on the bottom it says ads and it'll show you those, the ads being run by that company page.
So for whatever your industry is, go scope out what your competitors are doing and maybe similar offerings are new.
Kathleen: That's a great suggestion.
Second question, marketers tend to have a common pain point, which is that so much is changing so quickly. LinkedIn is a great example. I feel like just when you feel like, you know how it works, something big changes and it's, you know, you almost have to start over.
How do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated about
Anthony: In the world of digital marketing? For LinkedIn specifically? I'd say I see there's not much content out there about LinkedIn ads. So the surprising thing, like as I've learned this over the years there's so much out there about, about Facebook and Google ads, like the huge communities and stuff like that, of courses, everything. There's not much about LinkedIn ads.
So I've gotten the most by joining a number of different groups and like asking questions to people there and like, and like, just like working one on one with other people who are active advertisers.
Kathleen: Any particular groups that come to mind?
Anthony: LinkedIn Official Advertisers, a group on LinkedIn. That's a group on LinkedIn. Yeah. I have a small one that I started recently. It's called, this is on Facebook, LinkedIn advertising strategies.
Kathleen: And you said that is or is not on Facebook?
Anthony: That is on Facebook. Yeah. Okay. Got it. LinkedIn groups overall are still,
Kathleen: Yeah, they've kind of like died on the vine a little bit.
Anthony: I hope that they put more effort or like, you know, improve them because I think there's a lot of potential. Like we've seen how Facebook has put so much focus on groups and how they've been, like a number of groups that I'm in are super active and super valuable. I hope that it does the same there.
Kathleen: So yeah, I was going to ask you about that. It's funny, I'm glad you brought it up cause it is, it used to be so great and then it just, was it just, Ugh. I mean I don't spend any time in LinkedIn groups these days, but I used to spend a ton.
How to connect with Anthony Kathleen: So okay, well we're coming to the top of our time. So if somebody is interested in learning more or they want to reach out to you and ask a question, what is the best way for them to connect with you?
Anthony: So the best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn. I think I'm the only Anthony Blatner on there. So go look me up. Connect with me and send me a little message in the add now and the add connection requests because we all get tons of them.
You can find me at my email is anthony@modernmedia.io and then our website's modernmedia.io.
If you're looking to learn more about LinkedIn ads or understand strategy, I have tried to put out a lot of content as I've learned over the past few years, knowing that there's not much out there. I've tried to put out more content to share with others. So we have a number of blog posts about funnel strategy, lead generation strategy and then specifically LinkedIn ads, tips and best practices. We got one about lead magnets and then we have one about all the tips around copy and creative. What works the best.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: Awesome. Well, I'll put those links in the show notes so that people can go check that out.
And if you're listening and you have learned something new today, which I certainly have, head to Apple Podcasts and please consider leaving the podcast a five star review. That's how other folks find us.
And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest.
Thank you so much, Anthony. This was great.
Anthony: Thanks for having me.
With COVID-19 upending our work and home lives, how does user experience need to change to reflect the "new normal"?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, I dig into this question with guest Bob Berry, a virtual operations and user experience expert who is a principal at AnswerLab and founder of ItsTheUsers.
Bob has helped some of the world's largest companies, including Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and others, to create new, optimal online experiences in the age of Coronavirus and in this interview, he explains why companies must relearn what their customers and prospects ant and expect as their lives are transformed by the pandemic.
Bob says that to not only survive, but compete and win in the future, businesses need to create optimal online experiences now. Check out the podcast to get his advance on how to go about doing that.
Highlights from my conversation with Bob include:
- The sudden shift to working from home during the Coronavirus has put digital, virtual and online experiences front and center in a way that they have not been before.
- This makes it imperative that companies develop a deep understanding of what their customers' lives look like now in this new normal so that they can craft experiences that match that.
- Bob believes that virtually everything that happens in business is a set of individual choices or decisions by real people and the sum total of those choices is what drives the global economy. This is why user experience design is so critical.
- Because of changes related to the pandemic, we're going to have to determine, as marketers, whether the assumptions we've made about how people buy are still valid. And if they're not, we're going to have to learn what the new patterns are.
- One area that Bob believes will change is how people think about data and privacy. He predicts we'll have a quicker movement to more stringent privacy rules, prompted in part by the need to do more contact tracing related to Coronavirus.
- Changing user experience require that you look holistically at a business. Bob gave the example of his work with Deluxe Corporation, where he undertook an omnichannel business assessment that looked at the entire lifecycle of a customer's experience with the company. The result of that assessment and the changes the company made drove an additional $3 million to the company's bottom line.
- Bob says the best way to get started is by doing an inventory of every touchpoint that a customer has with your business. From there, you can use that data to develop a new narrative around what the buying journey looks like today.
- Understanding customer buying journeys is not an event, according to Bob, but rather a process that must be undertaken on an ongoing basis.
- One way to accomplish this is through survey tools and diaries that require your customers to document their interactions with your business. Bob has used a tool called dscout to do this in the past.
- For now, the two things that businesses can focus on are how they will stay in touch with and maintain relationships with their customers in the future, and what their products/services need to look like going forward.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the ItsTheUsers website
- Visit the AnswerLab website
- Connect with Bob on LinkedIn
- Follow Bob on Twitter
Listen to the podcast to learn how the keys to business success have shifted, and what companies need to know -- and do -- right now to create user experiences that will position them for success in the future.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week my guest is Bob Barry who is the founder and principal of it's the users. Welcome to the podcast, Bob. Bob Berry (Guest): Thanks Kathleen. Glad to be here. Looking forward to this.
Bob and Kathleen recording this episode.
Kathleen: I am really looking forward to this because this is an interesting time and as we're recording this we're I don't even know how many weeks -- seven, eight weeks, what have you -- into pandemic quarantine. I guess it depends on where you live and et cetera, but it feels like forever and the world has undeniably changed quite a bit in that time.
I think many people are just starting to kind of find their footing in what may or may not become the new normal. So we're going to talk a little bit about that and what that means for user experience.
About Bob Berry and ItsTheUsers Kathleen: But before we do that, could you please tell my audience a little bit about what ItsTheUsers is and your background, and how you came to be doing what you're doing today?
Bob: Certainly. So, my history goes actually back quite a ways.
I originally got my degree in computer science and out of college, I actually worked for Hewlett Packard back in the day when bill and Dave were still alive. It was a very different company back then and I was one of their early eCommerce business managers when the internet and the web came along.
And that's where I first started getting involved in this whole idea of experience and how experiences can really influence what we do in business. Back in those days, we developed some of the early social media, online learning, e-commerce and cloud based services before a lot of those terms even existed.
I actually left HP to get involved in a number of startups during the dot com boom, and started a company that did a lot of training and learning and curriculum for youth.
We actually embedded some pretty interesting experiences for young people to help them get ready for life. We were pretty far into that as we approached the great recession when a lot of the spending was starting to dry up and entrepreneurs like myself were struggling. My wife sat me down. We had five kids, four cats, and a dog at that time. And we were surviving on her teacher, principal income. She worked in public education.
She sat me down and said, Hey, this isn't working. We need to find a way to have my income be more stable and more predictable. So I actually made a big shift at that point, that was around 2007, 2008 and actually became full time involved in user experience and really understanding what impact that has on business, what impact that has on people.
And I've been doing user experience in one form or another since then, both as an independent and working in a corporate environment. Now I'm working for a company called AnswerLab. I do that in addition to ItsTheUsers.com.
AnswerLab is really focused on working with a lot of major companies. We work with Google, Facebook, Amazon, and doing projects for all of those companies right now around user experience and helping them to figure out how to adapt what they're doing and shift their online presence and their digital strategies into this new world we're about to enter.
ItsTheUsers.com is focused on bringing new people into the world of user experience and really understanding how to do that. So it's focused on a lot of people that may not have a tremendous amount of money to spend who can't pay the big ticket research studies that some of those big brands can.
So it's a really interesting mix. I get to work with those big companies, you know, they invent a lot of cool new stuff and I get to work with them and put those out in the public and learn how real people react to things that those companies are inventing.
And then with ItsTheUsers.com I get to work with a lot of small businesses, professionals, entrepreneurs and help introduce them to this whole world as well. And of course now we're entering this whole new phase. Like you say, we've only been a few weeks into this and we're all very interested to see how this is going to unfold and what's going to happen as we try to go back to work as we try to get our businesses restarted.
I think we all have a lot to learn about how this new world is going to function.
Kathleen: Absolutely. Boy, listening to you tell your story, I just have to share that it really hit close to home because when that recession hit in 2008/9, my husband and I owned a digital marketing agency together and we had four kids and two dogs.
I'm listening to you tell the story and we looked at each other and we were like, Oh God, we're in the same company. We're totally in this boat together. It's either gonna sink or it's gonna float. You know, it was, those were some crazy times. I guess for that reason, my heart goes out to people who own businesses right now because I've been through that experience and I just remember so clearly the stress that that put us under at the time.
So that could be a whole other podcast that we talk about, but we won't, it would probably be very stressful.
It could be several podcasts, but you know, focusing on the situation that the world is in right now, it's such a unique situation, but it's also, in some very interesting ways, at least to me, it's presenting us with a unique, once in a lifetime opportunity because it's really speeding up some things that I think were going to happen anyway as far as movements to remote work and the acceleration of companies really doing more business online and all of these things that we were sort of creeping towards over time.
But that process has accelerated dramatically as a result of what's happened, and I know a lot of companies are kind of scrambling to figure out what it means for them. So in terms of user experience, I'm just going to hand it over to you and I would love to hear what you're seeing as far as the changes and what you've seen done well and where companies need to improve.
It's a big topic. So, you know, where do we start with this?
How is COVID-19 changing user experience? Bob: Yeah, it's a big question and there are a lot of challenges wrapped up in this. I think one of the major effects that's happening right now is because of the need to quarantine, the social distance, all the lockdowns that are happening, you know, not just here in this country, but really all over the world.
It's putting digital, virtual, online in the center of what we're all going to need to adapt to in a much bigger way.
Fortunately, we've been working on this for a long time with the internet and the web and a lot of these virtual tools and platforms have been around long enough that all of us, or most of us, are pretty familiar with them.
But as we drive that massive shift to digital and virtual, if you look at all the industries out there -- look at education, finance, entertainment, sports -- the ways we interact socially, you know? Medicine, commerce...
So many things now are being transformed by this and digital and virtual really becomes the centerpiece of how we're going to have to conduct business and interact with one another.
In the midst of that, there are going to be a lot of new innovations. Things are gonna change. So some of the old ways of doing things are going to go away and there are going to be a lot of new technologies.
We're already seeing some of these now. A lot of new innovations are coming out just dealing with the virus. We're coming out with a lot of new technologies and new ways and of course people, as they're working remotely or as they're living and socializing remotely, we're inventing a lot of new ways to apply this technology.
So to cope with all of that and deal with all of this change, the experience really is the centerpiece of all that.
And so Kathleen, I kind of have this crazy idea that I promote, you know, both in my role with ItsTheUsers.com and then in my research role with AnswerLab, and the premise is that virtually everything that happens in business is a set of individual choices or decisions by real people.
So certainly in inbound marketing, if somebody is going to respond to some content marketing, if they're going to react to a paid ad, if they're going to click on anything online, it's all about individual people making individual choices and decisions. And all of those decisions happen within whatever experience we put out there for them to encounter.
And in fact, the other part of this theory for me is that the sum total of all of those choices is really what drives the global economy. So if that's really true, if experience is that centerpiece, if that's truly what happens, then all of it is being transformed right now.
When I talk about user experience, it's more than just sort of the traditional usability. It's really about understanding people. Who are they? What are their lives like? What are their challenges? What's their personal narrative? So understanding that whole journey that they're on and therefore how do they accomplish what they need to -- that's a key part of the experience as well.
So, those trends that the personal and business people that were going through this massive pivot to digital and all of the new innovations that are going to occur as a result of this, they all intersect in the experience.
So we have to figure out how to invent better and new experiences so people can function, so business can function, so we can continue to run and do what we do. And we're going to have to find new ways of building, deploying and verifying all that, because now we have to do it all remotely.
Kathleen: Yeah, it's so true. It's very interesting as I listen to you talk about it, I thought of a personal thing that happened in the last couple of days that I think for me at least illustrates part of what's changed. Everybody's talking about how the whole world is all of a sudden using Zoom.
I've used them for years. I've worked remotely for a long time and sometimes I feel like I spend more time with Zoom than I do with my husband. So for me, Zoom has always felt very easy to use and very intuitive.
I think it was designed for a person like me who is relatively, you know, technologically fluent, spends a lot of time on their computer, working remotely, et cetera. But in the last two months, the number of users of zoom has mushroomed and it includes a lot of people who are not as technologically fluent, who don't spend as much time on computers.
And for me, the way this has really come to light is, I joke that my unpaid second job is that I'm now a Zoom tutor and I have taught my sister in law, my parents and my mother-in-law all how to use Zoom so that we could do these family calls.
My mother in law in particular just is really reticent about it and you know, she's a little older. It was really interesting because I got her to the point where she could get on and join a call. But the other day she called me and said, I want to be able to start a call. And we went onto that little, the Zoom screen. I'm sure most people are familiar with it by now, where it says like, join, start, schedule, et cetera. And she didn't understand the difference between schedule and start and join.
So I was listening to you talk. It got me thinking that Zoom is a great example, it has this new audience that doesn't just intuitively understand the differences in those meanings and it's almost like they need to change that little screen.
Just say I want to start a meeting, schedule one for later, join someone else's meeting. It needs to be even more explicit now for those people who aren't as much digital natives as maybe it's prior user base wise.
So I just wanted to share that story because it's so fresh in my mind and it's nothing that I ever would have thought of. To me, the interface of zoom just seems so easy and simple. But then when I was walking through it with her, I was able to see it through a different lens.
Bob: Yeah. I have to laugh because I'm sure you've heard the Zoom story yesterday with the Supreme court. So the Supreme court is trying to hear cases and make decisions using Zoom and similar kind of situation, there are probably a lot of them in the same age group as your mom.
Well, apparently somebody used the bathroom and there was the sound of a flushing toilet. That's now referred to as the flush heard round the world. And I haven't heard yet who exactly was.
So here's these most distinguished members of our society and they're struggling with something as simple as remembering to hit mute when they do something personal or they're on zoom.
So that's a really good example.
Another really important dimension of this that I wanted to bring up and kind of get your perspective on as well, because we're so early in this process, speaking of inbound and I've been, you know, been around the internet and the web since the very beginning and I've seen so many changes and one of the major changes that of course has occurred is our access to data.
In such a big way, data drives what so many inbound programs and capabilities do. I think we're in the beginning of a major shift in data. I've also done a lot of research around data privacy and personal data on how individuals deal with this.
As we try to deal with this pandemic, I think one of the things that's coming is we have to increase our ability to test, trace and track who's got the virus, who's had the virus, et cetera.
We're in the middle of this big experiment where big parts of the country are trying to go back to work, but we don't have that capability yet.
Google and Apple have announced that their devices can communicate, and we hear about new apps now being launched that are supposed to provide this capability.
Well, I suspect that people, in order to trust this process of gathering all this data to manage the virus, are going to have to be very confident that that data is protected in a whole different kind of way.
If that happens, does that mean new regulations are going to come into effect, new practices, new principles around how we gather and use data and are those practices and principles now and probably going to be a lot more strict, are they going to apply to the data that we acquire for marketing purposes, for inbound marketing purposes? And so what does that future look like?
And so it's really difficult to predict where that's going to go, but that's something I'm really keeping a close eye on to see what kind of data requirements are going to be needed. What influence is it going to have on all the other data that we have out there right now?
And, you know, then I think it also begs the question of is the data that we have now on our customers that we use so widely in inbound marketing, is that data still valid? Is the world changing enough that we're going to have to relearn some of that because people's buying patterns or their preferences or their economics have changed?
So there's some big issues at work that we're looking at.
Kathleen: Oh, I, I totally agree with you. I think there's absolutely a heightened awareness around data now, especially health data as you pointed out.
Interestingly, I think businesses and marketers in particular are having to rethink the whole notion of personalization and tracking because so much of it was done based on IP addresses, corporate IP addresses, which, with everybody working from home, you lose the ability to track that way.
Not to mention then the whole topic of accessibility. You know, when you have people who are visually or hearing impaired, who might have been able to physically come into a business in the past more easily now really can't. There's always been this requirement that websites be built in a way that's accessible. But so few businesses have really done it.
I just think it's going to happen on so many fronts that we have no idea the tidal wave of change that's going to hit us.
Bob: Yeah, I agree. And I think one of the key aspects of this that we're trying to implement and that's really a lot of what we're trying to stay on the forefront of is to figure out ways to track all of this, to stay in touch with these people, to learn, you know, individuals in businesses.
There are so many ways that individual businesses are trying to adapt. Now businesses are coming up with some very creative ways of reacting to this. And then, you know, how our individual lives are changing and you know, how are we going to keep our fingers on the pulse of everything that's going on.
And there's, again, so many dimensions to this. So from a research standpoint, there's a lot that we need to pay attention to, and a lot of new tools and methods and approaches that we have to put in place in order to continue this relearning process.
And again, it's what kind of new experiences are going to be required to help people that maybe have never used Zoom before that are now going to have to deal with new apps on their phones because they're going to be tracking health data or you know, they're not working in an office anymore.
They're working at home and what does that mean about their whole set of digital experiences that they have to deal with?
So being able to relearn it, retrack it, gather all the data that's required, create all the new experiences -- that's what we're trying to stay in front of and trying to help other companies and individuals figure out how to do that as well.
How are companies changing user experience in response to the Coronavirus? Kathleen: Well, there's no doubt that the changes, it's not just coming, it's already started. So I'm curious to dive into some specifics.
What are some, some specific things that you have seen or worked with? I know you probably can't talk about specific clients and what you're doing for them, but, in generalized terms, can you share any specific examples of things that have had to change already in order to adjust user experiences to the new environment?
Bob: Yeah, so there's a lot going on out there right now.
So again, being able to understand, first of all, who is your audience and how is that changing? So who are these individuals? What kind of things are they dealing with?
I think it's important to make the distinction between whether you're talking to B2B or B2C, because those are different types of dynamics. There's a lot of business and instructional and operational changes that organizations have to deal with as far as how to go remote.
So in this process of staying in touch with your customers and learning what they're up to, how are you going to manage your workforce? How are you going to manage whoever your teams are as you go through that process?
I think there's also a tendency to want to stay in touch with the larger trends out there. So what's happening, you know, socially and politically, economically? There's money available from the government and how are you going to get access to that and how are your customers and your clients getting access to that and how does that change what you might be doing with them?
An example that I can name, where we actually did a pretty massive business transformation process, maybe it's helpful in this context to give you an example of the kinds of things that we've done that will need to evolve but that are still very sound practices.
So a few years ago I did a study for Deluxe Corporation.This was actually in the midst of the great recession. So they were in the process of doing a pretty major business transformation and their business is very much about financial documents and checks and related types of products.
We did what was called an omni-channel business assessment, and this was something that took place over a couple of years. We looked at a number of different touch points.
The reason it's called Omni channel is because we look at a variety of different ways that they interact with customers. So we looked at email, we looked at web, we looked at their call center, we looked at all of their print programs and we also assessed their direct sales force.
This was a combination of both B2B and B2C. The problem with just looking at any one of those is, any one customer can touch multiple aspects of their business.
Somebody can pick up a catalog and interact with that and then they may find a phone number and then dial the number and talk to somebody in the call center. They may get an email message with that, which then sends them to a website.
So there's all sorts of aspects of inbound marketing involved with this. There's probably a few outbound aspects as well.
And so long story short, over a couple of years, we assessed all of those different touch points and made sure that the overall experience was effective, that people could find their way around that, the pathways from one aspect of it to another were smooth, that the messaging was consistent, and that the people that different aspects of that you could hand a customer off effectively from one, one part to another.
At the end of the day we were able to drive over $3 million of new business to their top line by optimizing all that. And this was in the midst of the great recession when things were financially very challenging.
So that type of approach I think is going to be a really important, that sort of omni-channel, multi touchpoint approach is going to be really useful, really important as we enter this new world. Because in a lot of ways, all of those different touch points are going to be changing and evolving for businesses. And if you don't pay attention to all of them, you won't have the big picture of what's really going on and the different journeys and pathways that customers might be taking in interacting with your business.
How to get started Kathleen: So where can companies get started? How do they begin? You know, if somebody is listening to this right now and they're thinking, okay, things are going to need to change. We don't maybe know how much permanent change that it's going to be, but obviously things need to change.
How do they begin to wrap their heads around this and, and begin to figure out what's the right approach?
Bob: I think you have to start, I think a lot of cases with where you are.
So what do you know now about who your buyers, your prospects, your customers, your users? You have to start with them. If you haven't already, it's important to begin to develop some sense of their story, their narrative, and again, who they are, what they're challenged with, where do they live and work? Are they still in an office? Are they still in their store? Is that whole work environment now changing? How they make buying decisions -- is that still the same or how is that evolving?
So you have to start by understanding what are those stories, those narratives, those journeys that people are going through. And there's a variety of ways to do that.
There are a lot of a very effective tools out there right now because the demand for doing a lot of this remotely is increasing pretty rapidly as you can imagine. So you know, if you go out there and look, there's a lot of different ways that you can interact with these customers and gather a lot of information and survey them or really understand who they are and what type of interactions that they're dealing with.
So once you have a sense of who they are, those journeys, those personas, those narratives about who they are, then it's a process of understanding. Again, what experiences do you need to put in front of them? Are those web experiences or those phone experiences? Are they mobile? Are they on an app? What are all the ways that you need to interact with them so that they can understand your business and what you offer?
Do an inventory of all of your touch points, and certainly inbound marketing is a key part of that as well, and begin to measure how much business you're getting through those different channels and begin to put in place ways to actually understand and observe how they interact with those experiences.
You're going to want to do this on an ongoing basis. This is a process and not an event. You want to make sure that over time you can start to identify what are some trends that are going on and begin to track those trends.
Again, there are a lot of different ways and approaches to evaluate mobile experiences and a lot of different ways to evaluate in person or desktop or web based experiences.
So there's a lot of different approaches and tools that are available to do that.
Tools for doing audience research Kathleen: So you mentioned starting by learning more about your audience and your customers. Are there any particular tools that you've worked with that are favorites of yours? I imagine there are some that probably are better for larger companies with bigger budgets and some that are better for smaller guys with smaller budgets.
Any, you know, sort of list of your favorite tools?
Bob: Yeah, so there are various tools out there that can do a variety of what we consider like diaries.
So we actually have tools that allow people to keep track over time of how different apps or devices or interfaces work within their lives.
So, understanding a day in the life or a week in the life of somebody based on having them create a diary of how they interact with your business or your apps or your website gives you a good sense of putting those things into context of who they are and what they're dealing with.
So diary tools are really important.
One that we use is called Dscout and we have some of our own internal tools that we use as well.
Kathleen: How do you get somebody to follow through on it though? Because obviously you're asking them to spend time for you documenting how they interact with your business or your product. And I know just from experience myself and from working with other marketers that very often even just getting customers to agree to doing a 15 minute phone call or filling out a survey can sometimes be a battle.
How have you found is the best way to get people to comply and follow through on keeping those kinds of records?
Bob: We usually provide some kind of incentive. So in many cases we, they get paid for their time. Some companies, when they do this kind of research, they may provide some kind of in kind reward.
So if it's a restaurant chain that's doing this kind of study, they might offer vouchers for food or something like that. It might include something simple like an Amazon gift card.
And so usually we try and incent people, give them some kind of reward for whatever time they invest. And that can vary based on how much time you want them to participate, and how involved you want them to be. But that seems to be the best way.
Kathleen: Any particular approaches that work well for B2B companies?
Bob: We put quite a bit of effort into locating and recruiting the right people. So a lot of times in the recruiting phase, we have questionnaires that we put together, and we ask people about what they do and you can kind of gauge their level of interest or their level of willingness to participate in something like this.
We have a lot of third party companies that we've worked with that have databases of people and companies that they've worked with. So we also have individuals that might be more inclined to want to be involved, make a contribution there and are willing to follow through on this kind of thing.
How are companies adapting to the new normal?
Kathleen: Got it. So I'm curious if you have any examples of specific changes that you've seen companies need to make as a result of Coronavirus and this new environment that we're living in?
Bob: Yeah, so it varies a lot.
So just in my own neighborhood here, I'm seeing companies become very creative. We have what used to be a cafe down the street. Because people can't go in and congregate there anymore, they've made the shift to providing produce. They obviously had suppliers that they used for doing whatever they were doing to serve their cafe. And so now they've evolved to actually using those food suppliers to providing fresh meat and cheese and produce to people in the neighborhood. And they restrict how many people can be in the store.
So being able to adapt, looking at your available resources, supply chains, customer base, and being able to think of new ways, and doing a lot of this online. So now if you want something, you go online, you can order everything that you need.
And the only time you need to spend physically in the store is just to go in and pick up your bag and leave. So all the ordering and payment and everything happens online.
Another example is a local construction company. I have a videographer partner that I work with and he's doing work with them to take everything that they do and turn it into video. So if you want to do a remodel or if you want to do various types of home improvements, then you can go online and you can look at a lot of examples of things that they do with video.
You can also take your phone and do a video walkthrough of your house and show the areas that you want to have remodeled. And then they will take that and turn it around and they'll provide another video that will describe to the homeowner exactly the steps that they're going to take and where they're going to be in the house or what they're going to do.
And so the amount of time that they have to spend face to face is really minimal. There's so many examples of this, of companies figuring out how to adapt, and how to do things better, how to do things differently.
Kathleen: That's really smart. Having now spent so much time in my house for the last several weeks, I would love to just have them come in and tell me what I should change in my house. Because I have found that being stuck at home through the Coronavirus, you start to see like every little maintenance project that you've ignored for so long becomes that much more in your face and annoying because you're spending so much time with it.
So I imagine they're getting a lot of traction with that offer.
Bob: Yeah, they are. And they'll even give you a video of when the work is actually going to occur. They'll kind of stage it out for you and say, you know, we need to be in your home on these days to do these steps. And obviously all the products and all the materials and colors and all that kind of stuff, they provide all that to make that available as well.
So those are just a couple of examples of figuring out how to adapt and certainly digital and online creating those new kinds of experiences again, are going to be a critical part of how companies can do this.
You know, at AnswerLab, we have offices in New York and San Francisco and in early March, like a lot of companies, we had to turn on a dime and figure out how to be remote.
And so that's another aspect of this too. Depending on what your business is, you're going to have to get creative in building and managing and maintaining a remote workforce.
Now obviously for some companies, this is going to be easy. Other companies, this is going to be a lot more challenging. So it varies a lot in how you might approach this and how you might go about doing that.
If it would be helpful, I can share with you what we went through in this whole process of making our whole operation remote. And it's actually going quite well right now. And fortunately a lot of the companies that we work with have gone remote as well. So we've created a whole virtual culture and whole virtual operation that, right now is, is running quite smoothly.
Kathleen: Oh, that's great. I think there are a lot of companies struggling with that, that weren't used to working remotely before. I've worked in places that have been almost entirely remote and there are definitely playbooks out there for how to do this and how to do it well. You just have to be willing to embrace them. It's things like being on video when you talk to other people and not everybody's ready for that, but, but it can really make a difference.
Bob: Yeah. And we have what I like to say is a MacGyver kind of culture, which is, there's all these technical challenges and everybody's willing to jump in and just figure things out, trying out new tools, trying to figure out new ways of interacting with our clients. How do we share information? How do we conduct research? How do we do a lot of in person workshops and brainstorming sessions and, you know, how do you replicate that kind of team spirit and that kind collaboration interaction when you have to do it all through a computer screen? There are actually a lot of really creative ways to do it.
So figuring it out, just jumping in with both feet, getting everybody involved, creating a culture of making it happen, is really important.
Kathleen: Yeah. I think the same challenge is really facing the events industry. I've been parts of lots of calls with people who've been talking about how they used to hold in person events, conferences, et cetera, and now we're going to try to do them virtually. Let's not just make it into one long webinar. Let's try and capture some of that same feeling you get when you're there in person in a new way online. It's a similar challenge
Bob: Yeah. And that's, that's another example of it. Entirely new excited experiences that we're going to have to figure out. I mean, there's so many large events.
You know, before I got into podcasting, I used to do a lot of teaching and speaking at conferences and, you know, we have to completely rethink that now. And those are a whole new set of experiences that we're all going to have to figure out how to create. How to validate that they work and people are getting what they want out of them? And then we're gonna have to figure out how to participate in them and, and make them successful.
What are some things you can do now to prepare your business for the future? Kathleen: Yeah. Well if there's a marketer or a business owner listening and they're thinking, okay, I need to focus on this for myself. Do you have like two or three key pieces of advice for them that they should really focus on in the next couple of weeks?
Bob: So are you thinking about the whole process of going remote or the whole process of figuring out what this new digital world is gonna look like?
Kathleen: The latter.
Bob: I think a couple of things that people need to do is they need to figure out what are the ways that they're going to stay in touch with their customers.
Who are your buyers, your purchasers, your prospects? How are you going to develop longterm connections with them as they evolve, as they adapt to what their new world is going to look like?
And then to figure out how to put your business, whatever product or service you're offering, how are you going to evolve that along with them to stay relevant, to make sure that you're still something that they're going to need and be willing to pay for?
Whatever those businesses and those individuals are going through, whatever is changing in their lives, that's going to determine how your business needs to evolve to stay with them.
So number one, you need to figure out how you're going to maintain those connections and do that relearning that's necessary.
And then the second part of it is, what kinds of experiences are going to be required?
And of course a lot of those experiences are going to be virtual, digital, online. Does that mean you're going to need a new kind of app in order to communicate with them? Does that mean you're going to have to now, like with the example of the construction company or you're going to have to start developing new types of media, like video or audio, are you going to have to create new ways of selecting and ordering your products? Does that mean a new eCommerce system?
So figure out who they are, where they're going, what they're up to, what they're experiencing, and then decide how you're going to create the right kind of virtual digital experiences that are going to be relevant and important to them and how you're going to make sure all that plays together.
That's probably the most important thing right now because it's changing rapidly and now's the time to start relearning.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Good advice. Well, shifting gears, I have two questions I ask all of my guests and I'm curious to know your thoughts on these. The first is, is there a particular company or individual that you think sets the standard for inbound marketing?
Bob: Yeah, I actually, I thought about that quite a while. As I mentioned, we work with a lot of the big brands, you know, Facebook and Amazon and Google and FedEx and they have obviously some great examples there.
But another company that I worked with for a long time is actually a fairly small operation. They're based here in Colorado, and the leader is called Jeff Walker and he's in charge of something called Product Launch Formula and years ago, he developed an inbound system that allows you to go out and find a target audience and interact with them and provide them a lot of valuable content and draw them into your product or service through really effective content marketing. He does a lot of books and courses and affiliate programs and video and email and stuff like that.
He does a lot of the things that work well.
I think the number one thing that stands out for me though is so many organizations and companies that I see online are using his system, which to me is the greatest testimony.
So you can tell your story through PR or marketing programs, but nothing speaks like success and the number of organizations and people and platforms out there that have adopted his model. I think if you look at a lot of the inbound programs now, they actually use a lot of the principles that he developed probably decades ago. So he's one that I pointed to it because he's had such, such a big influence on the whole digital and virtual marketing world.
Kathleen: That's a great example. I'll definitely have to check that one out.
Second question, marketers always talk about how difficult it is to stay abreast of the rapidly changing digital landscape. I think the conversation we just had is a perfect example of that. How do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated?
Bob: Well, podcasts is certainly a big one. I listened to a lot of them. I listen to them pretty constantly. I do a lot of reading. LinkedIn is a big source for me as well. I do a lot in networking, so I learn from people and I get a lot of great information off of LinkedIn just from what's posted there in the form of learning and articles and also, another way is just really through my colleagues.
I work with a lot of very talented people and they're constantly presenting new challenges and new technical things to solve. And so that, to me, is probably one of the best ways I learn is just sort of on the ground, you know, with my fingers in it and trying to figure out how to make it all work.
That's probably a big one for me.
Kathleen: Any particular podcasts that you really love?
Bob: So I actually listen to a lot of historical podcasts.
I'm also a big fan of Sam Harris.
Right now I've been listening to a lot of podcasts on LinkedIn about LinkedIn to figure out how to do better as we now have to do a lot more things virtually. And we don't have to do as much face to face and really trying to get geared up for LinkedIn.
I actually listened to a very interesting historical podcast yesterday about pandemics and putting all of this into context. It was very interesting to kind of see the big picture over history. Probably one of the big takeaways there is that there are a lot of people who hope we can get back to normal and I think they're thinking of the old normal, but we have to let go of the old normal because it's gone. We're looking at a new one and we have to figure out what that means.
Kathleen: Yeah. It's amazing how quickly things can change, isn't it?
How to connect with Bob Kathleen: Well this has been so fascinating and I think you're doing really interesting work with a lot of really interesting companies.
If somebody is listening to this and they want to connect with you online or learn more, ask a question, what's the best way for them to do that?
Bob: Certainly LinkedIn. So look up Bob Barry. That's B E R R Y on LinkedIn. And again, I'm associated with AnswerLab and with ItsTheUsers also.
You can go to my homepage at inbound.itstheusers.com.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: Awesome. All right. I'll put that link in the show notes.
If you're listening and you liked what you heard today or you learn something new, I would really appreciate it if you would go to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast a five star review. That helps us get found by new listeners.
And if you know someone who's doing great inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommwork, because I would love to make them my next guest.
Thank you so much for joining me this week, Bob.
Bob: Kathleen, thank you very much. Good luck, so they say.
What's the best way to develop a content strategy that reflects the reality of today's buyer journey?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Ashley Faus, who is the Content Strategy Lead for Software Teams at Atlassian, shares why she thinks a playground provides a better analogy than a funnel for marketers looking to develop their content strategy, and how to use the concept of a content playground to provide your customers and prospects with a better buying experience.
Highlights from my conversation with Ashley include:
- Many marketers use the concepts of the linear funnel and the looping decision journey to develop their content strategies, but Ashley says that those don't reflect the reality of how people buy.
- Much like in a playground, where there isn't a singular goal (get to the top of the jungle gym!), your prospects aren't always ready to buy and may have other interests. For this reason, a playground offers a better analogy.
- Rather than forcing prospects to follow a specific journey that we as marketers have determined is ideal, Ashley recommends focusing on creating strong content depth that allows your prospects to follow their own journey, wherever it takes them.
- For smaller teams that are just getting started, Ashley recommends identifying your "hedgehog principle" - that one thing you do better than everyone else - and creating a very in-depth piece of content on that.
- Then, you can use that content to repurpose into a variety of assets that can be used on social media, for your trade shows, in the sales process, etc.
- The key is to find a topic that is substantive enough to support the development of this amount of content.
- In terms of how this content gets presented on your website, Ashley recommends ungating it, and then being very explicit with your CTAs so that your website visitors know exactly what they will get if they click a button.
- She also suggests adding a related content module on your site to encourage visitors to browse through your content.
- The best way to begin measuring the impact of your strategy is to use simple tools like Google Analytics in combination with UTMs. As you grow, you can use more sophisticated marketing automation software like HubSpot or Marketo.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Atlassian website
- Connect with Ashley on LinkedIn
- Follow Ashley on Twitter
- Check out Atlassian's Team Playbook and Agile Microsite
Listen to the podcast to learn why envisioning your buyer's journey -- and their interactions with your content -- as a playground is a more effective way to approach the development of a content strategy.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week my guest is Ashley FOSS, who is the content strategy lead for software teams at Atlassian. Welcome Ashley. Ashley Faus (Guest): Nice to be here. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so happy to have you here.
Ashley and Kathleen recording this episode.
Kathleen: And, and for those who are listening, you can't see it. But Ashley has an awesome virtual Zoom background of the golden gate bridge.
That's one of my favorite things about the pandemic is that it is revealing people's personalities through the Zoom backgrounds that they choose.
Ashley: It's been interesting. I actually think didn't have the latest version of Zoom. I got scared that if I upgraded and something went wrong, I wouldn't have access to it. So for a long time I was the lame person that didn't have a background and it was just my kitchen the whole time. So yes, I finally upgraded.
Tell any of the listeners that are hesitant, you can upgrade. And it's not going to ruin your computer. And you, too, can have a nice virtual backgrounds.
Kathleen: Oh yeah. For our all hands meetings at my office. We've been having so much fun with just seeing the backgrounds that people come to these meetings with. It's, it's awesome. It reveals so much about their personalities.
About Ashley and Atlassian Kathleen: But so we have so much to talk about. And the first thing I want to talk about is really have you explain to my listeners what Atlassian is, and then also your background and what led you to your current role as Content Strategy Lead.
Ashley: Sure. So Atlassian is a collaboration software maker.
A lot of people are very familiar with JIRA, Confluence, Trello, Bitbucket, Status Page. We have a number of different products that people use all the time. JIRA especially is a staple for software teams.
So I actually started at Atlassian two and a half years ago and I moved among a couple of different teams.
My background is primarily marketing, but I actually started on the corporate communications team, moved over to editorial, doing a mix of content strategy, social media, thought leadership for the corporate side, and then just recently made the move over onto software teams.
One thing that's kind of interesting and great is having that diverse background has given me that ability to move across different areas and go where my skills can be most useful.
So I'm excited to dive in. I'm fairly new to the role, so it's been an interesting transition to try to onboard from home and then also start to get up to speed both from a content standpoint and a strategy standpoint, and then also from a tactical standpoint of where are all the different boards, where's the JIRA tickets? Like what's the process, what are the meetings?
So, um, it's been fun. It's been fun.
Kathleen: I will definitely say as far as Atlassian is concerned, I've been a user of so many of the company's products. I've used Confluence and JIRA. I'm currently using Trello. I know our dev team uses a number of products as well. It's a great company and a great suite of products, especially for anybody who's practicing agile, which I have done a few times. And so that was another reason I was excited to talk to you.
But one of the things I think is really interesting is, you know, you mentioned you're relatively new in the role and we were just talking before we came on and you were explaining how your fiscal year, it's going to change over pretty soon. And so not only are you relatively new in the role, but you're being thrust into the situation of having to plan and strategize for a whole new year in the middle of the pandemic, no less all of these things happening at once.
Your current focus is on content and I was really fascinated by how you think about content and content strategy planning and this concept of the content playground. So could you talk a little bit about that and what do you mean when you say a content playground?
What is a content playground? Ashley: I started thinking about it because I needed a new metaphor. Everybody that I talked to was talking about primarily the linear funnel. And you know, you've got your three phases with your editorial calendar and you say, "I need three content, three pieces of content per phase. I'm going to do one per month. Cool. Now I have nine months of content strategy, if my math works out".
Most of your listeners are probably sitting there going, "That's not how you do content strategy. You can't just say one piece of content per phase and then call it".
Kathleen: Wouldn't it be nice if you could though?
Ashley: You bought a calendar, write three articles and you're done.
Then, you know, I know a lot of people have moved on to the looping decision journey where you basically add a fourth phase in there. And you're kind of almost recycling these people, but now there's a cross sell or upsell, but somehow you're dumping them back into that awareness phase from the linear funnel.
If you look at the Google results for both the linear funnel and the looping decision funnel, it's kind of terrifying. It's very confusing. It basically just shows that we all agree that humans don't work this way. Nobody just goes politely down our little funnel.
The 10-3-1 conversion was kind of the standard for a long time. You get 10 people in awareness. A certain amount of drops. So you get three into consideration to be able to get one to that kind of purchase decision.
I was really wrestling with this because I was like, how do you create content in a way that allows people to do what they actually do, which is enter and exit and go sideways and all of that?
So I had originally come up with this idea of a jungle gym. But there's two problems with that -- mainly that there's only one objective. It's either to get to the top or, if you're my three year old nephew, it's to go across without touching the lava below that.
It's still me as a marketer forcing you into what I want you to do and it's taking all these touch points and saying, what's the fewest number of touch points that I can use to get you to a purchase?
And yes, ultimately we need to sell products. Ultimately we have to make money as businesses, but it feels bad to everybody to just constantly be like, are you just trying to sell me something? Like what's the catch? I don't really trust you because I know you're trying to sell me.
So if you look at an actual playground though, what's the point of the playground?
Is the person who's sitting on the bench just enjoying the sunshine? Are they enjoying the playground the wrong way? No, actually perfectly acceptable. Sit on the bench.
Again, you know, thinking about what the right way is to play on the playground for the adults and the playground designers, going down the slide is the right way. Three year old nephew, every time wants to go up the slide.
If you translate that to content strategy, I recently had an example of this where in the traditional funnel, pricing is considered a very bottom of funnel action. If I'm asking you about price, man, I'm ready to buy.
Well, in my case, I needed to go ask for budget before I could even do the RFP and I had no idea what that budget should be for. It was going to be a SaaS product. So understanding, you know, the subscription, SLA, the licensing tiers, all of that.
And so I started reaching out to some vendors in the space asking them for just ballpark pricing so I could go get budget. And so many of them were like, well, allow me to send you a white paper about why this matters a lot and you know, Oh, you need to do a demo. And I'm like, Nope, I don't want to waste my time going through your traditional funnel when I don't even know if I have a budget yet.
Kathleen: I have to just interject there and say amen because this has been a frustration of mine for so long. I had this recently with a marketing software product. It was exactly what you're talking about.
It was last November and I was working on my budget and I knew that I was not going to purchase this product until halfway through 2020. And that was even before all this craziness with the pandemic hit. But I needed a placeholder number for it in my budget. So there's no chance I was going to engage in, like multi meetings and demos and hours long calls with people to pitch me what I know I'm not ready to buy yet.
I just needed a price.
There's nothing more frustrating than companies that make it that hard and it wasn't a one time thing. I just found myself doing this yesterday. Somebody started talking about email signature software and they mentioned the name of a new company, and I literally Googled the company name and pricing because I was like, I don't even want to waste my time looking at everything else and getting excited about it if I can't afford it.
Ashley: Yeah, well, and it's interesting too because once I got the budget approved, I was already completely sold that this problem needed to be solved. I just needed to get management on board that yes, we are committed to solving this problem.
So then I actually got into the sales process and you know, I started kind of at the top of that and I just said, look, I'm bought in, draw me all the way down to the bottom of the funnel and I want you to just pitch me.
Kathleen: Yeah.
Ashley: It blew the sales people's minds. And they're like, well, let me just go through the deck. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I don't know how many slides you have, but I'm telling you I'm bought in, I agree with you. This has impact. It solves a problem that I have. I have money, here's what my budget is. I'm BANT qualified. I need you to drop me all the way in and I need you to sell me.
A majority of them just froze because they didn't know how to go through there. They only know how to do this step by step. And that's where I think the content playground comes in. Obviously there's a sales component to this too. When you do get people who just want to jump right in, I wouldn't send them to play on the swings.
That's what we're doing right now. We're spending all our time on the swings.
Let's just do it. Quit trying to force them to go down the slide.
It's so funny because people have this idea that there's a specific way that you're supposed to build the relationship and you're supposed to, you know, okay, let's get you through the marketing funnel and get you through MQL and then SQL and then a sale.
And it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you meet somebody and they come at you and they're like, no, I'm literally ready to sign on the dotted line, whether it's you or one of your competitors. So why should it be you?
Kathleen: Yeah. And not only is that an issue, but it's like I'm going to sign and it's going to be fast. So if you can't meet my fast timeline, just get out of my way.
Exactly. That's so interesting. I love that concept.
How to use the concept of a content playground to develop your content strategy Kathleen: So give me an example of, conceptually, how does that play out in terms of developing and executing your strategy?
Ashley: I've done this at a number of different companies and then we also, you know, do this similar type of thing, whether you see whether you recognize it and call it a content playground or not. When you start to recognize companies that do it because you go through and there's a nice experience to say, Oh, I've kind of landed in this problem space or solution space and now I have the ability to go explore.
So we've done that quite a bit in it last year and moving into this content strategy role on software teams, I'm getting exposed to some great ways that they've done it.
So for example, we have this agile microsite and then we paired that last year with this agile coach series. This is all work that has been done that I'm excited to come in and kind of optimize and see how can we replicate this across other content types.
And it basically says, you know, yes, JIRA helps you run in an agile way, but if you don't have the right practices set up and you don't have that mindset in those processes, a tool is not the thing that's going to fix it for you.
And so sure we can sell you JIRA, but if we don't show you the right way to set up the workflows, if we don't help you have acceptable standups, if we don't help you improve your retros, having these things on a board is not going to solve, you know, your agility problems.
And so putting that together, if you look at it from a content depth standpoint, instead of organizing around specific phases of the funnel, organizing it around content depth.
So from a conceptual standpoint, what the heck is agile? Why does it matter? What kinds of success, you know, have people seen with it, what are the problems from a strategy standpoint, what are the practices and rituals?
So that's where you get into some of the standups. That's where you get into some of the retros. And then from a tactic standpoint, how do you actually do those things?
And so we have a number of things from the agile coach series, from the agile microsite and also our team playbook, which talks about things like my user manual. So how do you work together as a team? Um, putting together project coasters for kickoffs. And then yes, there's some product demos in there. There's some guides in there, there's some tutorials, there's here workflows that you can set up to do that in JIRA or to do that in Trello.
But it's really that full content experienced to say, I just need help figuring out how to run my standups or my retros. And then, cool that I can do that in JIRA as well.
So I previously worked at Duarte, if you're familiar with Nancy Duarte's work. Um, she wrote Resonate, which was, you know, a big game changer for a lot of people. They do workshops, they do presentation design for tons of big names and Fortune 500 companies.
So we did this in a number of ways. When we launched her slide decks book for example, we put that as a free, ungated version on SlideShare.
And then we linked over to this kind of more traditional inbound strategy page where you've got a landing page with a form, you give away a free piece of content, show good faith that this is good quality, and then you've got a form fill out to download some templates that people could use that would then drop people into a drip campaign where we would showcase more templates, we would showcase some use cases that we had built and give them more content to ultimately lead them to say, "Hey, if you want to buy a workshop to learn how to do this at a pro level, here's how you can do that."
Getting started with your content playground Kathleen: So if I love the whole concept here, and I love the notion of content depth because I do think that there are so many marketers that almost try to cover too much and they skim the surface on everything and it doesn't work.
I think the thing that could be challenging about this is hearing that, like, where do you start and how do you, how do you get there? Because you can't snap your fingers and have a lot of depth in all these topics right away. And also, how do you know what those top level topics are? If you were teaching this to somebody, how would you walk them through that?
Ashley: So there's a couple of ways that, uh, we've been able to do it at Atlassian. Obviously we're fortunate we have a large team and a ton of experts that have complimentary skills.
So for example, we have done a ton of keyword research to understand both search intent and the specific wording of that.
From a market standpoint, agile came in and changed the game, and it turns out that JIRA was actually a really good fit to run agile.
So we already kind of were keeping a pulse on the market and we started to see that agile is becoming this very mainstream thing, that our tool and our technology is really useful in helping people run. So let's focus on agile.
Okay, where do we focus? And that's where things like SEO and keyword research, that's where focus groups, that's where digging through the feedback that your customers are giving you and asking like, what are the top questions in terms of workflows? How do those map to things like running scrum teams or running Kanban boards? How does that now map to workflows and guides and onboarding tutorials that we would share with somebody who starts with your product or working with Trello products, for example?
So I would say I'm doing a listening exercise and there's a number of tools. You could do it on social media as well, particularly for software devs, which is one of our core audiences. They hang out on Hacker News, they hang out on Reddit.
And so go look there. That's, that's another core tenant I think as marketers is loving the whole human and not just who are you as a buyer? I only care about you as a buyer or user.
How do I get you to engage in the product every day or buy more of the service? Okay, these people have lives. And so if you can figure out what do they love, what are they passionate about outside of the one thing you're trying to sell them, that also gives you an entire new space to explore for thinking about what topics could you engage in.
And so, when you think about engineers, efficiency, optimization, clean and concise process is something that's very important to them. Well what are some of the frameworks or what are some of the topics that deal with optimization that could potentially lead you to lead you to something like Six Sigma or manufacturing for example, right?
There's a lot of ways that you could think about it if you just know what do engineers generally like? And it's like, they really like efficiency. They like optimization, they like tight, elegant solutions and just jump off from there to see, okay, what are the specific topic areas that would coincide with your product offering? And with the things that they generally care about, what does that mean?
Kathleen: And if you don't have an enormous team and you want to take this approach, how do you do it? Because I imagine you'd have a choice of like, okay, I've identified 10 areas that I want to go deep on, you know, and I could either take area number one and fully play it out and develop all the content. Or I could do one article for each of the 10 areas and then go back and do the second article. Like how would you tackle it?
Ashley: Yeah. So one of the things that Nancy Duarte actually talks about a ton, from Jim Collins book Good to Great is this concept of the hedgehog principle. And that's if you can do one thing and be the best at it, just do that one thing.
