Building Brand-to-Human Relationships in a Digital World
Emily Wolfe shares her insights into building brand to human relationships in a digital world, personalizing your marketing to boost your brand value, and developing a 360 degree marketing plan.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faiz on CEO of Caspian Studios.
And today I am joined by a special guest, Emily.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
How are you?
Excited to have you on the show, excited to chat about
collective health, one of my favorite companies.
So cool to finally have you on the show,
chat about marketing and everything in between.
So what was your first job in marketing?
My first job in marketing, I actually worked at a hospital
doing internal comms mostly, but a little bit of
advertising, a little bit of PR and just kind of got my feet wet.
But it really set me on this path for health care marketing.
And after that, I realized could not do the big business
established organization thing.
I had to totally pivot to startup mode.
And I've been there pretty much ever since.
And so tell us a little bit about your role at Collective Health.
Yeah, so at Collective Health, I sort of my dream role in the
sense that I get to oversee everything related to our top of
funnel lead journey.
So that's content, social, a little bit of business development,
email.
And it's really exciting, but I will say it's also a little bit
scary because then if we don't, you know, our lead targets
or they're not high enough quality, I don't have anybody
else to blame now all on me, but also makes it fun.
Let's get to our first segment, The Trust Tree.
This is where you can go and feel honest and trusted and share
those deepest, darkest, man, Jen and marketing secrets.
What does Collective Health do and who do you sell to?
That's a great question.
So Collective Health was founded to solve this broken
employer health insurance system.
We do that a few ways, but I think the biggest way to think
about it is make it easier for employers to see how they can
better support their people and make it easier for people to
get the care that they need when they need it.
And we sell mainly to employers, as I mentioned, but one of the
kind of interesting things about our business model is
employers rely on brokers or consultants to help them navigate
this health insurance field.
So for us, as a marketing team, we really have kind of two
audiences, those employers, which are represented by HR
leaders, benefit leaders, and then they're brokers and
consultants.
So trying to make sure we're messaging to both folks.
Yeah, I've had the pleasure of sitting down with your CEO,
Ali, a few times, who's phenomenal CEO.
He's absolutely great.
And there's just so many things that were illuminating to me
about health care and about how much of that responsibility we
put onto employers.
And one of the crazy stats that I remember hearing is just this
health care number rises every year.
And if you're a CFO who loves to count the numbers and makes
sure all the numbers add up, that this is an expense that they
have no idea what's coming every year.
And every single CFO thinks about this stuff all the time, but I
had no idea that that was the case.
Yeah.
And not only that, it's actually the biggest expense for a company
after payroll.
So it goes payroll and then health costs.
And to your point, to not know what those health care costs
are going to be every year, can you imagine how stressful that
is for a CFO who likes to have everything projected and planned
well in advance?
Stressful for me as a CEO.
And we have a fraction of the number of employees that these
other folks have.
And so it creates such an interesting challenge, as you
mentioned, with your marketing.
So you have this true committee approach.
We talk about committees all the time as it relates to marketing.
And you all have this committee of the CFO needs to take a look.
The CHRO is interested.
These brokers, which have so much influence on this, tell me
how you think about personas and looking at those.
Yeah, absolutely.
For us, it's such a challenge to make sure we're speaking to
all audiences while still staying true to key core message.
So where we've netted out is focusing different stages of
the funnel to different personas.
So our top of the funnel is really focused on that broker
consultant, because often they're going to be the ones who flag
us to their employer clients.
Then as we get into middle of the funnel, those employer
clients, which are typically the benefit leaders, the HR leaders,
that's where we focus our middle of the funnel tactic.
And then as we get to bottom of the funnel, you're exactly right.
That's where we pivot to the CFO, the cost savings,
just the cost planning message that seems to really resonate
with that group.
How does your marketing team, how is it structured?
How is your sales team structured?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So our sales team follows a somewhat traditional structure
in that it's geo-based.
And we have specific sales reps for specific territories to
really get in deep with all the employers in that area, the
brokers and consultants in that area.
The marketing team, right now we're grouped functionally, and
that's worked well, I think as we start to grow, we might have to
think a little more creatively about that.
So for now, though, we have campaign and analytics team, we
have a content and social team, we have a digital team, and then
those folks obviously work closely with the brand, the product
marketing and the field marketing teams.
