If You’re Not Working with Influencers, You’re Left Behind
Learn from Cristy Garcia, CMO, impact.com, about working with influencers and the do’s and don'ts of partnerships.
[Music]
What kind of pipeline visionaries that mean phase on CEO of Caspian Studios and
today I'm
joined by a special guest, Christy, how are you?
I'm doing well Ian, how are you doing?
Oh I am thrilled to chat with you today and life is great. I got no complaints
and we're
going to talk a lot of marketing stuff and today's show is brought to you as
always
by our friends at Qualified.com. You can go to Qualified.com to learn about the
number one
conversational sales marketing platform for companies revenue teams that use
Salesforce
and over to Qualified.com to learn more Christy. First question, what was your
first job marketing?
I was a marketing coordinator. I started at a B2B tech company and I will tell
you that the
company did internet faxing. And faxing is still a thing, internet faxing if
you ask but yes,
that was my first job and that was a long time ago.
My wife recently did a rotational, she's a physical therapist and at a
government
place and they fax every day.
People still fax, I know it's crazy to think about but yeah.
It is crazy to think about. I just filled out some paper forms the other day
for my kids school
and I was like, what do we do in here people? That's pretty fun. That's a great
first job marketing.
Flash forward to today tells us what it means to be CMO of impact.com.
Yeah, so my job today is a little different. We're trying to educate people
about the change
in consumer behavior. So essentially we are a partnership management platform
and we help brands
discover partners to work with. These can be influencers, affiliates, other
brands.
Our platform provides the tracking so that you can start working together,
sharing links,
driving business to each other's websites and ultimately when there's a sale,
there's a payout
that occurs and you can pay through the platform also. So it's affiliate
marketing, influencer
marketing, brand to brand, co-marketing, collaborations and lots of other
different
partnerships types on the platform. But being CMO means a lot of content, a lot
of education
and managing a fantastic team. Okay, let's get to our first segment. The trust
tree
where you go and feel honest and trusted and share this deepest, darkest
pipeline secrets.
You just told us a little bit about what impact.com does. Who are your
customers?
We sell into the marketing buying center primarily. Marketing primarily with
enterprises
is sort of what we're known for as a big enterprise brand. But we've recently
created some packages
for the lower end of the market. So now we serve businesses of all different
sizes,
all different industries, but primarily into the marketing team at those
companies.
And then do you think of sort of marketing teams as sort of like B2B and B2C,
or how do you like slice up marketing teams? Yeah, I do think of them as B2B
and B2C.
So we lead, I lead a B2B marketing team, but we're often marketing to B2C
primarily.
Yeah, and how different we are, I suppose, right?
Well, I'd like to think that we can make those roles a little closer. I think B
2B marketing
used to be seen as kind of boring. And there's a couple companies out there and
things that we're
doing as B2B marketers to try to really entertain the audience instead of just
sell and sort of look
like a faceless, nameless brand, a B2B brand. So I see that those two things
are coming closer
together because at the end of the day, everyone is a consumer. Yeah, I mean, I
completely agree.
And I think it is, we're not robot marketers that it's like, if anything, I
think all the data shows
that B2B buying decisions are actually more emotional than buying stuff for
your family.
And when you think about it, it does make a lot of sense. You know, you're like
if I buy something from my family, it's like, I'm going to do a whole lot of
research.
It's like if you're buying something in B2B, it's like, if you choose from
someone, you know,
whatever, whether it's in a quadrant or whatever, it's like, there's probably
some really good
options that you're choosing from, you know? And it's like, whereas if you're
choosing a car for
your your family, it's like, if it's a lemon or whatever, you're going to hear
about it every
single day from your spouse. Exactly. No, that's a really good analogy. Really
good way to think about it.
Okay, so tell me a little bit more about that buying committee. Who are the
different people in it?