So instead of trying to spread yourself too thin across all of those 10 topics, I would be ruthless initially in what is the thing that we actually have the ability to talk about without having to spend a ton of time and energy going and finding that expertise? What's the thing that leads most to the product market fit, or the service market fit, whichever of those that you're selling? And then what's the thing that has depth?
This is something that I see a lot, is people start throwing topics on the board and you're like, okay, but how many words can you actually say about that thing?
And for the most part, people were like, "Whoa". And it's like you can't even say one sentence about it. How are you going to write a full article? And then that also gets into, it's not just one article, it's okay, how do we also turn that into a video? How do we turn that into an infographic? How do we turn that into a social media post? Because this thing has to live for a lot of time.
Nobody has time to keep creating net new content all the time. And so if this piece can't be repurposed or broken apart, it probably doesn't have enough depth to chase.
So I would say if you're very first, starting from scratch, to limit it to probably two, maybe three topics that are related to each other and that you know, have depth.
And I would say especially if you're dealing with a small team, like you're at a start up and the founder is kind of the only person who could talk about this, I'm definitely limiting that to two topics that you know you have in house expertise and then doing a good job to capture that from a conceptual, strategic and tactical standpoint the first time.
And then go with the repurposing strategy.
So instead of saying, "Oh my gosh, we have to cover it, a thousand words or a 20 minute video every single time", think about it as, no, nobody wants to read that, nobody's going to scroll through all of that. So let them pick their journey of how deep they want to go.
Repurposing your content Kathleen: So can you dig in a little bit more to that repurposing topic because I was interested to hear you discuss all the different ways that the content can manifest, because I think a lot of people might hear this and think it's a bunch of blogs, but it's, it's really not.
Ashley: One of my favorite campaigns that was super successful, there was a startup that I worked at that got acquired by Oracle called Palerra. Palerra was a cloud access security broker, which, you know, doesn't matter as much to the majority of the audience if they're not in tech, but, basically they're kind of a complimentary security product to a lot of cloud offerings.
We were primarily an enterprise solution. Technology is a really heavy topic. And so what we did, when I came in, there was this raw word doc of just random customer interviews, and problems that they had faced. And so for example, we all know on a personal level we should update our passwords regularly. A lot of companies have that installed where it's like 72 days time to change your password.
So at an enterprise security level, there's a similar concept for your keys to your different cloud services. And so we had a scenario where there was a customer that hadn't rotated their keys in like two years. It blew our minds. So our product actually found that.
So we actually were talking about cautionary tales and focusing specifically on AWS because that cloud offering is quite ubiquitous among our customers and these are a lot of common pitfalls that our products can help solve.
So we called it a cautionary tale. We turned it into an ebook first that then became the basis for our booth graphics at AWS Reinvent. And then we had a booth giveaway. We put an Amazon Tap in a clear box and then we had a bowl of keys sitting next to it and they looked identical. And so you drew a key and if it unlocked the box, you won the Tap.
And so that was able to lead us into, "Have you rotated your keys? How are you doing password management?" But not just those basic tactical issues, but also like how do you know there's even a working key in the bowl? How do you know that Kathleen is supposed to have the key and not Ashley? What happens to the keys after the show? So let's say Kathleen and Ashley both leave and the bowls just sitting there. Now what happens to the keys? Right?
And our product can help with that. And from a security standpoint, those are a lot of blind spots that at the time people were missing.
And then the nice thing about that being at a security conference, people were very skeptical that there were any working keys in the bowl. Right? There's no keys. Yeah. So every time someone won, we took a picture and then we put it on the company Twitter feed.
And then if they had a Twitter handle, we tagged them and ask them to retweet.
And so there were people, and I mean we had people, well, again, they're very methodical about this. They're like, okay, it looks like roughly once an hour people are winning. So the last time somebody won, they just won. Okay, well I'm going to come back and try again later.
Kathleen: Like people play slots.
Ashley: Yeah. It's like slots. But that was a great way. And then we were also able to share that ebook on Twitter as well to say, "Hey, if you're curious why we're taking pictures of the food, you can read this ebook." And then we were able to send that as well with some deeper case studies to anybody that we had scanned at the booth.
So it was a really nice integrated online, offline and social media experience.
That's another one of my pet peeves is people who are just like, come to booth 123. I'm not at the conference so you're just going to spam me for three days.
So making sure that you have content that tells a story to your social media audience, whether they're attending the conference or not.
Kathleen: That's great. That's a really good point about the shows too. Because yeah, you do so much marketing. And if somebody is not going, it's just annoying.
How to share your content on your website Kathleen: So if you've created all this content, what does that look like on the website from an experience standpoint? Are there content hubs? Is it a resource center? How do you organize this all for presentation to your audience?
Ashley: I think it really depends on the audience. I think HubSpot, obviously from the hub and spoke model that they've done, is amazing so that you can kind of see, you can dive in deep per topic, you could dive in deep from an integrative marketing standpoint, you can dive in deep from a tech stack standpoint and obviously they have solutions for that.
So the way that they've organized it is actually really great because it allows people to kind of slice and dice how they want.
One of the things that we've done that I think is really great and it lasts and is, for example, on the work-life blog, which is like a corporate level, so deals with things like teamwork, practices, leadership, et cetera. We've got a related articles function. And so when you get to the bottom of the article, yes, there's a CTA.
If you want to sign up for the newsletter, you want to um, go talk in the community. Or in some cases where we're doing product focused content, it's go to the product tour or something like that.
But then at the bottom there's related content. And so we have a mix of collections, a mix of tags, and then those get fed into the related content. And so there's always a next step for people to take.
I think that's the biggest thing, whether you organize it as a hub, whether you organize it as a resource center that's done by topic filtering or content tagging, that ability for somebody to always take the next step and to, to only force that next step to be a buying action if they're in a head space for buying action.
So if you're on a product tour, the request a demo or the sign up for free, or the do an evaluation for seven days or 30 days, whatever it is, that makes perfect sense.
But if you've just read an article about productivity, it's a really hard landing to talk about five tips to manage your time and then all of a sudden be dropped into, you know, by the way, you need to buy Trello. It's like, why would I do that?
So making sure that there's always a next logical action that either takes them deeper toward a purchase or deeper tool, words and practices that will help them or allow them to say, I don't know how I landed here. How do I get back to the first thing that I clicked so that I can get back on the path where I think I should be?
Kathleen: Yeah. How do you execute that? Because you just gave the example of somebody who's just poking around and then they're all of a sudden getting pushed to buy. You know, being that it's a playground and people can go in any number of directions, how do you craft those next steps so that they make sense?
Ashley: I think the biggest thing is, there's obviously an ideal customer journey and that does include some post-sale engagement.
That could be things like documentation. It could be a support community. But really, I mean even from like, um, practically accessibility, labeling your buttons with what it is you're doing. Are you downloading this? Are you reading this? Are you clicking to do an evaluation? Are you starting a trial for free? What is that? And then that way people are very clear whenever they get down there, they know what they're clicking on.
I know I've had this experience a few times where it's like, see more. And I'm like, yes, I wish to do that. And it automatically takes me into this form where it's like put in a credit card. And I'm like, you didn't tell me that's what I was doing. That's not, I didn't agree to that.
So having really clear navs and in the resource center, not having buy CTAs all over the resources.
For example, Intercom does a great job with this. They're a messaging, communication growth platform. You can go over to their journal section or their resource center and it's all thought leadership. It's all very high level and they state at the top, "This is free content. It's educational, no sales."
And so, you know, when you're that part of the website, you're not going to get sold to and there's a nice handy button at the top. It's like go back to home. And that's where, you know, you could either be directed down an education path or sales path and you can kind of choose.
So I think just being really explicit. We're past the point of I'm going to trick you into sales.
It might've been on LinkedIn. I saw a discussion that maybe you and somebody else were having about, "Oh, I got a thousand leads from this form. And the question is, are they qualified?"
Jay Acunzo actually has a whole rant about this. Stop gating your best content and then pretending whoever fills out that form is a lead sales lead. That's not what they agreed to.
And so don't try and trick your audience. If they want to buy, they'll let you know. If they want to be educated and they want to form a relationship with you, they'll do that.
And so giving them a clear path to let them either do sales or build a relationship makes them feel empowered. It gives everybody good feelings and it doesn't clutter up your sales process with people that are junk, that are not qualified or that are not actually interested in buying.
Kathleen: So true. I find it's counterintuitive because, I started a few years ago ungating as much content as I possibly could and just putting it on the page and then adding like a little field just for email saying, "Want to get the PDF? Put your email in." And that was it.
What was fascinating to me is that not only did conversion rates not go down, in many cases, they went up. It's really psychology if you think about it. There's so much crappy gated content out there and the problem with gating it, first of all, is people are very jaded and a lot of them will think, I'm not giving up my email only to find out that this is junk. And so then they don't convert at all.
Whereas, if you give the content away and then give them the option of downloading, you're basically allowing them to try before they buy. You're proving that what you're giving them is really good and if they do think it's really good, they are going to convert because they're like, "Well, it's no skin off my back. This is great content. I don't mind giving up my email address for it."
And so the people that wind up converting on the ungated content are more qualified because they've self qualified.
The other thing I've found, it goes back to your thing about being explicit, is especially when you don't have things gated, like on the page before or in the marketing you're doing for it, just coming right out and saying, "No need to fill out a form to get it."
Ashley: Yeah.
Kathleen: You don't have to give us your email address. People are so naturally almost defensive or they're like, Oh, Nope, Nope, Nope. They're going to ask for something. And if you can just come out and say, I'm not going to ask you for anything, that goes a long way.
Ashley: Well, and I think what's interesting in this, in this thought about building relationships and giving that content away, a great example, there's a company that I worked with, they were an agency for us.
We were a startup. We were using, you know, a lot of agencies and freelancers and they host these dinners and it's basically, you know, just get five, six, seven people together, have dinner, nerd out about marketing topics.
And yes, we all know full well some of us are current customers of this company. Some people are prospects of the company. But I don't have budget or need to work with them anymore. But every single time I meet somebody that says that they have the need that this company services, I refer them and I refer probably three or four clients to them.
I would continue to do that and we have a great relationship. They still invite me to the dinners. I sent one of my colleagues to a dinner to basically make a connection to say this might be relevant for you to meet some people that we might want to put spokespeople on panels with in the future.
And so that willingness to connect with each other.
I'm loyal to that company even though I have no budget and no need to buy from them right now. But I'm referring, I'm still giving them revenue because again, it's, it's fine for, for me, when I meet somebody at a conference and they're like, how would you do this? I'm like, actually this is a great company. Would you like an intro?
And so a buying action may not necessarily be the person who downloaded the content buys. It may be, I mean, again, I talk about Intercom.
I love the content that IDEO puts out.
Again, I have no need to buy their services at this point, but I tell everybody, go look at HubSpot's content or go look at Intercom's content.
And so there's no way for them to measure that. I'm just another random name on their list that hasn't converted, but I'm a brand champion for them and they don't even know it, you know?
Measuring the ROI of your content playground Kathleen: That's awesome.
So speaking of measuring, you get this all set up. You deploy it. How do you track and measure whether it's working, how it's working, et cetera?
Ashley: So I've done this in a number of different ways depending on the company and the strategy and the bandwidth and all of that kind of stuff.
If you're just starting out in your tiny little team, and you don't have the ability to do, you know, Tableau or Databricks or kind of all of these fancy data pipelines, at minimum just start out with your Google tracking.
Google has free stuff that you can put on. Use your UTM codes to understand if these things are getting tracked from a social media standpoint, what's the referrals, if you are using any pages with forms from any of the marketing automation providers.
Again, I'm pretty partial to HubSpot just because I think they do amazing content. The platform is great.
We've used Marketo in the past, and other companies.
So any of those are great to really understand what are the trends.
I think that's the biggest thing. Making sure that you're looking at a correct trend level.
I've worked a lot on the social media side and people get freaked out per post. "Oh my gosh, we did 10 posts last week and this one did, you know, half a percent better than this one." And it's like, let's zoom out and look monthly. How are things trending? Let's do some testing to see if we post more. Does our engagement rate go down if we, um, the other big thing is optimizing the CTA is for what you want to happen.
So it's going to be really impossible for you to get somebody to like, comment, retweet, follow, and click through all in the same posts.
Like there's not enough words for that post. And so making sure that each CTA belongs where it should be.
So if you're asking for a poll on Twitter or Facebook, that's the goal. Responses in feed is the goal versus explicitly asking someone to click through. Make that explicit and you need to make sure that you're putting in some sort of hook or benefit.
I see this a lot with people who are just starting in social media, for example, that they just give the title of the article or they just say, read these five tips. Well, what are they?
On the opposite extreme, they give it away and they say, here's the five tips. And then they laid them out. And I'm like, well, now why do I need to read the article? You already gave me the tips.
Give me the first tip that you think is the most interesting and then say, click through to read the next four tips.
Kathleen: Right?
Ashley: So, from a measurement standpoint, being very clear on a per post basis about what your goals are, if you're looking at click through rate or engagement rates and what type of engagement.
So that's kind of more from a social media standpoint. If you're doing YouTube, if the answer is subscribe to the channel, if the answer is watch the next video, if the answer is go visit the page, those are very different actions. And so making sure you're optimizing those.
And then obviously looking at things like organic traffic is always great. Looking at whether you have emails or product tours.
From an email standpoint, looking at the open rates and the click to open ratio. So a lot of people look at the CTR, but that's a little bit out of whack. If there's a thousand people that opened it, but you sent it to 5,000, it's not very fair to say what's the CTR on the 5,000? Use it on the thousand.
In some cases we've gotten really granular to look at which pieces of content get the most clicks. And so that helps us to understand, it's great that you want to put 10 pieces of content in the newsletter, but if only the first five ever get clicked, you need to find something else to do because you're not amplifying those things.
Kathleen: How do you get people down further?
Ashley: Yeah, exactly.
What kinds of results can you expect? Kathleen: So any examples of like, what kinds of results does taking this approach yield in terms of pipeline or engagement or revenue or any of the above?
Ashley: Yeah. From a scale standpoint, it depends. It's not very fair to say like, Oh, you'll get a thousand leads.
It's like, okay, well if your revenue goal is 10,000, that's a struggle. Or if you're a billion dollar company, a thousand leads doesn't do you any good, right?
So, we've done content pairing for example, where we've done a mix of gated content and ungated content. When we did that at Duarte, the ungated piece has over 300,000 views. Now it's been up for a couple of years, but it's got over 300,000 views.
We were getting roughly 10 to 15% download rates of people going and getting that content.
And so that's something where you're still getting the benefit of the people looking at it for free and ungated, but then you're starting to see higher engagement, you know, 10, 15% on that.
Whenever I've done newsletter sends that have been more thought leadership focused with very light touch sales, we've been able to see 20, 30% open rates, 15 to 25% CTOR rates. Again, because we're serving that content that they've requested, not trying to shoehorn in sales.
Whenever we've done sales, as a piece of content, like, "Hey, get a trial" or "Use this code" or "Refer" or "Here's an eCourse and then we'll give you one module for free because you've signed up for this newsletter" or something like that, those do have a much higher conversion rate for whatever the next buying action is.
Again, it depends on the scale. So like the Palerra one at the time, you know, that ebook and we were a tiny little company.
I mean we only had, I think when we got acquired, we had maybe 60 employees total. So very small company, 10 by 20 booth at AWS Reinvent, which is a massive conference. And we got, you know, almost 2000 views on that small ungated ebook. And then we got substantially higher open rates, and then our lead scans at that booth, I mean it was ridiculous. I want to say we scanned like 500 people and at most shows we were only scanning probably a hundred to 112 and so it was huge because it all tied in.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: That's awesome. Well shifting gears because we're gonna run out of time.
I have two questions that I like to ask all my guests and I'm really curious to hear your answers because you've worked with some really interesting companies who are very good at this.
Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it with inbound marketing right now?
Ashley: So I will do the shameless plug for Atlassian, A, because I work there so of course I think we're doing a good job. But truly, I think one of the biggest examples of this, we have our team playbook and this is something again where we connected our work futurist Don Price, has done a number of different keynotes around the world and always promotes the team playbook and that has led to this health monitor -- the team health check, understanding where your blockers are.
That led to a large engagement with ANZ bank, which is a huge bank in Australia and they have now done a case study with us. They're huge champions that come for our conferences and speak about how this one tiny little interaction with this health monitor has led to this entire agile transformation across their business.
It's a mix of the tools, the people, the practices, it all came together perfectly. So, yes, that had a revenue result for us, but it started with that ungated content at a conceptual level about how do you do your team work better and that's what Atlassian really tries to empower.
I mentioned Intercom as well. They have a ton of great content. They've got sales manuals, they got marketing manuals that talk about a variety of different ways to think about content marketing, sales, the interaction between sales and marketing. Highly recommend their content for both sales and marketing practitioners.
And then, IDEO, just like if you want to elevate your creativity and you want to kind of think outside of a traditional business or products. I work in tech, so of course I'm in this little bubble that everything is SaaS and everything is ARR. IDEO has none of that. And so every time I go to IDEO and just like, this is fascinating, how does the world work when you're not in your little bubble?
And so I would say, no matter what bubble you're in, IDEO will help you get out of it.
That would be three that are a mix of marketing focused, tech and then a design consultancy that's just completely out of my wheel house.
Kathleen: I can't wait to check some of those out -- particularly IDEO. It sounds really interesting.
Well, second question is, the biggest pain point I was here from marketers is that digital is changing so quickly and they feel like it's drinking from a fire hose to try and keep up with everything and stay educated and on the cutting edge. So how do you personally do that?
Ashley: Yeah, so from a broader view, kind of outside of marketing or just business chops, which I think is really important, it's how do we fit in and especially as you move up in your career and you become COO or something like that, understanding that business acumen is really key.
I love MIT Sloan review for that content and they've been killing it lately. Every single thing that's come out from them over the last probably six or seven months, I'm like, "Yes, one hundred percent fascinating". So I love MIT Sloan from a business standpoint.
There's a couple of marketers that I think are a little bit contrarian and I joked about going on rants about things and I'm like, "Yes, ranting. I love it."
Katie Martell is somebody that I've been loving her content lately.
Jay Acunzo I think is great. He's really honing in on podcasting and show running over the last year or so. But just in general, his thoughts on content marketing and strategy are great.
I love Scott Berkun. He is primarily a designer, and more on that design thinking. He has a new book out that I need to get because it looks amazing. It's like How Design Makes the World, I think is what it's called. And it's looking at how all of these interactions and everyday things influence our path, our actions, et cetera. So Scott Berkun is great.
And then I would say just like a book that I always come back to is this book called The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson. It's primarily about intersectional thinking and divergent thinking. And so yes, there's an element of understanding the tactical nitty gritty from a digital standpoint.
I think there's a number of, you know, Marketing Profs, CMI, HubSpot, all of those do a really great job of that. But how do you think about change? How do you think about a problem space? How do you think about a solution space? The Medici Effect is just every, it's like I come back to it kind of annually.
It's like, okay, somewhere in there I'm missing something. I should probably just reread the The Medici Effect. In fact, I should probably just to think about the concepts and The Medici Effect to jolt myself out of being so focused on, okay, what does this button on Twitter do or what does this ads do? Like are we doing AB testing? We're doing multivariate testing, what's our competence interval, whatever. We're pulling those things down. Like I don't know what the best practice is.
It's like I'm clearly thinking about it in the wrong way. If I'm so twitchy about such a small detail, you get lost in the weeds pretty easily.
Kathleen: Those sound like some really good resources. I will put links to all of them in the show notes.
How to connect with Ashley Kathleen: If somebody is listening and they want to connect with you online or follow you or learn more about this topic, what's the best way for them to do that?
Ashley: I would love to connect on LinkedIn. I'm Ashley Faus. For the most part, I think I'm the first search result for that. And you can also follow me on Twitter also @AshleyFaus.
Kathleen: Great. I will put Ashley's links to her social accounts in the show notes. So head there if you want to find them.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: And if you are listening and you liked what you heard today or you learned something new, and how could you not because Ashley shared so many good ideas, head to Apple podcasts and please leave the podcast a five star review. That helps us get found by more people.
And if you know somebody who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next interview.
Thanks so much for joining me this week, Ashley.
Ashley: Yeah, thank you for having me. It's always fun to nerd out about marketing.
Kathleen: Yes!
How did IMPACT grow the subscriber base for its email newsletter to 40,000+ in under two years?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, IMPACT Editorial Director Liz Moorehead talks about THE LATEST, IMPACT's email newsletter. Created in 2018, THE LATEST is written by Liz and sent out three times a week. It's one of several email newsletters that were created around the same time and are really disrupting the world of email marketing.
In this episode, Liz shares the story of THE LATEST, from how she writes it, to the newsletter format and design, how they grew the subscriber base, and the impact the newsletter has had on IMPACT's business.
Best of all, she shares her advice for anyone who wants to start an email newsletter, or is interested in revamping the one they currently publish.
Highlights from my conversation with Liz include:
- Liz is the Editorial Director at IMPACT, where she overseas a team that publishes approximately 25 articles a week and a thrice weekly email newsletter, THE LATEST.
- In 2018, IMPACT had a large audience and a lot of content, but no email newsletter.
- THE LATEST was originally created as a way to consolidate all of the email that IMPACT was sending and create a better experience for its subscribers.
- When THE LATEST launched, there were only about 1,200 subscribers. Today, there are around 42,000.
- The newsletter goes out three times a week and every issue is personally written by Liz, and sent directly from her email address.
- Each issue begins with a personal story by Liz, where she often includes very personal details.
- This choice to mix a business newsletter with very personal stories was a deliberate one that has helped THE LATEST connect with its audience.
- Liz's advice to anyone writing an email newsletter is to be honest and vulnerable, but keep the stories somehow relevant to the content and audience.
- Liz tested a variety of different formats for THE LATEST, and eventually landed on one that is very text heavy, with few if any images. This ran counter to what she thought would work, but testing proved it to be the best performing format.
- She uses emojis to break up the text and draw the reader's eye to what she wants them to see.
- IMPACT uses HubSpot to measure the performance of its marketing and through that, can tell that THE LATEST has influenced more than 2 million dollars in revenue.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit IMPACT's website
- Check out THE LATEST
- Connect with Liz on LinkedIn
- Follow Liz on Instagram
Listen to the podcast to learn what makes an amazing newsletter and how you can use your newsletter to grow an audience and drive revenue for your company.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week my guest is my good friend Liz Morehead, who is the editorial director at impact. Welcome, Liz. Liz Moorehead (Guest): I am so excited. Can you believe it's taken us this long to have the idea to have me on this podcast?
Liz and Kathleen having WAY too much fun recording this episode.
Kathleen: And if I'm being honest, I honestly think I thought I had already done it, which is why I didn't do it because I thought I already had.
Liz: I'm going to try not to take this personally. You may get an official demerit in the mail. The jury's still out on that. We'll see how today goes.
Kathleen: I don't know how this happened, but we're making it right now.
I'm so excited to have you on because you are somebody who is doing so much amazing work in so many different areas. To be candid, when I invited you, I had to choose because there were so many topics we could have covered. You're the pillar content pro and all these other things. But the thing I really wanted to talk with you about is email newsletters.
But before we get into that, pose people out there who may not know who you are or who or what IMPACT is, can you please talk a little bit about yourself as well as the company?
About Liz Moorehead and IMPACT Liz: Absolutely. So as you mentioned, I'm the editorial director here at IMPACT.
IMPACT is a digital sales and marketing company. That basically breaks out into a couple of different things.
Number one, we consider ourselves the top educators in the space of digital sales and marketing, and that manifests itself through our publishing. We publish the anywhere between 20 and 25 articles a week, seven days a week, even on Christmas.
We have IMPACT Plus, which is a self guided learning platform for digital marketers, sales pros and business leaders. And then we also have our agency services as well. So we originally started out as an agency, you know, the traditional inbound marketing HubSpot partner agency before we really started getting our claws into the education piece of it.
One thing I will say though that is a little bit different about our agency services is that instead of the traditional model of, you know, "Hey, just, you know, kick your marketing over here, we'll take care of it. Like don't worry about it. We got it, we'll take care of it," we have more of the "Teach a man to fish" model.
So we do a lot of empowering businesses to bring their content in house, bring their video in house, really take ownership of their marketing technology stack with things like HubSpot.
So that's, that's IMPACT in a nutshell. All things digital sales and marketing. If you have questions about it, basically just come to us.
Kathleen: You've had an interesting journey because you're like part marketer, part editor, part writer. You're a different kind of a person than we've traditionally had on the show. So could you talk about your journey a little?
Liz: My journey is strange. I never fancied myself ever getting into marketing. I only ended up in marketing and quite frankly, landing in your lap Kathleen, as the result of a layoff.
Prior to being in the inbound marketing and content management space, I had been working in communications and I had been working as a senior editor at a digital publisher that catered exclusively to trade associations and then they overhired, or there was a market contraction, and there were a bunch of us, since we were the last in, we were the first out.
So my editorial team, we all just like, 50% of the people, left like overnight. Then, the next day, a mutual friend of ours who was working at your agency Quintain at the time said "you should come out for lunch." I'm like, "I don't want to," like, "I want to stay in pajamas, I want to be sad, I want to keep crying cause I just lost this job that I really loved."
And it turned out it was when you were guys were doing the Inbound Marketing Summit at The Metropolitan in Annapolis. And I walked over to her and I said, "I had no idea the rest of everyone that you worked with would be here."
And that's how you and I met, because you said "You're the one who writes the beer column for the Capital Gazette. Right?" And I said, "yes". And the next thing you said was, "I don't like beer". And then I, there was a little pause and in that pause I'm like, "This is the worst 48 hours". I'm like, "I look like I just got dumped. I feel like I just got dumped. This lady in front of me, dressed to the nines, and I looked like, just awful." And then you said, "But I like your writing".
Kathleen: Yes, it's true. I was a devotee of your beer column, which I just think, it's hysterical because you're right, I don't like beer. I don't drink any beer, but I loved reading about beer because you made it so interesting. So go figure.
Liz: Yeah. So I came on board at Quintain and I'm going to make this part of the story pretty short, but it was kind of, it was a, it was the first time I had really failed at something.
I was very excited to be in marketing. It was a new challenge. I had done each piece of that job desperately across different roles throughout my career. Things that I had done historically very well, and it just wasn't working.
I think about a year or so afterward, you and I had one of those “carefrontations”, a candid conversation, a crucial conversation, whatever you want to brand it as. And you and I were sitting there talking and you and John Booth, your husband, who ran the agency with at the time said essentially, you know, we have a right person, wrong seat. So you put me in a content management role.
That was, I feel like, when my career changed, because prior to that moment working in marketing, I had always been brought on in the way we had discussed it. As, you know, "you needed a marketer who knew how to write". And the reality is I was a writer who had a strong marketing backbone. It was the flip.
And so once I really went into that role, which at that time I remember you saying like you had heard about it from Marcus Sheridan and you know, there were all, you know, people were starting to realize that you couldn't just like market, you had to have someone who knew how to write, who knew how to communicate, who knew as a native skillset, the way people know how to build dimensional, like email marketing strategies and revenue campaigns and like all of these things that are not native skillsets.
To me, brand storytelling, interviewing, voice and tone development -- like, how do you make content that is so memorable that people not only remember the answer that you told them, they remember that you're the one that said it to them. That's the kind of stuff I was really good at.
So to be able to really focus on that exclusively in the role just really changed it. But that is something we're still seeing today. You know, there's more traction, there are more content managers now, but at the time, you did something that was atypical. You created that role that I think was, in a way, ahead of its time.
Kathleen: Well, you're giving me a lot of credit, but you are an incredibly talented writer. And for those listening, Liz and I have had the opportunity, and I would say for myself, the good fortune, of working closely together several times. We don't work together now.
You've had a really an amazing career and, I would say, she has set the bar for what it means to be a Head of Content in many ways, in the sense that not only does she do an amazing job, but she also teaches others how to do it.
Why IMPACT started THE LATEST Kathleen: So that being all said, let's talk about email newsletters. I want to preface this with, when we were working together back in 2018, we were both at IMPACT and IMPACT produces a lot of content and has a big audience.
But at the time, it didn't have a newsletter, which I always thought was interesting because it had this huge, built in audience. So we were talking about creating one, but we really wanted to create something special and not just kind of check the box with a newsletter.
It just so happened that that all happened around the same time that I feel like newsletters were undergoing a Renaissance. It's funny, I just gave a talk on this last night.
2018 was the same year that Morning Brew was founded, that The Hustle was founded, that Ann Handley started writing Total Annarchy. That was a pivotal year for email newsletters.
And I think I would hold up the newsletter that you're involved in right alongside those others in terms of the, you know, how it's kind of breaking new ground on what it to send an email newsletter.
So with that as an intro, maybe you could rewind the clock and start at the beginning. For people who are listening and might not be familiar with the newsletter, could you talk a little bit about, you know, what it is, how frequently it is sent, who the audience is, et cetera?
Liz: I like how you phrased the history, by the way, of THE LATEST, because I remember that conversation. "Liz, how would you feel about writing our newsletter?" And I said, "Nope."
I waffled, was a bit wishy washy. I was trying to say no, but with as many yes words as possible.
And then you did that thing that you're so good at doing, which is like basically communicating that you're voluntelling me. Like, "So you're going to try it out and see what you think about it."
So that went pretty great.
So we have THE LATEST. It's meant to give digital sales and marketing pros everything they knew need to know to make smarter decisions, faster, and to do their job better in around five minutes.
It hits inboxes Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. I do emphasize to people who may not have heard of this newsletter before or are new to this, yes, an actual human being writes it.
That human being is me. I spend about six to eight hours a week working on it and it is a labor of love.
Now, Kathleen, you remember the discussions that we had. We had already been doing some passive email distribution of our content, but we were starting to run into a couple of challenges. You know, HubSpot, for those who may or may not be familiar, has an option where you can automatically generate instant, daily or weekly digests of the content that you're publishing.
We had scaled up rapidly from the traditional model of like, a few times a week of publishing content, to what I mentioned before, you know, seven days a week. No holidays off, 20 to 25 articles a week.
That's a large volume. And we were running into a situation where we had emails competing with each other. You know, we had events we wanted to promote. We had all of this content that was going out and it was just this passive valuable-ish maybe kind of thing that we'd been sending previously.
So THE LATEST was really meant to solve for that, as the centralized location where we could put all of our most important information.
And we had a new opportunity to show one of the things that we believe about the most at IMPACT, which is our people, our products. So if that's the case, we're going to make it as personal and as impacting and as thoughtful and hand curated as possible. We wanted it to be as valuable as it could possibly be.
Kathleen: So that was the nice things about newsletters, is it's their ability to consolidate a lot of what you want to communicate to your audience. And I do remember at the time that, you know, we have those instant blog notifications going out, but we were emailing people about events, and webinars and you know, social groups that we were running.
There was a time, I think we counted and people were getting, you know, an email every day from us, if not more than that. And that can quickly lead to major email fatigue, which you know, really can hurt your sender score.
So that was a great reason to shift over to the newsletter in and of itself, was let's email people less and let's be more efficient about it.
But I think you're right, there was so much more to it in terms of being able to really cultivate a voice and develop a relationship with the audience.
Getting personal in a corporate email newsletter Liz: I believe though, that was the thing I didn't expect out of it. And I'll admit, I'll still get the heebie jeebies every time I have to smash the send button on a newsletter that goes to I think 42,000 people at this point.
That's still something where in the pit of my stomach, I'm like, "fine".
The thing I never really expected out of it is that piece you just mentioned, which is really developing a relationship with your audience. I remember when I first started writing the newsletter, earlier issues were a little bit more pithy, a lot shorter, not very personal.
I always like to embrace the Kathleen mindset of "keep doing stuff until people tell you to stop doing it", then just keep going and see what happens.
And so I started using it, especially last year, to just be more emotional and honest about where I was personally because I went through quite a bit of stuff last year. I'm just ripping off that bandaid.
I now live in Connecticut, but I used to live in Annapolis, Maryland with you -- not with you in the same home, but like a mile down the street. I was married at the time. I am not married anymore. I was moving up in my career. I was trying a lot of new things. I was experimenting with a lot of, just, new things professionally.
It was a really big year of growth for me and I started talking about it. I started talking and I had no idea. I don't know what possessed me to do it, but very similar to Ann Handley and a lot of other newsletters you might see out there, we really focus on putting the letter in the newsletter.
Now you may think to yourself, well, things like divorce and moving and all that stuff -- that's not really relevant to digital sales and marketing leaders.
What was surprising to me is how many of those elements of going outside of your comfort zone, being willing to embrace change, all those things really apply personally and professionally as well.
And the audience, that really ended up resonating with them. I would get start getting responses and replies. You know, we were in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic and I remember there was one where like, I was trying to be positive. I was trying to be like the little fortune cookie, you know, confused to say it's all gonna be fine. Like it's not, I couldn't get myself there. And finally I just wrote this thing about how I was just flirting with an emotional cliff.
I wasn't in a really horrible spot, but it was becoming increasingly more difficult to carry the weight of my own feelings, carry the weight of the feelings of my friends and family -- the fear that for a while there was really gripping the country and the world and still is to some degree.
That was one of the issues that I got the most responses to.
It becomes this thing where I essentially started just writing to the people in front of me and they would respond and they would also still read all the stuff I put in there -- still read everything else. They would read all the articles, they would click through everything.
Mixing business and personal in email newsletters Kathleen: so taking a step back, as I think it's interesting, if somebody isn't familiar with the newsletter, this might be confusing.
This is a corporate newsletter in the sense that it is IMPACT's newsletter as a company, but you write it pretty much every time. Every now and then somebody else jumps in if you're on vacation or, you know, for whatever reason to take a Saturday off.
But really, this company newsletter starts off every time with a very, very personal introduction from you.
So can you just talk about that dynamic because I think that's a dynamic that is going to be very new to a lot of people. They might be thinking, "why would you have a company newsletter come from one of the employees and start with a personal letter from him?"
Liz: Well, let's face it. People trust human beings. People buy because of relationships they have with human beings.
Now more than ever, since we are trapped behind our screens, my entire social life is conducted via Zoom at this point and has been for the past seven plus weeks.
They don't want to talk to a nameless, faceless company. They want to talk to a human.
Also, if you want to just get more technical and tactical about it for you business leaders out there going "I don't know, we're different. That's not for us guys." Just to be perfectly candid with you, your open rates will increase if it comes from a person. The moment we stopped sending things from IMPACT or "Liz from IMPACT" or "whomever from IMPACT" and just put "Liz Morehead", boom, open rates popped.
Kathleen: Yeah. It's funny, I was, so I mentioned I was giving a talk. I gave a talk last night to the Public Relations Society of America about basically this topic of newsletters. I talked about having it come from a person and, and how a lot of companies are very skeptical and they think "No, our audience is too professional, we need to be more formal." The example I love to show that shatters that myth is there's a company called CB insights, which is a technology analyst firm. Like, big time tech companies, you know, are their clients -- the Googles, the Microsofts of the world.
This is a very highly respected company in the analyst field. They have an email newsletter that has hundreds of thousands of subscribers and it comes from Anand Sanwal who's one of their principles.
This is the part I love the best. He signs off, like at the bottom of the newsletter, he writes his intro just like you do. And at the very bottom, instead of saying "from Anand", he says, "I love you, Anand".
This is a highly professional tech analyst company and one of the principals signs off the newsletter "I love you".
Like, you know, I think that that to me just says, if they can do that, then anyone can kind of cross that bridge and become more personal in the way they do their email outreach.
Liz: A hundred percent and I get that feedback a lot too. "Well, Liz, you're in marketing, you're allowed to do this kind of thing". I'm like, wait, hold on a second.
Our target audience are high level VPs, CEOs, no nonsense business leaders, and they're reading and subscribing to my newsletter. It's still works.
Yeah. I think a lot of people talk themselves out of trying things before they're even willing to see, you know, they're, they're ready to indict it. They're ready to pass judgment and say, "Oh, this won't work for us. Yada, yada, yada."
But that's not true.
And I would also say, you know, this is something we've been seeing with video right now too. This sounds like a strange correlation, but especially in this, you know, in the wake of Coronavirus, the threshold for production quality right now is a little bit lower, especially in video.
People are expecting you to be in your homes, to be more human, to be more open. And I think this is a great opportunity for us to open that door and realize, yeah, so they're tech people or they're this or they're that, but they're also humans first.
They are human beings first.
The anatomy of THE LATEST Liz: But to get back to your original question, yes. So the anatomy of the newsletter in terms of how it's set up.
At the very top you're always going to have a big headline that basically showcases the three top stories that we're covering in a given issue. So for example, the one that went out yesterday was "How to have really difficult conversations over video" and "Are you ready to do content marketing right?" and "How we planned and executed a 3,000 person virtual event in only three weeks."
So we'll have that right underneath that. If nobody wants to read my letter, that's fine because we give you the links to those three articles in a little box right above it. So you could just like, you know, "That's fine Liz, you have a lot of feelings. Maybe later I want to read this stuff."
Now underneath that then we have the letter.
The letter itself usually falls into one of two categories. I would say 75% of the time it is somehow tangentially related to one of the three articles that's included. I like to keep it relevant.
There are, however, the fringe cases -- that other 20% of the time where it's like, I have something I want to talk about. Maybe something big happened at IMPACT. Maybe there's just something more global that I want to talk about.
For example, let's just go for it. The issue when I told everybody I was getting a divorce and I did it kind of euphemistically was the New Year's Eve issue. So it really made sense because essentially I was saying I was moving to Connecticut and doing so by myself. I'm only going with my cat. It's crazy to think about what the beginning of this year was like versus the end of this year. And I think a lot of us are feeling that way.
That is something where like there's a bit of a balance. It's not always like, emotional bloodletting, but that's how I bring those types of stories in.
I don't just decide, "Well I don't have anybody to talk about my feelings with. I'm going to do it here." It has to be relevant to the moment, to the context of what I'm talking about after the letter.
Then it goes into a little bit more detail about each of the articles. You know, what question does it answer, what is it about, who wrote it?
And then I also include some related links. So for each article, if somebody is interested in the topic, but that's not quite the article they're looking for, I'll pull in some other things. We feature our latest podcasts and shows -- the usual stuff like marketing events you need to know about.
And then right now, because everything is so stressed out, we used to have something called weekend nonsense in our Saturday issue. Now it's in every issue because I think we all really need a laugh right now.
And then I might throw in like, "Hey, I'm reading this" or you know, I, I fool around with what's in there.
But that's really the anatomy of it. The goal is essentially to make it something people are excited to open. I think if you're creating an email newsletter, yes you want to drive traffic to your own site. But when I wake up on the days that I have to put this together, my number one goal is to make it something so insanely valuable that no one will ever regret having opened it.
Even if they don't click through, that's fine. I just want them to feel like I have somehow made their job easier, their life easier or made it easier to make some sort of decision that day.
Designing your email newsletter Kathleen: That's awesome.
Now I know way back in the beginning we had a lot of debate about what this newsletter should look like, and how it should be formatted.
There's lots of different schools of thoughts on this -- you know, how many graphics do you include and pictures and videos and gifs and emojis?
Liz: So many things. I was so wrong.
Kathleen: So talk a little bit about that. I think it's evolved over time and you've done a really good job of testing everything so that you can make data backed decisions.
Can you share a little bit of that whole evolution and what you've learned?
Liz: Sure. First of all, it's good to keep in mind, just from an email deliverability perspective, the more graphicy, flashy, design-y your email newsletter is, there is a higher likelihood that people will not see it that way either due to settings in their email that automatically turn off images if you're in a particularly like cybersecurity or technology focused space.
Outlook inboxes are brutal in terms of what they will let through or what they will actually show.
So we tried to keep the structure of it pretty lightweight. It doesn't look all the way plain text. There's some tabling in there, there's a little bit of structure, but for the most part it's just a basic rich text editor.
But it wasn't always that way. Well, originally it wasn't.
We had a little bit more structure around it, but for the most part I would say as long as I've been doing it, I really try to keep it more of that loose structure.
Now a couple of the things though at the beginning that I, let's just talk about the thing I was most wrong about. So, as you know, every blog article you publish on your website should have a featured image associated with it. You know, people like things to look at. So I was of the idea that every featured article -- because again, they were under that welcome letter for me, there are three articles -- that every single one should have like, a featured image with that.
We did that for a while and the open rates were great, but the click through rates were fine.
Then somebody said we should test it without images. I just thought that was going to be a disaster.
I am always coaching people about content, when they create it, to not create giant word walls. Beause that's the first thing that makes people go, "No, no, this looks hard. I don't want to do that. That is visually, that is not a content piece I would like", you know?
So this idea that we were going to have just like, so many words, really freaked me out with no visuals. Lo and behold, when we took out the three featured image, one per each of the articles, our click through rates went up.
Now that I think about it, it kind of makes sense. Imagery in a newsletter. If you subscribe to it already or will be in future, you'll see that I still use images, but they're purposeful. They're only there to drive the story forward. They're only there to provide visual context where I think you actually need the context.
Otherwise it's not there. There are no images.
I like to use emojis, which is also another thing I was wrong about. Not really so much in the text or the letters, but we use them as visual guides. Like for example, there's always a pointing finger in front of every headline for each of the three articles. The marketing calendar always has the same little calendar box, hot topics and Elite -- I'm very proud of this one -- a little spicy pepper. Things like that.
It's so that people can visually scan and they get used to knowing where things are. And it allows me to visually call things out without it being intrusive. But that was something I was always very against.
Just, you know, I'm, I'm knocking on the door 40, I've never been a huge emoji fan. We had to have like two or three people in our team at the time help us try to figure out Snapchat, and I still don't understand it.
I've just never been an emoji person, but it allows me to add a little bit of personality, razzle-dazzle when I want it. Occasionally I'll just like throw one in to be a little bit cheeky in my intro, but that's really the only visual compliment other than me including an image when I feel like it's necessary.
Otherwise it's just, it's just words and links.
Kathleen: I think this is another area, like, emojis are a great example where you hear people say, "I can't do that because my audience is older and more professional". But the audience for THE LATEST is, how would you characterize it?
Liz: All over the place? I think a lot of people on the surface would say, okay, so you're a young, hip marketing agency. You can get away with this stuff.
The people I hear the most from -- this reminds me a lot of my beer column. Everybody always thought that my beer column audience was like young bearded flannels, you know, the usual beer drinking crowd. And I did have a lot of those. But the people I've heard the most from, my most devoted people who still actually read me to this day, even though I retired from that like what, six, nine months ago? They're older, 40 and above.
It's the same thing with this. Some of my most devoted people, the people I hear from the most, are much more established in their careers. CEOs of businesses, VPs of sales and marketing.
One of the guys is actually one of our clients, was one of our clients. He's like some good old boy from Tennessee. He's a straight shooter. He's just that guy.
People you would never imagine are actually reading my newsletter and they're engaging with it.
The other thing I'll say about emojis, too, is that remember it doesn't always have to be a smiley face. There are emojis for things like charts or very basic things like a calendar tab.
You know, take a look at what's available to you. You can get away from the kitty stuff, you can get away from like the silly stuff. There's a lot of good stuff in there.
Kathleen: Yeah. And there's a great site. My favorite resource, the site getemoji.com because you could just go there and you can see them all and you can copy them and use them wherever you want. I use them a lot, not just in email newsletters but in LinkedIn posts and stuff like that.
The other thing too is that going back to the conversation we had about fact that a lot of your images will get stripped depending on where it's being sent to and what the email platform is. Emojis are Unicode text. So you are able to make your visuals have a little bit of flair.
Liz: It gets in there without it getting stripped out.
Kathleen: Yeah.
Liz: So that's really nice. It's, it's good for me. I use it for visual hierarchy the most.
Kathleen: Yeah. It's very, very effective for that.
What impact has THE LATEST had for IMPACT? Kathleen: So, this started in 2018. Can you talk a little bit about the results? Like how large is the list now? What are you seeing in terms of marketing results from the newsletter?
Liz: Oh yeah, for sure.
When we started this, I think the number was somewhere around like 1200 people maybe because we didn't want to force opt-ins. We had people who were opted into our daily, our weekly notifications, but we didn't want to force people to come on board with it.
We did an initial push, I believe, with garnering subscriptions. We brought some people over who were already opted in in certain capacities and it started as a very small list.
After that, today, I think I already mentioned it, we're now at 42,000, and in terms of results of what we're seeing from it as of today, we're closing in on about $2 million in revenue associated with it via HubSpot, which is outstanding.
Kathleen: That's awesome.
Liz: It's a newsletter. You watched me last year on stage at IMPACT Live. I like content that makes money. You know, a little little skin off my back there. I'm pretty happy that that's uh, that's doing well.
The results really speak for itself. I think if you go into that with the same mindset that I have, whether it ends up looking like mine or not, it's not just about what articles do you want to in here? Do you want to drive traffic?
If you just focus your entire energy for a couple hours that you're putting it together and say, "I want to make this the most valuable thing that my ideal buyer would have in their inbox", you will be astounded at the brand evangelists you can build out of that.
Email newsletters in the time of COVID-19 Kathleen: That's great. Have you had to change anything with the newsletter as a result of this whole craziness with the Coronavirus?
Liz: I think what's been surprising is how much benchmarks no longer matter. Like, we had all this benchmark data, right? We've even written the same articles, like "When's the best time to send an email newsletter?" When's the best time to do to do that?
Those rules no longer apply because everyone is trapped at home. So for example, we had, you know, a pretty steady average open rate that had been growing incrementally over time. And then there were a couple of days just because, you know, I think a lot of people can relate to this, as soon as Coronavirus hit, it was, it moved like a wave across the country and around the world. But when it would hit wherever you were, it was like 24 to 48 hours of complete madness. There was shell shock. There was, what are we doing at our company?
There are all these things that need to happen. And so I was talking with Vin, our VP of Marketing, one day and I said, "Look, there's no way I'm going to get to this until like, THE LATEST is actually going to be the latest my time. Like that's just how it's going to happen because I have X, Y and Z to do." And he's like, "Those are the top priorities. As long as it gets out the door today, I don't care when it gets out."
We had sent it at like six or seven o'clock at night. We had almost doubled our open rate.
Kathleen: Wow.
Liz: It was absolutely absurd because it made sense. Right? People are now just sitting at home, not understanding boundaries between work and play because, I don't know if anybody else is like me, I know I'm done with work when I move from this side of the couch, which is the right side of the couch, to the left, just to kind of mix it up just to see what happens.
That's been kind of crazy. I would say also the level of emotional honesty I'm allowed to get to has been great, but it is a balance. I really was struggling for a couple of weeks there of, you know, I used to find inspiration for the newsletter out in the world, face to face human interactions. What do you do when 80% of your stimulus for how you create as a writer for me is gone? That was really a big challenge for me.
Some days I feel better than others. And I think as this has become more of a normal, as this has become more status quo, again, this is the end of week seven of this, at least for me, I'm learning to find stories in different ways.
But for awhile there it was hard. You know, just, I couldn't be depressed all the time.
Kathleen: You can only talk about your favorite Netflix show so many times, right?
Liz: Well the other thing too though, is that there's an emotional delicacy to it. There is a reality that I need to constantly be aware of. There's a difference between humor that genuinely puts someone in a good mood for the first time in a day and humor that's tone deaf and falls flat and actually ends up offending someone.
So it's been a tricky thing to figure out because I understand that everybody has a different situation. Here's a good example. IMPACT Plus is that learning platform we were talking about earlier. I run the virtual peer group for content managers.
We have CEOs and business leaders, sales and videographers and content managers, yada yada yada. So I run the content manager one. We had a content manager virtual peer group scheduled for the week after everything just caught completely on fire. I had originally slated to be teaching people how to build a content strategy, and instead I was like, I'm not sure if this is what they even want to be hearing about or if this is even what they care about right now.
I'm so glad I didn't do that because as it turned out, a couple of people on the virtual peer group had been laid off, weren't even content managers anymore, but they were still there, there were business owners who were concerned whether or not in a month they were going to still have the business.
I mention that because I had a similar reaction to THE LATEST. I remember the first couple of issues, I sat there and said "Am I helping people who have just lost their job?" You know, I'm in a place of privilege. I still have my job. It's all relative in terms of what everybody's dealing with, but that is a privilege.
I've had to maintain situational awareness that I'm not speaking to an even more diversified audience with a much more volatile emotional range. And I'd say that has been a really big challenge, but it's also been really fun.
Like yesterday's issue of THE LATEST I talked about weird food and combinations and stuff. Like the other night for dinner, I had this fantastic 2015 red Bordeaux from France and I paired it with an Oscar Meyer baloney sandwich and I started getting all of these funny emails back from people. One guy was like, "The only reason I was able to build a spreadsheet last night was because I took a break and stood over the sink and ate cold pizza."
I think good advice for this is to just be honest. Everybody's kind of blindly feeling around the dark room for a light switch right now, but the only way you're going to get through it is just being aware of who your audience is. Be cognizant of the emotional state they might be in, but don't let that restrict you from a place of fear. Let that give you freedom in terms of the stories you're telling because I think people are really looking for people to be honest.