And what would you say is your marketing strategy holistically
within that?
It's interesting.
It's definitely evolved recently.
I think I used to think so much about channel versus channel.
And what would be more impactful?
Is it a LinkedIn ad or should we really rely on SEO or should we
have a super aggressive persona on social to start driving folks
in?
But what I've since come to realize, and maybe it's an
obvious insight, but it's this idea that it doesn't really matter
what channel, these are all just brand interactions.
And the most important thing you can do is whichever channels
you decide to be in, because you can't be in them all, be in
them 100% and make sure that when you are there, your
creating that thread of a relationship with the prospect,
so that the next time they see you, it can just start to build
on itself.
I think when you start to stack channels against each other,
you really just start to cannibalize your own marketing
efforts.
So it's really important to think about them holistically.
And again, it doesn't matter where they see your message.
What matters is how it all melds together and starts to
build that relationship.
Any thoughts on how demand fits into that?
Yeah, I think a mistake that a lot of marketers make,
especially in the demand space, is they're really focused on
claiming credit or claiming influence over opportunities that
are generated by sales.
And I totally understand it, like, how are you going to justify
your budget the next year?
You don't have a number to point to.
But the risk that you can fall into there is you become
really focused on only marketing originated deals as opposed to
against looking at the whole picture, realizing that you and
the sales team are kind of working towards the same goal
and just staying super focused on ultimate revenue.
And however, the fastest, most efficient way to get to that
revenue goal.
Any other things about marketing strategy or your personas
that are unique, any other thoughts?
I think the only other thing that I'd add is account-based
marketing has completely transformed our strategy.
And the biggest takeaway for me when I think about ABM is
people can overcomplicate it, right?
It feels like it needs to be super segmented or you need to
have a custom landing page for each prospect.
But I think if you develop two to three plays that you think
will be successful, just run those plays with a limited set
of target accounts, optimize them, find kind of the winning one
of that three, and then try two more the next season.
And just start iterating on it that way and not try and
overcomplicate your whole ABM strategy.
To me, that has probably been the biggest driver of revenue
that we've seen is really focusing on that ABM playbook
and just optimizing every play every year.
Yeah, what would be some examples of those plays?
Yeah, so probably my favorite one, I call it the White Whale.
And it's this idea of typically the target list is going to be
some of your competitors' customers who have refused to
have a meeting with your sales representatives in the past.
So you know who they are, the salespeople know who they are.
Everyone knows exactly who these target accounts are.
Then you create internal Tiger team and you're going to
figure out how to surround these folks with a 360 campaign
with email, ads, events, social media posts.
You're going to be tagging the employers that they benchmark
themselves against.
And you do that in a very calculated three month sprint.
And your only goal for the campaign is to get a meeting.
And what's so nice about that is for the sales team,
they've been trying to get a meeting with these folks
for years and years and they haven't been successful.
Then when you're finally able to get them that meeting
and at least kick off that conversation,
it really just again creates this credibility internally.
Like hey, if we all band together, we can make the magic happen,
we can make it work.
So that's probably my favorite one.
I love that.
I think the other one.
Yeah, no, it works really well.
I think the key though is definitely keep it short timeframe,
like a three month period, have a super discernible goal.
If you start with 100 target accounts, your only goal
should be get like five meetings.
Because then you're going to blow it out of the water.
Everyone's going to be super excited.
The other campaign that I've seen work really well
are late stage prospects.
So what I like about this campaign is it will result in revenue.
But also you should have a pretty good benchmark
to determine success.
So you have your historical conversion rate
of like a late stage opportunity to one.
And then what you're going to do is have all your closing
messages, all the messages you think would work really well
to push someone over the line.
And then you compare that group to your historic conversion
rate.
And you should be able to see a big boost in closed one
revenue.
Because these folks, especially for those committee decisions,
if you surround sound those groups, they're like, well,
I see these guys everywhere.
So you might as well go with them.
They're definitely the safe choice.
Yeah, it really makes me think of something
that I talk about a lot on the show, which is in your committee,
there's, let's just say, 13 people in your committee.
And there's probably seven of them
that they think about your product 15 minutes a year.
Right?