So we're like like many other businesses trying to reach the CMO,
selling into directors, VPs, but generally it's, you know, it's a software
decision. So CMO or
VPs involved primarily. And Zuma know what's your marketing strategy hol
istically?
So I call it account-based marketing, but also multi-channel content marketing.
So we leverage all
sorts of different demand-gen channels and organic channels. But ultimately it
's the goal is to
educate and provide thought leadership so people understand why partnerships
before why my company.
So a lot of the things that we're doing when we're tracking and targeting
people on LinkedIn or on
Google or on Bing or Facebook or whatever it is that we're using, we're
advertising our content.
And the content is not hard sell. It's it's mostly like I said, thought
leadership very top of funnel.
We do have quite the strategy built out for the we call MoFu and both in
addition to ToFu. So we
were sort of tackling all areas of the funnel with our content. Gosh, it's just
music to my ears.
To hear you say that. Because I think that,
hey, it's easier to market content, which I think is like one of the things
that I think people
sort of don't really necessarily understand is like it's easier to get that
stuff and cheaper to
get it out in the world. And people like it more. And then they will become,
you know,
intimately familiar with your brand. I call it MCMF, multi-channel multi-format
. So.
Okay. Can I steal that from you? I want to. Absolutely. Ken, well, it was it
was cool to
for you to say that, you know, your strategy is multi-channel content marketing
. Because that's
the same way that, you know, I feel about it too. Yeah, so I've been calling it
multi-channel
multi-format because you just have to do that now. Like you don't you don't
have to pick every single
format. You don't have to pick every single channel, but it needs to be multi-
format and it needs to
be multi-channel. So. The average buyer is looking at at least four or five
review sites or
articles or doing research before they buy 90% of consumers say that they
research at least one
article or one website before they buy. So you do need to be everywhere. And I
think that really speaks
to the value of the partnerships also is the fact that you have third parties
validating you.
And essentially saying this product is a good one I've bought it. And that's
what consumers are
looking for nowadays. The messages that we're putting out as brands. Not as
powerful as what
people are saying about us. And so working with different partners across the
funnel. And like you
said, different channels across the funnel. You can be sure to reach your
audience. But it is
better to hear that as a sort of a referral from someone else rather than hear
it directly from the
brand, which isn't as trusted. Yeah, I again, I couldn't agree more. And this
is I don't just do
this all to be the agreeable podcast. Well, it's not that's a pretty good name.
So our strategy at
Caspian is threefold. It's portfolio partners and paid. And portfolio is your,
is your, you know,
your quote unquote, own media portfolio, which I think is all that multi
channel multi format
content in which I think it's shorts, shows, and moonshots. Then the second one
is partners. So I
am, I'm a huge proponent of partners. I think it's so important. I think that
partners is also
incredibly complex as, you know, why impact calm exists. And there's so many
different ways, whether
it's individuals that are partners, whether it's other companies that are
partners, whether it's your,
you know, influencers are all sorts of these other things. It's so much more
complex than it used
to be. And oh my goodness, it's just so critical for your business. Just to,
just to comment or
a post or a thing, we just know how important it is. You know, like we've all
seen the, you know,
Kim Kardashian mentioned somebody's brand and all of a sudden it blows up, you
know, like it's
just such a different world. Yeah, well, I see more frequently than that, this
rise of commerce content,
which is publishers are no longer monetizing, like you talk about your Wall
Street journals and your
business insiders and sort of New York Post. And so essentially they're no
longer, or they're
they're moving away from advertising and they're writing articles. These list
icles like top 10 things
to buy new mom or five things for a dad who is a boomer or whatever it is. And
they're inserting links
where consumers can go and buy those products. And then the publication
receives a commission. So
it's as if the publication is actually like a commerce site where they're
directing people to go
buy these products that are being recommended by them. And I've seen companies
blow up literally
overnight from having a placement in the right article at the right time.
Without a doubt, we did
years ago, I had co-funded a media company. We did a gift guide and it was, I
think it was 101
gifts, you know, for whatever. And we got to, and this was basically on medium.