I'd say that's one of the big impacts that this pandemic has had on our newsletter. I was already being really honest. I was already really doing a lot of these things, but it's made me a much more creative storyteller in terms of where I find stories and it's also made me, I think, a much more empathetic storyteller. It's made me more human, more open, more personal. Whereas I think the knee jerk reaction might otherwise be to restrict, pullback, be more corporate.
What Liz says you should know about starting an email newsletter right now Kathleen: if somebody is listening to this and they're thinking, well, I might want to try either starting a newsletter or revamping my newsletter and taking a different approach, if you had to give somebody advice on, if you were starting a newsletter now, what, what would you tell them?
Liz: I think it's important to have a very clear idea about the why behind the newsletter.
Why are you making this choice? Is it because your current email marketing isn't working? Is it like us, where you have so many different communications? We need to bring that together and there's a new opportunity to do it better.
Really understand your why. I would say that's the first step.
Then be very clear about what your goals are. I think that if you're going to go into this, like, "we need to check the box, we need to do a newsletter," then what I'm talking about is not for you. In fact, I'd say probably in a year or so, that kind of email newsletter stuff I don't think is going to really survive.
It'll be there. People will open it, but it's never going to drive the brand awareness that you want. It's never going to create that community. It's never going to make people initially have that reflexive "I have a question about this. I should go to them after that."
I would say when you're building out what goes in your newsletter, you need to put out of your mind, your priorities. You need to say, "What is it that, if I were my ideal buyer, what would make me go, 'Oh wow' every time I open that newsletter?" -- that's what you want.
You want to create that moment where somebody opens it up and it's a present like on Christmas morning and they say, "My gosh, they got this just for me!"
That's what you want to do and it's going to look different. You know, you may not have the crazy personal letter or like, I think one time I made like condolence cards for marketer's failing email campaigns and stuff. Like I get really weird in mine.
Just make it personal, tell a story, you know, make it so people understand that there's a human behind what you're doing and then just commit to it and be willing to try different things. Be wrong about images.
You know, you're going to have to fight a lot of your own instincts. You're going to have to do a lot of testing, you're going to try things, they're going to work, they're going to not work and that's okay, but be consistent.
Kathleen: Yeah, and just keep doing it.
Check out THE LATEST Kathleen: If somebody wants to check out THE LATEST or subscribe to it, what should they do?
Liz: Just go to impactbnd.com and if you scroll down, you'll see a little bar that says THE LATEST. You could see the latest issue and then there's a big button that says "Subscribe to THE LATEST" and you'll get me -- actually me -- in your inbox three days a week.
Kathleen: You can scroll through so many past issues of it, unlike many newsletters which only exists in your inbox. I think the cool thing about what you guys do is you can go back and read prior issues on the website, which is really nice. So you can try before you buy if you want.
Liz: Yeah, absolutely. I mean if you follow me on LinkedIn, my username is Liz clam. Every time a new issue of THE LATEST comes out I share the web version of it, which is, you know, it's user friendly to look at.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: All good things must come to an end, but we're not quite done yet.
I have two questions that I always ask all of my guests and now it is your turn to answer. The first one being, we talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really like the shining example of doing inbound marketing?
Liz: That's a great question. And the funny part is, is that I always knew these questions were coming, but I'm still racking my brain about this. I think my answer probably would have been different had we had this about a month ago before everything happened or I guess more than a month ago at this point.
I've been spending a lot of time on LinkedIn recently as I think a lot of people in our space are. And I have to say, I have been blown away by three people who our names we're all familiar with. Marcus Sheridan and Ann Handley they started doing this live series about being trapped at home and talking about the most pressing questions, concerns, and fears that everybody was having now that we're all in this new reality and I just thought that was a really fascinating and new way to do inbound in a real time, human way.
Kathleen: That's really cool.
Liz: There's also a guy named Chris Carolan and he is a member of our content manager peer group. I'll make sure to get a link for him so you can put it in the show notes. He is in the manufacturing space and the stuff that he has been doing recently has been, I don't think he realizes what he's doing. He is a little pioneer of inbound and also now virtual selling. So doing sales demos.
There's this whole idea that as a sales person, you need to be in front of a person in order to sell to them. He's doing virtual sales demos, still closing deals, and he's also creating insanely good content about it. He's probably one of my favorite people to follow on LinkedIn and I'm not even in manufacturing.
Kathleen: That sounds like me and beer.
Liz: Exactly. I will never build anything but I will follow him forever.
Kathleen: Yes, exactly. Awesome. Well I will put the link in the show notes for those people.
Second question. The biggest pain point I always hear from marketers is that digital marketing is just changing so quickly that it's like drinking from a fire hose, trying to keep up with everything. How do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated about all things digital marketing?
Liz: I mean, I almost have a cheat answer. I'm the editorial director at IMPACT, so I have to read pretty much everything that we publish. And it's across video, sales, and marketing. It's across HubSpot marketing technology, developing your strategy. And we also have a whole section devoted to just news reactions, which contextualizes the latest digital sales and marketing news.
So by virtue of my role, I know I'm a little bit spoiled in that I have to stay up to date. But here's what I will say. I use Feedly. I've never gotten over the demise of Google reader. I think it was the biggest mistake Google ever made was getting rid of that. But Feedly is now the devil I know and I've used it to create digital marketing news and publishing newsfeeds for me.
So I follow SEO Journal, Marketing Land, Search Engine Land, Forbes CMO Network, Digiday, all of these different things.
And then on the publisher side, it's like, What's New in Publishing, Poynter, things like that.
I just go in there and scan. Even if you're just scanning headlines, you don't have to sit there and be like, I'm going to take three hours out of my busy day and I'm going to read all these articles. I just skim and I look, I just try to stay abreast of what is happening.
There is no secret sauce, no silver bullet to staying up to date. You need to come up with a process and a schedule and you stick to it.
Kathleen: But I want to say, I mean you guys create THE LATEST as a way for people to stay up to date, so you can subscribe to THE LATEST and piggyback off of all the efforts of the folks at IMPACT who are trying to summarize the news every day for you.
Liz: Thank you for shamelessly self promoting me so I didn't have to.
How to connect with Liz Kathleen: All right, well now we really are coming to the end. If somebody does want to ask you a question or reach out to you or connect with you online, what's the best way for them to do that?
Liz: So the best way for you to do that is to find me on LinkedIn. My name is Liz Morehead, L I Z M O O R E H E A D. And if you like pictures of beer and cats and the occasional Connecticut state park, you can find me on Instagram at @whatlizsaid.
Also, fun fact, if you go to impactbnd.com and type the word "genius" in the search bar, you will be brought to every article I have ever written.
Kathleen: That is amazing. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that just to see it work.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: All right, well, thank you so much for joining me, Liz.
If you are listening and you liked what you heard here -- and how could you not because Liz is amazing -- or you learned something new, which again, how could you not because Liz is amazing, apparently she's a genius -- head to Apple podcasts and please leave the podcast a five star review. That is how we get in front of new people and they find a find the podcast and hear and learn from amazing experts like Liz.
If you know someone else who is doing kickass inbound marketing, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest.
That's it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me, finally, Liz.
Liz: I know, I know. Talk to you again soon Kathleen.
What do high growth companies with savvy marketing teams do to drive traffic growth?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Directive Consulting founder Garrett Mehrguth shares what his team does to help companies like Allstate and Cisco boost traffic even after all of the low hanging marketing and SEO fruit has been picked.
TL;DR, It all starts with product marketing, SEO and a focus on bottom of the funnel, high intent leads.
Garrett shares the specific strategies his team at Directive uses to get results for their clients, as well as his advice for startups that want to do it right from the beginning.
Highlights from my conversation with Garrett include:
- Garrett says that everything Directive does is based on the belief that your brand is more important than your website.
- What that means is that when someone with high purchase intent is searching online for a solution, you need to make sure you're discoverable.
- He says that sometimes your marketing metrics have an inverse correlation with your financial metrics, meaning that if you focus on the top of the funnel, you might generate a lot of traffic, but you won't get as many high intent leads as you would if you focus on the bottom of the funnel (which generally results in less traffic).
- Garrett's advice is to track CAC (cost to acquire a customer) and LTV (lifetime value) and use that to determine whether you are paying a reasonable cost per demo, opportunity or proposal -- NOT cost per lead.
- For many companies, the best place to focus their initial marketing efforts is on ranking on review sites. Done well, this can allow a lesser known, newer market entrant to unseat an incumbent player very quickly.
- You can pay review sites to conduct review generation campaigns on your behalf, and Garrett says it is absolutely worth it to spend that money.
- Another strategy that works well is to use LinkedIn ads for awareness raising. Garrett says that leads that come through LinkedIn are not high intent, so you shouldn't spend a lot on a cost per impression basis.
- Instead, he and his team "trick" LinkedIn by advertising on a cost per click basis. Not many people click the ads, so LinkedIn accelerates their placement in the feed and they get seen by a lot of people.
- In terms of content, Garrett believes the traditional approach to pillar content and topic clusters promoted by HubSpot is wrong. Instead, he uses that same content and creates product pages as pillars, which he then uses to link to from blogs that address bottom of the funnel topics.
- Garrett builds authority for product pages by guest blogging (where he can control anchor text and backlinks) and doing podcast guest interviews.
- He says that where its tough to get your subject matter experts to create written content, you should invest more heavily in podcast guest interviews.
- Garrett's advice for companies right now is to double down on online advertising. Because so many companies have shut down or pulled their online ads back, prices are down and it is easier to get found.
Resources from this episode:
- Check out the Directive Consulting website
- Follow Garrett on Twitter at @gmehrguth
- Connect with Garrett on LinkedIn
- Email garrett at gmehrguth[at]directiveconsulting[dot]com
Listen to the podcast to get specific strategies for combining product marketing and SEO to generate more qualified bottom of the funnel leads.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week my guest is Garrett Mehrguth from Directive. Welcome Garrett. Garrett Mehrguth (Guest): Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. And yeah, excited to chat about search.
Garrett and Kathleen recording this episode.
Kathleen: Yeah, I love, I love getting into nerdy marketing topics, so I'm really excited about this. Before we dive in though, can you please tell my audience a little bit about yourself and your story and also Directive?
About Garrett and Directive Garrett: I'd love to. I did my degree in three years in economics and I wanted to do my masters in a year. I was playing soccer. I thought I was going to go pro, be like a pro soccer player. I hurt my knee, and that kind of reset a lot of that stuff. And so I said, "Hey, you know, maybe I could try this consulting thing."
I applied to Boston, Bain and McKinsey. I'm not sure about Deloitte, but kind of the big ones and instantly got this auto-response. In the application process, I knew I was doomed because you go to their portal and the university I attended was not one of the options. I was like, "They do not tell you that before they take your money."
So from there I was like, "You know what? I'll just build my own agency and they'll have to acquire me."
I don't know why. That's how I thought, and was just like where I went.
I had no tangible skills, so there was that problem.
I have this belief system that perception is reality and I knew that people perceived I knew the internet and so I figured I should learn it. So I started to try to learn how to do WordPress sites.
And then I got this little shwarma shop in East LA. I was on my little moped. I had a 78 Peugeot 103. I was going around town on that thing and I essentially got the client. It was really, really small. I don't even remember because I was so bad at this point that I didn't put the amount in the contract. I still have the contract, but I don't remember the amount. It's probably like 200 bucks.
I did that for 30 days, came back on the 30th day to get the check. He said come back tomorrow. The whole place was boarded up. So that was our first client.
I was selling $5 social media calendars on Fiverr and I was just hustling and doing all this stuff. And then I got a hookah shop and the hookah shop asked me to build them a website and then I did that. It was okay. Looking back at, it wasn't the best website. And then he wanted to rank number one for hookah shop and all that stuff.
I said, "All right, I'll try." I've never done it before. So I went online, read everything on Search Engine Land, Moz, WordStream, Search Engine Journal, teaching myself kind of SEO and PPC.
I ranked him number one and all of a sudden you got all these people in a shop and it was completely dead before. I was like, "This is kind of cool."
So, one of my best friends who's my roommate said, "Hey, don't go to law school. You know, come join this company with me. We'll be millionaires" or whatever he said. I was paying him $3 an hour at this point.
So we kind of just started from there and now we get to work with really large enterprise accounts and mid market companies, mostly SaaS, doing SEO and PPC still. So pretty fun.
Kathleen: Great. Now one of the things that I think is interesting about the perspective that you bring -- and we've had lots of people on the podcast talk about SEO and PPC, I was interested to chat with you because you do have these bigger clients and I think there are pros and cons to that, right?
The pro -- having owned an agency myself -- the pro of having big clients is they've got big budgets. They've got teams to support getting work done. They are generally very savvy.
One of the -- I don't know if I would call it a con -- but the tough thing about accounts like that is very often, they've already done all of the basic things that they should be doing. They're sharp, they know their stuff, they have their act together, so being able to really show results and traction requires taking things to a much more advanced level.
As I think you were saying when we first started talking, you've already squeezed most of the juice out of that orange. So how are you finding those opportunities for the last few drops?
You had some interesting thoughts on that and I'm really interested to hear what you have to say and to get into that technical level of detail with you.
What do top SEOs do to prevent traffic from plateauing? Garrett: Let's do it Kathleen.
So first and foremost, it's such a blessing because I got lucky. Everyone gets lucky, I think, in business to get somewhere. I had no capital. I started this thing with 20 bucks. We have no debt. We have no anything, right?
I think we got Allstate when I was like 23 to 25 years old. And we've had them ever since. Right? So there's little moments like that. Or, we did the global SEO for Cisco when I was 26, I think.
So like, you get these little moments and they really help you. And obviously you have to deliver, right? And then you can scale that.
But one of the things that I think allowed us to be successful regardless of who we were working with, whether it was a Series A startup who was trying to go to the moon, or a mid-market SaaS firm that was trying to go after the market leader, or the market leader, right?
You have these kind of three groups to work with and they all need to slow down and reframe how they approach the idea of search. And that's what I think Directive is really special at, is taking a moment to say, how does your customer discover the products or services you sell, and how can we rethink our approach?
So here's what we do. We have two kinds of fundamental beliefs.
First and foremost, if you can eat enough humility as an SEO and say that my brand is more important than my website, you become an incredibly powerful and creative marketer.
So our first fundamental belief at Directive is your brand is more important than your website. What that means tactically is that when someone searches at the bottom of the funnel and has the strongest purchase intent, you need to make sure you're discoverable.
Now, the old adage was, you need your website to rank, but see something has changed in consumer behavior. I call this the Yelp and the Amazon effect.
See, consumers got trained at the transactional level that even before we spend $3 on a lollipop or on a breakfast burrito, we're going to look on Yelp to see the reviews.
Well, guess what? Before we buy quarter million dollar software, we definitely look at reviews.
See, Google caught onto this and they started to change the types of websites that they were showing when there was bottom of funnel purchase intent for SaaS. That's G2, Capterra, Software Advice, PC Mag. It goes down for days and hours, right? There's all these review sites.
Well if you search your primary keyword, let's say "ERP software", and you layer it with "top", "best" or "reviews" or "comparisons", you have purchase intent.
Also your most expensive cost per click and Google ads, all the sites are review sites. That's because Microsoft Dynamics has no SEO. That's not because Oracle has no authority or content. That's because Google is choosing to show these types of websites.
So if we take that fundamental approach that our brand is more important than our website, we can be hyper successful.
Kathleen: Yeah, that makes sense. And I've noticed that, too, with reviews. Over the years I've spoken with some other review sites that you mentioned. They've pitched me when I've been at different places and it's really fascinating to just do those searches.
And you're right, if you do it -- if you search those terms -- those are the sites that will absolutely come up first.
So when you consider that you need to appear on review sites, how do you go about tackling that? Because it's not as simple as just claiming your presence and setting up your profile. You can still get lost in the sea of companies that have done that.
How to leverage review sites to drive traffic Garrett: The first step we want to do is we want to take another fundamental hypothesis and understand it, which is that sometimes your marketing metrics have an inverse correlation to your financial metrics. And it becomes very, very, very dangerous for SaaS firms.
So here's what I mean. Most agencies have this belief that in order to generate more MQLs for the demand gen team at a SaaS organization, they need to essentially increase the amount of keywords they rank for. They need to start going to top of funnel and they need to generate more leads.
So what happens when organizations pursue what I call a "breadth approach" is they start to experience what's called in economics diminishing marginal returns. In other words, their marketing KPIs improve.
So let's say you're trying to go for "top ERP software", but you just have a Google ad running. Instead of saying, "How can I show up more often when there's purchase intent?" and going with depth -- and so essentially expanding search impression share in Google ads for your primary terms that have purchase intent and then ranking on individual review sites through their cost per click models, and then evaluating all of that at a cost per demo level, not cost per lead level, and then doing financial allocation, right?
That's what we do here. We focus first on demand capturing before pivoting to demand generation.
So we go to the bottom of the funnel and say, "Cool. When there's purchase intent, we're going to show up as often as possible and as many places as possible before we try to show up for more terms."
So this allows us to experience increasing marginal returns for our clients in the first two quarters and get buy-in.
See, what most people do, is they start to go with their Gartner report and they start to leverage that, which isn't an intrinsically a bad idea.
But when they start to essentially go after informational intent and go to the top of funnel, they start to lower their cost per lead, they start to increase conversion rate and they think they're winning.
But if you're a savvy growth operator in SaaS, you know, like for example, I convert at 60% on lead gen ads on LinkedIn.
Okay, target market giving me their information -- 60%. I get that all the way down to $17 a week.
Yet that is 17 X more expensive than buying that same lead from ZoomInfo, and I have no greater purchase intent than someone essentially downloading an asset or me buying them from ZoomInfo.
So now I'm paying 17 X on a cost per lead.
And so that's the diminishing part where your marketing numbers look better, but your revenue doesn't increase because you have horrible CAC-LTV on top of funnel versus bottom of funnel.
And so that's kind of the other approach, is putting everything through an LTV-CAC model and then focusing on bottom of funnel first.
Start at the bottom of the funnel and capture high intent leads Kathleen: So let's, let's dig into that a little bit. So you talked about starting at the bottom of the funnel and going really deep to capture high intent leads for very specific terms.
If I came to you and I said, "All right, let's go. I want to do that," can you walk me through what that looks like? You mentioned showing up as often as possible for that one, high intent term.
Garrett: Yeah. So first we're going to do what's called category defining. So we need to find your category.
One of the most difficult problems in SaaS, as most people approach it, is they want to create their own category or they exist as a subset of an existing category.
You have a lot of experience in cybersecurity, correct?
Kathleen: Yep.
Garrett: We do a lot there as well. So like we've been working with SentinelOne for a long time and other large players in that space. Now that's endpoint protection, right? People know they need a security solution, they don't always intrinsically know they need an endpoint solution. Right?
So how do you generate demand and increase MQLs if you're in a new category? Okay, so first we do what's called category definement.
And what we'd like to do is not only position you in endpoint, but position you in the security software category and then do hyper product differentiation through like product naming conventions and positioning, so that your CTO or whoever that person is who's your audience, they're searching and when they go to security software, we want them to show up above the fold with your brand as endpoint protection and then essentially drive awareness from the greater category to our subset or our pain solving product.
So that's kind of first step is define that category. Then we ask ourselves, are we above the fold? So on Capterra, when you land on that, do you have to scroll for a couple hours to find you? How many reviews do the top five have versus you?
That gives us a review target. Then we'll help you and say, "Here's how we've seen other clients go about getting reviews and here's the strategy you could pursue." Now we have a competitive amount of reviews on all of our categories.
Kathleen: Let me ask you a question about that real quick. Most of those review sites have, uh, call them packages that you can purchase where they will, you know, you give them your list of clients, they'll email them, offer them an Amazon gift card or something along those lines to get reviews. And so essentially there's a cost per acquisition model that you can use.
Do you find in most cases that that's worth doing, or do you work with your clients to develop their own outreach and review generation campaigns?
Garrett: That's totally worth doing. I think there's nothing more important than other people advocating for your product, especially with how consumer behavior has changed at the B2B and B2C level.
So no, that's critically important.
Now, what we need to be able to do here though, is we need to be able to measure everything on a cost per opportunity, cost per demo, cost per proposal -- whatever you want to call it -- level, not a cost per lead.
What we've found across over 350 SaaS companies that we've worked with over the last five years is that the cost per lead between Google Ads, Capterra, G2, Software Advice, et cetera, has a really, like it's not that different, maybe 15 to 30% range between each.
But then I found that third party review sites have a 230% lower cost per opportunity. And so what we do, like, we got hired a couple of years ago by a publicly traded sales compensation software company and within one quarter we increased their demos by over 300% by only pivoting budget.
That's the craziest part of all this, is most people are still evaluating their demand generation at an MQL level, not at an opportunity level.
And so the biggest, easiest thing you can do is go one step further and look at opportunity. And then the furthest step that we've now actually evolved to as an agency is putting all our clients in LTV-CAC models, and then looking at activation rate. So not cost per trial but trial activations, right? So how well people are going from trial to demo, or demo to close rate, and then we're evaluating channels by close rate or by trial activation rate.
And when we start to do that, that's hugely powerful for for financial allocation.
How can you use intent data to drive traffic and revenue? Kathleen: Yeah, that makes sense. Now one of the other questions I had as I was listening to you talk about this, you talked about intent and bottom of the funnel and a lot of those platforms that you mentioned, in addition to being able to purchase a package and drive reviews, now they're selling their own intent data.
Are you also working with intent data and taking it and creating ABM or audience match campaigns around that for your clients?
Garrett: Yeah, so you can do a lot of that stuff.
I think we, like most people, are using that engagement data or enriching stuff with Bombora for sales dev.
Right now, if you do traditional ABM with account based advertising, so let's say Radius, Terminus, DemandBase, Madison Logic, Listen Loop, I mean we use Terminus personally internally. Now the reason is, is we need to be able to do cookie-based targeting, not IP-based targeting. Because, for example, right now, if you're trying to run IP-based targeting campaigns during COVID, you're not reaching any of your audience.
Kathleen: Oh, you are preaching to the choir, because the product that we sell incorporates IP obfuscation. So anybody using our products, you couldn't target them by IP. I think it's going to happen more and more, and more people are going to use tools like that.
Garrett: Yeah. I think to answer your question, yes, we are doing bi-directional syncs from HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot or Salesforce into our ad platforms. But you still have a really poor match rate because people are using personal emails on social because they don't want to get fired from their company and their LinkedIn goes down.
So, essentially what happens is, your match rate is really poor on social because the only one who still has firmographics after the whole Cambridge analytical debacle, -- because you've got Axiom data in Facebook and you can be really powerful there.
Twitter has always been crap, but essentially GDN is terrible right now unless you're doing managed placements, you're actually going in a search engine results page and then searching keywords and then finding every site that ranks in the top five for your keyword that uses GDN and then doing targeted URL placements
That works because it comes off as a native ad.
But then other than LinkedIn, it's not working. But then LinkedIn fails because there's no purchase intent and the CPA is too high.
And so what we're finding is the way we're doing LinkedIn is awareness, with text ads and spotlight ads. And that's actually working. But there's a lot of nuance in all that for sure.
How to use LinkedIn ads to raise brand awareness Kathleen: So then you're generating awareness on LinkedIn and are you hoping effectively that that'll get somebody to go to the client's website? Then, you can retarget them on other platforms?
Garrett: We're actually being a little bit humbler than that because I don't think I can control my user. And what I mean by that is, the click through rate is crap on LinkedIn. In fact, it's so bad for spotlight and text ads and we've tricked it and we've figured out a game.
So we run brand campaigns for our clients and for ourselves based on what I call "clarity." It's this concept of saying what you do and who you do it for, and being humble enough to know that you have to get your message across without the click.
So what we do is we actually do it on a cost per click level on LinkedIn and we're able to deliver because nobody clicks.
What happens is LinkedIn accelerates our impressions and gives us a much lower CPM when I do CPC, than when I do CPM on LinkedIn. And then we personify everything.
This is the biggest trick to LinkedIn. So you take your primary asset, let's say "The Ultimate Guide to Demand Generation", and then you turn it into "The VP's Guide to Demand Generation", "The CMO's Guide to Demand Generation", and "The Marketing Manager's Guide to Demand Generation."
All you have to do is change the cover page and then run lead gen ads and we're converting at over 50% across the board.
So there's that route.
And then the awareness campaigns and the text ads and spotlight ads, you're on a CPC level and then you focus on what you do and who you do it for, and then you personify that.
You put that all together and you have really, really cool awareness campaigns. And then I say, spend as much money as you're willing to never stop losing.
And if you take that approach and you say, "Look, are you willing to spend $5,000 a month until you die and not know what it does for you?"
Because I'll tell you right now, I can target your exact audience to perfection and deliver your message to them till you've decided you're done with this organization.
"Are you okay 'wasting' five grand a month so that every person in your audience on LinkedIn knows who you are?" Yeah.
The trick is to not get results. Because what happens is, people go into it thinking they'll get results and they pause before they ever could have gotten results through a brand campaign.
And so when you take the other approach, it works really well.
Kathleen: Yeah. That's a really interesting way to think about it. I would love to be a fly on the wall as you have those conversations with clients to be like, you know, "You're going to spend all this money and I'm not going to show you any quantifiable results from it, but you're going to have to believe that the results are there."
It's like playing the long game and having faith.
Garrett: Yeah. Do you believe that this is your exact persona on LinkedIn? Here's your exact title, firmographic, industry, size of account, revenue...do you believe that? Yes.
Do you believe that your message is valuable enough to communicate it to them on a consistent basis? Yes.
Cool. How much does your company spend on snacks?
Kathleen: Give up the jelly beans and advertise on LinkedIn!
Garrett: Yeah. Honestly, it's the frappuccino a day is the kind of the joke I make.
What's your coffee budget? Cool. Could you spend that on this and never stop it? And it usually gets some pretty good buy-in.
How to optimize your website for traffic Kathleen: That's a really interesting way to think about it.
Do you do anything with your clients in terms of what they should be doing on their own site to support all of this? You talked about how it's not necessarily about everybody getting to your website, and how the brand is more important, but I would think that there are still some things they need to be doing on the site to provide supportive content and other assets that you can then use to go out and have success on these other platforms.
Garrett: Yeah, that's a relative statement to shock people to think differently.
It's not that your website's not important. It's that your brand truly is more important than your website.
You really have to understand your brand is more important than it was.
Now your website is obviously critical, so what you need to be able to do is communicate who you are and who you're for and what you do for them.
We do custom landing pages here. We have a really strong conversion rate optimization team. And so all that review site stuff I'm telling you about, we're split testing two custom landing pages with messaging, calls to action and what I like to call psychological friction tests.
So the biggest issue right now in all of SaaS that they could change if they listened to this, is changing their call to action.
Almost universally it's "request a demo." There is nothing more psychologically friction than "request a demo."
Every time I speak to an audience, and I get to speak about 30 to 40 times a year at conferences, I love to ask, who here likes to do a demo? Who here likes to have a day of demos? Nobody raises their hand.
Kathleen: That's like saying, "Who here likes to sit through an hour long webinar?"
Garrett: Yeah, and so when I ask them, I said, what if you did something really simple? What if you change it from request a demo to watch demo video? You still gated it. You still sent that lead to sales development or your account executives, but you are asking yourself, can I give my visitor something of equal or greater value to what they're giving me?
That's the number one question with calls to action and demand generation is, am I giving someone something of greater value than they're giving me?
When someone requests a demo, they fill out a form and nothing happens and it says "Someone from our team will contact you in 24 hours." You're not doing it.
So what we always do, and we can take clients universally from around 2 to 3%, to over 10% conversion rates by simply doing watch demo video.
And then all we do is have a form that says "Fill this out and we're going to give you a five minute demo video so that you can have a better educated sales conversation when we follow up."
Close rates go up, activation goes up, sales development teams are begging for these leads because they're having product conversations, not like "who we are and these lame 30 minute intro slides" to finally get to price.
It works universally, exceptionally well.
So that's what we do on the website level. But when it comes to content, and I think that's kind of where you're headed with this, is like what do you do with that content engine?
Are you familiar with HubSpot's pillar content approach that everybody's following? I think it's a bad approach, financially. The reason I believe it's a bad approach financially, it's due to what I was communicating earlier.
HubSpot's approach is you take a really, really beautiful strong asset, and then you lead to that asset with other types of content clusters that support that and you essentially do lead generation through that asset.
I say, do that same thing but with features.
Here's an example. We do our own SaaS products at Directive to make sure that we're not just full of crap. Not enough people do that. We rank in the top five for all our keywords. We actually spend a ton of money on PPC and we try to actually test everything and our hypotheses on ourselves.
What we're doing right now is, we have an educational product called Institute. This teaches our clients and we give to our clients free of charge because we believe that education drives adoption.
As consultants, you don't need to only make recommendations, you need clients to adopt them, right? And so we need to educate them as to why. So we educate them on SEO, PPC, et cetera. We sell it to the market for $39 a month.
It teaches people how we do what we do, all our templates, our approach, et cetera. We have 40 lessons. So I'm asking myself, at a $39 a month product, my CPA, my cost per lead is too high to do a ton of paid acquisition. So how can I drive organic leads from my product?
So here's my strategy and I'll share with your audience because hopefully it can help them. I'm taking the top five to 10 keywords for every one of my lesson pages. So, "how to do Google ads" or "how to do keyword research for PPC", okay?
So then I put "keyword research for PPC" into a keyword research tool. Now I take the top five questions people ask around that. Now I'm going to use entity tools like Clearscope or Content Harmony or something like that to really understand what I need to write here to rank.
So then I write five articles all around that one lesson.
Then, above the fold on all five articles, I link to that lesson and say "Want to learn how to do it with video?" and come up with an offer that resonates with where they're at in intent.
In other words, they intend to learn this. That's why they're searching it. I can satisfy that intent with my product feature, AKA my lesson. And now I also create a content cluster.
So all of these content pieces around this topic are internally linking back to my lesson page, which I'm trying to rank at the bottom of the funnel. And so I'm using middle and top of funnel content with lead gen assets all internally linking and with magnets essentially generating leads for my product.
So instead of trying to generate informational intent leads, I'm trying to generate purchase intent leads.
So their hypothesis of what they want to do with content clusters works for HubSpot. The issue is that getting someone from informational intent to purchase intent is incredibly long and most marketing people won't survive their tenure if they're only focused on driving informational intent leads.
So we try to pivot everything to purchase intent. Does that make sense?
Kathleen: Yeah. So it sounds like what you're saying, if I understand correctly, is basically the product page on your site effectively as the pillar.
Garrett: Yup.
Turning product pages into content pillars Kathleen: The same exact approach applies only you're not writing a 4,000 word guide. You're creating the product page.
Garrett: Yeah. You just audit all the competitors in the industry to say, "Okay, how many words do I need on my product page to rank? How many internal links do I need? How many referring domains do I need?" And then you say, "Cool, now I'm going to create the entity, the topical understanding to Google that we're the best answer to the questions people have related to the product we sell."
And then when you do that whole approach, you're amazing at what you can do when driving MQLs and demos at the bottom of funnel.
What should your SEO strategy look like if you're just getting started? Kathleen: So one of the things we talked about when when you and I first chatted about this was that, you work with a lot of big companies and they're coming to you and saying, "We're already doing a lot right. How can you take us to the next level?"
But then there is this other school of thought that, if you have, let's say a startup or a new company or a company launching a new product, they have this opportunity to do it right from the beginning -- to greenfield it.
Paint a picture for me of what that looks like. You're starting a new company and you want to really ace it out of the gates.
Garrett: First and foremost, I'm going to look at all the review sites and ask myself how many reviews I need to be perceived as a market leader.
It's the coolest thing in the world, right? Because someone searches now "top whatever software" you sell, and a review site shows up.
You don't actually have to be the best! You might not be because you've only been in the game for a couple of months. But if you can get the reviews there, you look like you're the best and that's 99.9% of marketing.
So first and foremost, we're going to position ourselves to be discoverable. When there's purchase intent, we're going to focus on demand capture, okay? Because to rank our website as a new organization, we don't have the authority, link profile or content, and investing in all those things takes a large financial upfront investment and has a long runway -- probably two years to build that organic engine.
So if you have a 24 month runway to build your organic engine and you need MQLs now, the easiest thing to do is paid SEO.
Now with that being said, we don't want to wait two years to try to rank because now we have another two years to get there, right? So we need to start from the beginning to try to position ourselves organically, to lower our cost per acquisition and have a better CAC-LTV ratio.
So what do we do? We are going to say, when someone searches for your product or your features, we're going to try to create as much bottom of funnel content as possible.
So not only a product page, but a feature page and solution pages. These are saying when someone has pain that your product solves and they go to discover that, can we show up?
Perfect. Next what we're going to do is, we're going to start with our link building.
So one of the things I had to do at Directive is, before we niched into SaaS, we were niched into just B2B. We had a lot of like manufacturers like Pelican Cases and stuff like that. So we had a lot of B2B players as well.
So I couldn't rank for the keyword "B2B SEO", but I wanted to. I didn't have enough authority. My site wasn't large enough. It just wasn't going to happen.
So what I did is I went on Search Engine Journal and I wrote, or Search Engine Land, I think it was, a fresh perspective on B2B SEO. In other words, I used someone else's site to rank for my keyword and they control the narrative.
So with a startup, what you're gonna want to do is, you're going to go on CIO or Tech Crunch and instead of just bragging about how much money you raised, you're going to want to actually try to position yourself for what your buyer journey is like.
We're going to leverage these other third party sites to do what's called guest posting to then rank exceptionally well for these top of funnel queries while internally linking from those guest posts back to our bottom of funnel pages we already built so that we can once again increase our rankings for purchase intent.
So you can actually win at the bottom of funnel faster than people realize because nobody's product pages naturally build links. So if you do a really aggressive link building strategy early, using guest posting where you can control the anchor text and the destination URL to point to bottom of funnel pages, you can grow.
And so then from that guest posting for bottom of funnel, now we'll focus on those products, kind of clusters we were talking about and our blog strategy, as well as Google ads review sites.
And next thing you know, you're 24 months later, you might have one of the best imagine engines in the whole entire industry because you did it right.
How to get executives and subject matter experts to create content Kathleen: Love it. One of the pieces of pushback I hear often, especially when you're a startup and you don't have a huge team where often your CEO or your CTO are the primary thought leaders and they're busy, I hear a lot of "Oh, we don't have the time to do all that writing."
Any tips for how you can get the goods out of their heads and onto paper in a way that's efficient and scalable?
Garrett: Yeah, the most scalable, best link building and PR you can possibly do is exactly what I'm doing right now. Podcasts.
There's zero preparation for the thought leader. It takes exponentially less time and you have a much more engaged audience than an article.
The best part is, when you guest post and you pitch a guest post, your success rate isn't always as high because not everybody accepts guest posts. Not everybody cares what you have to say. Sometimes editors are busy.
On the flip side, the entire podcast content medium is guest dependent. So Kathleen's job is to secure interesting, engaging hosts for her audience. And so when you pitch Kathleen, you're going to have a much higher success rate than if you pitched Kathleen blog articles because now Kathleen has to edit your blog. She might not agree with your opinions because blogs aren't intrinsically the same format as podcasts. They're not op-ed like podcasts are.
And so the best thing SaaS companies can do right now is link-building via podcast, hands down highest success rate, most scalable, easiest ended up.
Kathleen: I totally agree, but I will say please, for the love of all that is Holy, take two minutes and learn something about the podcast and what it's about and tailor your pitch.
I get pitched a lot, by a lot of podcast booking agents. Generally they're pretty good at doing their homework. But I can't tell you how often I get pitched from people who are like, "So-and-so built his real estate empire and can talk about earning money and like changing your life." And I write back and I'm like, "What does this have to do with inbound marketing? This person sounds like an amazing entrepreneur, but that's not what my podcast is about."
Garrett: I'd say we have over a 75% success rate. So I'd give your audience some tips on how they can pitch. Get their name right. I know it sounds simple. Write a subject line that doesn't stink.
Everything should be about how you make the podcast host's life easier and better for their audience.
What I mean by that is there's a really important word when you do outbound or pitching. You say, "I am emailing you because", and that quickly allows someone to know why.
And then you hit them with why the audience cares, not about yourself.
So a lot of people like to say, "Hey, you know, my client, uh, built his agency from one to $10 million, you know, would love to be a guest on your show. He's been featured by Forbes, Tech Crunch, in the Inc 5,000."
And then the podcast host goes, "Who cares?" Right?
Compared to saying, "I'm emailing you because I'd love to talk with your audience about a topic that I know they care about, that I happen to be an expert in. Here's three different topics I think your audience might be interested in. Do any of these resonate with you?"
Ideally, you want your podcast host to just say "Yes, this one". And then that's all the preparation required and you're good to go and it works.
Kathleen: Yeah, I totally agree. At the last two companies I've been in, it's been a part of my strategy to get my CEO as a guest on podcasts. It's so much easier than trying to get them to write blogs.
I think there's a human connection element of, you hear the person's voice, you get to know their personality, that that draws you in so much more than written content can do. So there's that aspect of it too.
Garrett's advice Kathleen: Well, any other last words of advice that you think my listeners should know about related to this topic?
Garrett: I guess one of the blessings we have with our portfolio is we have a lot of first party data. So I guess some encouragement.
Since March 1st I wanted to look at what happened across our portfolio. Spend is down 24%, but conversions are down only 18% because click through rates are up, CPCs are down and conversion rates are up.
So here's the really cool part about cost per click advertising is that it scales with demand and doesn't create waste. In fact, at a unit economic level, your advertising is actually more efficient now than it was before.
Is volume down? Yes. But also auction competitiveness is down. See, all CPC advertising and all channels is based on an auction. It's based on inventory. It's like an economic model. Supply and demand.
Well, because fewer advertisers are advertising right now, you're actually able to satisfy the existing demand that does still exist for whatever product or service you sell at a lower rate and you will have better efficiency and effectiveness in your advertising right now than you did before.
That's just at the ad level. It's not necessarily the close rate level or at the volume level. But just at the actual cost per click and cost per acquisition level, it's actually much more efficient right now to advertise, which is kind of cool. That's across over $1 million in spend.
Kathleen: That makes sense. So don't give up your ad budget altogether.
Garrett: Just to meet demand. But remember your ad budget will do that intrinsically. So as long as you're not spending a ton on display and CPM type stuff, you're going to find a ton of efficiency on CPC because fewer people are advertising, thus lowering your cost per click, and there are some people out there buying and you want to make sure you're discoverable to those people. So it's a kind of a cool way to still win right now.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Absolutely. All right, well switching gears, I have two questions I always ask all of my guests and I'd love to hear what you have to say about these.
The first is, this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it right now with inbound who my listeners could go check out as an example?
Garrett: I mean, HubSpot's a monster at this. They still are. I know. And everybody knows that.
Kathleen: I'm going to make you tell me someone besides HubSpot though.
Garrett: I know, I know, I know. The thing is, it's a lot harder now to move somebody out of a top 10 ranking. And so you see a lot of people pivoting away from that old school, gated content theory of inbound. And so that's why off the top of my head, I can't think of someone who's like doing that part of it exceptionally well because the game's kinda changed.
Kathleen: Who do you think is killing it with marketing right now in general?
Garrett: I always like what is Zoom is doing? Because I liked what they did with like offline advertising and I think that's so cool. I think they're really creative in the sense of thinking about how to position themselves.
I love the organizations that are investing heavily in podcast ads. For myself, that's one of my highest performing channels is niche-based podcast ads. I advertise on almost all the SEO or PPC podcasts that I can find because it works exceptionally well at a low CPM.
I like the D2C stuff. I think the D2C people are kicking B2B butt. Like Baboon to the Moon. I love their branding. I think if B2B had a little bit more boldness like this...
Kathleen: Yeah. What did they, I've never heard of them. I'll have to check them out.
Garrett: So yeah, if you want to see somebody who I think is brilliant and actually has a brand opinion and stance and is hyper creative and out there -- Baboon to the Moon.
Drift gets way too much credit for it because I don't actually think they're that good at it from a branding standpoint. They just have a free product so it's a lot easier to act like you're doing really good at it. They like try to take the human side of positioning.
I think Baboon is doing something really cool because they're taking a hyper creative approach and it's like they're on acid. It's like a goldfish on a human's body using their product, but it's brilliant because they are so consistent with it in their messaging, copy, and creative that it actually creates a brand theme that I don't recognize in B2B.
I think B2B organizations need to do a better job creating a brand theme. Like for us at Directive, we're trying to do a lot of people in our branding, but instead of just doing people in our branding, we're also like labeling them with their titles and their names so that it's so people know it's not a stock photo.
So we're trying to bring it to life. We can obviously do it a lot better. We're not nearly as creative as that, but I think if B2B looks at the direct to consumer brands that are doing so well right now, at the end of the day it's very similar if you have a self onboarding SaaS company to a D2C product. It's very still transactional.
And so if you can take your self onboarding, your trial-based SaaS company, and do that, and take that DDC stuff, and build that brand guide and just be really bold and crazy and ambitious with it, I think it'll pay off.
Kathleen: Yeah, that's, and you need to have leaders within the company that are willing to take a risk and be different. There's a lot of sameness in general in marketing and I think when everybody else is going right and you go left, there's a lot of opportunity there.
Garrett: Oh, a trillion percent. It's hard to get that buy in. I mean, I don't know anyone in my portfolio is actually doing it. That's why I'm in my head trying to think. It just starts at the top. You just need a CEO and a board that supports a bold new direction, not just verbally, but actually, and really actually sees it all the way through, especially when they get that first negative feedback or whatever from someone who doesn't like it.
Kathleen: Yeah. There are going to be people who don't like it, that's for sure.
Garrett: B2B is terrified of making anyone feel anything. That's truth, right? They're terrified of if someone doesn't like something. And the point is, the worst marketing is marketing for everybody. And so if you can be bold enough to have people hate you or like you, that's when you actually have marketing.
Kathleen: I totally agree with you.
All right. Second question. The biggest pain point I hear from marketers is that trying to stay on top of the changing landscape of digital marketing is like drinking from a fire hose. And so I'm curious how you personally stay up to date and educate yourself on all of that.
Garrett: I think it's actually less important to stay up to date with things than people think, and here's why.
Most marketers don't have a fundamental belief and a hypothesis of how they approach generating revenue for an organization. What's allowed myself and my organization to be successful is we have a fundamental belief that you need to make a brand discoverable at the bottom of the funnel regardless of channel.
Now, the beauty of that is that it doesn't matter if digital marketing changes. See in 1997 when Google first came out, what was the whole point? People came to people and said, "Hey, I want to show up on this new search engine. How do I do it?" And the answer was, "Well, you need a website." See, the new answer is, "Well, you need reviews for your brand and you need to be positioned."
As long as you don't get married to Capterra and G2, but get married to the idea of showing up when someone has purchase intent for what you sell, everything can change without changing anything because your fundamental belief is that you need to be discoverable when there's purchase intent.
And so my encouragement to people is ground yourself in a fundamental belief of what you actually believe. It's such a critical part of marketing.
If you want to make a ton of money in marketing, you need to actually have opinions. And you actually have to have beliefs and a hypothesis. You have to also be willing to adjust those, but you need to have them.
And so I think if people have a real belief system and fundamental approach and then say we want to be essentially discoverable when there's purchase intent, that allows you to just naturally adjust whatever happens in the market because all you're doing is maintaining your belief.
And that's, I think, what's so important for marketers, is to get away from this idea of, "Oh, what could I try? What new trick or hack can I try in a channel?" to say, "How can I essentially take my belief of discoverability and apply it to all my chanels?"
When you do that, it allows you to stay really even keeled and focus on your customers.
Kathleen: Yeah, and I would add to that, the best marketers I know in many cases are not actually marketers.
You're a great example. You studied economics.
The best marketers I know tend to be the most avid students of human behavior. People who understand people make great marketers because they're focused on the things that are timeless.
It really doesn't matter what Google does with an algorithm because, honestly, Google is just trying to solve for people, right? So if you're focused on people and how they behave and how they buy, none of the bells and whistles matter.
Garrett: Take that same person and then they learn financial modeling. Now you have the best CMOs in the world. People who have a really authentic, true belief of understanding of people and how they buy, and then they also understand financials? You put those two people together -- those are the CMOs of the Fortune 500.
How to connect with Garrett Kathleen: Amen. I could go on and on about that.
If somebody is listening and wants to learn more about some of this or has a question and wants to get in touch with y ou, what is the best way for them to connect with you online?
Garrett: I'm active on Twitter. I'm @gmehrguth. So first initial, last name. I'm active on LinkedIn. Shoot me an email, it's just initial last name at Directive consulting.
I'd love the chat and help anyone who has questions around demand gen. I'm pretty active on there trying to share all of our data and different tactics and things that we're doing. Almost daily I shared a new tactic or approach and a thread for essentially how SaaS markers can generate revenue.
So if you're interested in that, feel free to follow and engage.
Kathleen: Great. And I'll put all those links to Garett's social profiles and his email in the show notes. So head there to check that out if you want to connect with him.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: If you're listening and you liked what you heard or you learn something new, I would greatly appreciate it if you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a five star review.
We talked a lot about reviews in this interview and we know how important they are, and they are equally as important for podcasts as they are for products. So take a minute and do that. That would mean a lot.
And if you know somebody who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next interview.
That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Garrett.
Garrett: Well, thank you Kathleen. Glad to be here.
What can startup founders learn from the marketing strategies of high growth, silicon valley tech companies?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Traction Hero founder Kate Walling talks about her experience helping VC-backed tech startups develop marketing and business strategies, and the specific things she recommends they focus on to achieve exponential growth.
Highlights from my conversation with Kate include:
- Kate advises early stage tech companies on their marketing and business growth strategies.
- When she starts working with a new company, the first thing Kate looks at is the product and business model to determine whether there are opportunities to use product-led growth.
- After that, she evaluates the company's brand and positioning within the industry, and then focused on the sales team.
- One strategy that Kate has seen several companies use successfully to drive growth is community, and specifically building a community of their customers, users and fans and allowing that community to mostly self-moderate.
- To be successful, Kate says marketers need to be a part of the larger corporate strategy conversations around what the product is, how it will be positioned, what the tech stack is, and how sales will go to market.
- Another effective way to raise your brand profile is to work with industry influencers. Kate says that these do not always have to be paid relationships, and that its important for your marketing team to be aggressive in building relationships.
- If you have a small budget, one of the best ways to gain early traction as a founder is through a personal email newsletter. This is a strategy employed by many of the accelerators. Send it to friends, family, former colleagues, etc., but NOT clients, and share your journey as a startup founder. You can also use this to ask your audience for help and introductions.
- PR is another good way to get the word out at a low cost. While you can always hire a PR agency, there are plenty of opportunities for you to directly pitch yourself to local media, and you can subscribe to HARO and respond to those pitches at no cost.
- Tools like Canva are handy for making marketing collateral that looks like it was created by a designer but really uses templates to look professionally made.
- Kate's advice to founders is not to try and take on too many things. Find a few channels and platforms that are a good fit with your audience, do them well, test and iterate.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit Kate's personal website
- Check out the Traction Hero site
- Email kate at kate[at]katewalling.com
- Following Kate on Twitter @katewalling
Listen to the podcast to get specific strategies you can use as a startup founder (whether you have a big budget or a small one) to hit your growth goals.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host Kathleen Booth and today my guest is Kate Walling, who's the founder and CEO of traction hero. Welcome Kate.
Kate Walling (Guest): Hello Kathleen. I love your podcast.
Kate and Kathleen recording this episode.
Kathleen: Thank you. I'm excited to have you here.
I am going to do a little bit of an announcement for my listeners before we dig in. Um, if you have listened to my last few episodes, you might've heard this, but it's late March, the coronavirus pandemic is happening. We are recording on Zoom and Zoom is having some bandwidth issues. So just saying, if you're listening, be patient with us. If the audio gets a little funky from time to time, we're going to do our best and hope that Zoom holds up for us as we go.
But, these are interesting times we're living in. Lots of people working remotely, lots of people using video conferencing software. So it is what it is.
But with that said, welcome Kate. Can you please tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and Traction Hero?
About Kate Walling and Traction Hero Kate: Absolutely. So let me try to make this the short version of the story.
I've been an entrepreneur since a really young age. I started my first startup at 23, which was a consumer facing startup. I've kind of been an entrepreneur since then, although I've had a corporate stint.
I'm in the middle because at one point I realized that being an entrepreneur from a young age means that you don't understand corporate structure and you just hit some walls because you have a lack of understanding.
So I've also worked in a public tech company here in Silicon Valley and now I'm back with Traction Hero, which is a marketing agency for startup companies where right now we provide a lot of tech companies with on demand services just as they need it. So basically they can email with a quick project they need done and we turn it around in a couple of hours.
So it's really good for companies that have large budgets, but not enough team. Basically there's a lot of those.
And then we're also slowly building out services that are really focused on the deliverable so that startups can say, "I need a market research study done" or "I need a new identity."