Like, that's it.
And it's like, you got to make sure
that when they show up to that 15 minute meeting, or let's say
it's a 30 minute meeting, or it's one of the tools
in the discussion in that hour that when you get brought up,
that they're not going to be like, who's that?
Exactly.
There's that famous thing, you know,
saying no one gets fired for choosing IBM or McKinsey
or whichever industry you're in.
But I think it's also true that when there's a younger
company that seemingly has a lot of momentum,
that it's similar idea, right?
You have this third party validation,
'cause quote unquote, they're everywhere.
I see them everywhere.
So that's how I typically tell a lot of other startups,
get those late stage deals when you're up against
some of the more established players.
I love it.
Late stage play, it's dawned on me after 100 plus episodes
of DGB that in the playbook, we should probably talk more
about plays that was really fun.
Okay, let's go to our next segment.
The playbook where you talk about the tactics
that help you win.
You play to win the game.
(upbeat music)
Hello, you play to win the game.
You don't play to just play it.
What are your three channels or tactics
that are your uncutable budget items?
Okay, so definitely won't be a surprise.
Number one, account-based marketing.
I think if you have a limited budget,
which so many of us do,
you can't use brand pray anymore.
It's just as irresponsible at this point.
So that's number one.
Number two is actually from a staffing perspective,
having really great content creators.
People who are good writers,
people who can deliver great copy, clever captions,
funny emails, that is so critical to build
that brand relationship with prospects.
In B2B, we think about them committees
or we think about them as faceless organizations,
but it's just people and people want to work
with funny people.
So having those writers is very underrated,
I think, in a lot of organizations.
And then I think the third,
I would probably say is just a really good measurement tool.
And it doesn't need to be expensive one.
It doesn't need to be an all-encompassing one,
but you need a way to understand what's working
and what's not, because especially if you're in
a cutting budget situation,
you have to have numbers to back up those assumptions.
So something that will allow you to say,
this type of content performs better
than this type of content.
Or this blog led to so many more conversions than this blog.
So therefore, we should probably focus more
on this type of content in the future.
That to me is mission critical.
- What types of tools are you looking at for stuff like that?
- Yeah, so right now we use Google Analytics, of course.
We use HubSpot and we use Demand Base.
It's our three core sources of truth.
I am very intrigued by a lot of the content marketing
analytics platforms from the social listening tools.
But I think again, when you have limited budget,
you're a smaller company,
you really have to stay focused on the ones that can
better more of the Swiss Army knives,
that can do more with your investment dollars.
- Yeah, we've talked about it in the past year
about like this, the dark funnel stuff
and how important listening is just in general now.
It's like classic sales 101 is listen to us
as much as you talk sort of thing.
I think as marketers, we're always trying to figure out
better ways to listen.
So I'm really excited just how far the industry's come so far
and how it continues to go.
But I need the listening stuff even better.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
There's actually one other thing that I didn't mention,
which is a can't cut and it's relatively new for me,
but probably not for most of the listeners,
is any fully branded chatbot and having that sort of ability
to be able to engage with visitors to the website
in a much more real authentic way.
I've just never seen a better demand gen tool than that.
- You're preaching to the choir.
This is, I've qualified makes this show.
So.
- There you go.
Well, I mean, honestly, like I was trying to optimize pennies,
right?
And then we got a chatbot and I was like,
oh wow, we can get this a lot easier.
- So content creation, you mentioned that as having people
on a team that are just kind of like thinking of funny stuff,
thinking of cool stuff.
How do you do that?
Are you doing like marketing power hours?
Is it just people grinding in their sweatpants
on their couch, thinking of funny stuff?
Like how do you do that?
- The best ideas have come recently.
We've transformed our marketing meetings.
So instead of just being one hour status update
or presentation circle, we actually do the old Zoom breakout rooms
and each team has to come back with a few ideas.
And what's really helpful about that for larger teams is that
removes the stress of throwing out wacky idea
'cause in a smaller group might laugh and be like,
I just know it's pretty good.
We should put it on the list.
And it just, I think it creates more of a glide path
to coming up with those ideas that ultimately
will lead to something really different, clever and fun.
- I love that.
I saw something, somebody was posting,
was like companies should be remote naysynchronous
except for creative teams.