And so we had like
the largest publication on medium. And so we're doing like tons of traffic. And
but also mediums to
my authority is super high. And they're more ads on medium. So anyways, all of
it led to this thing.
So we got up to number two in Christmas gift ideas for the phrase Christmas
gift ideas. And it was
crazy. We were sending so much traffic to the to the top links on this on this
thing. People
were like hitting us like right and left. Like how, why are we we were getting
so much traffic from
from this article and stuff. So anyways, yeah, I couldn't agree more.
And you just see that's how we buy, right? It's just how people buy now.
It is. It just makes sense. It really makes sense. You want that recommendation
from someone you
trust. You want it to be authentic. And if you're reading a publication every
day and you sort of
you trusted, you're going to trust what they're saying and the gifts that they
're listing. And that's
where, you know, authenticity and that consumer trust really plays a big role.
Yeah, partnerships
andlessly complex. And we'll get into that a little bit more later. Okay. So
any of thoughts on
your content strategy? Sorry on your marketing strategy overall. Well, we're
sort of moving away
from what used to be like a lead based motion to more of a true account based
motion where
we're working with a tool called six cents. And we're using intent data to
essentially define
where we market and who we market to. So we're not wasting as much money
marketing to the 95%
out there that aren't interested in the product. And we're really reaching
those who are in market.
We still have a brand awareness so that people who are not in market will think
of us when they
hear partnerships, hopefully. But our primary, I think, challenge and goal this
year is to move
into this multi threading approach where you're not only just accepting the in
bound lead, but you're
you're finding out who those who those people are in the buying committee. Like
you mentioned
and you're reaching out to all of them individually. Anything different about
your team, your marketing
team and how you how you set it up? I think it's different because they're
amazing. They're the best
I've ever worked with. But no, I think we we have it divided up by function,
which is pretty standard.
So we have a demand gen team, a social media team, a website team. And we have
a program's team,
which is sort of kind of sitting underneath all the other teams or on top of
the other teams if you
want to look at it that way. And there are the ones who are creating the
strategy and putting the
different touch points together and essentially defining what it is we're
trying to accomplish as a team.
So in some teams, they're called like campaigns, people, other other places,
their programs.
But ours is a little different because they're working kind of across the
marketing team,
which is filled with expertise in these pockets. And they're sort of building
the program together
for their various stakeholders. So it's a it's like a hub and spoke model to
you to a certain extent where
there's sort of the experts in various different product lines and no one in
marketing is working on
the exact same things. But we all kind of have this top three priorities that
we're working towards.
All right. Any other thoughts on team or strategy before you get to our next
thing?
I think it's really important that when you're looking at your team, you're not
just looking at
the perfect top performers, but you're looking at those who make others on the
team better.
And essentially promoting those individuals that aren't necessarily the ones
that are all,
you know, maybe winning all the awards, but they're the most trusted person on
the team.
Those are the people that I look for because at the end of the day, it doesn't
matter how good you are
if you can't collaborate on the marketing team. Like there is no star on a
marketing team. You are
all working together. So I think it's really important to find performers,
absolutely top performers,
but those that also inspire others to be better and know how to collaborate
within a team structure.
Yeah, we do we do know hands every week. We like to do sort of shout outs.
Because our company's not very big, but it's about the size of a marketing team
depending on the size of your company as well. But of just yeah, like who helps
you this week?
And you know, you really learn a lot because there's just so many people that,
hey,
I saw you did this. If you want someone to jam ideas with, like let me know,
you know.
I think it's great. I think it's really important to have a culture of
appreciation like that.
All right, let's get to the playbook where you open up the playbook and talk
about the tactics that
help you win. What are your three channels or tactics that are most uncutable
budgeted?
I would say the tactic of six cents, the intent data strategy that we're
working with,
paid search and paid social, not cutable. Those are the channels that are
really driving us,
driving us forward. Okay, let's start with the first one. Can you dig into that
a little bit more?