Everything is focused toward what needs to happen to get that done. So as you know, when you're doing a lot of projects, you've got to have a writer, a designer, a printer, all these different people, and it's very stressful for marketers. There's not really been a solution so far where they can just cross that thing off the list and know that the whole thing is getting done.
So that's what we're working toward, is really solutions that help marketers get stuff done as they need it.
Kathleen: I love that you personally have been a startup founder and that you've done a lot of work with startup founders because I'm personally passionate about that. I have been a business owner. I've started a couple of different businesses.
Having walked in the shoes of the founder, I think you described it so well where there's so many things that need to get done. And that's just from a marketing standpoint, right? You're wearing all the hats when you're in a startup. You could be the owner, the chief salesperson and the marketer as well as other things. And in those early days it can be really hard to zero in on, what are the most important things I should be doing in order to gain traction?
That is one of the reasons, FYI, that I love your company name. You stay focused without falling victim to shiny object syndrome or you know, working so much in the business and not on the business, et cetera. It's a challenging, challenging time.
Kate: It is. And I think, you know, marketing's been already challenging for a number of years because the MarTech stack keeps getting larger and, and Silicon Valley, the budgets keep getting larger, but your team size doesn't.
But marketing is getting more and more responsibility for profit and loss. So there's a lot of pressure and I think what I hear from clients is, what you're saying, is that this was a different style with Traction Hero. And that's because I've personally been through the technology accelerator programs.
I am on my fourth startup. I really know what it's like. The interesting thing is that I started this agency model in Seattle. I built an agency in Seattle before I came down to Mountainview California and the model works so well, so it's called scrappy face and it was scrappy, right?
And we just went in and we helped these funded tech companies and we just moved as fast as we could. And we had a great team.
I closed the agency because I went through a divorce and growing a company really quickly in the middle of a divorce in a city that was always raining is brutal to say the least.
But the model was so interesting and when I went into corporate tech, what I realized is that I kind of thought their needs would be different. What I saw was just maybe limited, but it really wasn't, it was pretty much the same concerns of "I've got money, I don't have enough people to spend it." You know, "I don't have enough hands."
And then marketing has gotten so specialized that you can't possibly hire enough people to do all these things well, like they can't be experts at everything. So, you know, I'm a big proponent now of having smaller marketing teams, but knowing how to get more done quickly and having whatever workforce you need, that's really fluid.
Kathleen: I love that. should take a step back because this topic, when you talk about startups, I feel like it's a Rorschach test because the word "startup" can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. And for some people, they hear "startup" and they think little, you know, two or three person company. And yes, of course every startup has to start somewhere.
But then there are startups that are incredibly well funded, VC funded, that go from being one or two people to 20 to 30 people within a span of a month. When I think the conversation we're having, it's more around that high growth startup, not that little company that's gonna slog along for five years. We're talking about, you know, startups that have a lot of potential that need to move fast.
I think that's really key here. That's the experience I've had working in startups, is that it's all about speed, especially if you're looking for investment. Because as soon as you bring on investors, there are high expectations. There are benchmarks you have to hit. There are thresholds that you need to get to. And all of that needs to happen really quickly.
And you're right, you know, you couldn't possibly hire enough people to do that and you can't have a team that includes the world's best in everything, right? Because you'd need to segment out each little thing you do and hire a different person for it.
So what's the best way to move ahead? And the other element of that that, I think, is so interesting is this need to balance brand with demand generation because those are two really important components. And especially if you're in a high growth startup, you absolutely need demand generation. There is no company that doesn't, but brand is really important these days.
How early stage startups can quickly gain traction Kate: So like, yeah, how do you do all the things? It's so hard and I mean, you bring up a great point first. Defining "startup" is important. I think right now I do tend to concentrate on the tech startups that are scaling and have money. I also tend to help entrepreneurs that are somehow very well resourced and there's an opportunity that needs to move quickly. Those were the fun ones.
That can be anywhere. It's like there's been a regulatory or legal change and so it's presented this opportunity and you've got to go fast to take advantage of that opportunity.
So that looks different different ways, but it's typically those two categories in terms of entrepreneurs who are working on a smaller project or evolving it. There's so many tools now that they can use that would save them so much money that I think just having that right tool stack is a better situation.
But back to your question about balancing brand and demand gen. It's super hard and I think what I used to do is go month by month, quarter by quarter in my corporate role and say "What are the business objectives here? And so what does what makes the most sense?"
So if all of a sudden the sales team is growing from 40 to 90, right? I've got to get the demand gen up and going. I've got to get tools in place to deal with that. And that evolves into other things like what type of sellers are they? How are these tools going to work together?
Whereas if the brand is newer or there's been a change in the industry or there's some kind of potential in terms of content or positioning, you go on the brand side.
I think you just have to kind of reevaluate it every several weeks when you're, when you're at scale, when you're trying to work with scale.
Kathleen: Yeah. It's funny that you say that because I think the last month or two have been the best example of why it's important to reevaluate every few weeks because I can speak for myself.
I had a beautiful 90 day marketing strategy that I finished at the end of January. I'm a big believer in planning in quarters and adjusting in months.
And so I had the strategy put together and I was starting along my merry way, implementing my strategy and then coronavirus hit and blew it all up.
I feel like I, I, you know, I want to do air quotes, "go into work every week." You know, I'm not going anywhere. I'm working out of my house right now. And the priority is constantly changing based on the current fire.
And I say that not meaning that like, the house is on fire and the company's in jeopardy. That's not our case. In fact, oddly we have an increase in demand because of what our product does.
But, it's about pivoting and shifting and recognizing now it's all about remote work and you know, that sort of thing. And that's different than what I had planned out, but when things are moving fast, you gotta be able to go with it.
Kate: You do. And I think, you know, in terms of the virus, it's the emotional roller coaster for us personally. It's the same with business.
And I think it's that way with most parts of businesses, right? It's like, "Oh, I don't know if I have enough toilet paper. I don't know if I have enough this or the National Guard is moving in," you know?
So it's like, every day, assessing where things are and what your needs are. And I'm seeing that with my clients. The first week was about "What should we be doing? Should we do a campaign?" So we do an email and alert people of what services we're changing.
Now it's moved to, "Okay, competitively, what do we need to do? What's going on in the industry? What's the overall campaign, you know, with our overall strategy here?" And that strategy ends up being not just marketing, that's the whole business offering. We need to move products.
But marketing from my observation right now, which is, you know, limited in the grand scheme of things, marketing is driving some of those business questions, right? Because you can't go to a marketer right now and say, "I need you to do something about this virus." The marketer has to say, "Well wait, what are we, what are we offering here?"
You can't just throw together some kind of campaign or ad without meaning. I mean, this is not a, um, you know, "throw a graphic on it" type of problem.
How do VC-backed startups approach marketing? Kathleen: Yeah, absolutely. So let's put the pandemic aside for a minute because I feel like we could have an entire episode on that and I may need to do that at some point soon.
My curiosity has been peaked by what you said about how you tend to work with these well-resourced, need-to-move quickly, but potentially bandwidth-constrained companies. I think what is really interesting about that is that a lot of marketers see those kinds of companies that do grow really fast and they think, "What are they doing? What is the secret sauce? What's happening behind the scenes that's enabling them to go so quickly?"
Maybe I'm wrong, but I suspect it's not that they're just throwing money at the problem. It has to be more of, yes, you need money, but what are you going to do with that money that supports a really high growth kind of scenario?
So maybe you could talk a little bit about that and pull back the curtain on, if somebody does come to you and say, you know, we just got VC funding, we've got to triple the size of this company in a year. We've got the budget to do it. As a marketer, what kinds of things are you doing and looking at for them?
Kate: The first thing I look at is, is there anything in their model that should be evaluated overall for marketing in terms of distribution or influence?
For scalability, like you said, it's demand gen and brand. However, for a lot of things it's, is there something that needs to be built into the product from a marketing positioning standpoint or differentiation to make sure that that scale can happen with the brand and demand gen tools?
That's one of my favorite parts and that's where your puzzles come in. So if you're a SaaS company, do you need to be offering some kind of certification program because you need more people using the software? What are the different channels? How is that working?
I think getting a grasp on, is there something from a business model perspective that needs to happen?
The other thing is, a lot of companies at that point have some juggernauts, right? Like, we're seeing churn is hitting here and it's too high, or we're seeing these little scenarios happen with customers, or our lifetime value is off.
So we start trying to troubleshoot some of those things so that, that first step is really about marketing and the product and the operations of the business, and then also what needs to be worked out before you scale.
There are usually some major learnings there.
Once those kinks have been ironed out, we start looking at where are we positioned in the industry? Where is brand awareness? And then what is the plan with the sales team?
So if you've got two sellers and you're going to hire maybe one more, that's a pretty basic stack because you don't want to build anything too complicated until you understand, are these relationship-based sellers, are these more tech savvy sellers?
There's a difference in the tools required.
So you can do something more basic in the meantime, just getting them basic collateral, making sure they have that stuff on the brand side.
You start wanting to do more PR, more on positioning and really claiming your spot in the industry landscape.
Then, as your sales team picks up, so when you start getting to like 20, 40, 50 up and up sellers, you're looking at a lot more sophisticated systems. You're usually looking at a change of how sales works. So if you have inside sales reps, how are they working, how are they using your marketing software?
You get into really complex software decisions, and that's usually driven by marketing.
How can startups use product-led growth? Kathleen: There's so much there. I have so many questions I want to ask you. Let's go back to one of the first things you said, which is that you actually begin in many cases by looking at product.
So it sounds like what you're talking about is product led growth, and really going in and looking at what are the opportunities to bake something in -- the product that we have that can itself be a growth driver.
I would love it if you could just talk a little bit more about that.
Kate: It's both from a positioning standpoint, and distribution comes up.
That comes up with SaaS companies a lot. And positioning can come up with B2C, right, of like what is this particular opportunity here?
With direct to consumer you see it because you'll see, like, consumer products that are extremely well designed or they're really hip or something like that. So that's where you'll see that brand move play in really big.
And, and usually with D2C, that's part of the initial product development. But sometimes that can come in as like, how do we do that?
Sometimes it can be, with B2C, how do we build a community around the product, right? So some companies are doing a really good job of using Facebook groups. I think Facebook groups are amazing for marketers right now of, we're going to liberate our whole community and let them build with one another. But what are the rules of that?
So I think there's just a lot there in terms of B2C, it depends. If it's a commodity-based business, it's harder. A lot harder, right? You're looking at, how do we feel different to the buyer? How do we provide a different experience?
If we're not really offering something different, can we deliver it different? Is there really strong brand value that can go throughout the whole company and how would that be protected?
So it really has a lot of different shapes. Think of channel partners or technology partners who are taking our API and installing it.
But is there something more? Is there a way to even scale it bigger than that? Right? Like get like a whole group of individuals selling this thing for you.
So I think it's really out of the box type thinking. And generally at this point, you know, the startup's been going for awhile, they've had some success, they're ready to, you know, commit, and they're ready to scale. They're leaning that way. So it's a really good time to do this work.
How marketers can play a role in the broader business strategy? Kathleen: You're coming in as a marketing advisor. At the same time though, it goes to the core of the business strategy. It's not just a marketing strategy.
If you're talking about putting an evangelist program in place or changing elements of the product or building a certification program, some of these are business strategies.
So how do you navigate that conversation? Because I think often marketers are really challenged with, we're really comfortable staying in our marketing lane. But a lot of the times, when we get out of that lane -- and sometimes it manifests as, you know, we're starting to make recommendations about sales software, other times it's like the things you're talking about that can get rocky if you don't do it right -- how do you approach that?
Kate: Yeah, that's a great statement. It's so true with this early stage stuff that I'm talking about. It's typically before a startup has hired a CFO or a senior level marketer. And so you're working directly with the CEO and they have some marketing resources. They'll have a small agency, they'll have a couple freelancers, right?
Part of their problem is that they don't know who to hire. And most of the time what I tell them is you can't make that hiring decision yet. We don't know what the marketing is, so we don't know what type of marketer to hire, you know?
So I'm a huge proponent of fractional CMOs because I think it's just too early and you don't want to get the wrong person. There's a lot at stake. And I think a lot of startups at that base, they've got revenue coming in, hire a CMO to come in four hours a week and figure this out slowly.
And who realizes that you're going to hire for that position when you know what the direction is? So that's more early stage. And the company usually has maybe five to 10 employees, but marketing's not built out yet at all.
Later on is where you get really more tricky. You've got someone in charge of sales and they have a particular way that they're hiring. Then as a marketer, you're supposed to bring in demand gen, right? And the demand gen you need to bring in is a different skillset than the sellers have. And the sellers were not aware of the software that you have to do.
In my corporate role, it was a rollout plan. I started with HubSpot and got people used to this idea, this is what's going on and why.
Then I moved into Marketo, which is super hard.
Kathleen: I just went in the opposite direction. I went from a company with Marketo to a company with HubSpot and I'm like, "Thank God. It's so much easier."
Kate: And then with Marketo, the sales team was growing. We had to do much more sophisticated type rules and stuff too, because all of a sudden you can have a sales team and you start bringing in all these leads and a sales team does not care.
They don't care. And they're not gonna answer them. And you've got a cultural problem of you have to educate them toward how do you deal with these leads, what it means, their job and that it is, and you have to have support from the management team that this is going to be required.
There's a whole lot and it just really depends on who you're working with and what their background is. You have to take it one step, one day at a time.
So I think it just depends on the team. It depends on where people are. You have to be pretty fluid marketer. You have to be able to say, "This is what I need and it's going to be a process and I'm going to have to get buy in. And so how do I do that?" So you have to be patient.
Kathleen: I think you raised something really important, which is, when you're coming into the job, you're at an advantage because you're working with a CEO. But just one thing I've learned is that when you, when you're in those hiring conversations, you have to, you have to have a conversation about that. I might be making some recommendations that are outside of what you might think of as marketing. How are you going to feel about that? Are you open to it? Are you willing to keep an open mind?
You know, really, really figuring out that the personality type of the founder, the CEO, and whether they're willing to listen and, and consider other things I think is so important at that stage of a company.
Kate: Critical.
Specific strategies that startups can use to drive exponential growth Kathleen: Moving onto something else. You said you started talking about community and I love that topic. I could talk about it forever. And I guess this is, this is part of a bigger question I have, which is, I'd love it if you could share some examples of what you have seen work really well to fuel fast growth in some of the companies you've worked with.
And maybe we could start with community because I came from a company a few jobs ago where we built a very large community and it was huge for us and it was a Facebook community. Through that experience I became really passionate about that.
So that's just one example but, but there may be others. So, specific things that you have seen really deliver for the companies you've worked with.
Kate: It's different for B2B and B2C. So I'll start with B2C because it's the easy, fun one.
What I'm seeing right now that I love are these Facebook groups around certain products.
This is not a client of mine, but it's actually a product I use. There was, what's it called, the meal delivery company that I was using for awhile when I had really busy days. It was all plant-based food and then they had this Facebook group and you could join it and people were just sitting there and they let people post whatever they want. They can sit there and post like "I really hate this smoothie. How am I going to get through this or am I supposed to do this later or not?"
And it's super interesting to watch how that worked because the community moderated the community members for the brand. Brilliant.
People will say, you know, "I did lose weight, I did not lose weight. This is really more about health." And so you start seeing these advocates come up and then they would use those advocates for their Instagram stories and other things.
So that organic way of building a community that moderates itself is really interesting.
Now initially, you have those questions about when do we step in and when do we not, and how do we moderate? I think if you can get by with moderating lightly, but you know, the feel of the brand is so positive, right? So that's a brand value that you have less of those issues but they're going to come up. But I think you have to have a very careful strategy about how to moderate that.
The other thing that people are using a lot on B2B is obviously these micro influencers. There's some startups paying a lot of money for this and it's all over the place. Traction on that sort of slowed down the end of last year and now I'm starting to see clients pick back up on interest in that because everybody's at home and online, right? So we're starting to feel like there's opportunity there.
I'd say if you can build your own organic community, that would be ideal, right? If you can't, you can use these micro influencers and that's great content as well.
I talked to someone last week and their product's working and they're sold out, and they've gotten all this influencer marketing and that helped. But then all of a sudden years later, they don't have brand values.
And so when you're needing to do more, you're needing to build content, you're needing to build demand and you're needing to build, you know, other parts of marketing, if you don't have those brand values built out, then all of a sudden you're like, well, who are we? We were using everyone else for the voice.
So you'll run into that for B2B. It's true here.
I think some of this comes to hiring.
So what I've seen work really well is that you become friends with all the influencers in the industry and you sponsor their podcast and you appear on their podcasts and you go to their events and you just kind of make sure the team knows who the influencers are.
And then you do everything you can to get involved with people at every level. You'll have local events and you'll bring the people in that you know, in that city and have them share their stories.
And so it's a constant kind of industry networking. I've seen that work really, really well on the B2B side. But it's definitely different.
Kathleen: It's so interesting that you say that because I've seen that work really well too, where people have formed strategic relationships with industry influencers and sometimes, not paid as you say. It doesn't always have to be paid. It could just be really showering them with love in the form of, you know, having them on your podcast or going on theirs or commenting and sharing and making introductions.
I worked for a marketing agency for awhile and they did this exact thing and their way of forming those relationships was by offering to make personal branding websites for influencers. That was a great way to get to know them. Then you've done them a favor.
So there are a lot of different ways that that that can be done. I think that's really smart.
How to hit big growth goals on a small budget Kathleen: You work with well-resourced companies that are able to do a lot of these things. Any lessons learned or suggestions for companies that don't have those giant budgets? What are some things they can do in the early days?
Kate: Oh yeah. I love the scrappy brands and helping startup founders. So I advise a lot of startup companies. I love this part of the work cause I obviously identify with it a lot.
Being an entrepreneur for so long, I think, you know, when founders are trying to grow a brand unlimited budget, one thing I always bring up is never forget about email, because if you create an email list of your friends and family and colleagues and anyone that you meet with, those people become very loyal to your process.
If you share with them where you are and what you're going through and what you need help with, they will help. It will absolutely help.
I've seen that be really successful.
Now your tone has to be right because nobody owes you anything and you want to be entertaining and kind of make them feel a part of it. And that's part of the email structure, right? Of like, "Here's what's happening and you know, these exciting things are happening, these challenges are happening. Here's how you can help."
That is the basic format that does incredibly well. And that is one of the main marketing tricks that comes out of the Silicon Valley tech accelerators.
They have all their founders do a weekly email and it works.
I, on my own, I've had open rates of like 90% or higher, very high.
Kathleen: I want to talk about that for a second because I'm fascinated by this. I also believe strongly in email.
I also think that people think of email as this old, tired, dead strategy, but there's some really interesting things being done in the world of email right now.
So you're talking about founders doing a weekly email. Can you peel the layers of that back a little bit for me? What does that look like? Who does it go to?
Kate: Sure. So this is not client facing or customer facing. My personal list is maybe 200 people and it's my closest friends, my family members, colleagues I've worked with for years, people that I've met with on this journey.
So it's people that know what you're up to and what you're striving for basically. But not clients.
Clients and customers would get something different. They don't need to understand the process.
So that email list is specific for friends and family colleagues.
And what you do is, every time you send, you add more people that you've met along the way.
I usually start it with like "Hi friends" or something like that. And then I usually say something seasonal about what's happening in the world and that I'm thinking about them because I am. All these people, they're cheering you on.
And then I'll typically say, if you're new to the list, here's a link to the previous email, right? So that there's some sort of context in there drawn into the story correctly.
And then I'll put some kind of update about where I am or what challenges are happening. And it's usually interesting stuff because when you're building a business, you hit all kinds of things in the world that are happening.
So for example, with Traction Hero, there've been changes in California privacy law, changes in California employment law that have really changed the model. And that stuff is interesting. If you're not in it all day long, it's pretty interesting.
So share the challenges you have.
And then I usually say, "Here's the ways you can help. So if you just open your social accounts, we're now on Instagram. Would love if you would follow," and people will, they'll do it.
Or "If you happen to know a friend who knows anything about X, Y, or Z, would you mind connecting me?" They will.
This technique is straight from accelerator programs and it is a good one.
Kathleen: Do you add these people to the list or do you ask them if they want to opt in? How does that work?
Kate: I add them. I often will mention it to them. Like, "I'm going to add you to my newsletter. Let me know if it's okay."
You're not doing it for a business so the rules are different. This is actually a question I'm curious to know. I mean I still send, so my recommendation is, I send it through MailChimp, their most basic template. And the reason why is people can unsubscribe. It does hurt your feelings a little bit more when someone does that you know.
It's also interesting because if sometimes there'll be like a vendor or somebody and if they offer, I've actually had this happen, someone unsubscribed and I was like, then you're not interested enough in my story for me to pay you.
Kathleen: Yeah. Right.
Kate: Like, if you're not interested enough in this email because this is just basically what's happening with my business, if you're not interested in that, then I mean, I don't think that we'd be a good fit in terms of working together. I mean, I'm not bothering you.
It's like once every six months, I mean slow, but I used to try to do them once a month.
MailChimp's most basic template is perfect. And just text. I mean I throw in, maybe, you know, if I done a new logo design or something, throw it in. But keep it pretty simple. And that way people can unsubscribe.
Kathleen: I'm a big fan of not overly designing emails. I mean these days, most people have the images in their emails turned off by default. And so if you've got a lot of design in there, it just doesn't get seen half the time anyway.
And it looks crappy to have a lot of those image boxes. Like, "Turn your image on," you know, it just doesn't look good. So simpler is better all around with email in my opinion.
Kate: Yeah, I know, I totally agree. And that MailChimp basic template's nice. The fonts big, it works well on mobile. It's, it's a nice one.
These emails still take, I'm going to say it like if I'm fast, two hours. They still take time.
You don't want to bother anybody and you want it to be entertaining and you want it to be, you know, uplifting, even if you're talking about your challenges.
The most important thing is tone. I've seen some of these founder emails and if you use the wrong tone, people are like, "No thanks."
Kathleen: So what is the right tone?
Kate: I think it's friendly and I think it's engaging. You know, I don't think it's like, "Hi friends, hope you're enjoying this day. Please like my Facebook page, please sign up, please send me people who should be customers."
It's not about a million asks. People have a lot going on in their lives.
It's more of like, "Here's what's going on with building this startup right now. Here's what I'm trying to do. Here are the challenges I'm having. And that's interesting to people, because a lot of people haven't gone through it or want to go through it. And you know, entrepreneurship is never a straight line at all.
Kathleen: I love that idea. I mean, that's something that really any founder in any industry can do. I think for some it's going to put them in a place of discomfort because a lot of the founders I've met don't like talking about themselves that much, which is kind of funny because you're going to have to at some point as a founder.
But I think that's neat because that's something you can do that doesn't take really any money, that just takes your time.
Kate: I'd say founders who have marketing backgrounds definitely have a hand up on this one.
In tech accelerators, what would happen is I would send in mine first and then whoever in my batch would typically take mine and copy it. So people need examples of this.
Email me and I'll send you one of my past ones because it does help to see some kind of, you know, formula that's worked for people and it's so much easier for marketers.
Kathleen: I love that. So maybe we'll put Kate's email in the show notes and you can email her and say, Hey, I need your newsletter so you can see what it looks like.
So you had, you said you had some other things to be on that and I took you on a tangent with that one.
Kate: So other things on my list.
Definitely write industry articles on LinkedIn so that you're showing industry expertise and what you're learning. I think that's very important just to start showing industry expertise and that you're connected to the industry.
The other thing I'll say is look for media stories where you might fit in and ping the journalists.
So a quick side story, do we have time for that?
Kathleen: Yeah, go for it.
Kate: When I started my Seattle agency, I had just been through this issue of what's called domain front running, which is when you go in and you're buying a domain and before you can hit checkout, someone takes it from you. So they're capturing it on the domain register thing.
Well, King Five, the big news station in Seattle ran a story about how these guys were making all this money on domain names and how it was such an innovative business.
Well, I got the journalist name and I sent them an email and I said, "I totally disagree with you. This is really bad for entrepreneurs. It's, you know, it's not right. There's some negative things happening that are just unfair."
So they came to the office and filmed me talking about the story about how someone stole my domain name and then sold it back to me for a lot more money than if I'd just been able to push the button. And that was a great opportunity.
I've had a lot of luck. You know, my first startup was around printing cookbooks and I had a lot of luck just calling local news stations and cooking on air. Free PR.
I've gotten a lot of clients placed, um, if you have a consumer based business, there are a lot of news stations that their lunchtime, they'll have like a third hour, they have a third hour. It's usually lifestyle and you can get pretty easily placed on it if you have some sort of presence and something to talk about. They need people for that lifestyle hour.
So always look for PR and media opportunities.
Kathleen: Yeah. And I would say a great resource for that also is help a reporter out -- HARO. I mean that's a no brainer. It doesn't cost anything. You subscribe to it, you get an email, however many times a day with reporters looking for sources for stories. It can be overwhelming, but it also is full of opportunity.
Kate: Yeah, if you have gmail, you can put on a label and then go in and look when you have time. But yeah, that's an awesome recommendation.
Podcast interviews are great. You find people like yourself and you have similar topics and interests.
There are websites like Canva that make building marketing collateral so easy and you look like you know what you're doing design-wise and it doesn't cost you extra money.
So by all means, make your decks, make your one pagers, make collateral for all these different use cases. Think about collateral.
Kathleen: Oh my God, I have to stop you and just say, I am the biggest Canva fan girl on the planet. I am not a designer. I do not know how to use the Adobe suite to design anything.
That's the one thing I've just realized. I'm not, I don't have the aptitude for it, but I can go into Canva and make the most beautiful things and I do it probably four times a day. I love it. Yes. It's amazing.
Kate: Yeah. Canva, huge. When you get later on in your startup and you have to have brand differentiation and you know, you don't want to use simple stuff, that's different. Early on, use Canva, print this stuff, have leave behinds for customers.
It doesn't cost that much money to just really work on your marketing collateral.
I think also when you're on the topic of press, look at your local press opportunities, where can you talk at local events, whatever works locally. We'll end up working in different geographies and at larger scale. So learn locally first and that stuff is free. It just takes time.
And also work on your industry. So look, so look at this stuff in terms of, are you being, are you B2B or B2C? So where does that fall in? Then look at your media, look at it local and look at an industry as well.
And then you want to start growing your community in terms of media.
I see entrepreneurs, it's kind of painful to see that they're trying to do all the platforms and it's terrible on all of them.
Just choose the ones that are most relevant and a couple to start and just start figuring it out.
There's some great tools. A lot of people are saying, "Well, I don't want Twitter because it's not working."
Okay. But the thing about it, the people who are on Twitter right now are really passionate and they stay on it. They're a very, very, very passionate bunch.
My favorite Twitter tool for growing a Twitter audience is called Jooicer, which is J. O. O. I. C. E. R. Have you seen it? It's awesome. It's like 30, 40 bucks and will grow your Twitter audience for you beautifully.
So you know, find tools like that.
And again, like we were saying with Canva, you can make beautiful social media posts in Canva since you now have to have more designed content. Use Canva for that.
Kathleen: Yeah, I love this and I will tell you right now as the head of marketing at a startup, I use Canva, I use helper a reporter out.
I totally, totally agree with you on those suggestions. Those are great.
Kate's advice for startup founders Kathleen: Well we are running low on time. So any last words of advice for startup founders out there who really want to take that fast path to growth?
Kate: Yeah, I think the important thing is to try to not get overwhelmed. And so what I recommend doing is, do a list of 10 to 15 different things. You can try figure out a small test for that, that's feasible. Like, if it's an ad unit, put enough money so it's actually worth the test and go through and test them and concentrate on one thing, like one thing a week, step by step by step.
If you try to do it all at one time, you get really overwhelmed and it ends up not diluting the quality of it. So, one foot in front of the other is what I always tell people.
Kathleen: Yeah. That's good.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Now changing gears because I have two questions I always ask all of my guests. We're all about inbound marketing on this podcast. So when you think about inbound, is there a particular company or individual that you can point to that you think is really doing it well?
Kate: The first thing that popped in my mind was not what you asked. It was a company that helps people do it well. I really like Unbounce for landing pages. I think you can get a very beautiful landing page up quickly.
I would have to think on that. I think, sorry, I was not prepared for this one.
Kathleen: That's okay. Unbounce is a good suggestion actually. I can just keep that.
Kate: Okay. I'm a huge proponent of Unbounce. There are other cheaper tools, but I really like the quality of Unbounce.
Kathleen: Yeah, they're a great company. Second question, the biggest pain point I hear from marketers is that they can't keep pace with all of the different ways that digital marketing is changing. So how do you personally stay up to date with all of it?
Kate: Being an agency owner, I've spent a lot of time and resources going through MarTech tools and organizing them. If anybody wants these reports, just please email me.
And that helped organize my brain a lot and help me understand if I was doing the right thing or not. So we've done reports where we analyze CRM tools. There's one on website development tools. We've got one on email marketing and one on marketing automation.
What those reports did, because in my head I just couldn't keep it all straight, was say here are the solutions, here are all the features that they all have comparatively. And then here are the integrations they have.
Because I think what's so hard about MarTech right now is it's not only like I like this product, so I've got 20 products I have to put together.
And when you're going out to buy, it's, it's not a great way for marketers to have to spend time of like, which tool, and having to analyze this themselves.
So one of my goals to help marketers is to say, here's some reports. Go through everything that you need to know and hopefully you can pick a tool or at least narrow it down to two or three that you should get a free trial on before you commit to it.
So I think any website like that, save yourself time on evaluating tools. Find people who've done the research for you. I think that that is really overwhelming.
Kathleen: That's so true. It is. It's a lot. There's so many MarTech tools now.
How to connect with Kate Kathleen: All right, well we're just about out of time. So Kate, if somebody's listening and they want to learn more about you or traction hero or they want to reach out and ask a question, what's the best way for them to connect with you?
Kate: Katewalling.com is my personal website and Tractionhero.com is for the agency. It's a very landing page type website. Right now we're kind of building, um, by doing the work first.
You can always reach out to me on my email, which is kate[at]katewalling.com or Twitter, which my handle is @Katewalling.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: All right, fantastic.
If you're listening and you liked what you've heard or you learned something new, please head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcasts a five star review so we can get in front of some more folks just like you.
And of course, if you know anybody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest.
That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Kate. Stay healthy.
Kate: Thank you so much for having me.
How does Charles Alexander generate anywhere from 100% to 1200% ROI for his customers using animated explainer videos?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, small business advisor and video creator Charles Alexander explains how he helps customers create animated explainer videos, and how those videos are quickly generating huge returns on investment.
From why and when to use an animated explainer, to how the video production process works and how companies can use animated explainer videos in their marketing and sales process, Charles shares a wealth of knowledge on these types of videos, along with how you can create them yourself if you don't want to outsource.
Highlights from my conversation with Charles include:
- Charles is a small business coach who also has a business creating 90 second explainer videos.
- He specializes in working with people in an advisory role (ex. real estate agents, insurance agents, financial advisors, etc.) and helping them more clearly explain how they stand out from the competition.
- Charles says that 80% of online traffic today is video, and whether people like to admit or not, video is one of the main ways we all consume information.
- Unfortunately, many people are either very uncomfortable being on camera or very awkward when they are, and an animated video is an inexpensive way of reaping the rewards of video without having to put a subject matter expert on camera.
- The main reason to create video of any kind is to build what Charles calls a "know, like and trust factor" with your audience.
- Many people are uncomfortable or awkward being on video, and creating animated videos is one way to move quickly with video even where the subject matter expert either cannot or will not appear on video themselves.
- Charles's process for creating videos begins with his customer filling out a six question form that is all about their end client. He asks about the people they work with, the problem they solve, how they solve the problem, why they're different, what the steps are, and what the end result is.
- From that, he writes a 250 word script, which equates roughly to a 90 second finished video.
- 90 seconds is the sweet spot because anything shorter makes it hard to get a point across, and with anything longer, it can be tough to hold the attention of your audience.
- This also forces his customer to strip away all of the jargon and useless information that they might typically include on their websites and boil everything down to a simple story that is customer-focused.
- From there, Charles sends the finished script to a professional voice over artist, marries the audio with video that he creates, and produces a finished product.
- Charles has created a 12 point checklist that walks his clients through how they can use their animated explainer videos in their marketing and sales. It includes advice on using it for social media, on your website homepage, and in follow up emails to customers and prospects.
- The cost to create an animated explainer video can range anywhere from $300 to $20,000. Charles charges $999 for one video, but also offers packages with volume discounts.
- For many of Charles's customers, the payback period on this investment is very quick. He's had customers who have used his videos in their marketing and sales process and almost immediately closed new deals. For one client, landing one new customer meant 100% ROI, and for another, one new customer from a video translated to 1200% ROI.
- Charles is very transparent and shared that he uses software called VYOND to create his videos. He says anyone can do it, but it makes sense financially to outsource because of the learning curve and the amount of time you would need to spend.
Resources from this episode:
- Check out Charles' website at www.yourcharlesalexander.com
- Connect with Charles on LinkedIn
- Follow Charles on Facebook
- Check out some examples of videos that Charles has created for business owners, financial management companies, and insurance agencies.
Listen to the podcast to learn when to use animated explainers, and how they can help grow your business.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week my guest is Charles Alexander, who is an expert in making story-based animated explainer videos. Welcome Charles.
Alessio and Kathleen recording this episode.
Charles Alexander (Guest): Thank you so much Kathleen. I appreciate you guys having me on.
About Charles Alexander Charles: Just real quick about me. I have a couple of things that I do. I am a full time, small business coach and right now I am as about as busy as I have ever been working with small business owners in a trying time.
But also I have started, probably three years ago, creating 90 second explainer videos for people in an advisory role. A lot of financial advisors, insurance agents and other people that consider themselves advisers on what they're doing to stand out in the corral, work with their potential clients and really tell the story of how they help them
Kathleen: Love it. That's the perfect segue into me saying, if you're listening, this is the first inbound success podcast interview I have done now that the world, or at least the United States, is kind of quarantined and, and we're all working out of our homes.
And so I'm gonna preface this with, we're probably going to have audio issues on this interview because I'm using Zoom to record and I don't know how many of you out there listening have been using Zoom, but the world has definitely discovered it as a tool for video conferencing.
And so it is great for zoom. But they're having some bandwidth issues. If I had a crystal ball, I'd say that there are going to be some audio glitches as we talk today.
So if you're listening, please have patience. Bear with us. We're going to do the best we can to get through it as I know everyone is doing during this time, but you know, it's important to keep things going.
So with that, Charles, how did you get into making animated explainer videos?
How Charles got started making animated explainer videos Charles: So, as I said, I am also a small business coach for a small business development center. And about four or five years ago, I decided I needed to probably eat some of my own dog food so to speak. And I thought, "Oh, there's a variety of things that I'm capable of doing." I always write, create content, training material.
So I started out by doing some website content and email marketing for CPAs and banks. And one of the very first CPAs I made a pitch to, I had basically three tiered pricing -- anchor pricing, same as the rest of us. And one of the pitches was the high highest price item was that I would take the written content and create videos out of it.
Well at the time, I really didn't know how to create videos. I was using that to get them to pick the middle pricing.
The only videos I had made at that point were home videos. So I had to quickly learn on the fly. And the first few I made were pretty bad. They were actually a bunch of still images of me doing the voiceover.
And for you guys listening out there, this is a very Southern accent. You know it's cute for about five minutes and then it wears on you.
Either way. I made videos. Even though the videos were bad, they still beat the written content and I realized I was quickly on to something.
So from there I'll fast forward to where I am today. I learned a variety of different softwares, finally settled in on one that really works, have a formula that works for creating a story for my clients that helps them stand out and be set apart.
So this is, you know, the part time gig is basically the equivalent now we're bigger than the full time gig and I work exclusively with a bunch of fine folks that are out there trying to create some kind of content that ties everything else together.
And that's what an explainer video really does. And I like animated because you know, people can relate to it, it lowers their guard a little bit. You can have a lot of fun with it and still be professional.
Why animated videos? Kathleen: Yeah. So that's, that's interesting that you just said that because that was going to be my next question was I feel like within the marketing world at least, it's been incredible for me to watch in the last few years how companies have begun to embrace video and to recognize that it's really becoming a necessary part of the marketing mix just because of the way -- and this is at least my theory -- the way people consume content.
I mean when you look at younger generations and how YouTube has supplanted television and most other forms of content, you know, you can see the tide has turned and people want to consume information via video.
So I'm curious though, knowing that that's the case, when when a marketer or a business owner is thinking about having to use video to market their business, when is the right time to use animated versus talking head or some other form of video?
Charles: That's a question I often get. And going back to what you were saying just a second ago about video becoming more popular, we're close to about 80% of online traffic being video. And that's not decreasing. That's increasing.
That trend will not reverse anytime soon or even at all. And it's not just millennials, it's gen Xers, it's baby boomers.
People that say "Well, I'd really rather read something than watch it" because it sounds more sophisticated -- they're not telling the truth. The data doesn't lie on that.
So when somebody says to me, well, should we do a talking head video or should I have an animated video? I tell folks that if they're trying to build a know, like, and trust factor and they think that their face on camera can do it and they can speak through it clearly enough and they can tell an interesting enough story, you know, maybe you should go for it.
But what I have found, especially a lot of the professional advisers that I work with, they are awesome in a workshop. They do well in a one-on-one presentation, but something about the red light on that camera takes them from Zig Ziglar to Elmer Fudd and they aren't suddenly so clean and easy. There's a lot of bad talking head videos out there.
I'm heavy in the LinkedIn. Same with Facebook. Same with Instagram. There's a lot of, as you scroll through, somebody awkwardly adjusting the camera and looking into it, and then the first 30 seconds is, "Hey um, hey guys, well here again, so I wanted to share my thoughts, blah, blah, blah." And then they ramble for five minutes and never really come to a point. Or if they come to a point, it's generic.
So I learned that a lot of these folks can save time, effort and energy, spend a couple of bucks, but use that time -- I mean, the money they spend is well invested because they'll have a video that they can use forever. An evergreen a piece of content as I like to call it, and it ties in all of their other marketing and it will make them way more money than they ever spent on it, versus the bad talking head video that convinces them that video doesn't work.
I kind of equate that to exercise. People will tell me, "Well, I tried video once and it didn't work" is the equivalent of saying, you know, "I bought an elliptical or the Peloton bike. I rode it for a week and I'm still, you know, I'm not in the shape I want. What's wrong with it?"
What's the process for creating a 90 second animated explainer video? Kathleen: I wish it worked that way. I wish I could just do it for a weekend. I would buy lots of Pelotons.
It's interesting because there are a lot of people that are uncomfortable on camera for sure. And so this does seem like it could be a good way to, for them at least, you know, unless and until they're able to get comfortable or to be trained to the point where they're good on camera too, to not let that be a thing that stands in their way.
So, if somebody wants to do this, talk me through the steps. Like, if somebody comes to you and says, "Hey, I want to do it. I want to do a video. What's your process?"
Charles: I high five them first.
But then after that, my process, and this is my process, anybody can use their own. I have them fill out a simple six question form that allows me to write their script. The simple six question form is really focusing on their client.
And I think that's where a lot of people miss the boat when they create any kind of script. They generally make it all about themselves.
But the client really doesn't care that much about you. I mean, only in the fact that you can help them in some way, shape, form, or fashion. But they're, they're there to hear more about them.
So, you know, if I'm creating it for Kathleen, you fill out this simple six question form about the people you work with and the problem you solve. And then a couple of questions are about how you solve the problem and why you're different, and then what the steps are and then what the end result is.
And from there I'll write a 250 word script. And to me, 250 words is important because that keeps it at about a 90 second range.
Anything shorter than 90 seconds makes it very difficult for you to get your message across. But then anything longer than 90 seconds gosh, almost has to be Oscar nominated worthy in order to hold our attention.
Kathleen: That's interesting because 250 words is not a lot. So you gotta be tight. You gotta be really careful with how you say things.
Charles: And that's where you know, I think that's where we have a big benefit beyond just the video because I've had to force people through an uncomfortable exercise they really haven't done before.
So if you take, let's say, I'll use financial advisors as an example. You go to the average financial advisor website and it is filled with words, all of them, lots of text, lots of jargon. "Customer service", "best in class", blah, blah, blah -- same thing that everyone else says.
When you want to put that into a video, it takes away from a quicker and a finer point that you can make where you're focusing on your customer. Telling them all that stuff is basically telling them nothing cause everybody else is the same thing. So it doesn't matter. You not saying it doesn't make them say "Well they must have crappy customer service because they never told me how world-class they were."
So we really scale all that back, take all of that out and make it really fine tuned to make it story based, to make a focus on the customer. And at about 250 words we can do that.
And then, you know, from there the process is really simple. I'll take the a script, I send it off to a professional voiceover artists. And when I say I take the script, I let the customer review and edit, tweak it, but the professional voiceover artists does it, gets it back to me and then I create the video and then my client has unlimited revisions of the video until they're happy with it.
Once they're happy with it, I lock it in and send it to them.
How to use animated explainer videos in your marketing and sales Kathleen: All right. Now do you have any guidance for your clients when you work with them about what should they do with the video once they get it?
Charles: I sure do. I actually created a 12 point checklist that they can follow step by step. And I don't tell them to use all 12 examples of how to use video -- find three or four that really work for you.
And that goes back to figuring out who's your best customer in the begin with. And where are they? Social media is always kind of the layup answer, but that's not the only answer.
As a matter of fact, where I have found this thing really works best is on the home page of your website. When people come to you, most likely, even though you have a variety of marketing methods, they're coming to you through referral and word of mouth.
That is still the preferred method. And that's still the way a lot of people will find you. But if they find out about you, and they probably also asked somebody else, and a friend referred, you know, to this insurance agent and that insurance agent, what's the first thing they do?
They don't necessarily pick up the phone and call anymore. They do what? They visit your website.
So if you had that nice little video above the fold, so to speak, what's the first thing they see? They will watch it. The competitors' website? Don't worry, it'll have some bad stock images they see on all the other websites with a bunch of jargon. But they'll watch your video and if the video they watch is about themselves, the story opens and it's got the average person that's in the same situation they are and it goes through this hero's journey, so to speak, over they have the issue, they find the helpful guide. In this case, that insurance agent finds the right policy at the right price and then they kind of go back to their life as normal. That's gonna resonate and mean something to them.
And then also when they contact you, you should have an email followup unless you just close them right away. Well, the email followup does not need to be, again, a bunch of texts, a bunch of jargon or a boring PDF.
Send them a different video, a follow up video or that, you know, again, kind of tells their story that those two things are almost, well, not almost, those two things are worth it in itself if you never use the video in any other way.
But yes, I give them extra instructions on how to use it on Facebook or LinkedIn. More importantly on those tools, where it really works is in the inbox or in the messenger apps.
If you're sending somebody a one on one message and chatting back and forth with them, that animated video will make you stand out very quickly versus just anything else you could possibly send them.
But then on top of that, you know, regular email marketing, during your presentations, there's just a ton of ways to use an animate a video like that.
What does it cost to create animated explainer videos? Kathleen: You talked in the beginning about how you work with small businesses and I really love that because I do feel like it's easy to talk about best practice marketing for big companies with big budgets and lots of experts on their teams.
But I've been a small business owner and I've walked in the shoes of that person who's like, "I don't have the money and I only have, you know, three employees" or, or "It's just me. I'm a solopreneur. I'm the owner, the salesperson, the dishwasher, the vacuumer and the marketer."
So I love exploring ways that small businesses can get better marketing results.
Putting that hat back on right now, the question that that person is always going to have when they hear something like this is, can I afford it?
So can you talk a little bit about what it costs to do this kind of video?
Charles: I'll give you what the investment is that I ask for from my clients, and in kind of a generic way, what is it all the way across the board?
It's still a wide variance. There's a lot of folks that will create something truly custom made that, you know, 15, 20 grand that you know, is unlike anything you've seen.
And then you have few out there that will do it for three or 400 bucks, but they're probably overseas. You won't be able to talk to him or you ever get an update on it ever. And it might not be the quality you want.
So I kind of tell folks where I'm at is the loaded Camry, so to speak.
Kathleen: I love it.
Charles: I'm not the Yugo that's falling apart in the driveway.
Kathleen: I drove a Camry for a long time and you know what? Those cars last forever.
Charles: Boom. Great example I made. But yeah, they're great. So I have three video packages -- a single video, two videos, or three or more videos.
The single video is only $999. I take care of everything from beginning to end and the only work my clients do is fill out a six question form. And from there I, I do all of the work. They just have to approve it and then they'll get a video 17 days or less from script approval.
The most popular one I have though is the three or more videos at only $797 each. And those are even invoiced out monthly through PayPal. So it fits within somebody's marketing budget.
And what I see quite a bit is that somebody will have an an idea of what they want for their homepage video that's a kind of not just about their customer but explains who they are, why they're different.
But then past that, people will have different targets or different niches. And I know you probably say niche, but I'm right here in middle Tennessee. We say niche.
Kathleen: Potato, Patato, nish, neesh.
Charles: They have different things they offer. They have one or two other products or services that they really want to advertise and make sure that people are aware of or they may have different customer bases that, you know, if it's, let's say it's business to business, maybe you target healthcare, but then you also target CPA firms.
Listen, you know, if it's direct to consumer, you might have a product that targets women ages 30 to 40, but you also have a product that targets men 55 to 65 that are soon to retire, needs a golf lessons, whatever it is.
You can create additional videos for that. And the investment piece is simple because in most cases you need a client literally to probably pay for it. And then you know, you're, you're ahead of the game and then you've got the evergreen content you can use forever and will continue to help you close those clients.
The ROI of animated explainer videos Kathleen: That's great.
Now you've done this for plenty of small businesses. Can you talk a little bit about what impact it has had for them in their marketing? Because of course on this podcast, we're all about results and how that translates into results.
So what has this done for your clients?
Charles: So just a couple of quick examples. I remember I had a pest control client that wanted one for termite damage. They created a fun and engaging video that explained how termite damage affected the client's home in this video. They sent it out in one of their email marketing newsletters and closed, I forget how many, she said several clients immediately. They watched the video and then right away after, after watching, called them and quoted what the video had told him. He said, "Hey, we need you guys come out and check right away."
One of the best ones I had was for a real estate agent. She had a series of six videos where she would, you know, upon initially meeting a client, she had a followup video and then it was a, she had them about buying, selling, pricing, negotiating.
She said there was a particular client that, well, somebody that became a client, but as they were going through the process, you know, they were still kind of feeling around, shopping around, and you know, that's a very personal process -- finding somebody that can help you with your biggest investment. But she said toward the end, right before they became a client, the husband and wife were sitting there and the husband started saying something that was a little negative and the wife said, "Hey honey, we're not going to be like those people in that video that are, you know, being negative about selling a house." She quoted a line from the video. They all laughed and then immediately signed Sandy to become their real estate agent.
Kathleen: Oh, that's funny. I love it. So have any of them been able to, I mean it sounds like they have real, concrete stories of like these people became, my client. Have any of them been able to share, like I, you know, I made this much more money because of my video or translate any of that into dollars?
Charles: I'd love to give you these great stories about how they told me all about their ROI. And what I've discovered is that even though I'm creating these videos, they have to already have in place a way to truly measure great return on investment. Do you know how many people out there are really measuring return on investment for marketing dollar?
Kathleen: Yeah. Especially in a small business community. That's, that's tough.
Charles: It's well, they, they do it by the number of clients. And in this particular case, you know, Sandy, for that one client alone, that was a $400,000 plus dollar house or whatever, you know, 6% of that was, but that was just that one client only or the termite, you know, that's a, they were doing Sentricon not the board paper with details, but that's $2,000.
Kathleen: So let's actually do the math on that. A $400,000 house, and I'm really bad at math, so I might get this wrong. Four times, you know, let's say you get half the commission because you're only the buyer agent or the seller agent. So $12,000 on a $1,000 spend. So that's a 1200% ROI.
Charles: Awesome. See, that's what I need to be out there. I have some content written on ROI. And I've got 40 plus testimonials on my page, but when I come back to ask people to help me calculate it, they kind of, they're on to their next thing. It exists. It works. But you know...
Kathleen: No, but that's, those are great stories because like, even the termite thing, if it's a $2,000 sale, you know, that's double. Right? Right, right. So I love that.
So it definitely points to, you know, this can be a really quick way to, to see some increased sales quickly. I love that story.
And, and I would love to include links to example videos in the show notes. So send me some links, Charles. We will put all the links in. So if you're listening and you want to see examples of these kinds of videos, head to the show notes.
Getting started with animated explainer videos Kathleen: So what advice do you have for somebody who's listening and thinking that they might be interested in doing this?
Charles: So first and foremost you can actually go to my site and you can find that six question form there at yourcharlesalexander.com.
So the first question is if you should do it, you know, there's, I've already, I felt like I've already made the case. You need a video in some way, shape, form, or fashion. You probably need three or six.
So the next thing is, do I want to do it? And I don't tell folks not to do it. And I know if they're in a real startup phase and they're trying to wear all the hats, maybe that, maybe that's a scenario where you need to start and try to create your own. There are some tools out there you can use.