And as a company who's 100% remote
and we're basically our whole company as creatives,
it is super hard to do it remotely.
But I think that the younger generations of folks
are learning that piece as they go.
They don't necessarily understand the like,
how to be a business professional part as much
'cause that part is harder to learn
like when you're not sitting around your peers.
- Yeah, I think you're not together, absolutely.
- But from a creative standpoint,
I think it's actually like,
I think you can still be super creative remotely.
You do need to figure out how to make time for it.
- And I think the big thing too with that
is having that psychological safety in your team
and making sure that your team knows
that there are no bad ideas in a brainstorm
and just having fun with it.
It's so hard over Zoom,
but I definitely think it's possible
in kind of like smaller groups.
- Yeah, don't bring an umbrella to a brainstorm.
- Yeah, exactly.
That's the worst when someone's like,
"We actually tried that two years ago
and it didn't work."
- Oh my gosh.
- It was super helpful, thank you.
- We share that with content all the time
with like my castor video series.
We hear that all the time
or someone's like, "Well, we try to podcast
like three years ago."
And you're like, "Well, like..."
- How do you get that?
- I mean, I think-
- Yeah, but what a thing.
- As if nothing has changed in three years
and as if that would be like,
"Yeah."
- We wrote a blog post three years ago
and that thing did not convert.
And you're like, "Yeah, well, maybe like
three episode podcast series
that's like titled the name of your company."
Yeah, probably it was a terrible strategy.
But I think that that's the sort of stuff
that content is like, what happens
is everything gets noted to death.
Then it gets to the leaders, senior leaders,
then they noted to death.
And then now you have something super safe, super boring.
And all of us are trying to make stuff that isn't boring.
- Exactly.
And it's so easy to spot the stuff
that was decision by committee.
So it doesn't mean anything.
It's just more buzz words.
And yeah, the creative that really stands out
is the one where it was like someone's crazy idea
and they got it through from the backend.
- I did something the other day.
I post on LinkedIn.
We were about to run a bunch of ads for Caspian.
And I posted all the ads on LinkedIn
and I had people and I was like,
hey, could you just comment what,
which ones you like the most?
And we got great feedback on the ones.
And someone was like, couldn't you have done A/B testing?
Like, why would I spend money on A/B testing?
Why do I like?
- Yeah, I could have found this for free.
- Yeah, get a bunch of this stuff for free.
But there's like little things in there with creative
that's so tricky and we can use ads
and we can do all that sort of stuff.
But figuring out the copy and like one of the,
this is always the case of creative.
One of the ones that we didn't think was the best one,
people thought it was really funny.
- Always happens, yeah.
And I've seen that with message testing too.
Well, you'll do formal focus groups
and you'll say, which one do you like best?
And it's always the one that you least expect.
The funny thing about that though
is unless sometimes you have that external validation,
like, yep, this focus group approved the weird idea
that sometimes it's still hard to push that stuff through.
- And it goes back to A/B/M, right?
Because like part of the thing that I think is often
the mistake there is when you A/B test yourself
and to get, okay, this copy is the best.
But if you look at the LinkedIn example that I just gave,
there was like a group of people
that loved number one and number two.
And then there's a group of people that loved number four.
And then there's people who are like,
oh, I actually really liked three and five.
And so what's interesting to me is that so often we like,
A/B tests ourselves to get to like the one answer.
But the truth is, is that like people convert
off of different types of content.
They, some people like really funny silly stuff.
Some people like zany stuff.
And then you're like, well, that's off brand for us.
It's like, well, on brand is making money.
So like. - Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
But the other thing about the A/B testing too
that's kind of funny is you'll get an insight.
And then I think it's easy to over apply it.
So one test we learned that the word discover for CTAs
significantly boosted ad performance across the board.
And we're like, oh, that's great.
We'll start using discover everywhere.
And we got to a point where we never were not using discover.
And so I think there's like this point where all the data
is helpful for a directional perspective.
But I think we sort of lose it a bit when we use it as like
the only recipe that we can use for a successful campaign.
Like there has to be that element of creativity involved.
- Yeah. And with this crazy circuitous buying cycle
that we're all in now, this crazy customer journey
is like discover is a great, maybe that word was super great
for 80 to 30% type opportunity people.