Why is this so uncutable? Yeah, so it's incredible because it's a it's multiple
tools within one.
So what I like about it, and I'm not being paid to say this, is they
essentially also have an AI
chatbot that can act as an SDR for your team. So anytime an inbound lead comes
in, it can essentially
jump on it, act like a person, talk to the prospect, loop in the correct sales
persons, send them
content, and you can really sort of have the SDRs and BDRs in your team focus
on more strategic
accounts when you're able to leverage artificial intelligence to be responding.
And you really can't
tell the difference, the emails are even better if they're written in some
cases by AI. So that's
one component of the platform that we really like. The other component is it
has this ability to
have a churn indicator. So if your customer is searching for keywords looking
on competitor sites,
comparing you with competitors, you're able to see that and you can surface it
to your CS team,
to the leaders in your company to say, look, their intent is there that they're
looking around for
another provider. So in addition to being great on a prospecting side, it's
also great on a retention
side. The second one, you said, was that one paid search? So we hired somebody
who has taken our
paid search program from a very good program to an excellent program. So we are
now probably,
I'd say between 40% and 50% of our demand budget is going specifically into
paid search. And on paid
search, we're talking primarily Google, a little bit of Bing, but mostly Google
. Yeah. Any insights
there on sort of like what what takes it from good to great? We spend a lot of
time focusing on data
and performance. So we know which ads are going to move the needle. We know
what they need to look
like, what they need to sound like. And we're big on keyword research in
general. So we focus primarily
on creating content that fits these these keywords. And in our ads, we know
what will move the needle
as a result of that. Okay. And then paid social. Tell me how you're how you're
doing that.
So paid social. We're leveraging LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is the great platform
that allows you to
upload a list. And you can actually target that list. So we love LinkedIn for
for AVM reasons. And
the paid social, we look at everything from the way the look the ads look to
the color of the call
to action button to the content within the ad to the asset that we're promoting
to our targeting,
you know, proficiency. So we're we're always trying to optimize, but we have a
great partnership
with LinkedIn at this point because of the amount of money that we're we're
spending there. And
and we're seeing incredibly good results as a result. It's one of our top
performing channels for
closing deals also. LinkedIn is so fascinating. We do a bunch of stuff there as
well. And there's so
many so many different things you can do now with it. Whereas I think back in
the day, it was a
little bit more restrictive. And images are so important now. And now you now
the thought leader ads
are really interesting. The carousel stuff is super fascinating works really
well. You can promote
content just so effectively there, but it's super expensive. So then you're
like, you know,
it's expensive. Yeah. They're now offering CTV within the LinkedIn ecosystem.
So that's sort of the
next chapter for us. We're going to be testing into connected TV. Yeah, you
know, it just made me think
about from earlier talking about multi channel multi format. And obviously a
lot of people in
in B2B world, you know, you're you're using primarily your desktop or your
laptop or whatever.
But it is really interesting thinking about how you're getting on their medium
screen, how
they're you're getting on their little screen and then how you're getting on
the big screen.
We're a customer of a company and they put they put a little testimonial of C
aspian Studios
in their ad. And I get I've had so many people hit me up. Yeah, that took a
photo of the video that's
on their TV. They're like, you were just on my TV. Uh, it's cool. Yeah, no, and
it's like it's one of
those things where like I, you know, I mean, they're bigger companies, they're
bigger budget. But
it's like one of those things where getting into that moment of time, that
snapshot in time when
they're probably not in work mode, but you are getting that extra reminder. It
's it's it's nice.
Oh, I'm very excited about testing. It's been years coming. So we'll I'll have
to keep you posted on
how it goes. Yeah, seriously. You know, and it's like obviously with everything
, it's like, you know,
it could you could waste a ton, right? It's like that's, you know, part of the
it's the
the game is about waste, right? So you know, you know, you're going to waste.