I'll even tell you the software I use is Vyond -- V Y O N D. And it's got a ton of competition out there. Toonly, VideoScribe, Moovly anything it ends in L Y, obviously. Powtoons.
But the point is you can create your own, but in most cases it looks like you created your own. I tell folks, where's your time better spent?
This goes back to my small business coaching hat. Are you better off working on the business or in the business, or are you going to be the one that is doing the $10 or $15 an hour activity? Are you the $150 to $200 an hour person now?
And you need to outsource that to somebody else and figure out where the true return on investment is. And that's when you decide if you should outsource it or not.
Kathleen: Amen to that because I have played around with some of those tools in the past and I'm not a video person. Yeah.
Charles: Like anything else, once you start digging into it, you find there's a lot of nuances with it.
Kathleen: Right. Let me just tell you, I could lose days trying to create a 90 second video. No, it would not be good. So that's, that's interesting.
I appreciate you sharing the names of those platforms because it's good to, to, you know, and it's not smoke and mirrors. I like that you're, you're really transparent about that and that you shared your prices. That is very inboundy of you. That's awesome.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Cool. Well, let's shift gears. I have two questions I always ask all my guests, and I'd love to hear your answers to them.
The first one is, you know, we are all about inbound marketing on this podcast. And I'm curious, when you think of inbound marketing, is there a particular company or individual that you think is doing it really well? Right now?
Charles: John Nemo from LinkedIn Riches, and he has a variety of online content that he creates, but it's all about inbound marketing and one-on-one messaging.
So I'm a heavy LinkedIn user and he talks quite a bit about, you know, especially if you're doing B2B or you're using other businesses to help you create a center of influence to get clients, Linkedin is a fantastic platform, but a lot of people still don't know how it works.
I hear comment time and time again, "Man, you know, I created one a few years back. But I check it now and again, I really don't understand it. It's just like somewhere where I post my resume or people tried to poach me to go work at a different job or do something, do something else or sell me something."
John has created a really good business for himself. And he has his own podcast Nemo radio. But if you ever get a chance to interview somebody that really understands how that works, how to create evergreen content, how to bring in inbound clients over and over, he's your man.
Kathleen: And is that Nemo? N? E M. O?
Charles: That is, just like the fish.
Kathleen: All right, I'll check that out.
And then the second question is, you know, the, the most common pain point I hear from just about every marketer I talk to is that they feel overwhelmed with how quickly the world of digital marketing is changing and how hard it is to stay up to date with all of that.
So how do you personally stay up to date with all of those changes?
Charles: So what I do is I have found three or four things that really work for me. Not every single thing on planet earth, not every social media platform, not every email marketing tool, not every CRM. Find the three or four that really work for me and stick with those.
It doesn't mean you can't be aware of other tools that might be better, that you might need to change. But like you just said, they're changing all of the time. So one of the big questions I always get is "Charles, since this is video, you must know everything there is about SEO, Facebook ads, Google pay per click." And I tell them, actually no. There's a ton of other video folks that do that. They're knee deep in it and it changes every minute of every day. I don't do that.
What I have really works for me. Again, I've already mentioned his LinkedIn, so I stay on top of that. You know, I've got John and I stay connected with him and keep up with his content. So I figured out what the changes are through him.
For email marketing, that's something I read up on and stay up on. But quite frankly it has stayed the same throughout all of this, which is crazy. People will tell me from time to time, they don't feel like it works. But I can tell you right now, email marketing in terms of social media has about three times the number of accounts that social media does all put together and it has stayed the same.
So there's not a lot to stay on with it other than creating something that's compelling. Just think about it simply. What would you want to watch or read? If it's a bunch of jargon and a boring stuff, don't do it.
It's that simple. It's a litmus test.
And you know, those are the primary things.
I hope this is a still fits within an inbound marketing, but I still do some old school stuff. My best clients and my centers of influence, I write them notes. I send them stuff in the mail.
Even just this last week I had created basketball cards. It was supposed to be for the NCAA tournament. So I told them, you know, I had some downtime from not watching the NCAA tournament. So I create these silly little basketball cards with their cartoon picture on it, instant stats and send it all to them. And I got tons of feedback from how much they enjoyed this.
So to answer your original question, find your lane, find two or three influencers so to speak, and then just stay on top of it. Don't get overwhelmed and try to be all things all people
Kathleen: Amen. And you know, it's, it's funny that you say that about the cards and March madness. I had a lot of plans in my marketing strategy to do some direct mail that was kind of account based marketing and that's gone out the window because nobody's at their office to receive it. So we all have to shift gears right now. Right?
Charles: The word, the word "pivot" hasn't been overused at all, has it?
How to connect with Charles Kathleen: No, no, no, definitely. Well, thank you so much Charles. This has been so interesting. If somebody wants to learn more about the videos or get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Charles: It's super easy. Go to my website. I got really creative with the name -- yourcharlesalexander.com.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: All right, I'll put that link in the show notes and thank you Zoom for mostly not glitching out on us in this conversation.
Charles: I think we did pretty good.
Kathleen: So yeah, so hopefully this, this'll be a bellwether of things to come for future future podcast interview recordings.
But if you're listening and you enjoyed this, like what you heard, I would really appreciate it if you would head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast a five star review. That is how we get found by more listeners.
And of course, if you know someone who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to interview them.
That's it for this week. I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy and we'll see you next time. Thanks, Charles.
Charles: Thank you.
How did 16-year old online learning company Mindvalley double the size of its user base in a year?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Mindvalley head of marketing Alessio Pieroni talks about the company's internationalizing strategy, and how entering new markets fueled dramatic growth.
From translating versus dubbing content, to what international expansion means for hiring, how your social media strategy needs to change, and what to consider when localizing your product, Alessio talks about all of the different dimensions of internationalization.
Check out the episode to hear more about the impact that internationalizing has had on Mindvalley's business, and the advice that Alessio has for anyone thinking of entering new markets.
Highlights from my conversation with Alessio include:
- Mindvalley is an online learning company that focuses on teaching people the things they can't learn in school.
- The company has been around for 16 years and has historically focused on english speaking markets.
- In 2011, Mindvalley first attempted to enter international markets but was not successful because they tried to recruit employees to star in their online course videos, rather than the company's founder Vishen, who had always been the face of the brand.
- After that experience, they refocused on english markets again, but then a year ago, they were approached by someone who wanted to translate their course material into Spanish and market it in Mexico.
- They did it as an experiment and put some advertising dollars behind it, and were able to realize ROI in 5 days.
- After that early success, the company copied that same formula and now has course materials in Spanish, Portuguese, French and German.
- In just the Spanish speaking market, Mindvalley was able to add 1.2 million new users in 10 months, and now the company's Spanish customer base is larger than its English speaking customer base.
- This year, Mindvalley plans to add courses in Italian, Arabic, Japanese, and Indian to its offerings.
- Alessio says that the keys to the company's success are the quality of its courses and years of data, which it has leveraged to develop pay-per-click advertising programs that have allowed it to quickly scale growth.
- The company's cost to acquire a new customer in the US is between $8 and $10, whereas in Spanish speaking markets it is between $1 and $2.
- Going international is more complicated than it might seem and it's important to get details like language right. For example, with Spanish language material, they had to determine whether to use a South American accent or a Spanish one, and whether to dub the course material or subtitle it.
- There are other challenges as well, such as different payment processors and cultural attitudes towards credit cards versus cash.
- As the company has entered new markets, it has relied on contractors to help create course material.
- In some markets, it has had to outsource social media and paid advertising.
- Mindvalley has not yet localized the UI of its product as that would require a significant investment in technology.
- Alessio says that these efforts have resulted in the company doubling and nearly tripling its business in a year.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Mindvalley website
- Connect with Alessio on LinkedIn
Listen to the podcast to learn how Mindvalley experienced its strongest growth ever by internationalizing its marketing -- and what you need to know if you're considering marketing to an international audience.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week my guest is Alessio Pieroni, who's the head of marketing for Mindvalley. Welcome Alessio. Alessio Pieroni (Guest): Thank you so much for having me. So excited to be in this podcast.
Kathleen: Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. And fun fact, I am sitting here at 8.00 a.m on a Friday in my office and you are sitting there at what time?
Alessio: That's 9.00 p.m Kuala Lumpur time.
Kathleen: 9.00 p.m, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia time in the hot weather, whereas I am sitting here and it is cold and rainy and dark. So I think you win this one because it's not even happy hour, it's Friday night party time in the beautiful tropical Malaysia.
About Alession Pieroni and Mindvalley Kathleen: Thank you for joining me and maybe we could just start by having you tell my audience a little bit about yourself and who you are and what Mindvalley is.
Alessio: Yeah, absolutely. I like to define myself as a full stack marketer. Because in my experience in the past six or seven years I've been working different areas of marketing.
So I started out around email marketing and funnel marketing, went on then going deeper into organic traffic and SEO. And then from there I moved into Product Marketing and conversion rate optimization till the last one took about two years ago where I'm managing an entire marketing division for Mindvalley, where I kind of need to be a generalist.
To speak a bit about Mindvalley, Mindvalley is the biggest personal grow the education platform in the world. And what we like to say that we do is that we take all the kind of education that traditional education doesn't teach you, and we bring it to you.
So education, for example, teaches you accounting, but doesn't teach you how to be rich. It teaches you science, but doesn't teach you nutrition, or does not teach you fitness. It teaches you a lot of things but doesn't teach you memory, doesn't teach mindfulness, doesn't teach you to be a great parent and lover, or how to be happy.
And that's kind of our mission to the world -- to bring that great education to the life of everyone so that everyone can improve their own life and live a happy life.
And we'e been doing that since about 16 years ago now. And now privy to about 10 million people reach across our social media. We have about four million users on our platform and hundreds of thousands of customers every year.
So it's an exciting company to work for definitely.
Kathleen: The world's largest personal growth and learning platform. And it's interesting to me that your focus is on that gap between like what you can learn from a book or a class, a normal school versus what you really need to know for life.
I feel like that's actually kind of what we do on the podcast. It's like, you can take marketing classes in school but what are the things they never teach you?
Alessio: Absolutely. I just had this discussion few weeks ago with some marketing students that came to our office and they were asking me some questions about how they could actually nurture their careers and I was like -- I speak frankly -- like, university will never teach you Facebook ads. It is too new for you to learn something like that in university.
Take university for what it is, but once you're out of university you learn so much more. And there is so much non formal education. And I believe that podcasts are changing the world for that. It's so beautiful, so much free and amazing education is out there and I love to market it every day.
Kathleen: Absolutely. I learn so much just from hosting this podcast and talking to people like yourself.
And that's one of the reasons I was looking forward to talking with you because you bring, I think, a different experience than a lot of the other guests I've had.
Specifically, Mindvalley is headquartered in Malaysia. It's grown considerably in the last few years. I mean, it was already experiencing a very healthy pace of growth. But then in the last couple of years, the company really made this decision to go more international. And that has just fueled this tremendous uptick in the company's growth.
So, we've talked a lot about many different aspects of marketing on this podcast, but one of the things we really haven't covered much is international marketing and what it means when you want to start selling into different markets around the world from a geographic standpoint, from language, cultural standpoint, etcetera.
So I am so excited to dig into this with you. But let's start.
Mindvalley's international growth Kathleen: And can you talk a little bit about what that journey has been? And when did the company start thinking about going international? What was it doing before that? What was the pre international phase? And that sort of thing?
Alessio: Absolutely. So Mindvalley has been very focused on the English language and on covering all the markets that are English speaking. And we're pretty big on that.
And with it, with the wave of internationalization that we have been trying to do in 2011 - 2012, we like to say that that was a bit of a failure as a company.
What happened exactly in this case is that, Mindvalley, for the ones that are not familiar with our business model, we have a host, which is our CEO and founder Vishen, and he's the one basically hosting the personal growth and learning from all over the world.
And what we were doing 2011 and 2012 is that we tried to recruit some great employee and make them host in their own languages.
So Vishen wasn't any more the face of Mindvalley, but that employee was the face of Mindvalley in that language. And it was okay for maybe a couple of years. But then it definitely wasn't the right way to scale up. And all these kind of businesses that we were starting around the world kind of faded away and we kind of stopped them.
So for the next few years, we focused completely on English. Last year, we actually got a call from a guy that's in the marketing space from Mexico. And he was simply telling us, "guys, I really believe so much in Mindvalley, I really believe so much of what you guys do, can I translate your content in Spanish?".
And we were just like, you know what, that just such a small bag that we can play Just give him a product will pay him very little amount of money just to test out and see what will happen.
And what seemed to happen is that in this time we simply translated the program, keeping Vishen as our host. And after translating the program, we simply tried to say, "What would happen, now that we have this program, if we just put some advertising budget on that? What will happen?"
And the results were shocking. We're this very small firm, and we have been having such a big growth for a new market, which we weren't in, given the little investment that we made in the beginning. We literally paid it back in about five days.
When we looked at that, we were like, "Wow! Really, like, that's incredible."
And, so that simple little experiment that we did in a very random way, from that we said, "Okay, maybe this is something that is so much bigger", and that's when we started to actually assemble a team around that, and we started looking into the different languages that we can actually work on, which is the prioritization of languages. And how we can actually scale up this entire system.
So one year and a half later, we are now in four different languages -- Spanish, Portuguese, French and German.
We added, just in the Spanish speaking market, 1.2 million users in 10 months. And right now, the Spanish list -- actually the internationalization list overall -- it's bigger than the English speaking list.
So we have so many more users from all over the world. And for now, this year, we're looking into a lot of different languages -- Italian, Arabic, Japanese, and Indian. And so yeah, it's becoming global.
And its so beautiful to see the impact that we're able to make in a lot of, I would say, underserved markets, because a lot of these markets are very hungry and very willing to actually get the learning that we're giving at Mindvalley.
What's the secret behind Mindvalley's international success? Kathleen: Now, you kind of, I don't want to say stumbled into going international but it wasn't this grand plan that you know, you worked up to it for two years. It was you, you were opportunistic, you had somebody come to you. The company jumped on this opportunity and went and it was successful.
Why do you think it worked so well? For you?
Alessio: Well, I would say that there are definitely a couple of things that were very interesting, and some feedback we got from our customers as well as why they love us so much.
So number one is definitely the quality of the product. In the last couple of years, we need to level up so much because the English speaking market ,the American market, its so competitive.
I truly believe that the average customer of Mindvalley every day will kind of think, "Should I watch Netflix? Should watch MasterClass.com or should I watch Mindvalley?"
The level of quality that we need to match for the English speaking market is so difficult that we really need to push ourselves so much more.
And the reality is that when we went to the Spanish speaking market, so many of our competitors are just not there. And the quality that that market is used to is so much lower that we as English speaking people are actually used to. And so when we went out there we just found ourselves being so much better than everyone else.
And that's actually a big advantage for us and it's definitely been a super great thing.
On the other side, I will say also that another big advantage we have had is that we've had tons of years of data. And having data -- even on English speaking customers, but also that you have maybe some English speaking customers from Mexico, from Spain, from Latin America -- learning which kind of customers we were still able to capture from those countries gave us a lot of ideas on how we could capture more of them.
So the data was especially amazing when we needed to actually just run advertising to that and let the Google and Facebook algorithms help us find customers that were similar to the ones that were already following us from that region.
And it worked really magically in a very scalable way that allowed us to grow exponentially.
What does it really mean to go international? Kathleen: So I want to dig in a little bit to really what it means to go international because I think someone listen it would be easy to feel like, "I just need to translate my marketing materials into another language and, blast it out there and people will buy."
That's not really what we're talking about here. I mean, you have a product, which is an online product. So it's not just advertising that needs to be localized. It's the product itself, correct?
Alessio: Absolutely. And what I like to say is that when we took this approach, there have always been two phases of localizing.
The first phase is to kind of bring the best of Mindvalley in that language. And the second phase is to bring that language and that culture into Mindvalley.
Because obviously, it's really easy to take a program, translate it and put it out there. But the first thing is that you start to get tons and tons of feedback. And the reality is also that every different culture, every different language, and sometimes different countries in that specific language, will give you very different feedback.
So just to give you some examples, in the Spanish speaking language, there is a very big debate of, should you actually translate with a Spanish accent? Or should you translate it with the Mexican or the Colombian one?
And it's very interesting to see this debate and understanding.
So a lot of time what we needed to do is simply test it out a bit, and we've seen, okay, if we translate one program with a Spanish accent, what happens? If we translate another one with a Mexican accent, what about that?
So it's very important to check it out and actually get different feedback from different people.
Another important debate that you always need to face and understand is should you dub your content or do you actually want just to subtitle your content?
We are having this problem and debating in the Portuguese market, especially because what's happening in that case is that apparently, like some years ago, some companies went into the Brazilian market, they translated and dubbed their content. But they did it in such a bad way and the program was done in such a skanky way that they kind of destroyed the whole dubbing industry.
So there are so many people that just don't want to consume a program that is dubbed. But then there are so many other people that don't want to just read the subtitles for every everything.
So it's very difficult, even in the same market, to satisfy everyone. So we're trying different approaches and we are trying to understand exactly which approach will work better in which country. But a lot of that, frankly is really trying look for what the customers says and improve our progress day by day.
Kathleen: This is such a fascinating topic to me because I actually lived in Spain for a year after I finished college, and I happen to live in Barcelona, which has, it's not the same accent as even like the regular Spanish accent it's a little bit I guess you would say cleaner.
But, it's interesting too. It's not just accents, it's like between Spain and South America, there are different levels of formality in the way they speak. Like, if you're a Spanish speaker, it's the difference between using "tu" and "usted" and "ustedes" and vosotros" and things like that.
I guess, for somebody, you don't have to speak Spanish to understand this. It's like the difference between British English and American English. They're very different.
And in fact, it's so funny because I used to do a lot of work in India, where they have call centers, and somebody once told me this funny story which I have to relate. This is a little bit of a tangent. But they told me that in Karnataka, which is the state where I was working there...
Alessio: By the way, I lived in Karnataka, in Bangalore for a year.
Kathleen: So well, so you might even know this already. So they said there are two different schools. Like, if you're Indian and you're going to go work in a call center, you either go to the school where they teach you British English or the school where they teach you American English, and they jokingly call the American school the "duh duh duh school" and the British school the "tuh tuh tuh school."
And the reason is, think about how people say the word "butter."
I'm American, and so I say butter, which is duh, duh, duh butter versus the Brits who say butter, which is tuh, tuh, tuh.
So you know, it's fascinating, like, these nuances of language that I think we really take for granted. But then the other half of the story -- and sorry, I'm totally going on but you've made me recall all these memories -- is when I was living in Spain this issue of dubbing is so fascinating because Spain actually has like, I think it's like the world's preeminent dubbing school / industry.
And I'll never forget this is going to totally date me but I moved to Spain when the show Melrose Place came out in the United States, which was a really huge hit, but I happen to be living there when it started.
And so, I only ever saw it dubbed and listened to it in Spanish with the dubbed voices and there was this character played by the actor Andrew Shue, who in Spain, he had this very manly dubbed voice, you know, and he would be like, "Hola, Carolina".
And then I came back to the United States and he has this more, like, high pitched voice. He's like" hey Caroline", and it totally ruined the show for me.
Sounds like so anyway, total tangent, but it is super fascinating to me. Just the impact that those choices can make on your effectiveness and communicating and the way that your audience absorbs and forms an opinion about your product.
Like, I formed an opinion about Melrose Place the product because of this voice that was different the voice that actually was, etcetera.
So, anyway, that's my whole two cents on the dubbing and the language thing, but it's really interesting, and I think most people probably don't think about this. So I'm curious to hear from you, as you did these tests. What did you learn? Like, what were the winners from the tests that you conducted?
Alessio: Absolutely. So definitely for the Spanish speaking markets, having a cleaner accent, so having a Latin American accent, has been working much better for us.
The program that we actually tried in the Spanish accent from Spain, we needed to retranslate it into Spanish from Latin America, because we got so many complaints from our customers that now we're in the process of retranslating and recording that.
And that's actually a very interesting point. I guess about 65 to 70% of our users from Latin America are from Mexico. So a lot of time its simply about understanding the customer that you want to serve more, and understanding where your interest is going, where you're actually growing.
And interestingly enough, what we've been seeing now is that in terms of users, Spain is just number six among the Latin American market, but in terms of customers it's a close number two to Mexico. So obviously, the conversion is much better than when it comes to Spain, but then in terms of depth of the market and width of the market, it's definitely not the biggest one we could find there.
So for the Spanish market, we definitely decided to set them work.
The standard for the Portuguese market, frankly, is something that we are still trying to figure out. Probably between all the markets we've been going for, Portuguese was one with the highest expectations we had, but we still weren't able to go into that.
For example, another very big problem that we found in the Portuguese market is the fact that having a localized checkout makes the entire difference. So for some interesting reason, people from Brazil can't really buy products that we normally buy. They need a very specific checkout that is normally in a very specific way that allows the Brazillian credit card to work.
Kathleen: Is it just that they need the currency to be in reals? Or is it just the credit card processor?
Alessio: It's the credit card processors and 80% of Brazilians cannot buy with a normal process that is normally used for a normal website, or at least with our current websites.
So one of the major things that we're doing -- and this obviously, it's a tech change that you need to do -- is changing over checkout in order to be able to serve more markets.
So that's something that we're in the process of doing, but as you can imagine, it's such a big project because to better serve one county, you kind of need to start to change your entire process for the entire company.
So now we're working on that and ideally, in a couple of months, we should be able to have a solution that should allow us to serve these customers better.
Kathleen: Well, it isn't that really like, the classic conundrum of the product marketer, which is that, you know, there's this very natural tension between, you have a customer who could be a great customer, and they have this really specific need that might suck a ton of resources out of the organization versus, like, the population of the rest of the potential customer base who might need smaller changes in order for them to buy.
It's like, which one is more valuable, the bird the hand or, the bird that could potentially fly in the next week? I think that's a conversation product marketers everywhere can really relate to.
Alessio: Absolutely. I completely agree with that, it's something so crazy. And it's funny, because the more you actually learn about other languages, the more there are certain things that are kind of very interesting.
Like, an example of that is in the Russian market, which is actually the only market that's from the previous kind of internationalization that is still alive in Mindvalley. They have 20% of their sales that happen offline.
So what that means is that that people buy, but instead of buying, they actually take a screenshot of something that you put on your website. And then they go to the local shop, they show them the screenshot printed, and then they say "I want to pay in cash, and then they pay in cash to the shop, and the shop make sales for you." And it's just like it...
Kathleen: So interesting. I know.
Alessio: You're like "Why?", but a lot of people don't trust credit cards in our local countries. And a lot of people simply don't trust banks or don't trust anything. They believe much more in cash.
So that is very normal, and they expect, when they actually need to make a sale or to buy something, they want to pay in cash, simply because that's how the culture is.
Probably in few years, also in other countries, things will change. But at the moment, if you want to properly serve that kind of customer, you need to adopt your business a bit.
Localizing the product in addition to the language Kathleen: That is fascinating.
You talked about having to create a localized checkout experience for people in Brazil. When you talk about internationalization, or localization really, is what it is, for these different markets -- you've got four now, Spanish speaking German, French, Portuguese.
I guess the question I have is, you're obviously translating and subtitling or dubbing the course materials, but are you really presenting a completely localized UX as well within the Mindvalley web experience?
Alessio: So we definitely translated the entire UI of our app, and our website and everything. Let's say that, in terms of you UX, there is definitely a lot more that we could do. Especially like, there are certain countries that we're looking at that present these kind of challenges.
So just as an example, right now we're entering Arabic. Now one of the biggest questions is, do we write everything left to right or right to left? Like, what do we do?
And actually, for us, writing in the Arabic way, so right to left, we would need to make so many changes, tech wise, that if we want to do that we would probably be internationalizing the country two years from now, not today.
So sometimes you might need to make some compromises.
And also, for me, being a non English speaker, natively, when when I was a kid, and I was playing games, I grew up basically with playing games that their UI was completely in english. It was actually my way to start learning English a lot of time. Sometimes there are certain things that people are way more forgiving.
And maybe even if the UI is not translated, it's still good. And the UX is definitely a very advanced level that you might want to adapt, just maybe in a second space.
So answering the question, in terms of UX, we have not done that yet. But it's something that we're definitely looking for. But for that, also, it would acquire our platform to become much more flexible than what it is right now. So it is a lot of tech work involved.
What kind of a team do you need to support internationalization? Kathleen: Now, what about your team? Because this obviously has implications for the people behind the scenes, both those who are involved in creating the content and adapting it for new languages. Do you have any kind of, like, support functionality that needs to be internationalized? Like, what has that done to the structure of the company itself?
Alessio: That's a very interesting one. Because the team, the simplest way to do it, is to do it with flexible contractors. Okay?
So what we did for every country is that we have some very strong project managers, and those are the main hires that we did. And these project managers are the ones that actually coordinate all the different contractors of the different areas.
So we have some contractors that are in customer support, some contractors that are doing the entire voiceover, scripting, and copywriting in that specific language. We have some contractors doing the learning part. And then slowly, as demand for work is becoming bigger, the more we're starting to hire those people.
So we started to hire, for example, social media managers in all those different languages because obviously we want to go bigger in terms of social media.
And the next one will be hiring people to take care of the learning, because one of the next steps in terms of our localization is actually to start creating programs that are specific in that language.
So that's very interesting, because studying these markets, we've come to understand that there are specific needs that that market has that maybe the English market doesn't have. And so there are these possibilities that we can create specific programs just for that market. And that's something that we are exploring at the moment.
Mindvalley's international marketing strategy Kathleen: Fascinating. I mean, I could talk to you for hours about this stuff. But I want to make sure that we build in some time to talk about, like, some of the marketing activities you did to really fuel the growth.
So you mentioned advertising. Is it fair to say that that was the primary channel that really drove customer acquisition in these new markets?
Alessio: Absolutely. In our industry, online education, advertising is always one of the major channels.
But what was incredible for us was that the cost per acquisition in that market was incredibly low. So while in the US we may need to spend about $8 to $10 to acquire a lead, in the Spanish speaking market, we spend between $1 and $2.
So literally, we can acquire four or five people per every English user.
So, it's very interesting from this point of view, which is why we were able to grow so much in terms of users in the year.
Then what's been interesting is that the more users you acquire and the more programs you launch, the more you can actually monetize this fan base and user base that you've been creating.
So definitely, email marketing was the other part that was incredibly important to keep those people engaged and to make sure that we could serve them with the best content, with the new classes, with the new programs, and create this kind of fan base. That was incredibly important.
Kathleen: To what do you -- you mentioned the lower cost of acquisition in some of these new markets through ads -- to what do you attribute that that big difference between what you're paying to acquire customer in the US versus, for example, say Mexico?
Alessio: Well, two different things. So number one, the competition, having a much lower competition in the Spanish speaking market means that the cost is much lower.
And we see very clearly obviously, acquiring a new user in India is much cheaper than acquiring a user in the U.S.
And the other side is also that, obviously, we need to take care of our markets, as marketers, is not just about how much does it cost us to acquire users, but also what is the return that we can get from that?
And that's also a very, important one. So we've been looking into that. And obviously, it's very clear that the conversion rate that you will get in U.S market, it's very different than the conversion rate that you will get in a Spanish speaking market.
So you know that if in U.S you have 5% of users buying in the Spanish speaking market, might be only 2% or maybe 1% sometime.
So that's something that you always need to take into account and always pay attention to how you're scaling up and how this affects profitability.
So it's been actually a very good lesson for us because, in certain moments we were just so bullish, and we're like, "Okay, let's spend more and it just grow it." And then for a couple of more, if you look back and are like, "Okay, cool. Let's just make sure the profitability is there are we're able to do this sustainably" because that's one of the most important to you ought to do.
Kathleen: I feel like in the U.S, when we talk about pay per click and online advertising, 95% of the time we're talking about Facebook, Google and Google remarketing. Maybe some LinkedIn, but that's more B2B. Maybe some Twitter. But it's really mostly Facebook and Google.
So I'm curious, did you find that to be the same when you went internationally? Or were there other platforms or channels that performed really well for you?
Alessio: We definitely found that to be the same.
Specifically, what actually has been working really well for us is YouTube. YouTube has been an incredible channel for us. And we've had a few reviews, especially in the Spanish market, where we've had about 35 million views on a specific video that was part of our advertising mix. And that started to go very viral in the market. So definitely, that's what we've been seeing now.
But when we actually internationalize in a new market, what we're looking for in the future is definitely we're seeing that there are some other opportunities out there.
So in the Russian speaking market, Yandex is a big one. They have Yandex, they have VK -- they have a lot of different social media. Telegram is a big thing there.
So definitely, that would require a different mix that we're exploring much more at the moment.
Or, for example, in Japan, they have LINE, which is a sort of a Whatsapp, let's say, for the Japanese market and is much stronger than Facebook, for example.
So going in these markets really means changing your marketing mix. But let's say that in the four languages that we've been internationalizing until now, we don't have these needs at the moment.
Kathleen: Yeah, I feel like that's a whole nother kind of scary area for marketers, when they think about going internationally. They're like, "Hey, it's taken me a long time, but I finally understand how to do Facebook and Google. Now you're telling me I need to learn Yandex and WhatsApp and all these other platforms that can be really intimidating."
How did you handle that? Did you guys really just like, learn it yourselves? Or did you find somebody who's really good at it and pull them in to help?
Alessio: So let's say that's for Yandex, we would definitely work with external agencies.
And we are literally, one year announced that we are studying China, because China is probably the ultimate internationalization that you want to do. And if we want to announce that we are studying the market, we understand what's really there because it's a complete different ecosystem from every single point of view. And we're slowly approaching that big box because it's really the biggest opportunity out there for internationalization.
But we want to make sure that once we go there, we go that properly and with the right instrument to make sure that we will be able to actually do it effectively.
And in that case, obviously, WeChat, Weibo, Youku, and all the different platforms they have -- so it's really a different system.
But as of now, I would say that 80-20 is really what matters. And we're really trying to be able to understand what the best is that we can do with what we have right now. And then slowly, the more these get successful, and also give us enough profit to invest more, understanding how can we go deeper and deeper into the different channels, the different markets and doing understand though, can we do even better?
Mindvalley's international growth Kathleen: Yeah, that sounds like it's so complicated. It's fascinating.
So before we run out of time, I want to make sure that we really highlight the results you've gotten. So before you did this -- before that person came to you and said, "Hey, can you turn this program into another language?" -- how big was the user base for Mindvalley?
Alessio: Our user base was about 1.7 million at that time.
Kathleen: Okay. And that was when?
Alessio: That was December 2018.
Kathleen: Okay. Wow. So, a little over a year ago.
Alessio: Yeah, a little over a year ago. And now, our user base is about 3.8 million. We also had a very good growth in English because we've been growing also there.
But we've been adding at least, in total, 1.5 million/1.6 million users, just from the internationalization effort.
Kathleen: So okay, I want to make sure I'm recapping this correctly. So the company is about 16 years old. And from years zero to 15, let's call it you grew to 1.2 million?
Alessio: 1.7
Kathleen: 1.7, sorry. Okay. Thank you. And then in the last little over a year, you've almost tripled that, correct? Or doubled to tripled it?
Alessio: You would say double to triple. Yeah, 2.5 million.
Kathleen: Wow. That is amazing.
Alessio: It's been a really, really exciting year from this point of view.
Kathleen: That's amazing. Well, kudos to you and the team for what you've done. This is not easy. But it definitely highlights what a game changer it can be from a growth standpoint, if you're able to do it and navigate it correctly.
Alessio: I personally think, after one year and a half of working on this, that it's probably one of the biggest opportunities out there that a lot of marketers have not been taking.
Alessio's advice for marketers thinking of internationalizing Kathleen: So, if you had to start over again and talk to yourself two years ago, what advice would you give yourself? Is there anything you wish you would have done differently or you had known before you started?
Alessio: So what I would say is that I would have probably, from the first moment, I would have approached it, I would have tried to over hire probably, and to hire a bit more people because it really requires some good HR to make sure that you're actually been able to go that deep into the market.
We've been stretching our resources a lot to launch as much as possible. But I think that if we would have had two to three hires per languages versus just one we would have been able to do a better job, and been more profitable and growing more.
These are probably the only few things that I would say to myself because for the rest, like, the team, even if it was the very simple payment stuff, has been able to deliver amazing things.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Wow. That's incredible. Well, we have just a few minutes left so I want to make sure I ask you the questions that I asked everybody who comes on this podcast.
The first one being, you know, this, the show is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it right now with inbound marketing?
Alessio: So my actual favorite guy in inbound marketing is Patrick Campbell from ProfitWell. I'm a big geek, in terms of revenue, subscription terminology, growing revenues and listening, and he's incredible in terms of looking into pricing, hosting a show that's fun, but speak about things that for the probably 99.9% of the people are very boring. But he's able to do it in such a great way. Such a great quality, having some great guests as well. And I'm really incredibly surprised the content he's able to put out there.
Kathleen: That's a good one. I'll definitely check that out.
And you know, the biggest complaint I hear from marketers is that things are changing so quickly. It's really hard to stay on top of all the new developments in the world of digital marketing. How do you personally do that?
Alessio: I would say that one of the habits I've implemented is that I always keep one hour and a half a day to learn. That to me is just a huge part of my job. Like, you can't be a great marketer if you don't learn.
Digital marketing in 2020 is different than digital marketing in 2017. And if you don't have enough time to learn it, you just won't get it.
In terms of sources of learning, I definitely have a couple of Chrome extensions that that helped me out a lot.
So number one is Zest.is, which is a fantastic Chrome extension that gives me the best marketing articles every single day. That is followed by growthhackers.com, which has a fantastic newsletter.
And then I follow a couple of podcasts, a couple of different things in the startup, entrepreneurship, marketing, business space that helps me to think outside of the box.
Kathleen: So what are some of your favorite podcasts?
Alessio: Actually the podcasts that I like the most are more around growth hacking and how companies have been scaling and growing. So Reid Hoffman Masters of Scale and Andrew Chen from Andreessen Horowitz. That's really incredible for me and something that I'm always trying to be on top of and, and to learn as much as possible from them.
How to connect with Alessio or Mindvalley Kathleen: Great. Well, this has been so much fun and so interesting. And I feel like we've barely even scratched the surface. But that's all the time we have. So if someone wants to learn more about Mindvalley, or if they want to reach out to you and ask a question about this experience you've had with internationalization, what's the best way for them to do that?
Alessio: Absolutely. So if you want to learn more about Mindvalley, just go to Mindvalley.com, and you can learn a bit more about that all our classes, our courses, and all the opportunities you have to improve your personal growth and education.
If you want to reach out to me, find me on LinkedIn, that's my favorite platform. I'm always putting out a lot of interesting content on marketing there, and just follow me -- Alessio Perioni. And I try to catch up with all the messages I get, and I'll be happy to answer every single question.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: Oh, fantastic. I will put the links to both the Mindvalley website and Alessio, his LinkedIn profile, in the show notes. So definitely head over there. And check that out if you want to get in touch with him.
And if you're listening and you found this episode valuable or you learn something new, please consider heading to Apple podcasts and leaving the podcast a five star review. That's how we get in front of new people and we get to share all this great information from folks like Alessio.
And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next interview.
That's it for this week. Thank you so much Alessio.
Alessio: It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It was such a fun conversation.
How did Chili Piper grow to become one of the hottest new sales software providers, and what would the team do differently if they had to start all over again?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Chili Piper Founder and CEO Nicolas Vandenberghe shares the story of growing his company, from his early days bootstrapping, to what he is doing now that he has secured venture capital funding, and what he would do differently if he had to start over again today.
One of the biggest things Nicolas would change is his approach to marketing. Listen to the podcast to learn why he would have started investing in marketing much earlier than he actually did, and how he thinks that would have changed the company's growth trajectory.
Highlights from my conversation with Nicolas include:
- Nicolas started Chili Piper to help solve the problem of companies not booking meetings with interested inbound leads.
- The solution he developed helps his customer double their bookings.
- Nicolas credits his early success to achieving product-market fit quickly.
- The company gained traction in the US market by using what it calls the "bullseye" strategy, which involved targeting highly influential customers to establish social proof.
- This strategy was successful in helping Chili Piper bootstrap its initial growth.
- Now that the company has secured venture capital funding and Nicolas needs to scale it, he wishes he had made a larger investment in marketing earlier.
- Chili Piper calls the category in which it plays "buyer enablement" and is focused on creating products that are so good, buyers will demand to switch to them.
- This is how Nicolas believes they will unseat the incumbent providers, like Microsoft and Google, that their prospective customers currently rely on.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Chili Piper website
Listen to the podcast to learn why startups should invest in marketing early, and how even an unknown startup can take on the industry giants.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm Kathleen Booth and I'm your host, and this week my guest is Nicolas Vandenberghe, who's the CEO and co-founder of Chili Piper. Welcome, Nicolas. Nicolas Vandenberghe (Guest): Thanks. I'm happy to be here.
Nicolas and Kathleen recording this episode.
Kathleen: I’m excited to have you here. I've been sort of watching you and your company for a few years now and I have a personal passion for startups. It's something that I've invested a lot of my time in, and I really especially love following startups that bootstrap for some of their time and find success, so I'm really excited to talk to you about that, and how you fueled your growth, and what the company does.
About Nicolas Vandenberghe and Chili Piper Kathleen: So let's actually start out, if you would, by having you tell my guests a little bit more about yourself, your background and story, because that's pretty interesting as well, and Chili Piper and what the company does.
Nicolas: Sure. I'm originally French, as I'm sure everybody will guess. I came to the US in the mid '90s. I went to Stanford Business School with the idea of traveling the world, and when I was there I met Steve Jobs. He was invited to our class. He sat on the floor. At that time he was CEO of Next, going next to nowhere.
It was an amazing experience and I thought, "That's what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be like him, doing tech companies."
And so I proceeded to do that and I've done several startups, not quite as successful as Apple, I must say, but enough success to be happy and done three different startups.
I also had spent a lot of time in sales, so I funded my studies. I say that I sold newspapers in the streets of Paris. It's a true story. I am very proud of it because I outsold everybody else; this newspaper that sold more than anybody else.
So I have a passion for sales and more recently I got to know the world of sales is going to be completely changed. Digital is going to have a big influence and it hasn't happened yet.
Right now we are still at the stage where records have been put in place. That's what you call CRM. But it's a different role for crossing the chasm and I make a distinction between a system of records and system of action.
The system of action is what should be used to do your job, and that is yet to be invented. So that is the business of Chili Pepper is to say we're going to be the company that will bring central revenue to the scene.
Kathleen: I love that, and it's one of the reasons I was excited to talk to you.
I've been working in marketing and actually sales, I've been in sales roles as well for a long time, and technology and tech stacks have become an increasingly important part of the daily lives of anybody who's in marketing or sales.
It might just be me, but I feel like on the marketing side, there have been just substantial advancements in making the technology a lot more user friendly, but on the sales side, maybe not as much, for the most part.
You see that with CRMs and systems of records as you referred to them. Things like salesforce.com. Everyone I talk with kind of both loves it and hates it, and the problem with these platforms, if they're not user friendly, is they don't get used.
Your tech stack is only as good as the decisions of the person who is meant to be using it. If they choose to use something else, then it's garbage in and garbage out. So that's my little rant but what I like about-
Nicolas: You're absolutely right, and still to this day the service is so bad that these days you have companies saying, "If you don't put your data in Salesforce, I won't pay your commission." It's like threats and punishments to use the software.
I mean, imagine if I had to tell my kids, "If you don't use your iPhone, I won't give you any candies."
Kathleen: Yeah, it's ridiculous.
Nicolas: Right. That's right.
Kathleen: It's ridiculous that we're in that position. Yeah.
Nicolas: That's why I'm trying to change the system.
An introduction to Chili Piper Kathleen: I read an interesting article that said that today every individual, marketer, and salesperson is their own CIO because of this exact problem. Because as a company, you can choose to put software in place but every individual person on that team is going to decide what software they're actually going to use.
If there's friction in the process, they're going to find a way around it. It's sort of like water. When water hits an obstacle, it goes around it and carves a new river. And I think that's what people do with software.
So tell me a little bit about exactly the problems that Chili Piper solves for because you mentioned that it's great for revenue teams, but what exactly does it do?
Nicolas: Yeah, so I started the company to help sales people, and we accidentally stumbled into inbound process. It's something relevant to this podcast.
What's happening is we started with helping people schedule their meetings. So especially with complex situations where there's a big SDR team booking a lot of meetings for a big company team, which they should book with the routing being fair with a round robin distribution. So that's how we get started.
And I was talking to some of our customers and saying, "What's your job?" and they say, "I am an inbound SDR, and what do you do?"
"Some people come to the website, marketing people spend a lot of money to bring them to the website. There's a form to request a demo or talk to somebody. I submit the form and my job is to call them and to book that meeting."
I said, "How is that going for you?" and they said, "It's going great. We're converting at 40%." To which I said, "Wait a minute, you're telling me that out of a hundred people who want to have a meeting, only 40 of them get a meeting? Because somewhere they got lost?"
That seems completely crazy to me but it seems to be accepted in the industry. That's what it is. You have a 40% conversion rate inbound, you're doing great. I didn't even have the... beat yourself up! I don't want to touch it. I'm 40% right. Thinking like it would be the ultimate achievement.
So we decided to build a solution for that and what we did is a small piece of JavaScript that companies put in their webpage, in their form, and when the form is submitted, we get the data from the form.
We can augment the data with solutions like ZoomInfo and Clearbit, these kinds of data sources. And in real time, based on this data, we need to find the right rep who should handle that prospect. We can dial the rep and dial the prospect and connect them in real time or we can retrieve the calendar and show options of the prospect and book a time.
So instead of saying, "Thank you I need to call you," say, "Just pick a time that works for you," they pick a time they're all set.
That seems obvious, but we are the first - and only to this day - company doing it.
When I launched it I said, "That seems too obvious to be true. I must be missing something." It turned out I wasn't.
All of our customers doubled their conversion rates. We had people at 80% conversion, a lot of people at 70% conversion. We had a company that was at 23% and went up 55% which is a very high volume.
So it just works. It was just a matter of innovating, coming up with a new way to do things.
The reason why it stayed at that level for so long is because we were just at the junction between the marketing and sales. So marketing thought we were bringing a good job bringing a lot of leads. Sales thought we were doing a good job filling up the leads.
The reference point was outbound, right, so all these companies you reach, you convert maybe 10% percent of meetings. In inbound we were getting 40%; that looked good.
That was a disconnect, so we're putting that all together with all inbound solutions to do this, handle it very efficiently and improve conversion rates.
Kathleen: It's really genius and it's funny how you mentioned that nobody thought of it sooner. You know, it makes me think of an experience that I recently had as a buyer, and I should preface this in saying that you referred to this under the umbrella of buyer enablement because I do think it's all about giving the buyer choices and allowing them to choose the path that they want to take, and not then putting things in their way.
It makes me think of, I was recently looking to vet agencies that do pay-per-click marketing and I went on to a website of a particular agency who I will not name and they had sort of like a quiz that they needed me to fill out instead of a contact us form, and I get the logic behind it so I filled out the quiz even though I was sort of annoyed.
I just wanted to talk to somebody and then at the end of the quiz, it was like, "We'll get in touch with you to set up a meeting," and I thought, "Well, no." Now I really want to talk to somebody and there was no way for me to go to any kind of a contact form or find any phone number.
It's interesting. By the time they emailed me to set up the meeting, I had already found somebody else that I was really happy with.
So there's like a perfect example of how the 60% of people who can fill out a form, who say they want to talk to you and then don't actually turn into a viable, bottom of the funnel lead/opportunity, because you've allowed that time in between to be filled with another solution, or they've talked themselves out of purchasing, which I'm sure happens a lot.
But it's frustrating. It's frustrating as a buyer.
Nicolas: It's crazy, it's crazy.
Something similar happened to me. I submitted a form to talk to somebody at LinkedIn. At the time, it was a while back, I wanted to buy a license of their solution, and you had to talk to a sales person, so I submitted the form and they said, "Somebody is going to call you," and to my knowledge, nobody did call me.
It turned out that two weeks later, it's not that somebody did call me the next day, but it was a 408 number and I got my setting that it go straight to voicemail, because I didn't know the number, and so I never knew that somebody had called. And it doesn't make sense these days.
So with our solution, a company has the option to connect in real time. We even have what we call real time video.
So if you... it's used a lot by companies for their in-app solutions, so if they're the free service, or paid service, somebody wants to talk to somebody, the most efficient in-app format for conversation is Zoom Video, because you can see each other, you can share your screen you can really engage with others.
We have a real time Zoom Video connection, where you can submit a form and say, "I need to talk to somebody," boom, so here is your Zoom Video link and you're connected to somebody over Zoom.
So, that's such a better experience for the potential buyer to be in real time connected to Zoom Video as opposed to waiting and wondering when they're going to be reached out to.
Kathleen: I want to make sure I understand. Are you telling me... I get that you guys through this JavaScript code can do this on a website, but you're saying that in-app, somebody can also use Chili Piper and immediately spin up a Zoom conversation with...
Nicolas: That's right.
Kathleen: That's a game changer. I mean, just like when you talk about trial to customer conversions and adoption and eliminating those friction points early in experience... that's amazing. I did not realize that it did that, which is very very cool.
Nicolas: Yeah. I think we need to market it a little bit better.
Kathleen: Well, there you go, we're talking about it on the podcast.
When should startups invest in marketing? Kathleen: One of the things I am fascinated by is your earlier story with the company, when it first started, because, as I mentioned, I work with a lot of start-ups. I am a head of marketing for a start-up right now, and the conversation always revolves around, in those early days, before you have really deep pockets or VCs have thrown a lot of money at you, what should the approach to marketing be?
I feel like there's really two schools of thought from the founders I've met. Either they believe in throwing all their money and resources at sales and having an entirely sales led organization and they defer marketing until after they get a lot of investment money, or they really really believe in marketing and make an early investment in content and building out their top of the funnel, etc. And that's a bit more of a long game but it's a leap of faith so I'm sure there's an in between but I seem to talk to those two people who fall in those two courts.
So I'd love to hear what your experience was, because you were successful in your early days bootstrapping.
Nicolas: That's a great way to put it, and I will say that I think the right approach is to do the second, the all in, in marketing. I mistakenly did the first and went to sales, so I'm here to exemplify the mistake.
We did something right at the beginning -- the strategy that I call the "Bull's eye." When we came up with the first product -- and the first product was around handoff between teams, so distributing between SDRs and account executives -- we had a company come to us and say, "I have this problem, can you solve it for us?"
And so the product market fit was easy because somebody came and said, "I have this problem", and we check if other companies have this problem, and we finally did, and so there was no question of having an idea and-
Kathleen: I was going to say, because that's the danger of having that one customer who's the squeaky wheel and you build out a product just for them only to find out nobody else wants it.
Nicolas: Right, right, so the worst part of that, we actually went to SaaStr. Only SaaS companies, and I went around and said, "Do you have that problem?", "Yes", "Do you have that problem?", "Yes", so more than half had that problem.
Then we did something that was inspired by the fashion industry and namely I was exposed to, in the early 2000s, Louis Vuitton, the luxury brand, built their business in the U.S. They targeted the most influential people in the world, the celebrities, so they were not so well known in the U.S. except for a few people.
They went to famous actresses and got them free bags and free jewels, so these actresses were photographed. That was the center of the bull's eye.
From there, they went to what they call socialites. In every city there are people who are more visible than others. They're social, they're visible.
They targeted these people, and from there they extended it. So it was a top down, concentric circle.
That worked really well and we did the same and thought, "Okay, which companies are the most influential in our space?" Obviously it's not Beyonce that helps you sell software. It's companies like Square, Greenhouse in New York, Segment in the bay area -- the companies that people look up to and say, "These guys know what they're doing when it comes to sales and marketing."
So we targeted these companies. It may have taken longer to get the business from them, but once got the business, other companies came to us and that built our early inbound flow from these companies saying, "Hey I booked with Discover Org," "I booked with Discover Org, that was awesome, that was the same experience," "I booked with Segment and it was great, I just did one yesterday. That was a good experience."
So that's what did well to get started to build the foundations. And back to your question from there, what we should have done was build the marketing and expand it, our content and case studies.
Instead, what we did is extend our sales team, so that worked. Every rep paid for themselves. We were able to bootstrap. We passed two million without funding.
It worked well but now two years later we think, "Well we have to build these foundations," because if you want to grow to the hundreds of millions in revenues, you can not do it without a strong brand, and a strong marketing presence, so we waited too long to build marketing foundations at the outset.
Kathleen: This is such an interesting conversation to me and I appreciate your candor in saying you would have done it differently, but I think if somebody is listening they might be thinking, "He says that but they were successful," and so I'm curious what you think would have been different had you started marketing earlier?
Would there have been a different outcome or would it have been the pace that would have changed?
Nicolas: I expect that we would have grown faster.
We typically double over a year, and expect that we would have done even better than that.