But the person who's like needs to buy right now,
like I'm screaming out like I don't want to discover
anything, just solve this thing for me.
- And I think that actually is the most under invested
in buying group.
And it's just because they're the easiest to snap up
but so many companies make it nearly impossible to buy
or even just to get pricing information.
Even though we know that most buying cycles start with
the team trying to get budget estimates together.
So if they can't get a budget estimate for your service
then maybe you fall off the short list
because they get it from your competitors.
- Yeah, great point.
What's the stat?
It's like if you don't respond within five minutes,
if the CEO of your number one prospect
walk in the door of your headquarters,
everyone would be like flipping over tables
to like run and greet them and show them whatever.
And if that happens on your website,
it's like they fought a leader quest.
Like yeah, okay, we'll get to it, Tara.
- Exactly.
- But what if our competitors see it?
It's like spoiler alert, your competitors already know
your pricing, so worry about it.
- Yeah, right.
Back to the ABM as an uncountable budget item.
What sort of ways are you spending money
on those ABM activities?
- So one of the really cool things
that we've been able to crack the code on
is doing more campaigns across social channels.
So in the past, it was sort of like LinkedIn or display
or forget about it.
But some of the data now we've been able to get out
of demand base has allowed us to create ongoing campaigns
on Twitter, ongoing campaigns on Instagram stories,
and just really targeting our buyers wherever they are,
even if it's not necessarily a traditional B2B ABM channel.
And that's been so huge for us
'cause you can spend so much less on those networks
than when you go to a lot of the trade pubs
than are just one of a sea of vendor logos.
- Yeah, it's exactly right.
We see a lot of the same stuff as we're promoting podcasts,
the various different series,
because same sort of thing,
it's like we just can't compete promoting ads on LinkedIn.
Like you just, it's so expensive.
- It's insane.
And it's frustrating too, because the results are good
and you know who you're getting when you do it,
but I don't know.
I think there's an over-reliance or an over-index
on people are on LinkedIn, they're ready to do business.
So we have to show them the business ads.
People take time throughout their workday
to distract themselves.
And if we can pull them back in
with a business-related ad, like that's not a bad thing.
- How do you view your website?
- We're actually launching a new website next week,
which is very exciting.
I know, a little stressful, but very exciting.
But it's given us a chance to kind of step back
and say like, what do we want in a website?
And for us, the most important thing
is really helping to build that relationship,
make it as easy as possible for people
to find what they're looking for.
And chat honestly is probably one of the main drivers
of that for us, to just try and get in front of people,
let themselves select before they have to navigate
the website.
But then if they choose to explore on their own,
just making sure even silly things,
but like nav items are super clear what you're getting.
If you want to get specific information
about this piece of the product,
or you need to understand our founder or anything like that,
making it as easy as possible for people to get there.
- All right, let's get to our next segment, The Dust Up.
This is where we talk about healthy tension,
but that's with your board,
your sales teams, your competitor, anyone else, Emily,
have you had a memorable dust up in your career?
- Oh man, I've got a few.
I think a recent one that was kind of interesting,
not at collective health, but another organization
was the tension between growth marketing
and the more traditional marketing function.
So like the brand world and how in this world
where so much of marketing budget needs
to have an ROI attached to it,
how you can make room for your friends in brand marketing
when your work in growth marketing,
you have to have that ROI
and you feel like it's a sales team, right?
Like you have a number attached to your work,
whereas the brand team can make this thin
maybe like a safer area.
But the way around it I found is again,
like really remembering that all of us want the same thing.
We all want the company to achieve
or exceed that revenue goal.
And really trying to get on the same page
with the brand team to sort of stay like, listen,
for us to be successful,
this is what we need to do from a campaign perspective,
which means we need super quick turnaround with creative.
We need this type of video asset and we need it on these dates
so we can really run these campaigns with fidelity.
So I think just being super clear with expectations
was kind of the way to solve it in that scenario.
- Any other marketing stuff that we missed
before we get into our quick hits here,
any other stuff that you're excited about investing in
or maybe a favorite campaign or anything like that,
big trends coming up?
- Yeah, I think we talked a little bit about it,
but the dark social stuff, the dark funnel,
it's super interesting, super terrifying.