That's the thing about,
you know, linked to in-eves, you know, you're going to waste there too. But you
also know that you
could upload a list and that makes it a lot better. That's right. That's right.
Most of the time you're
unsuccessful because your list is is messed up. Yeah. I found an account based
marketing. It's generally
like the providers are solid and the lists of keep and maintenance is the hard
part because people
leave jobs. Yeah. Yeah. You know, pretty ferociously, especially in the past
couple of years.
Yeah, we've had stuff too that that is tricky. If you if you target a certain
size account that's
so big and there's a certain type of job title that's just like, well, there's
400 people at this
company have that job title and like how much of your budget and then you look
at the stats, you're like,
oh man, we sort of, we're way too many ads, you know, there. And there's
probably a better way.
Probably was a cheaper way to do that particular account. So let's think of a
different strategy
there or whatever. And then so you mentioned sort of like this multi-channel
content marketing.
How are you thinking about creating content for impact? Yeah. So we have three
different
skews as we say, three different products that we're selling. So we're writing
top of funnel,
middle of funnel, bottom of funnel content for all three of the products. And
then of course,
we're writing about how the products work together. But what we don't do is
feature based marketing.
We're telling a story. And so we keep our stories themed. Like for example, we
write a lot of
content about influencer marketing. It's a very popular topic right now. It's
something that we
offer as a business. But everything that we seem to write about it is now
suddenly the most downloadable
asset. We're talking about how to pay influencers different ways to find
different various different
types of influencers. What they're charging nowadays. And so a lot of that
content is being found.
And so we're starting to rank for it, which is really nice to see some of that
organic traffic come
into as a result of the content. Yeah. I mean, the influencer stuff of how much
, how much getting
those benchmark data is just so important. It's just so incredibly important. I
mean, like whenever
we try to do influencer stuff, that's always the part where, you know, like a
small team,
you don't have a partnership person leading the charge. So then you know, so
much of figuring out
those benchmarks is just incredibly difficult. And then you're searching on all
sorts of, you know,
every, every slack group you're part of and you're asking, you know, it's just
it's a challenge.
It's crazy because it's the still a wild west. There's no standardized rate
cards, like an advertite.
Like it's very difficult to know what you're supposed to be doing in influencer
marketing. So yeah,
it makes sense that people are looking for that content. Any content that
particularly like
stood out or campaign that particularly stood out for you with within within
any of those
uncutable budgetos. Yeah. So we were in a campaign recently called advertising
is dead.
We're obviously marketing to marketers. And so what we did is we went on adage
and we bought up
their display ads and it said, you know, studies show you won't click on this.
And we just wasted
money on this ad kind of thing. And essentially it all led you to to this
experience where you have
to figure out who killed advertising. So it's we set it up like a clue game.
And you had these
different choices. Was it millennial because they killed everything or was it
too many ads and ad
blockers? Or was it consumer behavior? What is it that sort of led to the sound
fall advertising
that we talk about because obviously advertising has gotten more expensive and
less effective?
So this of course marketers I I browse raised and they sort of enjoyed the gam
ification of the site.
And then at the end they would download content, which is a white paper on
advertising is dead.
Here's why we're saying this and here's what we mean by it. So that campaign we
had a lot of fun
with it. We were able to take over airports and do some airport advertising on
the televisions.
Like I said, we have this microsite that got a lot of attention. We were we
were doing ads. We were
doing direct buys, but that's still one of our top performing pieces of content
. I love it. That's so
fun. It was fun. Super creative. And it's fun marketing and marketers because
you get to kill up with
say any stuff. And then it ends up working. Who killed it? It was consumer
behavior. Because now like I
mentioned earlier, they want to hear from their trusted resources, their
communities, their
their friends, their family, their influencers. And they really don't trust ads
. In fact,
most are trying to block them, which makes it difficult for marketers to reach
consumers.