You have to think, the number one problem for us starters is product market fit. If our customers more than double their conversion, they have a return investment that is massive.
That's obviously the first place to get to, but once we have that then the question becomes, how fast can I go and what's the most effective way to go so for all you listeners, you can bypass the product market fit.
The question we're addressing now is how to go from there and the marketing investment is more leverage, so for the same investment, you're able to serve more people.
Initially it doesn't work, but when it does work then you have more leverage right there. A piece of content can reach 20,000 viewers. A rep can not be in touch with 20,000 viewers at the same amount of time.
That's the leverage you need to get and how you're able to grow at 3x or 4x instead of 2x because you get this leverage from marketing, that's big.
We just hired a CMO a few months back, and we're putting all these things in place. That's why I say, we'll see if it all happens, but I have a lot of trust in our CMO and his team to make it happen. I can see he is already putting in the information and I can see how it makes sense.
About the "bullseye" strategy Kathleen: Well I definitely think you have a good team, I did a little bit of stalking on LinkedIn to see who was on your marketing team and it looks like a really qualified group of people so I'm sure you're going to see fantastic results from that.
I want to go back to something you said earlier, about the bullseye strategy. That's interesting to me because you talked about how Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy used that to bring Louis Vuitton into the US.
I've seen it also with one of the people that I sort of idolize who is Sara Blakely, who is the founder of Spanx, she did the same thing. She sent products to Oprah and other people like that.
In some respects, that can be really risky, and those are examples of product companies, but if you're sending product to somebody you don't really know, if they're going to do anything with it, if they're going to evangelize it... In your case it was going after really high value accounts.
While it's one thing to say, "We're going to do this, we're going to land the biggest fish in the industry," it's another thing to make it happen. So, I am curious, did you have another approach, or what did you do in those early days that you were able to get those meetings, especially as a company, at the time, that these other companies haven't heard of.
Nicolas: Yeah, it's actually not so much high value accounts we went after, it's highly visible accounts. It's a strong difference.
You get a lot more licences from selling to, say, I am thinking of an example, HP, than you get from selling to Segment. Both are costumers actually, and HP came much later, so we got a lot of licenses. Equal industries, these days.
Marketers look up to Segment to what they should do much more than HP, HP is known for other things. The target was not so much larger deals, it was very much who do people look up to.
It turned out that you think that, "Well how did you get about getting these costumers," people look up to these companies because they are forward thinking, and because they are forward thinking, they are interested in trying new tech.
I remember Segment had this French guy, Gillaume Cabane, and there was this discussion and he pushed back and I said “Hey Guillaume, you're super, and on the leading edge. Surely if I am right, you don't want to have missed it."
He said, " Okay, fine we'll do an AB test", and boom, we did an AB test, he went across 61%, it was super successful. He led a team that was known in the industry as forward thinking because he would try new things.
That helped us, because we would go to companies that would try new things, because they would implement these practices, and to implement these practices you have to take some risks.
You have to go and squeeze new solutions, you have to explore, you have to be willing to try new things.
So that's how we did it, and more practically, since...we implemented, and immediately, I did most of this in person. I actually went to events, meet ups and met in person in the early days.
It's not really scalable, but in the early days that's the best way to do it. Nobody knows who you are, if you email campaigned people will ignore it, so you have to go in person and engage in person, and try.
Once you get a few reference accounts, of course the game changes, and you can go online.
How Chili Piper gets customer success stories Kathleen: Well, it definitely seems to be working because, I think, when Chili Piper came on my radar screen, I actually heard Udi Ledergore from Gong talking about some of the results they have gotten.
I am curious, you're going after these highly visible accounts, they're having some success. Do you have a particular way of approaching them and asking that they talk about those success stories?
Nicolas: Yes, Udi is a great guy and Gong is definitely one of the visible accounts that we love.
We do case studies. We have a case study with Gong, it's on our website. We have one with Grow. We have one with Segment.
So we definitely package it as success. Then we ask them to share with other companies in the community. Often you have questions in the community say, what should I use, partner with them? That's something we could have done better, but we did pay attention to make sure that these champions would serve as references and would talk about us through case studies, and other type of discussions.
How Chili Piper is approaching marketing today Kathleen: Now, you got your first round of funding last spring, was it April of 2019?
Nicolas: Yeah.
Kathleen: Since then, you've gone on to hire some folks for the marketing team, you mentioned you have a new CMO, and I saw a few other roles. How big is the marketing team today?
Nicolas: We just hired....It's four people now.
Kathleen: Okay. As you think about looking forward, what is your approach to marketing, what are you looking for in the year ahead? Are there particular things that the company is focused on in terms of building its brand, its content, etc.?
Nicolas: Yes. When we took money last year, we were cash positive, so we didn't need the money from the existing business.
What we wanted to do was to invest in product development because we developed the new IDs that we thought were mature enough to bring to market, or to start building.
I should preface with that our inbound solution is growing. Of course we want to keep growing the business.
We're about to launch a very bold take on inbox, so we're taking on Microsoft, Outlook and Gmail.
With the new inbox, the difference is a collaborative inbox. The idea that revenue teams will be able to, we syndicate account-related emails across email boxes, so if you take a common account, you can see everything being discussed within the account, directly in the inbox.
Let's just say an account, let's say Gong, so if it's just for Gong, I'll see every email that's been sent to Gong, every meeting with Gong directly into my box from everybody. Then I can chat, comment on it, so ask somebody, "Hey, what did you do, say, when you talk to him at that meeting?"
It's a collaborative inbox. We think it's exactly the type of approach that sales and revenue teams need, especially the account manager, or CS. We need to know whether that's happened before.
We're about to launch that, and back to your question, we have this marketing team of four, what do we expect from the year?
Well we have this dual mission of building the business around our solution. As you pointed out, not everybody knows about everything we do, like the in-app solution. And start to position that new product line around our inbox, our collaborative inbox and revenue teams.
It's a lot to do. We are going to invest in content because we see that, obviously content marketing stuff works well, but in case there are lot of questions from companies, a lot of the things we do are new, leading edge, the idea of specializing revenue teams... What should the account managers do, what should the CS, costumer success do, how should the head off be done, how to be the best account manager of the best CS?
We are fortunate to have a lot of customers who are very smart and have great ideas, so we can bring these ideas, write them up and bring this content.
That's a big piece of what you're going to do in the future to lead the change... We said earlier on in the podcast, I'm a big believer that sales and revenues are going to be completely transformed with a new set of tools, so we want to make sure that we evangelize that.
How Gong is building the "buyer enablement" category Kathleen: Now, it's interesting to me, because you coined this term buyer enablement and a lot of what you're doing, as you explained rightfully, is new. It's something that hasn't been done before. This inbox, totally different than what anybody has constructed. You know some of the functionality that you have in your initial tools, totally different.
I am selfishly going to ask you this because I am fascinated by the topic of category creation. So, as a smaller company, you're thinking about this concept of buyer enablement. I assume you're also talking to analysts, companies like Gartner or Forrester, what have you?
How do you look at that, because everything I've read, and I've researched, and seen about category creation, it's an incredibly difficult play. But if you can pull it off, it can be huge. But it's not a quick thing to build a category.
I just would love to hear your thinking about that, and how much of your strategy revolves around that term, buyer enablement, which you're really coining and introducing into the market, versus drafting off of existing searches and things like that.
Nicolas: I'm smiling because I had a long discussion with our CMO yesterday about the category creation and the role of analysts. You have to think that an analyst is not going to come up with an innovation that's in your category currently. An analyst is not going to say that, "the new way of doing inbox is collaborative inbox, and this is the new category, and players come play in my new category."
Kathleen: Right.
Nicolas: Their job is to observe where the market is going and say, "Oh there is something new happening there, it's real," and, "I'm going to call this category, I'm going to explain it within there." That's typically useful in crossing the chasm when you're moving to mainstream. When you move to mainstream, you need this clear explanation of what it is about, but when you build a category you're not at that stage, moving to mainstream, you're at the other stage, the early state.
Our focus is to provide a solution to an existing problem. It's going to sound boring, but the fact that this problem is big enough that it's worthy enough of being labeled its own category is unintentional.
We think that sales people should have better tools, and we think that inbox and calendar, we are also going to launch Chili Calendar, should be specialized for them. Because it works, we're going to solve the problem, and we're going to help them coverup their revenues better.
Hopefully someday Forrester, one of our costumers is Forrester, will call that a new category, will put us in the right quadrant.
It works the other way. Once we’ve done it, they'll say, "This is what's happening and we'll do it," so for now we focus on the solving the problem. It's not as hard as it seems in a sense to create a category because if the problem is real, you're going to have real movement in the market.
A great example, that has happened recently, is sales engagement. Sales engagement is actually, in effect, is synonymous with sales development, it's the tool for sales development. Their job is to prospect and to engage the initial engagement.
A bunch of companies can request tools early on in to us, CalTAP and Yesware, they were doing templates. Then SalesLoft and Outreach which came with a better way to do it, which was cadences, multi-touch cadences, it's the right tool for this team.
They did that tool. Then they got a lot of costumers, high growth.
Somebody, I'm not sure who, called it sales engagement. They thought, "Oh, that makes sense, I like it," and then the category was born, but it didn't come the other way around, it didn't come the other way around.
So buyer involvement is a term we've used because we strongly believe that the focus has switched on the buyer, and that's what we do with our inbound solutions. You can't let your buyer wait two hours or two days to get that.
It’s a focus, but it’s more of a philosophy. We don't expect that somebody is going to come up and call this category buyer enablement. Some day the category will be called, and as a mission, we hope that we'll be in the right quadrant when that happens.
Kathleen: I think that's the right way to look at it, because everything I've seen is that even if an analyst sees it as a new category, they're not going to spend the time to coin it as such until there is more than one player in it. You can't have a category with only one company, at least in the eyes in most analyst firms.
Nicolas: Yeah.
How to unseat the incumbent solution provider? Kathleen: I think you're right. Last question, and then we'll kind of move into the wrap up. The thing that you're talking about doing, especially some of these new products around inbox start to get into the territory of taking on very well entrenched existing tools.
If I'm an enterprise level sales person, I have an inbox already, well I mean if I am anybody these days I have an inbox.
Nicolas: Yeah.
Kathleen: Often, in these larger organizations, it's generally Outlook, it's Gmail, and these platform, Google, Microsoft, have their tentacles into just about every aspect of the business.
So, how are you accounting for the fact that there is going to be an incumbent product in everyone's hand already, and does what you're building play with these other things, or how does that work, because that would seem very daunting?
Nicolas: That is a great question and it's for sure that the feedback we're getting from a lot of people, especially in the investing communities, are people who've never switched from our product, they get so attached to our product.
Kathleen: Well I don't know about that, Outlook is like SalesForce, people love to hate it.
Nicolas: You must be a Mac person because it doesn't work very... But the world has changed.
Kathleen: Yeah.
Nicolas: People adopt new tools much faster than they ever did. You see this on the iPhone, the level reduction, but look at Slack. There was email, there were also a bunch of messaging solutions like Skype and PICCHAT, but they came up with a better one, and people switched must faster than they used to.
It's up to us to come with a solution where the benefit is so obvious, it's a better way to do it, that people will switch intimidatingly.
That is much less of a risk than the investing communities sees, because people do switch. If in the inbox, this company called Superhuman that launched, say took after the inbox, and they've been successful.
Now there are so many new apps that users are accustomed trying new apps, changing new apps, and if it's better, they will do it. The job is to do something that is obviously better, and that's the challenge. If we do, then companies will switch, and usually will switch.
Kathleen: You just said something interesting, and this is my follow up question. Users might switch. This goes back to how we started the whole conversation about every person being their own CIO, because, especially in larger enterprise, I could see a sales rep saying, "Oh, I want to use this."
But at the end of the day if you want to get enterprise adoption, particularly for something like inbox, isn't the CIO, or the head of IT the key decision maker in that process. Which is a different audience than maybe you've dealt with in the past so-
Nicolas: Yeah, yeah, but there are two privileged citizens in the world, software developers and sales people. The software developer or sales person say, "I want that tool, nobody gets on their way," because you don't want to mess up your software development and you don't want to mess up your sales.
The reason for that is because obviously the software developers build the product, and you want to make them happy, but sales people, they bring the revenues. If they say the tool is going to help them, then it's very measurable.
That's the thing that's beautiful with our inbound solutions, that Chili Piper for the work sites. When conversion rates double, it's directly twice as much pipeline from inbound, the return investment is very easy to calculate.
It's not the feel good solution where you think, "Oh. That is helpful." No, you have twice as much pipeline, and that's easy.
So, same thing. When we launch our inbox, you're going to see shorter sales cycles and higher conversion rates.
I mean obviously it will be more subtle, I don't expect that it will double conversion rates. It will be a few points, but it's a few points on your total revenue. So if you can increase 5% your revenue, then the company making $200,000,000, that's 10 million, we'll charge less than 10 million.
Kathleen: Yeah.
Nicolas: We'll all make money.
Kathleen: Well I think you're probably right about software developers and sales people. I am just waiting for the day when the marketer becomes the privileged citizen as well. I have a feeling I shouldn't hold my breath.
Nicolas: You're right, marketers on a budget also, but for some reason, they struggle a bit more.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Yeah, yes. This is the path we choose though. Well, all right, so... Shifting gears, there are two question that I ask all of my guests and I would love to have what you have to say about these things.
One is the core of what we talk about in this podcast, is inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you really think is killing it right now with inbound marketing?
Nicolas: Well, I am going to be boring and name the king, and the king is HubSpot. They've nailed inbound marketing. To a large extent, they've been so good that they've been able to hide the weaknesses of their product. It took the longest time to... But now they have a reasonably good marketing product, a reasonably poor sales product. They've written the book on it, and I think all the other companies that are doing well...
A lot of companies have spun off of HubSpot and are doing well. In the case of Drift, they take the playbook, they replicate it, and it works for them.
That's definitely the company I would mention.
Kathleen: Okay. Well I've definitely heard those names, HubSpot and Drift, a lot on this podcast.
The second question is, the biggest complaint I hear from marketers, or the biggest pain point I should say is that digital marketing is changing so quickly, mostly driven by technology. They feel like it's trying to drink from a fire hose to keep up with everything and to stay on top of latest developments.
How do you personally stay on top of things?
Nicolas: On top of all marketing and technology, all the tools are there?
Kathleen: Right. Marketing, but also you're kind of in that sales and marketing technology space. Are there particular blogs, or podcasts, or people you follow? How do you stay up to date?
Nicolas: Of course, since we're in the space, we want to know what's going on at anytime, so it's almost our job to stay open. I do that with all the tech, I was looking at whatever tools can help us.
We have this concept of decision memo, so whenever we look at the particular piece... For example, I want to train my salespeople better right now. The first reflex we have in the company, at Chili Piper, is to say, "Is there a piece of software that could help us do that," and of course we’re biased, because we are software developers, but that's how we do it. That's the answer to your question, we go outbound looking for solutions.
There'll be different places where we can find good advice. Podcasts are a great one, yours in particular.
We listen to what other people do, say, and you learn a lot more from podcasts because people leave more practical description of what happens.
Look at the vendor talk, often abstract. Then there are also online communities where people discuss the best tools, and we pay attention.
Then we do, we take, random demos. Right now we are in the process of taking tons of demos from Learning Management Systems, for this particular solution.
We have tech savvy people in the operation, that also makes a big difference. I see companies that don't invest in operations, or don't put the right people in operations, and they're held back by that choice. It's a super important opinion that all companies over sites get tech savvy strong people in their operations.
These people are able to bring in new technology.
Kathleen: Yeah. I think that makes a particularly big difference in the early days, when everyone has to be willing to roll their sleeves up, and not just strategize but do a lot of the work as well, and understanding how to use technology is very powerful for that.
How to connect with Nicolas Kathleen: Well, we are coming to the top of the hour, so I wanted to make sure I ask you, if somebody wants to learn more about Chili Piper or reach out and connect with you online, what's the best way for them to do that.
Nicolas: That is to come to our website, because we use our own tools. Chili Piper is a play on word, chili pepper, Piper as in pipeline, so it's C H I L I, Piper, Chili Piper, and if you request a meeting with us you'll see our technology in action. It will pop up for you so you will be able to book it.
Kathleen: Great, I'll put that link in the show notes. Also, I didn't tell you I was going to do this, I also want to give just a small plug for Gipsy Time, which is another company that you are involved in founding. I just submitted my request to get in on the early access, it looks really cool, because one of my biggest problems is I have a million tabs open on my computer at any given time, plus Slack, plus inboxes, and it's super distracting, and it looks to me like you're solving that. Is that right?
Nicolas: Thank you, I am really delighted to hear that. Yes, yes, it's a typical case of solving your own problem. I have ADHD, I have a focus problem, and these to-do lists, they keep accumulating tasks, and I needed to manage a way to do that. On the side, I did this other company, Gipsy Time, to help people focus. It's not about capturing the task in the long to-do list, it's about getting it done.
We have the distraction blocking, where you can block, close all your tabs, and reopen them when you're finished. Make sure how much time you spend on something, make sure you spend the right amount of time. Did I tell you... When you requested that... Invited, it's very promising and it's helped me a lot in getting more done.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: Well, I need it for sure, so I can't wait to get my invitation. Well, thank you so much for joining me this week, this has been so much fun, if you are listening, and you like what you heard, please head over to Apple Podcasts, and consider leaving in the podcast a five star review, that's how we get in front of new listeners.
And, of course, if you know somebody else who is doing kick-ass inbound work tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next interview. Thank you so much Nicolas, this was a ton of fun.
Nicolas: Thank you, great fun, yes.
What is buyer intent data and how are marketers using content-level buyer intent data to get incredible inbound marketing results?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Intentdata.io Chief Revenue Officer Ed Marsh breaks down the topic of buyer intent data, and specifically talks about how contact-level buyer intent data works, and how marketers can use it to get better marketing and sales results.
Highlights from my conversation with Ed include:
- Ed defines intent data as "the collection of signals that indicate that somebody may be in market ready to buy your product or service."
- While it is a relatively new term, we all have intent data available to us.
- There are three kinds of intent data. First party data is what we have through the analytics software we use (ex. HubSpot). Second party comes from companies that sell data they gather through their own platforms. Third party data is collected from throughout the internet.
- Most intent data providers give you company-level data. Intentdata.io provides contact-level data which specifies exactly which individuals are taking high intent actions and what their contact information is.
- Company-level data can be used by sales teams to determine which accounts to target, whereas contact-level data can be used to create highly targeted marketing campaigns.
- With Google banning third party cookies, many intent data providers (particularly those who offer second-party data, will no longer be able to offer their data.
- One way to use intent data is in paid ad campaigns, and specifically for the creation of custom audiences.
- Another way is to trigger targeted email marketing drip campaigns or sales outreach sequences.
- Regardless of how you're using the data, the key is to have a way to unify all of that information and clean it up so it can be used correctly in your campaigns. That is where having some sort of customer data platform (CDP) can be useful.
- Ed says that the best way to get started with intent data is to focus on existing customers (for upsells and cross sells) and then on opportunities already in the pipeline, to see if you can close them faster.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the intentdata.io website
- Email Ed at ed@intentdata.io
Listen to the podcast to learn more about contact-level buyer intent data and how you can begin to use it now to get better marketing and sales results.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and this week my guest is Ed Marsh who is the chief revenue officer of intentdata.io. Welcome, Ed. Ed Marsh (Guest): Thank you very much, Kathleen. Great to be back with you.
Kathleen: You’re one of the very, very few people who has been on this podcast twice.
Ed: Well, it's a pleasure and an honor.
Kathleen: It's less than five. I don't know the exact number, but it's definitely less than five. It's a small and exclusive club.
Ed: As successful as your podcast has been, you're north of 100 episodes now, right?
Kathleen: Oh yeah, it's like ... I think I'm around 130+ episodes.
Ed: That's really neat.
Kathleen: I have surprised myself. Yeah, it's great. I feel like now I'm one of those people who's competitive enough with my own self that now I can't stop.
Ed: Both ...
Kathleen: It's great. No, I'm excited to have to back, and you are back here really representing a completely different company, intentdata.io, which I don't think existed. Either that or it was like the kernel of a company when we first spoke, the first time I interviewed you.
Ed: Right.
About Ed Marsh and Intentdata.io Kathleen: Let's start with kind of a re-introduction to my audience.
For those who either didn't hear you the first time around or heard you the first time around but aren't familiar with what you're working on now, could you talk a little bit about who you are, what you do, and what intentdata.io is?
Ed: Sure, absolutely.
We know each other, obviously, from the HubSpot community, the Inbound community, and have been kind of colleagues as agencies in that world for a number of years.
In the context that we originally spoke, I was really working in that agency role but not as an agency consulting for middle market industrial manufacturers. But of course in the context of all of this inbound marketing work, inbound has evolved. It's not a binary world where outbound is evil like they used to say.
No, the marketing takes all of these pieces. It takes inbound, it takes outbound, it takes paid, it takes great sales enablement, it takes all this stuff rolled together.
And one of the pieces that I began to roll into it several years ago was intent data, and it was very immature at the time. It's evolved quite a bit, but it's really through the realization that marketing needs to be approached holistically for most businesses in this hyper-competitive, hyper-content saturated world that we're in, every company needs every tool, and they need to use it really effectively and intelligently both strategically and tactically.
So against that background, I began working with a classmate of mine, actually from our mutual alma mater from Johns Hopkins that had worked on substantially developing and improving an algorithm for a very different approach to intent data than much of what was out there.
Through that work I then began selling it and experimenting with it, and it's been substantially refined over the last several years.
That algorithm is at the core of the intentdata.io business, and we've also incorporated some other elements like platform CDP in order to help companies fully exploit their full data stack and other stuff.
That's kind of how I got to where I am today and why we're talking in this role.
What is buyer intent data? Kathleen: That's so cool. I suspect that while most listeners of the podcast are pretty advanced, intent data's still a pretty new topic. I don't want to assume anything, and therefore can you just start by two to three sentences, I know this is going to be tough, can you explain what intent data is? Not necessarily what you guys do but what intent data is.
Ed: Sure. So what's really interesting about intent data is that most companies already have it and they don't realize it. Because there's this new term that we've put on it. Intent data is the collection of signals that indicate that somebody may be in market ready to buy your product or service.
So that could be visiting with you at an event or a trade show. It could be agreeing to have a meeting with you. In the common lexicon or parlance, it often is online activities like engaging with content, engaging with a competitor, social follows, and stuff like that.
How intentdata.io is different Kathleen: Great. And there are a whole host of companies that have sprung up really in the last, I would say, two years that are calling themselves intent data companies.
You mentioned that your algorithm and your approach is a little bit different. Can you explain what you mean by that?
Ed: Sure. There's a broad spectrum of companies that say intent data, some of which are really static databases. Some are visitor identification.
So if an unknown visitor comes to your site, you can use reverse IP lookup to figure out what the company is.
Some are selling account level data that's sourced through different means including DSP or bid stream data from programmatic advertising. Some through publishing co-ops.
There's first party data which is what companies have themselves that you collect through HubSpot.
Second party data is like TechTarget sell which is based on their own publishing platform.
And third party data, which is collected, supposedly or theoretically, everywhere else on the internet, although it's often from a small collection of sites.
Kathleen: Now, I have a lot of questions. So in your case, what makes intentdata.io special, different, unique?
Ed: So intentdata.io intent data is contact level intent data which is quite unique.
There's a lot of companies out there that sell account level data. In other words, we can't tell you who the person is. We just can tell you there's been a bunch of people from IBM that are taking such-and-such a kind of action.
There are companies that take account level data and then append to it their best guess of who the contacts might be based on who you tell them you'd love to talk to.
You know, if you want to sell to CMOs and they see somebody that meets your ideal customer profile from a firmographic perspective taking action, then guess what? They're going to append the CMO's name, and you're going to get all excited, and you're going to think, "This is exactly what I want."
What we do is we actually tell you who the person was that was taking action, and we give you their contact details, and we give you contextual information around the action they took.
So not just engagement with some kind of an opaque topic, the taxonomy of which is completely mysterious, but rather we say, "They took action with an article online that had, at its core, this key term that we know is important to you."
And because of that, then you can gauge where people are in the buying journey, the problem they're trying to solve, the outcome they're trying to achieve that competitors are talking to.
You pair that with the information embedded in the job title like seniority and function with the firmographic details, and suddenly you have this really rich understanding of what's going on for the individual. And then of course when there's multiple people from the same company for the account and for that 10.2 person buying team that challenger talks about.
Kathleen: Yeah, you're hitting on something that I think is really interesting. Because I started really looking at intent data probably a year and a half ago, and that's the kind of cool thing about the podcast is I get to talk to a lot of different people, I learn about a lot of different vendors, and specifically marketing technology vendors.
Now I'm in a role as VP of marketing at Attila Security where I'm looking at, "What should my tech stack be?"
And I've done this in a couple of different places now, looked at, reviewed intent data vendors. And I would say my perception, coming at this as an outsider, is that the big names that you hear most often are the ones that supply the account level data, as you described. I'm not going to name names, but that's basically what it is. Company x, lots of activity, they're looking at things. But you don't really know who in company x it is, and they market it as an account based marketing tool.
So you're already doing account based marketing, you're already targeting companies. We are going to tell you which companies are showing the most interest. Which I can see the value of, but I'm actually really interested in this contact level stuff.
Because yes, I think ABM has a lot of value, and it's something that I'm going to be working on, but I just can't help but think nothing beats knowing who the exact person is. You know, because at the end of the day that's the person who's either going to champion you or make the decision to buy.
So, it's interesting to me that more companies haven't gone contact level data, and I'm curious if you can comment onto why that is.
Why most intent data providers don't offer content-level buyer intent data Ed: Yeah, so there's a bunch of different reasons. Some of the big name companies started out unable to deliver contact level data and explained that as a technical impossibility or an illegality. And so there's some perception in the market that that's the case, neither of which are correct.
A lot of the large name data is now sold just as an embed in other software, like with ABM software and/or with a contact database. And so it's just really easy for somebody to pay an extra 30 or 40 or 60 grand a year and get the data that just kind of flows. Of course-
Kathleen: It's a lot of money, too, like, some of those add ons that you're talking about.
Ed: Right. I think the other issue with intent data, of course if we have contact level intent data, it's easy to look, just on a pivot table for instance, at how many contacts from the same company are taking action.
So you still get the account level insight, but it's a twofer. Not only are you getting that, but you're also getting the contact level insight.
I think that one of the places that some companies have struggled with it is to just say, "Okay, I want to take this list of contacts, and I want to start blasting emails at them using, you know, SalesLoft or Outreach sequences”. And that's not all that effective.
The companies that are really effective with it are the ones that take a more thoughtful approach whether it's in marketing, in sales, or both.
So when you look at account level data, the reason that often succeeds with a sales team is because the sales team says, "Wow, there's something happening. I got to figure it out," and they start working contacts until they figure out where it is.
And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whether they created the project through their diligence or uncovered it, nevertheless it's associated with intent data.
On the other hand, marketing departments can take that contact level intent data, create custom audiences with it, for instance, and then do really remarkably focused and tailored paid ads to very specific audiences, again drawing on all of the contextual detail of stage and buying, journey, problem to be solved, etc. with a really tight sort of a messaging matrix.
So to answer your question, from a marketing perspective, contact level data can mean more work. It's not as easy as just having Triblio tell you, "Okay, focus on these accounts."
I mean, it takes additional work, particularly if you're going to use it for other use cases like event marketing in addition to demand gen. Market research is a great application for it.
So you know, I think part of its awareness. Part of it is the initial perception that there was some impediment to using it, and part of it is the fact that there's more work to make it effective.
How will Google's ban of third party cookies impact intent data? Kathleen: Now, I'm going to ask what might be a dumb question, but I've been reading in the news lately about how Google is going to ban and/or phase out the ability for people to use third party cookies. And I'm still trying to wrap my head around what that means.
But it seems to me, this is where it might be a dumb question, that it's going to affect some of these intent data providers, particularly the ones that are looking at leveraging data coming in through ad platforms. Is that correct?
Ed: Yeah, I think it's not a dumb question at all, and it's very perceptive of you. That's precisely correct.
If you look at one of the very common methods of collection of intent data, it's based on programmatic advertising platforms. It's bid stream data, it's collected through a DSP, and what's interest is that-
Kathleen: What's a DSP?
Ed: Honestly, I don't even know what the acronym stands for. I'm going to embarrass myself.
Kathleen: No, I mean I have no idea either. I was like, "Oh my god, am I just the only one who doesn't know?"
Ed: What's interesting is that many of these providers have actually, going to set up a DSP without the intention of brokering and placing ads. But so they have the insight into what's happening into the market.
Kathleen: Interesting.
Ed: Who has space available, what kinds of topics, and who wants to put ads onto those pages. So it gives them some insight they've been able to build their intent data collection on, but that's predicated, to a large extent, on third party cookies, which of course Apple and Firefox did away with a while ago, but Google has announced a couple weeks ago they'll do on Chrome as well.
Kathleen: Ah oh, by the way, I'm going to confess I did just Google DSP. It's a demand side platform.
Ed: There you go.
Kathleen: "Buyers of digital advertising use to manage multiple ad exchange and data exchange accounts." I had to look that one up, so you learn something new every day.
Ed: Perfect. There are some alternative methods that companies in that space use.
They try to call it fingerprinting and some other things, but they're just not effective.
And so you're absolutely right. Although the sunset deadline I think is two years off, there are, in this crazy intent industry, there are companies demanding three year contracts right now including some that are selling DSPs.
So how'd you like to be a company that signed a three year contact for that about a month ago?
Kathleen: Yeah, and your provider's going to basically become obsolete, or they're going to have to figure out a different way to do it.
So okay. Well, thank you for clarifying that. I didn't want to take us on too much of a tangent, but it's been on my mind. Understanding third party cookies is ... it's complicated.
Ed: It is, for sure.
Kathleen: So I probably need to do a whole separate episode just on that so that people can understand it, including myself.
But in the meantime, so we're talking about contact level intent data, which in your case is not going to be affected if I understand correctly by Google's ban of third party cookies.
Ed: That's correct.
How are marketers using content-level buyer intent data? Kathleen: So now I'd like to shift gears and really talk about, "What does this look like in action?" Like, how are marketers using this information to improve their inbound marketing results? Do you have some examples you can talk us through?
Ed: Sure, absolutely. I think that there's really three phases.
One is building a full data stack. The second is doing proper analysis and segmentation, and then the third is doing orchestration.
And if you look at kind of the maturity of the market right now, there's very few that are at the orchestration stage. There's not all that many that are doing the analysis and segmentation correctly, just because the limits of the existing martech stack that they have.
But let's kind of, if you're up for it, let's work through those three kind of quickly.
Kathleen: Let's do it.
Ed: Chunk each one out.
All right, so first you've got to have ... I shouldn't say it that way. It is beneficial, and as the process matures more companies will have a full data stack. So that means first party data, not just what you're observing of known users on your site, you know people that convert forms and come back and look at the pages, but anonymous first party data, who from companies is visiting your site that you don't know who they are, and then first party data from elsewhere in the organization.
For instance, information on in-app usage and transactional information. There's all kinds of first party data that companies just partition.
They think, "Well, that's customer service," or, "That's operations," or whatever but really is important to understand that entire customer life cycle.
I think it's also important for companies to think of intent data across the customer life cycle, not just as a prospecting and demand gen sort of tool. Because it's got use cases across.
But also in that full data stack, you might want some second party data from a couple publishers that are particularly strong in your industry that own those relationships. They have opted in readers and subscribers that have some really important insights into what's happening on their platform in that space and that subject domain that's important to you.
And then third party data. And typically a couple sources of third party data.
A great example in the martech space is G2 Crowd which doesn't give you a lot of signal but certainly gives you some important signal.
You mesh that with something like our intentdata.io data, and now you've got a really interesting perspective.
Those then, you've got to roll them up, properly unify them, cleanse them, and then you start to enrich it. And you enrich perhaps the technographic information or firmographic information.
Or you understand about parent companies, and child companies, and how all of that's fitting together, you do some validation: validate email addresses, validate physical addresses because there's more marketing being done B to B with direct mail again, now.
So all of this stuff has to kind of be rolled up into a very accurate, single customer view.
That's one of the places that current marketing technology tends to fall a little bit short. Although there's great synchronization in many cases, there's not a lot of great unification of the data, and so that becomes a barrier sometimes for companies.
They've got a great stack with Salesforce and Marketo and Drift and all these important pieces that fit together, but they're just not quite able to get it all rolled up into one very accurate, properly enriched, properly unified view.
So then that sometimes is a barrier to the second step which is the analysis and segmentation.
So think about it, for instance, if you had ... You talk a lot about ABM so you probably know Kerry Cunningham from Sirius and now Forrester that talks about second lead disease. You know, Kerry makes the point that we all get really excited about the first lead from a new logo, and that's great.
The second lead from that same logo comes in, and people say, "Oh, that's cool. That's interesting, but we already have one. We're already working it."
His point is that second one is the one that ought to get people excited because now you know that there's something more going on. It's not just some person, a crackpot, doing research on their own, but there's some sort of organizational activity.
Kathleen: Right. There's water cooler talk happening at that company.
Ed: Exactly. So let's extend that. Let's say that you have one or two people that convert on your site, known people in your first party data.
Let's say that one of them has a demo, you know gets the freemium version of it and uses a lot of it, and one of them gets the freemium version and doesn't use it much.
Let's say that there's two or three people from the same company that hit your site a number of times but don't identify themselves.
So you know there's additional activity in the company.
Now, let's say in third party data you see some of those same people plus other members that you know would be part of that buying team, in other words the right roles and functions are in place so you know there's a project, and you see them engaging with competitors, engaging with industry news. You can see where each of them is in the buying journey.
And so now you've got a really interesting understanding of what's happening across that whole company. You've kind of validated the fact there is a project. You understand the roles that you see engaged. You understand the roles that aren't engaged or that you don't see and what your sales people need to focus, etc.
But if you think about it, if you try to do that in a lot of the marketing automation software, you can't do it. I mean, even stepping from the contact level to the account level in many cases is a little bit tricky. It's not really a relational database the way you need it to be with most of the marketing automation platforms in order to do that sort of thing.
There's two pieces. One is the technology piece, and the other is kind of the intellectual rigor and curiosity that's necessary to go through and say, "Let's build scenarios that really would tell us it's likely, it's sure," however you want to chunk them — MQL, SQL, whatever the case may be, and that's that analysis and segmentation then that gets really, really interesting and where companies, I think, in general are not yet hitting that point.
They're kind of taking the list and saying, "Let's see who's on our target account list, and let's follow up with them," as opposed to using that list as a way to inform the target account vessel.
Then the third piece, once you've done that, if you've got it all properly segmented, including micro segmentation so that the messaging is appropriate for the function, the seniority, the stage in the buying journey, competitors they've talked to, pages they've been on your site, all of that kind of stuff. Then you want to orchestrate, and you want to pull in your entire martech stack.
So you want to automatically launch sequences from Outreach if that's what you're doing. You want to automatically add people to the right custom audience for a social advertising. You want to automatically add people to the right segment and address so when they come, they have exactly the right customized chatbot experience when they come.
And you want all this stuff to happen automatically and at scale. And then further, you also want the automation to push the dots close enough together for the sales team.
You want to suggest to the BDR, "Here's what we've observed. Here's what we infer from that. Therefore here's the template we think you should use and the enablement content we think you should use."
You want to let the sales person or the AE know if they're in the midst of an opportunity and you see engagement with a competitor, then you want to make sure that they're clear not only that it happened but give them some context of the role and whether that person is also part of their deal or a new person. Just help them understand how to react to it.
Because there's so much information flowing at people, it's really important to give them that context so they can seize it and action it.
So I've been rambling, but I think those are kind of the three key areas to fully put intent data to work.
Who is having success using intent data? Kathleen: It's incredibly clear to me that this holds amazing potential for marketers from so many different standpoints, and you covered a lot of them. You know, in terms of ad targeting, in terms of key account selection, helping your sales team, your BDR, your SDR, etc. do their job better, but it also sounds really complicated.
So is there anybody out there that you've seen in the wild who's really doing this well? Like, who's really using this information well and getting results with it?
Ed: There are some companies that are doing it, and it's places where they've had one person that kind of really seized it, applied creative energy to it, saw the opportunity, and grew with it.
I understand absolutely your point about it sounding complicated.
On the other hand, if we were to talk about doing digital marketing really well, that's really complicated too. And so there's always layers. I mean, you can start easy and then gradually progress into it as the organizational maturity and resources satisfy that.
Kathleen: Yeah. Have you seen any success stories like where somebody's really been able to point to intent data and say, "That was the thing that helped me double my results or land that key customer"?
Ed: Yeah, so we're not at liberty to discuss any of our client data and success stories because of nondisclosures.
There's a lady named Amanda Bone who spoke at the B2B Marketing Exchange in Boston actually in conjunction with TechTarget talking about what they've done with a very robust intent data program, and I think the story that she told really illustrates the way you have to move into it progressively, you have to be very clear that you've got these cascading goals that you want to achieve.
You're not going to try to do everything immediately, but also she understood the importance of having some platform that would help to integrate the data from different sources so that it wasn't just, you know, I got to look here, and then look there, and then look there, and hope that I remember it but rather pulled it together into some sort of a single view that made it actionable both for marketing and for sales.
Unifying your intent data for use in marketing campaigns Kathleen: And what kinds of platforms do that?
Ed: A couple of the intent data companies have very limited platforms that they may integrate anonymous first party data. In other words put some sort of an IP address lookup tool on your site in conjunction with third party data and provide a roll up of that, but the right answer I believe, and the direction that we're headed with clients, is to use a full blown CDP, to have the full capability of unification and the full capability of orchestration.
Getting started with contact-level buyer intent data Kathleen: And so if you were somebody listening and you're thinking, "This sounds really cool. I would love to dip my toe in the water," but they're maybe intimidated by the full blown picture of, "Here's what it takes to really knock it out of the park," how would you suggest a marketer get started with this?
What are some smaller things they could do to maybe have some initial wins and demonstrate success to, of course, as every marketer needs to think about like get that organizational buy in.
Ed: Sure, absolutely. One of the really cool things about intent data is if marketers use it well, they can foster the alignment that seems so elusive between departments.
So I look for quick wins with your partners on the success team, and that means feeding them signal from current customers and providing some training so that they understand how to interpret that signal.
But if you see a current customer that's taking action with competitors or researching stuff, it's also a good upsell cross sell opportunity.
So turn reduction, upsell, cross sell. So you can win with a success team pretty easily that way.
With the sales team, I would discourage you from trying to start pushing them a bunch of new leads.
I would focus on pending opportunities and target accounts and push them that signal.
Now, you're going to have to provide a little bit more coaching and training in that case. And so you might want to phase it in gradually because nothing would be worse than a clumsy salesperson calling up and saying, "I thought you said you were going to buy from us. Why are you talking to the competitor?" That's not the way to use the data. So you want to make sure you train to avoid that.
In terms of the marketing function itself, two easy places to start.
If you're running pay ads, then develop some parallel paid ad programs with custom audiences, very tailored messaging. That's a relatively easy lift if you already have a paid ads program in place.
If you're not doing any paid ads then that's going to feel like a project. So that's a judgment call.
The second is to monitor events. If you're in an industry where a competitor of yours sponsors an event, what a fabulous opportunity to understand who the people are engaging with that event and target them with outbound sales.
If you have industry wide events then do the same sort of a thing, but it's not specifically for targeting customers. It's obviously to create a base of leads for paid ads, for salespeople outreach, and maybe even in some cases if you're going to have a salesperson at an event and you're not investing a ton of money in exhibiting there. Use that to help them schedule appointments before they go.
So those are a couple easy marketing use cases as well as a couple easy ways to incorporate it with sales, and success, and build alignment and buy in.
Kathleen: Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned events because I've thought about that. Even if you are exhibiting, if you're going to spend the money to have a booth at an event, most events these days don't give out their attendee lists.
Ed: Right.
Kathleen: And so, you know, marketers are left kind of scrambling with, "Well, how are we going to drive people to the booth?" Because you can send out a big blast, but you don't know that the people getting it are actually planning on attending, but if you can use intent data to narrow down your marketings to people who are going to be going to the event, then you can use a combination of advertising.
You could ... there's all kinds of things you can do to really get in front of them before that event.
Ed: Absolutely. For sure. And that investment is huge. That's where a lot of companies' marketing investment is going, but there's applications for the intent data before the event, during, and after.
And of course there's also applications for event organizers for companies th
at are organizing their own event and then opening it up to kind of parallel players. That intent data gives you ability as an event organizer to monetize for your other exhibitors. Because you can then say, "Hey, look. You're in such a such a space. We will, as part of the event package if you buy this add on, we will provide informational people that we see engaging that we believe are going to be attending the event that are particularly interested in what you're doing."
So there's additional value as an organizer to monetize when you're exhibiting.
Is buyer intent data GDPR compliant? Kathleen: Now, I'm sure that there are some marketers who are listening, and one of the questions that they'll have is, "What implications does GDPR have for all of this?" Because we're talking about contact level data, both data that you might be harvesting as the marketer using intent data, but you also just mentioned like event organizers sharing that data with others.
So can you just talk about that for a moment?
Ed: Show me two attorneys that will give you the same answer about any GDPR topic.
I mean, we can certainly talk about it. There is no definitive answer. Every company has to have its own philosophy.
I can tell you that we have clients in the EU that run our data the way we normally provide it.
We also have clients in the EU and in the US that request that we mask certain fields in the data. So they get the job title, for instance, from which they can discern a lot of information, but they don't get the name and email address, and they still get most of the value out of it.
So those are things that each company has to decide.
The bottom line, we believe based on our understanding, is the data is entirely GDPR compliant as it. And because of how we harvest, what we're doing is we're watching people take action publicly online. So it's very much akin if you saw somebody comment on a blog post, on an article on Forbes or on a conversation on LinkedIn and you're a salesperson in the EU, there's nothing that prohibits you from figuring out who that person is, and reaching out, and contacting them saying, "It looks to me like this is of interest to you."
So I mean, that's the closest analogy to commonly accepted sales practice that describes the data and why it's acceptable.
Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. You're right, it's a total gray area, but I appreciate you trying to clarify that.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: So shifting gears, I have two questions I ask all of my guests. You've been down this road before, but we're going to do it again because some time has passed. So we'll see if your answers have changed.
Who do you think, either company or individual, is really kind of setting the example for what it means to do great inbound marketing these days?
Ed: And I can guarantee you my answer isn't changed because I don't remember what my answers were. So I would say to that, a company called Mosquito Squad. I don't know if you've ever heard of them.
Kathleen: Oh, yeah.
Ed: Where I live in New England, the mosquitoes are horrible in the summer, and I get tired of ... Basically, you can't go outside for part of the year.
So I got really fed up in hunting around, and they popped up, kind of typical inbound playbook, but then they have so fully integrated a helpful, and informative, and consultative approach throughout the process that made it easy to understand why to use them or what was involved and we ought to select them.
Then it made it really easy to understand once we did what the process was going to be.
Then they're really good about letting you know, "Okay, we're going to be there in 20 minutes. Okay, we're done. Here's what we did. Here's the invoice."
I mean, it's so well integrated that not only did it make it easy to find them and learn about the service, but it makes working with them really easy too.
Kathleen: Yeah, you're right about those mosquitoes in New England because I grew up in New Hampshire, and my mother used to go out to do yard work, and she literally would wear a hat that had a net that came down and like tucked into her shirt. It'd be like 90 degrees, and she'd be in long sleeves and long pants, and the pants would be tucked into her socks. It was just crazy.
Ed: Right.
Kathleen: So second question, getting off the mosquito topic, things change so quickly. This is a great example of that. Intent data, DSPs, most marketers really have trouble keeping up with all of it.
So how do you personally keep up with everything that's changing in the world of digital marketing?
Ed: Well, what I do specifically is not focus on inbound and digital marketing.
I try to watch business more broadly. With general business resources, about trends in the economy, I mean there's certainly some kind of advertising and marketing related blogs that I follow and newsletters that I get from Ad Age through some others.
I use a lot of Google Alerts around very specific kinds of terms because that way I'm not limited in hearing from the sources that I know about, but I'm discovering new sources as information becomes, and different perspectives become, available.
I think like most people, this is a pitch for yours, podcasts are a great way to just kind of parachute in, get some ideas, see where there's an interesting episode, listen to it. You can do it while you're doing other things. So those are a great tool.
Then the other thing that I do is follow a couple people, not so much because I'm so excited about the ideas they talk about but because I really love watching the way they create content and practice their craft.
So I learn from seeing how folks balance all the media, and produce a lot of content, and build social following, and I just appreciate the way they do it whether or not I agree with the message that they're espousing.
Kathleen: Can you name some names?
Ed: Well, having said that I may not agree with the message they're espousing I got to be careful, but I mean there's some prominent marketers in the Boston area that have very large followings, that have a loudly proclaimed opinion about a lot of different things, that I think sometimes it's a little bit superficial or vapid, but they do create a lot of great content across a lot of channels.
Kathleen: All right. With that caveat, come on I'm going to keep plugging. Who you got? Who you got?
Ed: I think Dave Gerhardt is really interesting to watch.
Kathleen: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, you agree or disagree with anything he says, it's you can't disagree with the fact that he has successfully built a tremendous audience.
Ed: Right.
Kathleen: There's no two ways about it.
Ed: Right.
Kathleen: He actually gets mentioned a lot as a response to that first question I asked you.
Yeah. Cool. Well, that's all interesting, and any particular podcasts that you are really a fan of?
Ed: More general business ones. I love Business Wars.
I like listening to The Knowledge Project from Shane Parrish.
I like listening to some of the same ones that other people talk about, Joe Rogan where you get interesting perspectives from people of in depth interviews, history things. You know, Bonsai and all kinds of stuff. There's a lot of great podcasts out there.
Kathleen: Yeah. I always love hearing what other people are listening to because there are so many out there, and I wish I had 48 hours in every day to listen to podcasts. It's a great way to learn.
Ed: Like the numbers, if you compare the number of blogs to the number of podcasts, I don't remember what the numbers are, but there's like 3% the number of podcasts. So people that say that podcasting is already over the hill, I don't think that's the case.
Kathleen: No. Well, it better not be. Because I'm on episode 130+ and I plan to keep going, so.
Ed: You've got many more to go. Perfect.
How to connect with Ed Kathleen: But then again, maybe that makes me an OG. I have no idea.
This has been fun, Ed. I appreciate it, and if somebody is listening and they want to reach out to you and ask a question about intent data, or they want to learn more about intentdata.io, what's the best way for them to do that?
Ed: They can email me at ed@intentdata.io, or they can go to the website intentdata.io.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: Awesome. All right, I'll put those links in the show notes.
And if you are listening and you have not yet taken a moment and gone to Apple Podcasts and left the podcast a review, I'm going to ask you to do that today. It's how we get found by new people. We're 130+ episodes in as we talked about, and I would really appreciate it.
So if you're a regular listener in particular, take a minute and leave a review, and if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork because I'm always looking for new inbound marketers to interview.
Kathleen: That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Ed. This has been a lot of fun having you back for a second time.
Ed: Well thank you very much, Kathleen. I enjoyed it as well.
How did Morning Brew go from zero to 1.8 million email subscribers in just two years?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Morning Brew Senior Product Lead Tyler Denk shares the story of how he and and the small founding team at Morning Brew grew the scrappy email startup into the darling of the email newsletter world.
Tyler shares details on Morning Brew's referral program, which was responsible for the bulk of the newsletter's early growth, as well as his thoughts on why quality content is the single most important factor driving the company's success.
Learn what worked for Morning Brew in the past, what they're doing now, and what they plan to focus on in the future as they launch new newsletter products and continue to grow their flagship brand.
Highlights from my conversation with Tyler include:
- Morning Brew launched two years ago as a daily business newsletter that had the goal of making business news engaging and enjoyable to read.
- Since then the business has expanded to include additional newsletters such as Emerging Tech Brew, Retail Brew and The Turnout, as well as the Business Casual podcast.
- The company is currently undergoing the transition from a single daily business newsletter to a media company.
- None of the company's founders came from a journalism or business background, so they intuitively took a very unconventional approach to the newsletter business.
- Morning Brew is 100% ad funded, but all ads are in the form of native content that is created by the Morning Brew team, not the advertisers.
- Morning Brew is very picky about the writers it hires. They look for people who understand business and finance but also have a strong sense of humor.
- When it comes to design, Morning Brew's goal is to have a newsletter that is aesthetically pleasing but that doesn't have design that takes away from the content.
- Like every email newsletter, Morning Brew relies upon tracking pixels to see if readers are opening the email newsletter, but because so many people have images turned off by default in their email clients, they need to incentivize them to turn images on in order to get those analytics. They do this by optimizing the image ALT text.
- One of the biggest things that has driven Morning Brew's growth is its referral program.
- Every Morning Brew newsletter has a sharing section at the bottom that tells the reader how many referrals they need to get before they qualify to receive an award, and provides the reader with a unique referral link.