We've seen some of it impact our business now
in both positive and negative ways.
And we're still trying to figure out
how do we harness this?
How do we measure it?
How can we maybe covertly impact it?
But to me, I think that's gonna become
a huge area of marketing.
So there's anyone starting their career,
that's a good place to focus and become an expert in for sure.
- Yeah, I think it's about how do we figure out
how to accelerate word of mouth and get our customers
and our fans posting in these private groups, right?
There's so many of them.
We get it all the time where it's like,
hey, we heard about you on this Discord.
You're like, what?
What Discord?
- Yeah, exactly.
- Who's on that?
- You're making me the link.
(laughs)
- No, exactly.
The thing is they're invite only, right?
So it's like your SDRs can't join.
I mean, we do this with developers,
like developer relations, right?
- Yeah.
- And so I wonder if there's gonna be more
like relations type people in the future,
these community leads or sub community leads
or something like that.
Because it still doesn't solve the answer
of someone posting about your company,
but at least like technically someone
from your company is in the chat, which is amazing.
- The risk to brands cannot be overstated.
I've observed a lot of executive teams
are kind of slower to realize the brand risk that's there.
One negative interaction with a customer
or a promise that wasn't kept,
it can do such serious harm for your business
because late stage prospect sees that negative feedback
and they're like, oh, okay, well, I don't want that.
I don't want to deal with that.
Even if it was such a unique situation
that would never be repeated.
Yeah.
I don't have a solution.
I would love to hire someone who knows how to help us
in that area, both from a proactive
and a defensive perspective,
but maybe one day.
- Okay, let's get to our final segment.
Quick hits.
These are quick questions and quick answers,
just like how quickly qualified helps companies
generate pipeline faster, tapping your greatest assets
at your website to identify your most valuable visitors
that instantly start sales conversations,
quick and easy, just like these questions.
Go to qualified.com to learn more.
Quick hits.
Emily, are you ready?
- I'm so ready.
- Number one, what's a hidden talent or skill
that's not on your resume?
- Oh, I am very good at asking trivia questions,
even if I don't always know the answer.
Like in any situation,
I can ask really good trivia questions for that group.
- What is one trivia question that you would often ask?
- I would, so for you, if I was at a party with your team,
I would say, what is the number one podcast
on Apple right now?
- It's probably Joe Rogan, whoopi my guests,
maybe he's here for-- - It's a good trivia question, right?
- Maybe it's your time daily.
Yeah, it's great trivia.
- I don't know the answer, but I know this group
will fight over it, so it's perfect.
- That is true.
What is your favorite book podcast TV show
that you've been checking out recently?
- Oh, so I love this really silly Hulu show,
Only Murders in the Building.
Just soup, I'm still halfway through.
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah, slowly plotting through it,
but it's just one of those shows that really guilty pleasure
can turn your brain off and just totally enjoy it.
- It's so good.
Do you have a non-marketing hobby
that maybe indirectly makes you a better marketer?
- Oh, that's a good question.
You know what, I got really into cooking
during the pandemic, and I think what it taught me
is it's okay to go off script a little bit,
unlike baking, which I had done prior,
which you really have to follow the recipe with cooking.
It's okay to kind of improvise a little bit
and not to stretch the metaphor too far,
but I do think it's helpful in marketing as well
to remember that you don't always need to follow
the exact same process that worked previously,
like trying new things,
and that's how you're gonna find the stuff that really works.
- What is your best piece of advice
for a first time head of marketing?
- I think the most important thing is
become best friends with the sales team
and prove to the sales team
that you have their interests at heart.
If marketing and sales are walking in lockstep,
there's nothing that the organization can't do,
and they're smelling that the organization leadership
can say no to, because marketing and sales
are gonna drive everything together.
- Any final thoughts?
- Well, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't say
if you are unhappy with your company's health insurance
to go to collectivehealth.com and explore our offering,
because you deserve better.
- You absolutely deserve better, unequivocally,
that is the case.
It's been wonderful having you for our listeners
go to collectivehealth.com.
So learn more, go nudge your CFO, your CHRO,
and say, hey, we should use collective health
for self-funded employer health benefits.
Emily, thanks so much, and we'll talk soon.
- All right, sounds good.
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