It sure do. Millennials killed
napkins. Yes. That was my favorite. I remember one time we had like a family
thing and
my mother and father were talking about someone had brought up how Millennials
were killing napkins.
And I was like, Hey, I'm not going to sit here and say that paper towels are
not the superior option.
That's why I heard Millennials were killing the top sheet like in bed. Like
there's no more top sheet.
It's just the blanket. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I didn't know that. That wasn't that was
new to me. I still have
a top sheet. So I guess I don't fall into that. I did. I've killed the top
sheet. I've killed napkins.
That's funny. Yeah. Not advertising. It wasn't your fault. Hey, I'm glad.
Well, I think, you know, I mean, this is a total tangent. But I think it's
worth talking about.
Because it's a marketing podcast. I think that people, you know, used too big
of a brush to paint
people. And I think that, you know, specifically things around like Millennials
, first of all,
all these age groups are like way too big. Right? So it's like someone who is
like
37 and has a kid is completely different from someone who is, you know, I don't
know, whatever.
Just graduated college. Yeah, it's like these these age ranges are absolutely
ridiculous.
It is a mistake that people sort of like look at things in these like huge
buckets rather than sort of like
points in people's lives or basically transitional moments in your life or like
huge, huge, you know,
moments where you buy stuff and you do stuff and you, you know, make decisions,
you know, if a new
CMO comes in within 90 days, like they're gonna they're gonna be overhauling
something, right? So,
you know, that's a good time or whatever. And I think that people just paint
too bigger brush.
And they don't they don't necessarily look at, you know, what is what is the
activity levels that
are happening, you know, within that group or or something that's not just, you
know, their age.
Yeah, no, I know what you're I understand what you're saying. And I agree with
you, the generation's
thing is is sort of off the map when you can have somebody who's, you know, an
executive in their
career and somebody who's just starting out and being the same sort of
generational bucket, I think
that that's kind of bizarre. What about your most cuttable budget item or
something that that
maybe's not working fading away or that you're not investing in? Well, I don't
know if it's fading away.
It's hard to do direct direct mail. So what we were doing and what was working
well
during the pandemic was we were sending out these kits of, you know, different
types of wine. And
then we would hire a sommelier who would come on and we would have a virtual
wine tasting. Or
we did a gifting activity where it was after the holidays. And so retailers are
very stressed out
during holidays because they have Black Friday and they have Southern Monday
and they have
holidays. So we put together a U-Servive the holidays kit and we sent it to
them after Q4 was over
and it had like a cozy socks and like a little cup with whiskey stones and it
was it was cute.
Now you don't get people's purse so you don't eat it's very hard to get people
's addresses at the time
we were sending them to offices and now of course people are home. So that's
taken a little bit of a
back seat for us. But direct mail was a really top performing channel for us
prior to the pandemic
and everyone working from home. Yeah like that you said it is it is hard when
you're doing a right
it's great. What about AI tools? What are you using right now? How are you
thinking about exploring AI?
So we're leveraging Jasper AI right now for content. What's really cool about
Jasper is
I'm sure this is common among AI content platforms. I just don't know of many.
What Jasper does do is
you can train it to write like someone in the voice of someone. So what we
would do is we would
feed it articles that were written by me or by the CEO or somebody else and
then eventually we
could have it you basically toggle to say write like this person and it can
which is really time-saving.
Of course nothing written from AI the first time is as good as it written by a
human being
with the exception like I said of that email bot which is actually pretty darn
good. But
for like a content AI tool you still need to review it you still need to add
some human emotion into it
but it does sort of take you to that first step you get there a lot faster with
the tool then
without it. So I'd say that we're definitely leveraging it in our content we're
leveraging it in our
product. So if someone's partnering with an influencer we would be able to say
hey you're
partnering with this influencer we have recommendations for you based on who
you're partnering with.