- Readers are incentivized to share in a variety of ways, from SWAG to winning free trips, laptops and more.
- Morning Brew uses double opt ins to ensure that the new email addresses for subscribers are valid before awarding referral points to readers.
- Recently, they've supplemented the referral program with paid advertising and the team tracks their cost per acquisition closely.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the Morning Brew website to subscribe
- Email Tyler at tyler[at]morningbrew[dot]com
- Follow Tyler on Twitter
- Check out Tyler's Medium article on How Morning Brew’s referral program built an audience of 1.5 million subscribers
Listen to the podcast to learn how the team at Morning Brew grew the subscriber base for their email newsletter to 1.8 million -- and what you can do to get more email subscribers, too.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and today my guest is Tyler Denk, who is the Senior Product Lead at Morning Brew. Welcome, Tyler. Tyler Denk (Guest): Hey, thanks for having me.
Tyler and Kathleen recording this episode.
Kathleen: I am really excited to have you because I have spent quite a bit of time in the last couple of years studying what makes a great email newsletter, and a lot of that time was spent looking really closely at Morning Brew, which we can talk about in a minute.
But before we jump into our topic for today, can you tell my audience a little bit about yourself, about Morning Brew and how you wound up doing what you do today?
About Tyler Denk and Morning Brew Tyler: Yeah, sure. I don't know where to start when we... I might need to start with myself.
Kathleen: Yes, that would be great.
Tyler: Throughout being in Baltimore, Maryland, I was friendly with one of the co-founders of Morning Brew, so that alludes to how I got involved with Morning Brew.
Eventually, I'll fast forward, went to the university of Maryland, did mechanical engineering. I taught myself how to code while in college and me and a few buddies came up with a concept for some web application startup company that we did in college. Essentially it was to help entrepreneurs and startups connect to other software developers.
The problem we had was we couldn't code ourselves, ran into the problem getting to build the website. We needed to learn how to code. So that's what forced us into teaching ourselves how to code.
We built that website, and running that company while in college was a tremendous experience and that's what got me involved in like the entrepreneurship startup software world.
Fast forward a little bit from there, that we ended up eventually shutting down, but Alston, who is one of the co-founders from Morning Brew -- at the time there was just three people, they just graduated college -- were going full time with Morning Brew and they needed some tech help.
They asked if I could freelance on the side before I started a full time job. Pretty much all summer spent building the website and working on Morning Brew and eventually that led to a full time offer.
So I've been in Morning Brew pretty much from the beginning since when they went full time with it, two and a half, three years ago, and initially joined as a growth engineer and the first like, tech product growth hire essentially in that kind of world.
Kathleen: I love so much about this story, but before I ask all these questions that I have in my head, I did not realize that we had the Maryland connection. Because I am in Annapolis right now, went to college in Baltimore. So we'll have a whole separate conversation about that after I turn off the recording so that we don't force everyone to listen to the Maryland conversation.
And that's awesome. I love that you guys were basically a bunch of young guys who hadn't worked for years in the corporate world.
The Morning Brew story Kathleen: Tell the audience a little bit about what Morning Brew is and what makes it different than other newsletters? Because I think that's important to this.
Tyler: Yeah. So what Morning Brew started off as is a daily business newsletter that makes business news engaging and enjoyable to read.
What the co-founders found at the time, they were both University of Michigan students in the business school there, that typically the resources that the students were using were The Wall Street Journal and a bunch of incumbent traditional media companies.
They created a lot of content, but as far as our demographic goes, like a younger 18 to 34-year-old millennial, new in the workforce, it wasn't the most engaging content. So they started off by creating this daily email newsletter.
Since then it has expanded beyond just a single daily newsletter. We have a few other verticals. We have Emerging Tech Brew, which is all of the emerging tech. Retail Brew covers the retail industry obviously, and then The Turnout, which is a politics and business intersection newsletter.
And then from there we've also launched a podcast Business Casual, which is a weekly, interview-focused podcast of like CEOs, founders, et cetera.
So we're currently undergoing the transition from single daily business newsletter to a media company, and that's been exciting to be a part of.
Kathleen: I love that story so much because I think what's so fascinating to me is that email newsletters have been around for a really long time. And I think a lot of marketers when they think email newsletter, they think boring.
And I've always believed that one of the reasons email newsletters became so boring is because they became a little bit too easy to do "well" from like a formatting standpoint.
There's tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact and MyEmma that have given the average person templates and things that that made it really simple to send out a nicely formatted newsletter, but unfortunately what that resulted in was a lot of sameness and a lot of people just spitting out these newsletters that were, "Here's the latest four blogs we wrote." Really, really, really boring, check the box kind of stuff.
And so I think when I hear you talk about you guys coming right out of school and creating this, in some ways it makes all the sense in the world to me because I think it almost takes a group of people who haven't been steeped in the way it's always been done to recognize that the way it's always been done sucks.
Tyler: Yeah. Well, there's a few things there.
I think email actually is very hard, in a lot of senses, especially aesthetically. So you mentioned how terrible email newsletters traditionally look. There's a lot of limitations to like what you can do in email. Like you can't have video, you can't make it look... I think Morning Brew does a good job of making it as good looking as an email can, but it is very difficult to play with and there are a lot of limitations there.
So when people got used to digesting and consuming content online, the flexibility on the web is so much beyond what you can do in email.
So I think that's one reason why at least aesthetically email doesn't live up to living content online.
But then the other thing you hit on I think is really important, but a lot of these media companies monetize online through banner advertisements, and people display ads, and so their email newsletters were really just a drip of links to drive you back to their website, which if you are in your inbox and trying to consume content, that's not an ideal experience.
That's an angle we took. We are very unconventional.
I think you hit it pretty much on the head where when we started off there were two founders who did not have a media background. Our first writer was not a journalist by trade and so we never really did things how they were traditionally done. We were challenging the status quo from the get go. We didn't monetize. We still don't have internet on our website.
Our website's not monetized at all. Right now, even though we are 100% ad-based, which we're looking to change, all of our advertisements are natively created in-house and put right within the newsletter.
So that just flips the traditional media model on its head and we're just email first and have been hyper-focused on that. And I think that's just led to like a pretty interesting product.
Morning Brew's growth Kathleen: Yeah, I have like a thousand questions I want to ask, but I want to make sure that we do some table setting for people listening, especially if they're not familiar with Morning Brew. So tell me when exactly did they start the newsletter?
Tyler: So they started as two undergrad students at University of Michigan in 2015. One, Alex Lieberman, the CEO, he's a few years older than Austin, so he graduated and worked a full time job at a trading desk for two years while Austin was still at school. And then when Austin graduated, Alex quit, Austin moved to New York and they went full time with it, I would say March, 2017.
Kathleen: Wow. So that was like what, two and a half years ago, not that long ago. And how many subscribers does Morning Brew have today?
Tyler: Right now on our daily newsletter, we have 1.8 million subscribers.
What makes Morning Brew special Kathleen: That's insane. So if you're listening and you have a newsletter, think about how many subscribers you've added in the last two and a half years. And I'm betting it's nowhere near almost 2 million.
Like I said, I've been following you guys for a long time. You've published some really good content on how you grew Morning Brew, and the thing that I love about what you've said, and it's something I strongly believe, is that all of this growth, you can have the best growth hacks in the world, you can be an awesome marketer, but... and this applies really to marketing anything.
If the product stinks, it's not going to work. Right?
And so I'd love to just start out by talking about the product itself and what makes the Morning Brew email special and so appealing to the people who read it.
Tyler: Yeah. I think it really starts and ends and all the credit goes to the content team.
The writers that we have on staff here are incredible. They have a certain sense of like wit and humor where they can combine that aspect of writing and creativity with also like a deep understanding of what's important in the world, what is this news is actually relevant to our demographic and generation and so be able to fully understand the business landscape, take the top five, six, seven stories any given day and then throw some creative like whoever, what do you spin on the story to make it interesting and engaging for people to read?
I think it's like the total package, and I know that's something that we focus on, so that's not my thing, my domain on the content side of things, but it has been a struggle to hire for, just given that there are a lot of very funny, clever people that don't have any sense of the business world and like economics, finance and everything in that realm.
And then there's obviously the inverse of that of people who are super well-versed in finance and business but don't have the creativity to take these different stories and news topics and turn them into something extremely funny and engaging.
So I think we've done a great job recruiting and hiring people who are extremely talented and smart. And the product itself shows when you read it.
The importance of great content Kathleen: Yeah, it really does. There's a very distinct tone of voice and it's very consistent. And you touched on that earlier and I found this out because I actually reached out months back about advertising.
And one of the things that I talked with, I don't remember who I spoke with, but whoever that was, we talked about how when you work with advertisers, you establish what the objective is. Is it brand awareness, is it lead gen, what have you. And then the advertiser supplies information, content, et cetera.
But really your team in-house creates whatever is going in the newsletter. You're not like, copying and pasting stuff that an advertiser is giving you. And it seems like that allows you to really create native ads that are going to appeal to your audience. Because if they're subscribing, they already like that tone.
So can you talk a little bit about that?
Tyler: Yeah, for sure. So right now our ad and copywriting team is growing like wildfire. We have two in-house creative copywriters right now, hiring two more that are joining in the next few weeks.
Essentially, that is one of our value props to advertisers and partners, that you give all of the key messaging points and initiatives that you want to be promoted and our internal creative team that works separately from the content team, so we do have a separation between content and the advertising and copywriting, but they're trained in the same manner to have that same type of wit and creativity on the copy with the advertisement.
And so that's something even when I first started reading several years ago, that it was hard to differentiate just because it's written with the same tone, like the difference between a story and an advertisement, the wit and the creative thoughts put into the pieces are very similar.
Obviously there are disclaimers. That one is an advertisement and the rest are stories, but outside of that if you were to read them blind, they do blend into each other pretty well, which is great for advertisements as they get incredible performance and engagement with all the ads that we create.
And it also doesn't seem out of place in the newsletter itself, where we have this pretty consistent on invoice and then advertisement that's either like a disgusting banner ad or something that just seems very out of place.
So it's all kind of one cohesive product.
Kathleen: It really makes all the sense in the world just intuitively because you guys know your audience better than any advertiser ever could. So to think as an advertiser that you could do a better job of really resonating with that audiences is a pretty audacious thing.
So it's pretty logical, but it's interesting to me how few companies do that, that really create the content for their advertisers. That seems like an interesting differentiator.
Morning Brew's email newsletter design Kathleen: The other thing I wanted to ask you about before we get into like all the growth strategies, is just the aesthetics and you mentioned this also about how when you're creating content on the web you have a lot more in terms of options for how you aesthetically design something. But with email there are a lot of limitations.
This something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about, again, because I think that there is a ton of sameness, especially with emails, where due to the proliferation of templates, a lot of them are like picture to the left top, each of the right link or something along those lines or picture, copy, link, picture, copy, link.
And what I found is that a lot of email newsletters gratuitously include visuals that don't add any value like stock photography and things like that because either they think they have to or they somehow think that people want to see a more highly designed product.
And what I've noticed, at least in my own case, is that when I open my email client and I use Outlook and Gmail, one personally, one for work, all of my email clients are set by default to not show images.
So you open it up and all of those things people are adding in thinking this is going to make the experience better, they're not showing anyway.
You have created a very minimalist experience that still has design elements but they seem to be more intentional. So what is the strategy behind that?
Tyler: Yeah, I guess it starts with the template itself. So we don't use like the drag and drop that you see in most email service providers. We have like, a custom HTML template that we've like... You'd be surprised at how long it took to get to any final decision with the design of that. It went through like months of iteration of testing different colors, different themes, the different shadows which we have now.
If you've been reading Morning Brew for several years, you've probably seen our newsletter template change significantly, like three different times.
The most recent update that we did, I would say in the fall of 2019, so not too long ago, we went with like 3d card within the shadow type aesthetic. This is obviously all pending on what like email client you're using. Outlook is the laggard of the email world and so it's fairly ruminating.
As limiting as email is, Outlook is like a decade behind every other email client, so that's very frustrating. Like we used gifs to give it in our emails as well and Outlook does not provide the functionality to play gifs, just as one example.
But yeah, initially, we designed our website last summer and we had that card 3d aesthetic with the website and to build that consistency with email product as well, we mimic that in the newsletter.
What's interesting actually about a template is email isn't really supposed to have those shadows. So that wasn't really, not to get too technical, but a very hacky way to achieve that, which I think is pretty unique in newsletters and not many other newsletters I follow have a style similar to that. Yeah.
Ultimately what we want to do is provide various aesthetically pleasing experiences but not something that would take away from the content.
So that's just a constant battle. We have two in-house designers that are tremendous and then we obviously have a content team and the design likes to flex their muscles and build the coolest looking email product or any product that we release.
The design or the content team knows what's most important at the end of the day is being able to cohesively read the content and not let the design distract from what's actually being written.
So it's a lot of just like finding the right balance there. But I am very confident in our current design. I'm a huge fan of it. It's really just making sure it looks good, and now looking at every other email client.
Kathleen: Yeah, yeah. That is a tough balancing act, trying to get something that's going to work across email clients.
Optimizing email images Kathleen: Although I have noticed a little hack that I think you guys have used and a few other newsletters I follow have used, which is the alt text for the images or the gifs that you're putting in the emails. You can be really strategic about what you put in those and instead of like describing the image, it could be like, "Turn your images on or click if you want to see this." It's almost like you can make your image alt text a call to action to get somebody to look at it.
Tyler: Yeah. There's a few reasons we do that too. The way that I'm sure we'll get into this with the growth and everything, but the main metrics that email looks at because its fairly limiting, is how many unique opens you get from your reader base.
And so the way that opens are calculated is like there's like a small, like one by one image pixel placed in every email, which isn't unique to us.
This is like what every single email, whether it's an email newsletter or eCommerce like Amazon or jet.com or whatever, everyone just, they place these small pixels into an email and once that image loads it like fires essentially the pixel, which is how you can calculate whether or not someone opened their or never opened the email.
So people who have their images disabled like you make it impossible for us to tell if you actually open the newsletter unless you click on a link.
So that initially was like a growth hacking type way. We used to have the alt texts over and just say, "Please turn on your images." One, because we think it enhances the experience because our images are actually designed to enhance the experience and go along with the content that we're creating. But it also means if you turn on your images, we can track that you're opening the newsletter and thus to tell that you're engaged.
We did get some negative feedback from I guess visually impaired readers who found it offensive to say, "Please turn on your images." So I think we've moved away from that, but that was the thought process, start finish with having that as the alt texts.
Kathleen: Yeah, that's definitely a trade off because the visually impaired person doesn't get any value out of, "Please turn on your images."
Tyler: Right. It's still a learning experience.
Morning Brew's email subscriber growth Kathleen: Yeah. All right. So switching gears over to the growth, it's been unbelievable. So when you first came on there was like 100,000 subscribers, I think.
Tyler: Yeah. Yes. Around that-
Kathleen: And now it's almost 2 million.
Tyler: Yeah, it's been fun.
Kathleen: In under two years? It's pretty unbelievable. Can you maybe like... Let's start with big picture. What were some of the key leavers that drove growth for you in that time period?
Tyler: Yeah. And I'll start off by saying since about a year ago we hired new people in the growth team and I've actually moved towards the product in tech. So I don't want to say that I have done everything for growth but when you specifically reached out in the referral program is something that we are pretty well known for, which is what the article is about. That is something that I built in the early days.
I just wanted to make sure we gave the proper shout out to the growth team is doing an incredible job right now.
Kathleen: Absolutely.
Tyler: Yeah. When I first joined, we didn't turn on paid acquisition until early 2018, so the first six to eight months when I was on the team, it was all about taking our current audience of 100,000 subscribers and seeing how we can incentivize them to share with other people.
We gave away lots of awards, which have gotten better over time, but initially it was really just, "We have this subset of 100,000 readers, what can we possibly do to encourage them to share it with other people?"
We were partnering with like clubs on campuses, and what we'll get to as we created this like "share with friends" section within the newsletter and on the website, that has been unbelievably effective and it really just came out of necessity.
That's one big thing that I think our founders did an incredible job with, didn't raise any large venture funding. So rather than saying, "Let's raise $5 million and put it all into acquisition and just burn through money to grow," what that forced us to do is we wanted to make the product as good as possible so people would only share the newsletter if it was inherently good.
And so the content team did a tremendous job of making sure that our readers were engaged and then also, instead of focusing on just burning money on Facebook and Instagram and any other growth acquisition channel, it forced us to grow organically and focus on this referral program, understanding our readers, what incentivizes them and what are the different levers and triggers we can pull to have them go from a casual reader to someone who works with their entire network.
Building a subscriber referral program Kathleen: Yeah. It's a great point about having to get creative if you're not taking venture capital. I've seen a lot of newsletters that have had referral programs. I think yours has stood out because of the comprehensiveness with which you promote it, how easy you make it to use.
You've written an article on Medium about this that has a lot of detail that I thought was really interesting because I think the concept of creating a referral program for your newsletter is, it's appealing, but the actual execution can be pretty daunting. So can you talk about how you set that up?
Tyler: Yeah, I'll skip over the technical details because those aren't too exciting to talk about. But at a very high level, every user has a unique referral.
They are incentivized both in the newsletter and on the website. So we created two different hubs.
The sharing and referral process is built into the product itself. So in every single day's newsletter, towards the bottom there's a Sharing section which has, and it's like customly created, depending on how many referrals you have to say you have point referrals, you are only X referrals away from the next reward, as sort of like a character and stick or whatnot to kind of incentivize you to continue to share.
It then gives you a referral link which you can tap and share with your network or there's a button that says, "Click to share." And so that's really the action we want you to take.
If you click on that button it takes you out of email and onto our website to your own like referral hub, is what we call it.
And obviously, as we've discussed, the flexibility on web is a lot more advanced than within email. So once you get to that hub on our website, you have all of the rewards and their programs like listed out for you, and that's the incentive part.
We have several levers in terms of you can share on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, SMS, whatever, and buttons to do all of that.
And then it even has an invite people via email feature. So you can import your contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, and then send emails just by tapping on your contacts, which we already have a pre-written blurb. You can customize that if you'd like.
And all of those different levers include your referral link.
And so really it's a combination of educating readers that the referral program exists, incentivizing them with the different rewards that we have, and then providing all the tools that people have asked for, whether it's Facebook or Twitter or email, and making it as streamlined and easy as possible to get their referral code out into the world.
Kathleen: Yeah, I feel like there's like two halves of this. One half is if somebody decided to refer, making it super, super easy. And I love that you guys have so many options for like hitting a button and sharing it or importing your contacts or... You've basically given every possible option somebody could want, you have a solution for it.
But the other half of that equation is getting somebody to want to do a referral in the first place, because most people with most newsletters you see a lot which is like forward to a friend or share with a friend but no one ever clicks those.
The thing I've noticed about Morning Brew is really two-fold. One is you have done a great job of having that module at the end of the newsletter and that makes it really visual. You always can see like what are the things I'm going to get if I hit this button, which is very effective.
And then you mentioned those periodic give-aways. True confession, that is totally what got me to refer for the first time. I think you had one, it was a while back. I think it was when you were doing the giveaway of a trip to Singapore and I was like, "What the hell? You never know."
Tyler: We were still working that way with the guy who won that. They are going on a honeymoon I think in a few weeks.
Kathleen: Oh that's amazing. Yeah. I never won anything but I was like, "I'm going to post this link to Facebook and have three people sign up. I'll get entered and can't hurt." Right? So I'm somebody who never ever does those things and it got me to do it. So it was definitely that.
Tyler: There's a few things there. One, it starts to end with the product itself because we are content and we're written in a certain voice and tone, we are supposed to be your best friend in email.
So something about what the content team does really well is making you feel as if we are like, we kind of know each and that brand affinity that we've created is probably our biggest asset.
If you can have all these different types of rewards, but if you don't really align with the brand itself, I'm not incentivized to wear a shirt or have a coffee mug of a company I really don't care for.
So it really starts with the content and just creating something that people can align with. So that is definitely first and foremost.
Beyond that... Yeah, the goal is to get people to their first referral because 90% of people don't ever share. And I think that's just like the nature of most people aren't trying to be that annoying brand advocate that is posting in every group chat and on LinkedIn about this different service or product or whatever.
And so I think it's hard to get someone to make that commitment to initially share the newsletter. So that is ultimately the hardest thing we do, is taking someone from zero to one.
Once you get someone to a single referral, it confirms a lot of different things. It shows that they know that it verifies that they know it exists. So they are fully aware that you have a referral program, which before they ever shared, you don't know if they ever make it to the bottom of the newsletter or they're skipping over the different sections when you do reference that referral program.
So the only way we are 100% positive you know it exists is after you have shared. It shows that they know how to share.
So they have either copy and pasted it or posted on Facebook or shared on Twitter, but they have chosen their preferred action of how to share the newsletter and it confirms what they know how to, it shows that they are incentivized by the rewards because if they weren't incentivized, very few people do it out of the goodness of their heart unless they really think it would benefit a friend or family member. And then they've already received some sort of gratification.
So after you share the newsletter, you receive an email saying like, "Thank you so much for sharing whatever, whatever," and acknowledging that they have taken that action.
So because it confirms and verifies all of those things, the way that we can approach readers that have already shared a newsletter is entirely different than to people who have never shared.
So that again is like the hardest thing that we do is just getting that very first referral and from there it becomes a lot easier to go downhill.
Email nurturing for new subscribers Kathleen: Now, speaking of that first referral, I thought it was really interesting that you recognize that somebody is most likely to refer at the end of their first week of being a subscriber because that's when it's still new to them, they're excited, they're starting to see the value.
So you guys introduced an email, I think it was like around day seven or eight, is that right?
Tyler: Day seven. And I think we can do a better job of testing that. That was a hypothesis we'd had a while ago that two or three days seems too soon, after the novelty wears off, like two or three weeks, it seems like you may have missed the bright spot of where they're most likely to share the new newsletter.
We've set upon seven days, we've done some tests around that and previously it has confirmed that seven worked best for us. But I think we can always go back and reevaluate that.
We can also get a little bit more creative with it and rather than being set days on your first seven days, you may only open one newsletter, you may open all six newsletters, maybe we do it based on how many emails were opened rather than a set period of time.
But yeah, we've been testing that one day email and there's just so many things you can do there. Where that is initially, we have a small section at the bottom of the newsletter that introduces the share off section and tries to encourage people to share.
This email is the only, I guess, it's put spam email that we really send kind of unsolicited, but the value is clearly there because a lot of people do acknowledge it, take the action, start to share the newsletter.
So the ROI of the email is 100% worth the 1% of people who get annoyed that it's a bit spammy, but it also is just a full email dedicated to our referral program, what they can get out of it and the different rewards, incentives and everything else.
Kathleen: Now, one of the dangers of having a referral program, especially when you're trying to get new email addresses, is people can give you a lot of garbage. 123@abc.com, don't email me@stop.com.
I've seen like every iteration of clever fake email, so how do you guys deal with that?
Tyler: Yeah. Up until two years ago we didn't really do much with that. We just trusted that people were genuine, nice people, which is not always.
Kathleen: Sadly the world is full of people who cheat.
How Morning Brew approaches email list hygiene Tyler: Yeah. Once we started to put more investment into our rewards and they were actually like higher quality shirts and nice pull necks, et cetera, we put into place like a double opt-in type thing, which is pretty common.
A lot of emails, whether you are signing up like an eCommerce platform or a newsletter, a lot of them require you to double authentic from your email.
So basically if I were to share my referral with you, you sign up, you actually aren't on the email list and I don't receive credit until you check your email and confirm that that email does exist. Once you do that, then you're added to our normal daily lists where you'll receive the email regularly. I'll receive credit and that's how that process looks.
There are still people who use like temporary emails or disposable emails. They'll play with the period with their email.
There's a bunch of different tricks you can do, but me personally, I get email alerts every time someone hits a milestone and it lists out every email that they've referred.
And so it's very easy to identify patterns of people trying to play with the system and we have a list of 700 fake emails that we check against before you put it in. And that list grows every day by every person who tries to hit the system.
So our like defense mechanisms I guess are constantly getting better and no one gets through the system now, which is good. You might-
Kathleen: That sounds good.
Tyler: ... [crosstalk 00:32:37] momentarily but we'll catch you, bump your referral count back down to zero and we will add those fake emails to the list of forbidden emails.
Kathleen: Yeah. I imagine that the double opt-in process results in some real people deciding not to follow through and so it probably like has lowered your conversion a little bit.
But did that hit you took... was that made up for by the improvement in the quality of the subscribers you got?
Tyler: Yeah. It was definitely a trade off. I think when I first joined we were just growing at all costs, especially when we started using paid acquisition and any bit of friction to joining the list was 100% against what we wanted to do at the time. So it was a trade off adding a double opt-in.
What we've seen is the conversion rate is like over 85% I believe the last time I checked. So it is very high.
And then one thing I actually wanted to bring up earlier in terms of consumers and subscribers or whatnot is the focus that we've placed on quality over just the vanity metric of total subscribers.
We actually have over 4 million emails, but we've turned over 2 million, just because there's a lot of either competitors or companies that would boast about their top line subscriber number, which sounds great for a newsletter article or something online, but in actuality, if someone hasn't opened in six months, there's absolutely no value for them to be on your list and without completely nerding out on email, it actually makes your email harder to be delivered to the inbox because believe it or not, Gmail is very smart.
And so when they know that you have a 50% open rate, they're going to send more of your mail directly to the primary inbox because it's something that people clearly want.
If they see your open rate is 5%, they're going to send more of your mail to spam because obviously not many people want it.
So it's like a virtuous cycle and it works against you if you have people on your list that aren't opening. So we have very strict turning practices.
So that's a very long winded way of answering your question of, yes, it has lowered the absolute conversion rate but it does ensure higher quality and at the end of the day that's what we're looking for.
Kathleen: Well, and I would imagine as a business that's really... the revenue model is from advertising. It's almost more important to have engaged subscribers than it is to have like a larger number of subscribers because as somebody who looks at advertising, I'm not just looking at how many subscribers you have, I'm looking at like what's your track record of clicks through to get a sense for what I can expect from a traffic perspective. So I could see where that would be really critical.
What is your rule of thumb for how long you let somebody stay on the list inactive before you clean that up?
Tyler: Yeah. We actually have like two different filters. One is on the... we call it like the filter, which is when you first joined the list, if you don't open in about three weeks, we send you a, "Hey, you signed up for this three weeks ago, you haven't opened any newsletters. Are you still interested?"
And if you don't respond that you're interested, we will remove you within three or four days after those three weeks. And that's a little bit more uncommon I think.
But we do have a fairly large paid acquisition budget, so that gets any garbage emails out really quickly if they don't start engaging from the get go.
And then on the back end is what most companies, traditionally it was just like a reengagement campaign. And for us it's two months.
So after 60 days, if you have not opened a newsletter or clicked anything in 60 days, we'll send an email checking-in on you. And if you don't engage with that checking-in email, then we will remove you.
So we're getting rid of subscribers on the front end and in the backend.
How referrals drove Morning Brew's growth Kathleen: Got it. All right. Well, I feel like we could talk about this like all day long, but I want to zero in now on what was the impact of that referral program?
So you've grown considerably. You mentioned that you started including paid acquisition in the mix. What portion or percentage of your total subscriber growth can you attribute to referrals?
Tyler: Yeah, a lot. I think to date we've had over 250,000 people refer at least one person, and so that is individual people. Many of those people have dozens if not hundreds of referrals. So it's definitely a good chunk of our growth and it comes at a very competitive price.
So for paid acquisition, it varies channel by channel, but like a new email lead should be anywhere from like $3 to $6 or potentially more.
Our referral program, like let's say stickers is the reward, you get five referrals. We pay for those five referrals less than 25 cents per acquisition. So if you were to compare the cost of the acquired users through a referral program versus any of our paid acquisition channels, it's a fraction of what we pay.
Also, as I'm sure you would imagine, referred users are typically pretty highly engaged because they have been double opted-in because they came from someone, whether it's a friend or coworker or family member recommending the product.
And so there's just a lot of alignment in terms ending up being a highly engaged reader and people who are referred are also more likely to refer other people. So it really is this virtuous cycle of higher quality, more likely to refer.
The ROI is incredible and because people are sharing on social networks, even if it doesn't lead to a direct conversion, that exposure that we're getting in like your Twitter feed or Facebook or whatever else does add impressions to people who will hopefully eventually join us.
Lessons learned from Morning Brew's experience Kathleen: So two follow-on questions. First is, knowing what you know now, is there anything you would've done differently in the referral program if you could rewind the clock?
Tyler: Yeah, a few things. Two stand out.
One is the rewards that we came up with. We came up with on our own initially, I think, and that was before we knew the success that would be, and obviously we can and have changed the different rewards, but I would recommend with starting by talking to your users and readers or whoever and really identifying what their pain points are, what their interests are and what would really incentivize them to share the newsletter.
I think just people have a hard time talking directly to their users. It almost seems like too intuitive and too easy to do, but especially in email, you're always a reply away.
So responding to a few different readers and just seeing what incentivizes them, I think it really boosts the effectiveness of a referral program.
The second thing is while some of the rewards are like additional content, so at three referrals you have Light Roast, which is like our exclusive Sunday newsletter, which comes at no additional cost to us, which is great in regards to ROI.
The management of the swag. So we also have a lot of physical swag and so that's something we didn't really plan for. And so at one point our office was half desk, half boxes of swag, and we got a bunch of interns from NYU to come in and help out with that.
We actually outsource that now, but that was a huge headache and something that as we grew pretty quickly and the referral program grew in effectiveness, we didn't really have a plan to actually store, ship, manage and be on top of this entire swag operation, which became the biggest headache that wasn't initially a part of my job. So that's something to think about in advance.
The future for Morning Brew Kathleen: Yeah, those are good pieces of advice. Second question is, looking to the future, and I know you've shifted in your roles, but I'm curious if you have any sense of, given where things stand now, what does the future look like in terms of the referral program and other acquisition channels?
Again, you mentioned that you guys are doing some paid acquisition. Is the referral program going to still be a part of the plan and how is it going to evolve?
Tyler: Yeah, I don't foresee the referral program going anywhere anytime soon. It's been so quarter growth and it really just assists with everything else. It's a huge boost in the business in general.
It's pretty mixed. We have a fairly large paid acquisition budget, which consists of everything that you'd expect from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, buying ads on Google, Gmail and other newsletters even.
But the referral program has been a huge success and I think from there, it's really just focusing on how can we continue to optimize it.
So for better or worse, it is a little hands off or it can be so we can go months without touching it and it really just operates on its own. Everything is set up with automated emails. It's built into the newsletter template itself. It really does run by itself, but there's so many different triggers and parts of the funnel that you can optimize.
So that one week email that we check-in on that first week that you can change the subject line. You can change the days until you receive that email. The copy itself, you can incentivize Light Roasts or stickers or you can incentivize all of the rewards and just test the different copy there.
You could also throw in like a second email somewhere down the journey and then at each milestone, like when you receive stickers, we send an email asking one, for your information so we can send the stickers to you, but then also incentivizing you to hit that next milestone, which is the bottle opener at 10. So it collects information but then hopefully shuts you down the funnel.
We can test each one of those milestone emails at different ways in terms of what we're incentivizing you with, what's the language we're using, what's the subject line?
So there's like an infinite amount of levers we can pull with that. It really just becomes an opportunity cost of just 1% here and 1% there add up to hundreds or thousands of new subscribers per day or per week or is it fairly maxed out under other levers that we can spend our time pulling?
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Yeah, that makes sense. All right, well we're going to shift gears now because if we don't, we're going to run out of time.
So there's two questions that I always ask all my guests and I would love to get your answers to these. The first is really this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it right now with inbound?
Tyler: Yeah, to be honest, I struggled with this question.
Kathleen: Oh wait, why did you struggle? Because you don't think that anybody's doing it well or-
Tyler: Not that, but I feel like it's such an integral strategy for so many different companies and the thing is like the better you are at it, the harder it is to tell that it's a part of like this larger ecosystem strategy, and so everything kind of blends together in terms of like a content strategy, but really it's a top of funnel inbound approach to have you go down funnel and make a purchase or join whatever it is.
And I think most modern companies focus so much on doing both that it just becomes really hard to tell where you are in the funnel and what their actual true incentive is. Although usually it's always just to get into your wallet and have you pack your things.
What helped me actually on our podcast, Business Casual, we just recently interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk or Gary Vee, how a lot of people refer to him.
I personally am not a huge fan of the content, but in listening to the episode, I actually did think he made a lot of very creative, also in terms of he produces so much different content natively on all these different social platforms and explicitly does not plug his products or anything down funnel on purpose because his goal is to build an audience that trusts him and really engages with his content, knowing at some point you will make the leap if you really are aligned with what he's saying and his messaging, find the products down funnel, but he wants you to eventually get it to him.
But I did think it was interesting when he was talking about how a lot of his friends and competitors in the space think that he's an idiot for not explicitly calling out his products and really using these channels that are getting millions of video views to promote products. Rather he refuses to promote his products. And it's kind of playing the long game and his inbound marketing strategy of just creating good content very consistently.
So regardless of whether or not, I'm a fan of the content, I thought that his approach to that was pretty clever and pretty interesting and he seems to be doing very well. So I would find that to be pretty successful.
And then another one that I just... I love Airbnb as a company and always have, but Instagram is great for a lot of brands. Airbnb is unique because everyone loves vacation, everyone loves getting away and the way that they create and post mostly on Instagram of all of these also houses and these destinations around the world. But really it incentivizes you to go onto Airbnb, look at those and then hopefully book them. I just thought that was an interesting inbound strategy.
Kathleen: It's so funny that you call that out because I have totally gotten sucked in to going to the Airbnb website because I see like a picture of a tree house or something and I'm like, "Where is that tree house? That's so amazing. I want to stay there." But then I feel like I get to the site and I can never find those cool houses. It's like-
Tyler: Yeah, so if you follow them on Instagram, I'm pretty sure that they tag the place or at least makes it a little easier to find. But yeah.
Kathleen: Yeah, they have some awesome properties. Now, the Gary V example is great because you're right, like you don't have to be a fan of the content to appreciate the approach.
And that's the thing. You talked about how Morning Brew's really becoming a media company and at some point there was a place I used to work that was making that transition to a media company. And we really looked at it as with media companies, you're building the audience first and then if you build a great audience you can worry about the product later.
And there are so many examples of that done well. That's the whole business model that Gwyneth Paltrow built Goop on. It was just really a blog in the beginning and now she has a ton of products that she can charge an ungodly sum of money for and people are just eating them up because that trust is there.
And so to me, that's one of the big differences between like traditional business marketing and media company marketing. Business marketing, you have the product first and then you try to build the audience. Media companies build the audience and then they introduce the product and that's like a really subtle but important difference.
Tyler: Yeah. That's really great.
Kathleen: Well, this has been so much fun. One last question for you.
The biggest complaint I hear from digital marketers is that staying up with all the changes in the world of digital marketing is like drinking from a fire hose. So how do you stay up to date and educated for yourself?
Tyler: Yeah. To be really transparent, I struggled with both these questions. I'm obviously in the newsletter space and I get a lot of information from different newsletters. Shameless plug, I think we are releasing a marketing group newsletter sometime in 2020 so that should be everyone's go-to resource when that launches. And-
Kathleen: You've heard it here first.
Tyler: I think I broke news here. But I'm pretty up-to-date on whether it's like different podcasts or different newsletters and there's not really just one that I stick to, my inbox gets 25, 30 different newsletters a day.
Podcasts I'm way too ADHD where I just jump from anything that's recommended but a lot of them are from like the business startup culture and like founder story type podcast.
And so through that I think it's just like I find like pure marketing material to be a little repetitive, where if you actually take a step back and see like some of these founders stories of how they grew their company to be very successful, a lot of the success comes from creativity and just being aware of the business environment and your surroundings.
And so what I've seen, there was somewhere... Like in a random example, someone advertised in a fortune cookie at a restaurant that I was in and just something like that that I would never think about, but understanding that anything could be an advertisement.
I really just think the more exposure you have very broadly to life, but like the different experiences and what different companies have done, I think you can almost turn anything into a way to share your message or to get your voice or brand in front of a select group of people.
You just have to be aware of the different surroundings and what has worked for other people.
So I'm not a huge fan of Facebook changed their algorithm and now marketers should shift X dollars to do this type of campaign.
I'm more interested in what other companies have done in town, very successful, and something that actually makes you think to share your message.
Kathleen: Yeah, that's a great point because I do think some of the marketing, educational content out there really contributes to group think. And if you're doing the same thing everybody else is doing, you might grow but you're not going to have exponential growth the way that you guys have.
Tyler: [crosstalk 00:50:16] one thing that we have always been good at at Morning Brew is jumping on new platforms or new ad units when they become available. So specifically digital advertising.
Anytime that a company like Facebook or LinkedIn or like for example TikTok would be the new example. Before that becomes absolutely flooded with every competitor trying ad placements there, you get a lot cheaper CPMs when you jump to it first.
So rather than waiting for everyone and their mother to tell you that this has worked really well, if you hear that there's a new ad placement product or medium, being one of the first to test, it has its ups and downs, but if you're creative I think there's a lot of success to be had there.
How to connect to Tyler and Morning Brew Kathleen: Love it. That's a great tip. All right. Well, we're at the top of our hour. So if somebody wants to learn more... First of all, how can somebody subscribe to Morning Brew? Because that's the most important thing.
Tyler: That is the most important. So morningbrew.com, our landing page's optimized for conversion. You can't do anything but sign up. So go to morningbrew.com and sign up.
Kathleen: And then refer your friends of course, because you can get really cool swag and maybe even win a trip to Singapore someday.
And then if somebody has questions or wants to learn more, I will put the link to your Medium article where you go into a lot more detail on what we talked about today. I'll put that in the show notes.
But if someone wants to reach out to you, is there a great way for them to connect with you online?
Tyler: Yeah. So I'm also shamelessly trying to grow my Twitter audience. So I am @denk_tweets. It is my Twitter handle. So I respond to tweets.
My email is easy to find. It's just tyler@morningbrew for your responses to the inbox as well.
So either one of those, whichever you prefer, I'll be answering.
Kathleen: And definitely head to the show notes for those links because if you try to Google Tyler, you might accidentally reach out and connect with Tyler Denk who was a model on The Amazing Race, which I found out when I first tried to Google you.
Tyler: Yeah. I'm trying to beat him in SEO, so my name appears first, but I also talked to him funny enough from the SEO.
Kathleen: Yeah, and so maybe you can connect with both, but if you want the Tyler Denk who's at Morning Brew, head to the show notes for the podcast and I'll have all those links in there. Follow him on Twitter, subscribe to the Morning Brew.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: And if you liked what you heard or learned something new today on the podcast, please also head to Apple Podcasts and leave a five star review for the Inbound Success Podcast because that's how we get in front of new listeners. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Tyler. This was a lot of fun.
Tyler: Yeah, this was great. Thanks for having me.
How do the world's best marketers and salespeople use LinkedIn?
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, DigitalMarketer Head of Partnerships Marcus Murphy takes a deep dive on LinkedIn and shares his tips for using the platform to effectively connect and start conversations with your audience.
In addition to his work at DigitalMarketer, Marcus also teaches the "Intro to Marketing on LinkedIn" course on LinkedIn Learning and is a member of LinkedIn's customer advisory board for LinkedIn sales solutions.
When it comes to LinkedIn, Marcus really knows what he's talking about, and he shares all of his tips in this episode.
Highlights from my conversation with Marcus include:
- Marcus joined DigitalMarketer after helping companies like Yelp and InfusionSoft (now Keap) scale and build out partner programs.
- He is an avid user of LinkedIn and teaches a training course on how to get the most out of it.
- While most online LinkedIn trainings focus on how to optimize your profile, Marcus says the key to success on LinkedIn is all about the content you create.
- There are about 9 billion content impressions a week on LinkedIn and that content is driven by about 1% of LinkedIn's user base.
- Marcus recommends that you begin by using your profile summary to tell your story and start a conversation (check out his profile for a great example of this) rather than simply list the places you've worked.
- When it comes to creating content on LinkedIn, Marcus says not to wait until you have the perfect post. Share what you're thinking, ask a question, or ask for help. These are all great ways to start a conversation.
- You also don't need to come up with something new to say every time. Some of the biggest thought leaders on LinkedIn (think Gary Vaynerchuk) have been saying the same thing for years and it is their consistency that makes their message so powerful.
- Marcus says to find one tip that you think is useful, and go and implement it. Don't try and do everything at once.
- When it comes to posting things on LinkedIn, Marcus recommends using whatever format (text, video, pictures, etc.) makes the most sense given your content, but he did say that text-only posts seem to be performing particularly well right now.
- He doesn't think it hurts post performance to include links in the post itself, but he strongly advises against including more than one link as it can get very confusing.
- Marcus likes to use emojis to convey tone in his LinkedIn posts, but warns against their overuse.
- LinkedIn gives users the option of setting the button in their profile to say either "follow" or "connect." Marcus says you should have it say "connect" until you have a very strong following and then you can determine if it makes sense to switch it over.
- He does not advise connecting with every single person who sends a request - instead, he says you should look at the context of the connection request and engage with the people you want to have conversations with.
- LinkedIn is introducing a number of new features, such as newsletters, and Marcus says to be on the lookout for more episodic content in the future.
Resources from this episode:
- Visit the DigitalMarketer website
- Learn more about DigitalMarketer's event Traffic & Conversion Summit
- Subscribe to the DigitalMarketer blog
- Connect with Marcus on LinkedIn (tell him you heard him on The Inbound Success Podcast!)
Listen to the podcast to learn how Marcus has mastered LinkedIn for sales and marketing - and how you can, too.
Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast.
I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and this week my guest is Marcus Murphy who's the head of business development and partnerships at DigitalMarketer. Welcome, Marcus. Marcus Murphy (Guest): Hey. Thanks for having me.
Marcus and Kathleen recording this episode.
Kathleen: I am psyched to have you here. You are like my LinkedIn guru. I've been following you on with what you do on LinkedIn, and then I see that you're on LinkedIn's Customer Advisory Board. You're teaching classes. You are like Mister LinkedIn these days.
Marcus:You know what's kind of funny? I fell into it, because honestly I loved the platform when I was way back in the day when it was kind of like just for your resume. I was like, "Wait a minute. I can start sharing stuff, connecting with people," and now it's my pipeline.
So, it was way back in the day when I was a sales guy, and then now still a washed up sales guy, but I use it now for way more than that, like content distribution. Being on the board, I get to see some fun tools.
So, yeah, I'm all in. I'm super in.
About Marcus Murphy and DigitalMarketer Kathleen:That's so cool. I can't wait to just pick your brain about this topic. LinkedIn is my favorite platform as well. It's the one I'm the most active on.
But before we do that, if there is anybody out there who's listening and maybe doesn't know who you are or isn't following you on LinkedIn or isn't familiar with DigitalMarketer, can you talk about your story, what you do, what DigitalMarketer is, and just how you got to where you are today?
Marcus:Yeah, absolutely. It's a fun story. My wife and I got married in 2009, so we just celebrated 10 years of marriage, which was pretty cool.
Kathleen:Happy anniversary.
Marcus:Thank you. Went to Italy and literally I'm trying to get rid of all that weight we gained over there.
But, yeah, basically we were like ... Man, we did something crazy. We got married. We started it a company, and we moved from New York to Phoenix, Arizona for no reason at all, didn't know anybody, but kind of ran that company for six years and then finally sold it, because my wife was like, "You know what? We want to start a family. Why don't you think about maybe joining another company? It'd be a little easier for us." So, we did that.
I joined a little company, like a little startup called Yelp at the time, and I immediately kind of start to rise through there. I was in sales, account management. Then I became national trainer there and a bunch of different stuff.
I left that go join another small company at the time called Infusionsoft and went through that growth period, which was cool, with them as their partner development manager, so to build out their channel sales.
Then there, I met this guy who ... I was speaking somewhere, and I met this little guy. I saw him, and it was really funny. They were like, "That's Ryan Deiss," and I was like, "Yeah, whatever. I don't care."
Kathleen: Who's that dude?
Marcus: I don't care who that is. There was a huge crowd around him, and I didn't really want to meet him. I saw him speak on stage, and I was like, "Man."
I went home that night. It was probably 2:00 in the morning back home. I was in London at the time. I remember telling my wife, "I think I found the guy I want to work for. I think I just saw him. He blew my mind."
So, just so happened to be that Infusionsoft had a partnership with DigitalMarketer, and they put me in charge of that strategic partnership, which was really cool.
So, I flew down here. Ryan and I became friends. We spoke together, did some initiatives together, did some deals together.
Then when this idea of DigitalMarketer needs to build out a kind of customer-facing sales team, partner program, customer success care, they needed all of that, and they were looking for somebody to build it. I remember seeing that job description and texting Ryan. I was like, "What do you think?" He was like, "Absolutely not."
I think he didn't want to ruin our friendship, but I also I was kind of like forbidden fruit, being that I worked for a company that was kind of a partner. He's like, "You'd have to get your C suite to say yes to that," so I literally got my C suite to say yes.
I walked in, and this is actually to Clate's benefit, the CEO and founder of Infusionsoft, now Keap. Yeah, I said, "Hey, if there's an executive position here available where I could grow into this, let me know," and he said ... To their core values, he stuck.
He said, "You know what? I want you to succeed. I think this is a huge opportunity." And I said, "Great. If I don't get the job, can I come back and work here?" He was just like ... He said, "Yeah. You're pushing it, but yes."
I went and interviewed, and that was almost four years ago. I came in, and I built out all those teams for about two and a half years, and then transitioned. I hired my replacement. I stole a friend of mine from Tableau in Washington, DC, to come and be the head of sales, and he's doing a fantastic job about a year in.
Since then, I've transitioned into partner development, business development, strategic partnerships.
I speak a ton. Ryan and I and a couple of other people, we actually are more personality, forward-facing on stages and all that good stuff. Yeah.
And here I am today, just finally getting on your podcast. I've actually made it. You know?
Kathleen: Oh, I don't know about that. I think I've made it by getting you on as a guest.
Marcus: No way. Yeah, that was a very abridged version of the story, but it's equally ... Sometimes it's kind of funny how you end up where you're at, and it was just a series of little, tiny decisions, and I'm just the most fortunate person on the planet to land where I did.
Kathleen: That's awesome. As you were telling that story, there were so many things where I was like, "Ooh, I want to talk to him about that, and that, and that," the first one being I did not know that you owned a business with your wife for six years right after you got married.
Marcus: Yeah.
Kathleen: Here's what's interesting. I got married, within two months, started a business with my husband, which we had for 11 years.
Marcus: And it was smooth sailing and you guys didn't fight at all.
Kathleen: Oh. Oh, yeah. No, I still say til this day that my greatest accomplishment in life is that I am still married after owning a business with him for 11 years.
Marcus: It's so true.
Kathleen: We figured it out, but there did come that point, and that was part of why we actually exited our businesses. It was like we need to change gears. So, three years ago, for the first time in our marriage, we didn't work together.
Marcus: Wow.
Kathleen: Which was great, but also it was a little bittersweet, because we do work well together.
Marcus: Yeah. Yeah, I think my-
Kathleen: But that's okay.
Marcus: My wife is the opposite of me in so many ways, which is great. I am just gregarious and out there and whatever, and Gina's a planner. She takes her time. She's all those things that where friction ... Friction can create a rub that's not great, or it can create fire, and a good kind of fire, and I think we really harnessed that for a bunch of years.
We were traveling a ton. Then when we started to think about kids, it really just slowed down. We're like, "You know what? I think we should focus on our family," and that was great. That actually pushed me in the right direction to end up here, and so that was the coolest decision we made.
Kathleen: That's awesome. I love it. I've seen you speak. You're really great, as is Ryan. You guys are like a power duo.
Marcus: The best.
Kathleen: No, really.
Marcus: He's phenomenal. I always laugh, because he is ... We obviously have different styles. I think I'm so much more ... Ryan's a little irreverent. I maybe go way over that.
I think we also kind of really lean on this edgy humor, kind of we think we're funny and so we need people to laugh and whatever. But we've sat in enough audiences over the last 10 years to really think, "Man, people are coming there to, one, learn, but they're really coming there to be entertained."
I think there's an entertainment element that we lean on heavily in our camp and, just everywhere we go, we like to leave an impression. Hopefully somebody walks away being like, "Wow, I really enjoyed myself, and I learned something." That is the ultimate compliment.
Kathleen: I can definitely say that's the experience I've had. So, mission accomplished.
LinkedIn is making a comeback Kathleen: Now, with LinkedIn, it's been interesting to me, because I feel like in marketing it's sort of like ... Marketing's a little bit like fashion where, if you wait long enough, everything comes back, right?
Marcus: True.
Kathleen: If culottes can come back, then anything can come back.
Marcus: Yes.
Kathleen: In marketing, I think LinkedIn is really ... Not that it ever totally went away, but it's really having almost like a golden age.
Marcus: A resurgence. It is. It was. It was. It was literally just a site that you'd put your resume, and why would you go on there unless you were trying to get a job or looking for someone to hire?
I think when Jeff came in and really took over, he really started "Oh, well, why don't we add ..." The first acquisition they had was like, "Why don't we add an article component? Why don't we add ..." Then it turned into like a full newsfeed. Okay, people are coming here every day to consume content, to learn, to connect, and they're doing more than just using it as their online resume or CV, and that was like the major twist.
But for a while there, it was just ... It wasn't going anywhere. It was completely stagnant for a really long time.
Kathleen: Yeah. It was boring.
Marcus: Yes, boring.
Kathleen: I mean, I'll be honest. Almost every update you used to see, at least what I used to see, it just seemed like somebody was auto-posting their blogs.
Marcus: Totally.
Kathleen: There was not a lot of interaction.
Marcus: Stuffy. It was like, "Oh, I'm on Facebook. My mom's on LinkedIn." You know what I mean?
Kathleen: Yes.
Marcus: And her coworkers are on there, and that's kind of how it felt. It's been around for a long time, so it's not like this is just some new, hot thing. They've got about 645 million people on the platform, but the majority of that came in this resurgence period.
The last five years has been a major uptick when they started to add a bunch of things to make it sexier and more appealing for people to want to be there every day. That was a big, big difference.
Kathleen: Yeah, no, I've had a lot of business owners, marketers, entrepreneurs say to me in the last year or so that one of their goals is to really invest more in LinkedIn and in their personal LinkedIn presence.
It's easy to kind of cover the basics and be like, well, flesh out your profile and make sure you're following people and checking people you should follow and posting things, but there's so much ... As you say, there's so much more to it.
How to get the most out of LinkedIn today Kathleen: So, if somebody came to you and said that to you today, with all the functionality that LinkedIn has and knowing how it works today, what would you say to them about how to really build a robust presence on the platform?
Marcus: Yeah. You know, it's funny. People ask me to do a lot of things. I have a bunch of trainings out there for optimizing your profile and whatever. In fact, you can go do all of that stuff for free on Google. There is a million people talking about the 10 things, the 5 things, to optimize your profile.
But what people aren't talking about and what's really helping people win on the platform is obviously ... It's not a secret. It's content.
But it's not just content. People are putting things out in the world for sure. There's literally nine billion content impressions a week on LinkedIn, which blows people's minds.
The other statistic that's staggering is the one that, of those nine billion content impressions, all of those are being driven by almost 1% of the population on there. So, it's about five million people pushing all the content.
That literally equals viral, by the way, and the reason why it's viral is because, if you put out a piece of content to ... Let's say I have 15,000 followers on LinkedIn. If all of them see that I put out a piece of content, and they engage with it, so they comment or they like it, that'll show up in their activity feed. Then it just kind of trickles to a second and third connection.
So, all these people, the 100,000 views that my post got ... I'll share some of the content strategies I have, but a lot of them go really far, hundreds of thousands of views because it's not about the ... It's the people who are engaging with it and who they're connected to, and then those people see it and consume it and pass it along. I just becomes this amazing thing.
But the one thing I'll say that people aren't talking about with content is that it's not about content. It's not just about putting things out. It's about putting content out that creates the right types of conversations online.
And what I mean by that is literally, if you're not putting out content that is starting a conversation, then it's literally just noise. It's just another thing that just clogs up our brain and our feed and whatever, but if you happen to leverage your content with the right audience and create a space for them to have a conversation or engage you or be able to engage one another, you are now a catalyst in that. You have a ton of power. People start to see you as an authority or a thought leader.
That's where people are starting to take those online conversations off and do amazing things, partnerships, business, sales, et cetera, and they're moving that forward, because they've figured out that the real kind of equation is I need to find really good content that's relevant to a very specific avatar that I'm trying to target that will elicit a response that is a conversation.
And you need to know what to do with that conversation in adding enough value and relevancy to get that to come offline and turn into an opportunity. That is what people are doing that are winning with huge followings, and they're doing it every day. So, it's not just about the content. It is about the conversation, for sure.
Kathleen: What's really interesting about that, the way you describe it to me, is that it echoes some of what I say to people about their blogs as well. There are so many companies out there that are blogging, I feel like, unlike 10 years ago and you had to convince people to blog.
Marcus: Everybody's got a blog.
Kathleen: Now everyone has a blog, but there's a lot of "I'm just checking the box and phoning it in" kind of approach to it.
I was saying this to somebody the other day. I'm like, "If people can go to your blog and find information that they can find anywhere else, why should they come back? Why should they subscribe? They can find it somewhere else."
So, you have to be creating content that's somewhat unique, that is provocative in some way or another, but you have to give people a reason to return or engage.
Marcus: Totally.
Kathleen: It sounds like there is something there to that as well on LinkedIn, but I really like the way you're connecting this to a conversation, because it's one thing to provoke and to be unique. It's another to get a response.
Marcus: Totally. And here's the thing. Be proactive enough to reach out and start conversations with people as well.
It's one thing to get people who want to start a conversation. It's another thing to reply. Also, it's very interesting. There's a lot of missed opportunities with just wanting to have a conversation.
I know that everybody ... This is very common knowledge for a lot of people, but on LinkedIn you can see who's viewed your profile. That's a really common thing. So-and-so viewed your profile. You had this many people who came to your profile.
The only thing we don't do is we actually don't act human. We don't take humanity online with us, because in reality, if someone stopped and looked at you, they would probably look back and be like, "Can I help you with anything? What's going on?"
Kathleen: Why are you staring at me?
Marcus: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But in an online space, we don't really think that. So, when someone looks at your profile, they didn't just accidentally come to your profile. They were looking for something.
They might have come there for a certain reason. They might have saw you in a feed somewhere. And that is the opportunity to engage people in a human way and be able to take advantage of the opportunity.
The other last thing I'll say on it is that your profile, great, optimize it, but optimize it to start conversations as well.
It's not just about the content you put out. It's your summary. It's your headline. People don't understand there's a lot of real estate that, when someone sees your photo and what you do, not your title but what you do, "I'm here to double the size of 10,000 businesses," or "I'm looking to connect with agencies that I want to help grow," those little lines are allowing people to quickly understand what you want to talk about, and it really helps target that conversation.
So, I think it is about optimizing your profile, because you never want to have great content that points back to a really terrible ... I don't know. That's like having a really bad website with ads.
Kathleen: Exactly. Yeah.
Marcus: But it is an opportunity to not only optimize it but optimize it for the conversation, and don't be afraid to be human and follow up and really kind of push that.
Kathleen: Well, you are definitely drinking your own champagne, as I like to say, because I'm not a fan of eating one's own dog food.
Marcus: Yeah, I like that.
Kathleen: Your summary is a really good example of that, because it's not the usual, "I worked here, and then I worked there. And now here's what I'm doing here."
It's "I'm on a mission to overcome the stigma of selling," and I love that you end it with a question, because it goes back to what you said about starting a conversation.
So, I'm curious how often do you get people who visit your profile, and then they reach out to you and say, "Hey, I saw your kind of manifesto and your summary, and I'm in."
Marcus: It literally is a weekly occurrence, and it happens a lot. I use it when I speak, because I share that example, because people are like, "Well, I'm going to optimize this summary, but it's just there for SEO."
No, people literally read them, and they want to kind of get on board. They won't get on board unless you tell them what to do. So, my summary is set up in a very narrative format. I wrote it to be a story. I wrote it to be engaging, to allow me to put some personality into it.
So, yeah, I state my mission. This is what I'm here for.
Then as you work your way down that summary, I also talk about how ... Because most people are salespeople who read my stuff, sales and marketers whatever, but I basically say in there that I didn't ask for a sales costume for Christmas. I didn't dress up as one as Halloween. I didn't ask for training for Christmas.
Because we all kind of accidentally become salespeople, either by function or just necessity. It happens. If you own a business, you kind of have to.
I realized that it comes with a stigma of just every single terrible salesperson that was thoughtless before me, and I need to overcome that in order for people to see, no, I'm a human being. I really want to connect with you, and I want this to be meaningful.
At the end of it, I add a CTA that is like, "Hey, who wants to join me? Who's trying to join me on this journey?" And I just get people all the time that are just like, "Hey, I read your summary. It stuck out to me. I am on that journey as well," and those are the kinds of conversations that I want.
I'm creating a summary with 2,000 characters, so that's a lot of real estate to elicit that type of response to have somebody who reaches out and goes, "I'm in. I'm all in. What do we do? Do you want to meet? Do you want to have coffee? Can we have a call?"
I take them all the time, because they're my tribe. Those are my people. I can't do it alone. Most of those people really expedite this whole movement anyway, and many of them are business partners and friends forever and ever.
Kathleen: That's awesome. It's a great example. So, if you're listening and you want to see how this is done in the wild, go search Marcus Murphy on LinkedIn and check out his about section, which is his summary. It's great.
Marcus: Thank you.
How to get started with creating content on LinkedIn Kathleen: Assuming somebody is listening, and they're thinking, "All right. I got you. I'm going to work on my summary, but then I need to start to post content," going back to what you talked about earlier, my guess is that a lot of the people that might be thinking that have been either not posting much, or they've been phoning it in and just posting links to their company blogs with minimal commenting or anything like that. How would you advise somebody like that to get started?
Marcus: Yeah. It's interesting. It's a 1,300 character limit, meaning you've got to be somewhat concise, but you can definitely tell a story.
I like using posts that ... My opening line is definitely somewhat provocative. This one I just did ... I wrote that the majority of people reading this are going to not hit their goals this year. That was my opening line.
The reason why I said that is I went down, and I said, "We goal plan. We put a ton of time and energy and effort into doing that. We lock ourselves in rooms and make these big proclamations, but many people that I talk to, the one thing that's keeping them from their goals are the people they surround themselves with."
I had an exercise that I put in there, saying, "Here's a list of three lists that you need to make." One of people that you need to go deeper on the relationship and show up more and go kind of obviously expand upon that relationship.
Then there's a hard one, which is like here are the five people that are not helping you get there. These are the people that literally don't believe in you. They want you to fail, because misery loves company, and these people are just absolutely ... You're like one relationship away from succeeding and one relationship away from literally failing.
I was trying to make that point, being like, "Plan all you want, but who you surround yourself with will literally affect that in massive ways," but I opened that and started to give people not only the provocative statement and the thought behind it, but I gave them the resource.
I like to use the space to say, "Here is the thing that I want to catch your attention, which is for sure. Here's the little bit of stuff I've been thinking about that got me thinking about this question. And here's the resource. Here are the 3 things, 5 things, 12 things. Here's a link to et cetera." So that people understand, "Oh this is ..."
That thing has ... There's just so many comments on there, because people are like, "Oh my gosh. Yes," or they'll tag other people and they'll start making that thing go. It's because they can relate to it, because it's a broad topic.
So, I would say, if you're starting out, the only thing I would tell someone to do is be consistent and talk about something you actually care about.
What you're going to realize is that you connect with a really amazing community of people that totally serve your purposes, or people that are either in your industry or people that you want to get in front of, but the interesting part is that, if you don't put out information that you're passionate about, you won't ever start a conversation.
If you think that you want to put out every entrepreneur link or some Forbes article, cool, but you better have your own unique thoughts around it, and it should be something that you're passionate about, because people can tell.
Kathleen: Yeah, it's interesting. The pushback that I hear the most on that ... It's actually the same pushback I get when I talk to people about why they should be doing more video. They say, "But I don't feel like I'm enough of an expert in topic X to put it out there." What would you say to do?
Marcus: I don't think everybody's a thought leader. I'm going to say it. Everybody out there tells you ... You see it everywhere. It's like, "I'm a thought leader," and then this, "I want to share all this information and build a tribe and get a following and be an influencer."
It's like, no you won't, and we don't need everybody to be one. What you can be is vulnerable. What works really well on this site ...
My buddy David Gerhardt ... If you're not following him, you totally should. I think over the last year he gained almost 30,000 followers on LinkedIn, and one of the reasons is because he gets on there, and he shares his reality. He shares all kinds of things that are happening to him in his day-to-day.
One of them he shared we like, "Here's my calendar, because I'm not willing to sacrifice my family for my job," and he was a really incredible job. He's a CMO. He talked about "I wake up here, and I dropped the kids off here. Here's my schedule."
Oh, man. It got a million views, a million, that post. He was just sharing what he knows about.
Here's the thing. You're saying, "Hey, I don't have anything. I'm not sure." Well, go ahead and tell people that. Ask for people's opinions to help you fill the void of what you don't know.
There are so many people that are willing on this platform and in life to give advice. Some of the most viral posts that I've ever had are asking people, "Hey, you know what, I'm getting ready to go into a heavy interview season. I really want to hire quality candidates. What are some of those questions that you ask during your interview process?" There were 197 comments on that post.
Everybody has an interview question, everything from what kind of Crayola crayon you'd be to more like, "Hey, what's your weaknesses? No, really, what's your weaknesses?"
I think that if you don't have anything to share, ask good questions, because people want to engage, and they want to help you.
So, helpful posts, you don't have to be the most creative. You don't have to be an expert or a thought leader. Not everybody is.
It's funny. I'm the LinkedIn guy, but really what I love is when people ... When I have a need, I will go on there and ask and say, "Man, I feel completely ... I don't know the answer to this. Can someone help?" There's just an amazing response and flood of advice.
Kathleen: Yeah. I also like to tell people, if you wait until the day where you feel like the world's foremost expert in a topic, that day is never going to come.
The people that seem like experts are 99.9% of the time not the world's most foremost expert. You don't have to be. For everyone who feels like they have a certain skill, there is at least 10 other people who don't have that skill. And as long as you can impart your unique point of view about it, then somebody out there is going to find value in it.
Marcus: I made fun of ... So, I was speaking at an event in New York City called Digital Agency Expo, and I was hosting it.
Gary Vaynerchuk was there doing a keynote. We're backstage, and I'm like, "Gary ..." We've had a bunch of funny interactions. If you ever get the chance to meet him not online, like Gary, FU, go get hustle, or whatever, get some time with him. He's an incredibly genuine human being.
But one thing that he said was ... I was like, "Gary, you've been saying the same stuff for like six years." He hasn't deviated. He says the same few things that are just ... He beats them to death, and he just continues to say them.
When you find your thing and you see that it elicits a response from people, people are giving you feedback and they're saying, "Wow, you really understand this thing," you should just keep saying it, because there are so many people out there that want ... You'll think it's old hat, but it really is this new information to so many people, and you just kind of beat that drum.
I really love that, because we'll all kind of wrestle with that, and be like, "Oh, I need something new and hot."
When you're an influencer, a thought leader, in any way, you're like, "I just need a ... Maybe it's the next thing."
No. You need to be an expert in that thing that everybody wants to seek you out as an expert in, and the only way you can start doing that is being consistent about the stuff that you were talking about and you're getting that really popular response. Then you just double, triple down on it. I think that was really cool.
But, yeah, Gary ... We can't all be Gary either. Here's the word of advice for anybody that meets Gary offline. Just don't match his energy, or you'll look like an idiot. Don't do it. Don't try and just go with the ... Just be yourself.
Kathleen: It's funny that you say that about sticking with the thing that works, because as you were talking about, who came to my mind was Marcus Sheridan, who I've gotten to know over the years and worked closely with.
He started talking about They Ask, You Answer years ago. He just released the second edition of the book, and it's just as fresh as it ever was, not only because the principles haven't changed but the truth is, and I'm sure this is true about Gary V. too, you can tell people time and time and time again the way they should do things, and 99 out of 100 people still aren't going to do it.
Marcus: 100%! It's never the content. It's never the problem. It's the implementation.
Kathleen: Right. Totally.
Marcus: People will never make the capacity or the space in their lives to do the things that they're hearing about.
When you go to a conference ... We have Traffic & Conversion Summit coming up, and the number one thing I'm going to say when I walk out on stage, because I'm going to host it this year, and it's 10,000 people, by the way, which is pretty dope, but one of the things I say to everybody is like, "Hey, don't have a dusty ass notebook by the time we're done with this thing. Just don't."
Find one or two things you can implement into your business, and just do it. Just go home and do it, because every idea and every big ... How many pictures of slides do you have on your ... Of every event that you've been to. You're not doing anything with those. They're just going to occupy space.
You need to find the one thing and just implement, because 99% of people won't do it. They just get overwhelmed, or for whatever reason it just gets brushed by. And all that momentum and all the euphoric feeling, all that stuff just dissipates really quickly after you learn it.
So, yeah, I think the one ... Man, find something you can just implement. Then you'll be better than half the population, which is crazy.
Kathleen: A-freaking-men.
With that, I'm going to actually just challenge everybody who's listening, because that's why I started this podcast. I used to go to marketing conferences, and I'd hear people talk. So much of the talks would be really exciting and inspirational, but I would leave feeling like, "I don't understand. I don't have enough tactical knowledge to be able to go and do stuff." So, whenever I interview people, I always like to cover the exciting, the inspirational, the strategic, but also leave people with some really concrete takeaways, which we are going to do before we're done here.
So, my challenge to you as listeners is, as you are listening, find one thing in this conversation that you're going to leave and do today, because there will be some small things that you can do immediately, like make one new LinkedIn post that follows some of the things that Marcus is saying. One thing.
Marcus: Love it. I'll like it. Tag me. I will comment.
Kathleen: All right.
Marcus: I'll make it go further.
Kathleen: Awesome. So, with that, we're going to go from the ... We've talked about the why and the exciting stuff, and I want to start to get into a little bit of the nitty gritty-
Marcus: Awesome.
Kathleen: ... because there is a lot of nitty gritty that is really interesting about LinkedIn these days, at least to me, but I'm kind of a nerd about this stuff.
Marcus: No, yeah. Let's nerd out.
Text v. video posts on LinkedIn Kathleen: I've been playing around with LinkedIn also, and I'm nowhere near at your level. Some of the things that I've found really interesting is ... One is the difference between just plain text posts versus posts that have pictures, posts that have videos.
Do you see any difference in performance between those three formats?
Marcus: Yes, absolutely. You know what was really funny? When they added native video, it was like the hottest thing, and it was like a TV in a bar effect. You're going through your feed, and you see a video. You're like, "Oh, crap. A video. I didn't know they could do this." So, they got a ton of engagement.
Now, videos are interesting. If you have good content, you're going to get eyeballs. If you don't have good content, it's not going to just be like because you've got a video on there you're going to get engagement. I always think it's really crazy. It's like have good content. Have good, relevant content, and you don't have to worry about what format.
But, I'll tell you, I'm getting a huge response, a massive response from text, just straight text. It's working for everybody. It's 1,300 characters, and I space it accordingly.
I usually have thought, space, thought, space, thought, space, because our brains work in a way of consuming data like it's a book. So, books have space between lines where, if you have a chunk of text, whew, it's just, unbelievable how fast people can scroll past that in the feed, because typically what happens on the actual text is that you start with your statement, what you're trying to catch someone's attention.
Then if you continue to space it correctly, it'll have a see more button so somebody has to click that see more button to get down there.
The video part, for me, I still use when it's man on the street interview. If I'm just going to pop open my phone, I've got a really important thing to say, and I just ... It's happening to me, and I want someone's help, or I share it.
Those get a lot of engagement, because they're pretty authentic. That's the nice part. Some people like to see this.
They love to see the "Oh, you're like a human being. Not just behind a keyboard. You have emotions, and I can relate with you." Even if it's the way you look.
Most people, if they've never met me, they don't know I'm racially ambiguous looking, and I'm bearded and whatever. I think that sometimes that's really important to add the authenticity and that trust element is to leverage things for that: pictures, videos, and sometimes infographics and stuff like that.
They're great, because infographics can tell the story of what you have, but you still have 1,300 characters, even when I put up a video.
When I share our blog, like this actual podcast right now, I will put up my thoughts about it and the link to it, and that gets a lot of engagement because I'm giving people the big takeaways and what I really enjoyed about it.
The one thing I'll tell you that's been detrimental, which is it's opposite of what we thought it was going to be. Probably a year and a half ago, I was sitting on an advisory board, and they were talking about live video. They were like, "Facebook has this live element. It's doing really well. Instagram's got obviously this live element. LinkedIn should have this live element." And it's only been ... Some people do really well, like Harvard or business pages. They're doing really well because of really important interviews and that kind of stuff.
Most people it's just annoying. I realized I was losing followers when I was just popping up, because the notification that someone's going live is the most annoying thing on the planet.
It's like, "Someone starts going live." It's like, "I don't care. I don't want ... That's not what I want to consume at the moment. It's not anything that's interesting."
Now when you're connected to all these different people, it's anybody. It's like I don't want to know about how to sell brooms. That's the thing that I care about.
Kathleen: It's not breaking news.
Marcus: Yeah. So, until LinkedIn can modify that where it's like I'm following these specific people and the rest of it's noise, and I don't want to see these notifications but only from these people who produce this type of content, then it just becomes a thing that is annoying and disruptive.
That's my feedback, by the way. I was just there about a month ago, and I told them these things, but I'll tell you nothing right now is beating written for that 1,300-character, no picture, no video. It's just doing really well, especially when you tag relevant people into it, you're using appropriate hashtags. Those things go bananas.
I actually, every once in a while, which is pretty fun, it's a nice test, but I'll get notifications like, "You're trending in this hashtag," which is usually business or sales or sales leadership. Those are the three that I trend all the time in, and it doesn't take a lot. It's just the fact that most people are engaging with that post and it has a hashtag.
If you don't have a hashtag, it won't trend. That's crazy, because it shows up in people's inboxes when it starts trending. It'll say, "Hey, Marcus Murphy is trending on this hashtag," and then you click on it. It takes you to the post. It's super.
Yeah, writing. Writing is hands down ... Heavy word posts are what's winning on LinkedIn right now. I think that, yeah.
Like I said before, the only caveat that I have is that good content wins. It just totally does, regardless of the format. In this case, we are seeing that there is a bigger life in just the good old text-heavy posts.
Kathleen: There was a couple things that you said there that I just want to call out for people who are listening as far as takeaways. One is you have 1,300 character limit. Two is that it's going to cut off what you write, and there's going to be like a see more kind of a link. So, you need to put something that's going to catch people's attention right up front.
It was interesting. I did an interview with Goldie Chan a few months ago, and she talked about-
Marcus: Yay! My homie. I love Goldie.
Kathleen: She's awesome. She was the one who got me started doing LinkedIn video, because I was so inspired by her.
Marcus: Oh, that's awesome. She's the woman.
Kathleen: Yeah, she talks about something similar where she puts a question in her first line, because you do need to have something right up front that hooks people, that draws them in.
Marcus: Yep.
Kathleen: Then I liked that you talked about breaking up and having spaces. I noticed that too, that it's much easier to follow. You gave the example of Dave Gerhardt. He definitely does that as well. If you're putting one sentence or maybe two at the most per paragraph-
Marcus: Yep, that's right.
Kathleen: Then hashtags. It's funny. You're so right about the trending thing, because I don't have ... I have like the fraction of the percentage of followers on LinkedIn that you do, and I still get, "Your post is trending," and I'm like, "That's so cool!"
Marcus: Yes. It's awesome! It's so cool, because it also shows up that way for everyone else who you're connected to. So-and-so is trending right now, and you're like, "What are they ..."
Because trending on Twitter means something completely, right? We use the same terminology, so it makes it important. There's an elevated sense of this thing is super important, and I love that. And you'll see it.
I honestly believe ... That's the reason why I mentioned Dave Gerhardt specifically is because he posts constantly, and he goes against the status quo, which most people are like once or twice a day at max, but he posts everything that he's thinking about.
Kathleen: Almost every single time I open up LinkedIn, probably 9 times out of 10, he is the first post, and it's a different post every time.
Marcus: Yeah, that, but that's a part of it. He's posting things as he goes and he learns and he's reading, and he's doing a lot right now in terms of content.
He even has a private, paid content, which is amazing. So, you can check that out too. I feel like I'm just plugging Dave, but what I want you to do though is actually pay attention to what he posts and how he posts, because he's figured out.
If you look at people when things go viral or they get a response on LinkedIn, they have figured out what people want to read, what they want to consume, what's helpful, and we test things.
I'm constantly testing content. I am trying to figure out what that perfect thing is for my audience.
So, Dave has figured out for his audience. He speaks to marketers. He speaks to very specific people that he is dialed in and knows exactly what gets a response.
I work through, and I get big responses, and then I'll have some that are okay. They just did okay. I'm like, "Okay, that's too specific or not broad enough," or "How do I bring people in?"
I constantly kind of play with things, because there is going to be one post that you have ... Just hear me now. There's going to be one post that you have, and it's going to ... Something's going to happen where it's just like, "Oh my gosh. That got like 150 likes and all these different comments."
All you have to do is pay attention and try to replicate that experience with all of your content and try to work backwards. Dissect that and think about it, or look at other people who are getting a big response and be like, "Man, how are they speaking to their audience? What kind of content are they? Would that work for my network?" Because it's so different from person to person.
Yeah, and hashtags are just great. I think people don't use them enough. It's the one thing I keep telling everybody to do. It doesn't look bad at the end of your post. It's okay. You're just trying to connect with a bigger community, and that is where people find you. That is how you grow your following on LinkedIn.
Should you use emojis in your LinkedIn posts? Kathleen: Totally agree.
Now, I love that you raised do the thing that's right for your audience. That leads me to the next question I was going to ask, which is directly relevant to what is right for your audience, which is, what is your position on using emojis in your posts?
Marcus: Ooh. I use emojis all the time. Super basic like that. No. I think emojis are fun.
Okay, I'll tell you my first job out of college I worked at Syracuse University, and I was an admissions counselor, which is a glorified salesperson who goes out and gets applications and does those presentations where you want to take a pencil and stab yourself in the eye with your folks, when you go check out universities.
I had someone give me terrible advice once. It was very bureaucratic, very stuffy, suit every day kind of job.
The dean told me one time, "Hey, don't put smiley faces in your emails. Don't do that. That's not appropriate."
I sat there for a long time, and I was like, "You know what? It's not appropriate. I've got to stop doing that. I can't believe it."
Then as I started to get older, I'm like, "How the hell is anybody going to figure out how I feel and what my tone is?" I'll tell you that emojis, while they're still funny and some of them are wildly inappropriate, which I like to use in my personal life, not on LinkedIn, I do think that that tells a ... It adds texture to the post.
So, I think they can be overdone. I don't like when people put it in their headline or near their name. I think that's totally tacky, and it doesn't help you. It just makes me think that you're wearing Hawaiian shirts at home or something.
I think this is more about, hey, I need to add texture here so people can understand my tone, whether it's a fire symbol or whether it's whatever.
I totally like that, because people will read through it, and they'll go ... But I do think that you can overdo it. You can put it where it's just a thing that you think is helping you get more eyeballs on your posts, or you're thinking that it just makes you more relevant. It needs to make sense for the post.
Like I said, it's just appropriate when you're adding texture or you need someone to understand that you're being sarcastic. That's a really popular one.
Like your face, or you say something that people would miss in context if you didn't have something that was emoting and sharing what you're trying to get across.
So, yeah, I am for them. I use them, especially if I'm posting from my phone, because obviously it's way harder on your computer to do that.
Then I also just think that I've seen them done poorly, and I've seen people do it where I'm like ... I'm very sensitive to overusing them, but I only use it when I'm trying to add context and make sure people know this is my tone, this is what I'm trying to get out there. Don't miss it.
Kathleen: Yeah. I am for emojis as well. I'm team emoji.
Marcus: Yes.
Kathleen: What I've also found is that, because you can't format the text in your posts on LinkedIn ... You talked about it when you talked about leaving spaces between what you write. Visually, sometimes it can all just bleed together, and sometimes emojis are a nice proxy for text formatting.
Marcus: Totally.
Kathleen: If you bookend a really important line with emojis, it's almost as good as bolding it.
Marcus: Oh, it's awesome.
Kathleen: Things like that.
Marcus: I wish they would let us bold. It's so funny. When you write it, when you actually write the post before you actually hit post, it'll allow you to bold everything, but then when you post it, it goes away.
Kathleen: Yeah. They're faking us out.
Marcus: Yeah. Oh my gosh.
I do another thing that some people don't love, but I emphasize very specific words. I will capitalize a but. I will capitalize a you. I will make sure that I'm showing emphasis on the things that I want to elevate.
And I do that, but I'm not yelling at people. It's not like all caps on. But I like to do that.
Anything that you can add in, like I said the texture, or you can add in an element where you want someone to make sure that this is what you pay attention to, like you just said the bookend emojis, super popular. It makes sense, especially if it's like, "This is the thing." Like the sirens. I see people do that. It's like, "This is the thing! Don't miss this! If you don't read anything else, this is the thing right here that you can't miss."
So, yeah, I'm super pro emoji. And I don't even care who knows that.
Kathleen: Yes! Wear it with pride.
Should you add links to your posts on LinkedIn? Kathleen: The other thing that I hear people asking a lot is should you or should you not put a link in your post, or should the link be in the comments.
Marcus: Right. It depends. I put links in my post if I want that thing to show up with the image.
So, there's a link image that goes underneath posts if you only put that one link in there. Sometimes I think that that's interesting that people don't want ... Because it breaks a bunch of classic rules, right? You want to link away from a post, or you want to link ... You take people away.
A lot of people will put that link in the comments, which is an interesting move. I think if there's multiple links, I would absolutely not put those back to back, because you only get one shot at that image of what you want people to go to.
I use this all the time, because I share ... I do a ton of podcasts, and I have a lot of content out there. I will share that thing that I want people to go look at.
Or if it's an article, I'll put it right in there, and I'll even put emojis around it to make sure people click it because it's the most important part. I'm adding context to it. But I have no problem with putting the link in my post.
It's funny, because you'll get someone equally as passionate about not doing it. I've just never seen it do something ... It's never taken people away. Engagement hasn't dropped.
I think that it's only bad when you bifurcate it with two so that somebody's attention might not be in the right place. But if you've got the one thing and that really great thumbnail that comes up where it really catches someone's eye, or it's like you on a podcast so it's your still ...
When I actually launched my first LinkedIn Learning course, the link brought up my LinkedIn author photo. It was the coolest thing to put that in the post, because obviously people could see "Oh, that's his profile on LinkedIn Learning. That's pretty dope."
So, yeah, I'm pro link in post. I don't need to-
Kathleen: All right.
Marcus: I'm not going to apologize for it.
Creating conversations on LinkedIn Kathleen: We're putting our stake in the ground here. Now you talked in the beginning about how you want to start a conversation, but then you mentioned something in passing, which I think was really important that we haven't talked about yet, which is you have to then know what to do with that conversation.
Marcus: Right. Yes.
Kathleen: So, I'm just going to lob that ball over to you and let you run with it.
Marcus: Conversational frameworks are super important. It's funny, because I went and spoke somewhere, and I don't remember where it was, but I had these students come up to me afterwards who were at college somewhere, and they want to get into the workforce. They wanted to get into sales. They're like, "So, how do we start a conversation with ... How do we talk to people?" I'm just like, "How do you do it in real life?" Because I feel like we miss that.
A conversational framework typically starts with somebody saying something and the other person responding, and then it actually should go through steps.
The part that's really wild about online conversations is that we treat them so differently. We treat them in a way where it's almost like in a sales ...
Let me ask you this, and this is going to be a funny question. People online, raise your hand in your brain here. But how many of you have gotten a terrible sales prospecting message on LinkedIn?
Kathleen: Oh my god. Like a thousand of them.
Marcus: So, why? You know why? Because no one is actually treating it like a human to human conversation. It's not B2C. It's not B2B. It's H2H.
And people are forgetting that humans have a way of building basically intimacy. They build relationship in a very specific sequence. We are animals. Animals do it too. You can literally observe us and watch how that progresses to get to a place where somebody's like, "I know this person. I trust this person. We are in a relationship. This is us." I'm not talking about romantic, just I know this person enough.
I think that we don't translate that well online. Most of us show up like those sales messages. They're basically like, "Hey, I'm Marcus. Let's go back to my place." That is what they feel like.
Kathleen: Let's do it.
Marcus: Yeah, let's go. I've got pizza.
I don't know. It's just terrible. You've added no value. You've added no context. They don't know why they want to go back with you. You have built no trust in your communication.
So, the first thing that people get wrong is that they literally get online and say, "Hi, I'm So-and-so. Here's all my crap. Do you want to buy it? Here's who we are."
It's like, cool. Great. That has nothing to do with what I'm doing.
You haven't identified any of my themes. You don't know what I care about. You have taken no time to think about how to start this conversation, because you don't know me at all.
But based off of some assumptions, I can have a better conversation with you online if I start to look at all of the information that's out there for you.
So, there's no excuse. There is zero excuse to have a thoughtless form of outreach because of how much information is out there, especially on LinkedIn.
If somebody is replying to you or you are putting out content, you're already giving them an arsenal of things that they could be starting a conversation with you about.
If somebody replies to your post, and they're like, "Man, this is ..." Let me just give an example. This the best post. I totally ascribe to this. Click on their profile, find out who they are. If it's relevant or if there's something in there where you really want to connect with them, go ahead and go connect with them.
Then use this real estate, which is super popular and everyone does it wrong ... You get to add a custom note to any invitation that's 300 characters.
Now, what you can do there to stand out from everyone is not talk about yourself. Don't talk about what you can do for them. Don't ask them who in their organization can help you.
That also makes them feel bad, by the way. That's a belittling statement. Ask them, "Hey, I saw you comment on my post. I looked at your website. I love this thing about you. I have identified this thing that I think is interesting, and I would love to be connected with you." That is a very normal introduction, very first interaction, human conversation.
Then you can start ... Guess what? You can start having more of a conversation that allows you to learn more about them, and they learn more about you, because typically what people don't understand is, if I talk ... If I was talking to you, Kathleen, and I was just talking to you about you about you about you the whole time, asking questions, eventually you're going to do something very human. You're going to go, "Hey, what do you do? Who are ..."
Kathleen: Yeah, enough about me.
Marcus: Yeah, it's like, what's going on with you? That's a very human thing, but people online typically don't follow the same cadence as in real life.
If they could just take their normal how they would interact with people on a daily basis in a bar, on a plane, even though most of you need to stop talking to my on airplanes. Okay? If there are some plane-talkers listening to this, please stop it. It's like I put a blanket over my head.
Kathleen: Yes. Big headphones. That's a signal.
Marcus: Then somebody still leans over like, "What's your life story?" It's like, no. Stop it. I'm just literally trying to read my book.
No, but I think the majority of us just don't take those interactions and make it an online kind of how ... What would the cadence of an offline conversation sound like, and how do I replicate it online? You are going to be a guru. You are going to stand out in a million ways if you can just get that little, tiny piece right and understand that ...
To succeed in B2B, take a lesson from B2C Marcus: You know, it's funny. I'll say one last thing, because I talk a lot. But B2B, everyone's all super obsessed, because LinkedIn is like the B2B platform. It totally is. What's winning right now in any B2B kind of how you start a B2B conversation is to go super hard on B2C.
If you understand that you're actually talking to people within the organization and you understand that you're a business and you're trying to get in touch with other businesses, but that business, that point of contact, is a human being, B2C the heck out of that B2B, all right?
Figure out a way to continue to add that human element, and take that offline conversation to an online space. Everybody's going to want to talk to you, because you're going to be so different than everybody else and all those thousands of terrible prospecting messages that we get.
By the way, Kathleen, I stop and I write them back all of the time. I give them advice, or I say, "Hey, does this really work for you? Do you understand that this is your reputation?" I try. Probably like 1% of them ever take me up on like, "Hey, go fix these things and prospect me again, and I'll give you a meeting." And like no one does it.
Kathleen: Yeah. It's so true. Email marketers really have a similar trick they use called the rule of one, which is when you're writing an email, you picture one specific person, often a friend. When you're writing that email ...
And I do this all the time. I have this particular friend named Jen, and she's in my head. Whenever I write any marketing email, I'm like, "Would I ever send an email to Jen with a subject line that's like brackets, webinar?"
Marcus: Oh, that's so good.
Kathleen: No. I'd be like, "Hey, thought this might be of interest to you," dot dot dot. And I may or may not capitalize like the first word. I don't know. But I think it's the same principle. I always tell people, if you're having trouble operationalizing this, pick a friend and pretend that you're conversing with them.
Marcus: Yeah. Or people want to write a novel in the first engagement, the first interaction with people.
Our best performing sales email of all time was written by Ryan Deiss, and it literally said this. It said, "How can I make X business go faster?" Question mark. That was the highest performing, highest open rate, and most responses, because we weren't trying to get them to go to a website and pull out their credit card and buy something. We were trying to start a conversation.
When you try and start a conversation, it sounds a hell of a lot like you would send a text to somebody or you would send an email to your friend.
So, that's super important, man. We just miss it. It's just so missed, because we all want to ... I don't know. We overkill. We just...
Kathleen: Yeah. I like to say we go to work, we put our marketing hats on, and we forget that we're human beings.
Marcus: It's so crazy.
Follow v. connect on LinkedIn Kathleen: Okay. We're running out of time.
So, I have another question for you really quickly. Somebody raised this to my attention recently, and I'm sort of interested in it, which is that now you have the choice on your own profile to make the button follow or connect.
The advice that somebody else gave to me was that, when you surpass a certain number of connections or you're reaching a certain level of activity on LinkedIn, you should change that button to say follow, because it's a lower bar and more people are likely to hit follow than connect.
I would just love to know have you thought about this, what's your feeling about it?
Marcus: So, they're kind of right and wrong. Basically, depending on what level of connectedness you are.
So, if you're a second connection ... You'll see people, when they show up and you're not connected to them, it's like second, third. Usually if they're outside of those two, they won't even show up. You can't even connect with them, because you still get the follow button. It's still there. You hit the little dropdown on the right, and there's an opportunity to connect.
Now, the follow is interesting. A lot of people, mine shows up as follow. I think that what I realized though is the amount of views I get to my page, or to my listing, my profile, is a direct correlation with how many people request to connect with me.
Here's the deal. I don't connect with everybody. I think that's kind of foolish, because it's a quality over quantity game for me. If it's 15,000 followers, of those are half of the people that I really want to be connected to who I'm happy to be able to message and have them message me, because that really is the real significant difference between a non-connection and a connection.
It's not like Instagram. It's not like Facebook. There is no way to have a private profile on LinkedIn. Your information is there. It's just the ability to engage with people, and you have to be connected to just send that message.
So, I don't have a strategy for once you're getting going. It's funny, because Dave and I ... I don't have it. If you want to connect with me, send me a connection request. If you want to add a note in there, I'm going to-
Kathleen: Tell him you heard him on the Inbound Success Podcast.
Marcus: Yeah. Usually I totally connect with people, because I'm not afraid of those messages. It doesn't always mean that I'm going to respond to them.
I get thousands of messages a month. I literally just showed somebody the other day. I was like, "Here is December." They were like, "How many do you get?" It was 568 by the time I was halfway through, the 17th.
Kathleen: Wow.
Marcus: But it's not like a bragging thing, by the way, because some of that's hard to keep up with. I have to have people in there, making sure that there's opportunity versus someone who's trying to solicit me, like all these different things.
But the majority of them are pretty thoughtful, people that just want to say thanks and "Hey, I really enjoyed this," and "Hey, I'm connecting with you because we're pretty similar."
I do think that I can tell the standard you copy paste that line that we're very similar networks, or "Hey, you look like a really great, ambitious person. I want to connect with you." Great.
The next message after you connect with them is going to be "Here's my stuff. Do you want to buy it? Come back to my place."
Kathleen: Totally.
Marcus: So, I think that there's something in the fact that connections should mean more and have more weight.
It used to be even a cap on it. LinkedIn used to cap it at 30,000 connections, and now that's kind of gone, because David actually just told me that a little while ago. That is not the case anymore. So, they're not actually ... They're not throttling that in any way.
But I would be really cautious, because who you're connected to is important, because that shows up and shows other people who you are connected to as well.
This is a personal thing, but we have people in my office who will go on, and they've just got tons of connections request. The only way they'll connect is if they see that Ryan, myself, or somebody else shares a connection. So, if I'm just out there connecting with anybody, any person, and that's their ... That's probably a lot of your employees, by the way, are doing the exact same thing. If that's the case, then you have a responsibility to care about who you're connected to.
That follow button really helps a lot with that, by the way, to answer your question. The follow button is a really good opportunity. People can follow you, your content. They don't necessarily need to be connected to you.
If they want to be connected to you, it means they have something and they'll take that extra step and hit the dropdown and do it.
So, you're not going to hurt yourself either way, but if you're looking to build your initial ... You're going from 500 connections, and you're trying to make an impact.
I would lay off that follow button for a little while, because you really want to start building your network with connections, and letting people connect with you is really important, because you don't have anything to really give them to follow anyway. You haven't really amassed anything to quantify that. And it won't even really let you have that option.
Yeah. I don't know if I answered your question, but I feel like that-
Kathleen: Yeah, you did.
Marcus: Okay, good.
Kathleen: The answer is an it depends answer, which makes sense.
Marcus: Yeah. Yeah.
Kathleen: All right. One more question about LinkedIn, and then we'll go into our wrap up.
Marcus: Cool.
What's new on LinkedIn Kathleen: I want to talk briefly about what's coming, what's next, what are some of the new things, because one of the newest things that I've noticed just in the last two weeks was ... I think it was another power LinkedIn user, Sangram Vajre from Terminus, had started a LinkedIn newsletter. I was like, "What is this LinkedIn newsletter thing?", and I googled the heck of it.
Sadly it is currently invitation only, and I have not gotten an invitation. So, that's just an example that I noticed really recently as something that's new that LinkedIn seems to be testing.
What are the things that you're watching with LinkedIn that are kind of coming that the rest of us might want to just kind of have on our radar screens?
Marcus: I am looking for truly programmed, curated content. What I mean by that is I'm looking for TV shows and those types of things come out a lot more, like native podcast integrations. You're going to see them double ... You're going to see them quadruple down on content.
The newsletter play is something that's really funny. I talked to the marketing managers for that specific part that came out. So, it was like I don't even have access to it yet. I was like, "Guys, I need this in my life."
Kathleen: I know. We've got to find out what Sangram did, who he paid off to get that.
Marcus: Oh, no, no, no. He totally deserves it.
Kathleen: He does.
Marcus: The way they make decisions ... Because they roll out different beta groups, so I had LinkedIn Live way earlier.
They do it based on either the marketing team is working with you. You're somebody that they're putting forward, and you're ... A lot of authors got things way early, because we got to play with them and use it. They like that, because they know what our content's going to be, but they also now go by connections.
So, they'll look at followers. They'll look at, oh, you've got over 20,000 or 30,000 followers. We're going to go to these people first, because that's the biggest ... They're going to get the most data points on that, because if a newsletter goes out and they've got 50,000 followers on LinkedIn, they're going to get so much more than giving it to somebody with 500.
It makes a ton of sense on the way that they target that.
Then they usually have a first beta, second beta, and then they roll it out to everybody on the platform.
So, newsletters is definitely coming. It's an interesting thing to think about, because everyone's talking about newsletters. Ryan Deiss talks about newsletters.
We're actually getting ready to launch a new SaaS product called Recess.io, which is just an internal newsletter tool.
So, all of these things are happening, and you're going to see new cones of content distribution. You're going to see that LinkedIn is finding new ways for people to express themselves and create.
Back when it was Pulse, that was the acquisition, and now it's article. If you have it turned onto newsletter, by the way, you go into where you would write a post. Under article, now there's a newsletter option. It gives you different tools and ways to position that and add photos. It's just a really cool, robust way to share content.
So, what I pay attention to is what are the new things that are coming out that I could leverage that are going to allow me to present my content in a new way to the audience that follows me, and then how do I use that again to start conversations, or how can I use what I'm currently doing. Because I podcast all the time. We do a ton on video here. I'm in front of cameras every week. We're on stages.
I would love for LinkedIn to continue, which they are, cultivating that and finding new and better ways for people to easily share content in different formats. It doesn't have to be a video. It doesn't have to be a 1,300 character post.
But I don't necessarily want to write an article, but I want to start a newsletter, because then I can control who I am sending that too. Then people can start to subscribe to it, et cetera.
You're going to start to see that a lot more, and it's something I pay attention to all the time. I can't wait. I bet you you're going to start seeing live TV and curated content from people that have full production studios. They're going to start using LinkedIn as a platform to distribute that content.
Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Oh, that's awesome. I can't wait to see what's coming next.
All right, switching gears, there's two questions I always ask all of my guests. I want to make sure I hit you up on these.
The first one is this is the Inbound Success Podcast, so we talk a lot about inbound marketing. Is there a particular person, an individual or a company, that you think is really killing it right now with inbound?
Marcus: I almost made a joke and said, "Obviously HubSpot." But I was laughing.
I think that the people ... Okay. So, if you don't know who these people are ... Have you ever heard of Erik Huberman before?
Kathleen: No.
Marcus: Erik Huberman started this company called Hawke Media. They started in LA. They're about a $75 million company now. They expanded like crazy. They've got another office they just opened in New York. They are probably doing this better than anyone, and they're technically an agency, but it's funny, because I told Eric ... I'm like, "You own restaurants too. This is a weird ... I don't know what this coverup company is.
No, but they do it right, and they also use ... Inbound is really a fun way of saying they're attractional. They get a ton of people's attention, and then they literally bring them all the way down the line and warm them up to have that conversation.
That's a major acquisition play for them, and they're doing a great job. I freaking love hearing what he's doing. He's thinking in outer space, and I love people like that.
So, Hawke Media, Erik Huberman. You've probably never heard of him, but go look him up. He's a genius. Yeah.
Kathleen: Oh, I love when I hear new names. I'm definitely going to check him out. Google him right after this.
Second question. Digital marketing changes so quickly, and biggest complaint I hear from marketers is they can't keep up with it. So, how do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated?
Marcus: This is going to be funny. It's a weird plug for our blog, but ... DigitalMarketer Blog, digitalmarketer.com/blog, is a full team, nonstop. We are trusted all over the world to be the people that crack the story and the people ... We're tactical. We're heavy practical. I'll tell you that that is something that we hang our hat on.
If it's not DigitalMarketer, which is good, I honestly ... I have something ... I literally go on Google, which I do all the time, is I'll just go follow very specific people, or I'll follow a word.
I follow digital marketing. I follow LinkedIn. I follow sales. I follow a lot of different things so that it just curates and sends me an email every time.
Every morning, I have an email with multiple different people. It pulls articles from online and on the internet. Then I follow.
My Instagram is so funny, because it's mostly my girls and me traveling and stuff, but ... I have got two little girls, Florence and Pearl, and it's mostly them dancing around and yelling and stuff.
Kathleen: Aww.
Marcus: But it's also me. It's my opportunity to go follow everybody in our industry, from the Dennis Yu’s of the world and Forleo and all these cool people who are doing great stuff in their respective field.
I just love it. I'm such a voyeur though, because I don't ever really say anything or comment. I just glean like, wow, they're doing some cool stuff, or they're caring about this. Man, they're talking about that a lot.
I get an opportunity to see that, because I only follow practitioners. I don't love theologians in any way. I don't think people ... Unless you do it, don't talk to me. Unless you've done it, I don't care how theoretical you want to get.
So, I really look for people that are out there doing it and taking their failures and their triumphs and sharing them openly with people so that they can learn. I like to follow those folks. That's a big one for me.
How to connect with Marcus Kathleen: That's a great tip. All right. Well, if you are listening and you want to get in touch with Marcus or learn more about DigitalMarketer, Marcus, what's the best way for somebody to do that, to connect with you online?
Marcus: Yeah, literally you can ... Marcus Murphy on LinkedIn ironically just goes to me, which is hilarious. There's more, but for some reason I'm always the first one, which is fine for now, until it's not and I'm just Marcus Murphy out there in the world.
Then also digitalmarketer.com is what we ... We have a ton of free content. We have a lot that you can learn. The blog is totally free and has tons of information on there. Please go check that out.
I also think that this is a totally appropriate time. We have the biggest marketing conference in North America called Traffic & Conversion Summit, and that is going to be March 31st out in San Diego, beautiful, sunny San Diego. This year it's 10,000 people. We have a lot of fun. We have musical guests. They, for some reason, never take my suggestion of Boyz II Men, but someday it's going to happen. I'm going to be up there doing Motownphilly with them. But we have 143 sessions, and we just really go all in on practitioners and people that are ... What's working now in their business. So, that's a really great one.
But, yeah, we're all over the place. But, yeah, I would love to connect on LinkedIn. That's where I play most and obviously love to connect with anybody who wants to get connected.
Kathleen: Absolutely. I definitely second check out DigitalMarketer. Check out Traffic & Conversion Summit. You guys have built an amazing, amazing educational resource in your events and your site.
Marcus: Thank you.
You know what to do next... Kathleen: Of course, if you're listening and you like what you heard, or you learned something new, please head to Apple Podcasts and leave the podcast a five-star review, because that's how our new people find us.
That's it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me, Marcus. This was awesome. I could talk to you forever.
Marcus: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.