Here are some other partners that you should start working with. Great. So yeah
it's a great I mean
with every technology there's obviously concerns around privacy and security
and people have fear
around AI which I understand and we should be responsible with it but I
personally feel like it's
it's really important in my toolkit now whereas it wasn't a year ago. Yeah that
's super cool.
Thanks yeah. Okay I want to touch on partners obviously because you're the
expert. Is there
anything that we should be thinking about in B2B land as it relates to partners
or maybe some
maybe some stuff that we do's and don'ts for the the old partnership economy.
Yeah so you do find partners with a similar audience that's the first key.
You do not want to be trying to market your brand in front of an audience that
is not
interested in your brand. So find partners that align with your audience I
would say find some
that have similar objectives as you you all need to have the same goal or else
it won't work.
So those are two dues. I would say don't partner with someone just because
everyone else is
partnering with them. They may not be the right fit for your brand. That's my
number one don't
and the other don't is don't assume that the the partner understands what you
need. You need to
be communicating effectively throughout and the main problem we see with failed
partnerships is
just a communication issue. Instead of you know something more glaring like you
would expect it's
it's like well we didn't communicate that that was going to be the payment for
this or we didn't
communicate that this is the coupon or this is the deal or this is the
promotion that we want you
to be highlighting right now. So I'd say that those are some dues and don'ts
but I'd say don't roll out
other businesses like we've seen some really cool collabs between different
businesses in B2B even
and you can create a product that is you know extremely marketable and
interesting to consumers
when you work with another brand or you just co-market and do things together
and try to combine
audiences. So I think there's a lot of different ways that you can partner. I
think what we see is
people are generating up to 28% of their total revenue through partnerships not
their
marketing source revenue they're total revenue when they have mature programs
and they focus on it
but it's not as easy as just putting a quarter in and getting a dollar out you
know you you have
to work at these partnerships and so they're not transactional they're they're
very much relationship
driven. Yes so we see it a ton here at Caspian on podcast because you know
creating like a really
good show especially with video and growth budget and all that sort of stuff is
expensive and if you're
marketing the same group hey why not let's make a podcast together or let's
make a podcast and then
bring in another partner or a couple. So we've done a handful of these for more
than a handful
where you have multiple partners in and boy wouldn't you know it? When it works
great it is so great.
You get both of the audiences sort of invested it's an ongoing relationship
rather than sort of like
doing a webinar together which is like cool but everyone sort of knows it's
transactional
whereas like building a show together you have a lot of that and and you can
you can also just
really seamlessly do ads and and sponsorship stuff like that with a better
together better together
narrative the peanut butter and jelly you know narrative and like it works
especially if you're
if you're smaller people that are going up against a bigger competitor and you
know like hey let's
we're both point solutions and this is the platform play you know stuff like
that
can work really well. Yeah yeah definitely as long as you have the same aligned
objectives
and similar audiences and you can be successful. So what about individuals
because this is
something that I think like and whatever you want to call them influencers or
whatever you see
so many people now whether they have a podcast or a blog or or a newsletter
that you know it's just
one person maybe you know an assistant or something like that but they just
have incredible reach.
How do you think about those? Yeah I think when in sort of the topic of
influencers I think that
if you're not working with influencers right now as a marketer you're left
behind like this is
happening now but the rise of influencers I really they've been around for a
long time I spoke at
mommy blogger conferences back in 2012 so it's not new but what what is new is
sort of the heightened
awareness and demand for influencer content and I think it all happened around
the pandemic when
people were at home with their phones creating social interaction buying things
online and the influencers
really took off but I think the ones that are most successful there's yeah you
look at the celebrities
like the concurrent actions but a lot of these micro influencers have
communities like big communities
that are a royal so you won't need to be a celebrity anymore you really just
need to have an audience
and and some sort of medium it could be anything really but yeah it's it's
important to to align with
influencers that are authentic and that's where I think a lot of celebrity
influencers are to get
their hands blocked yeah I I think it's so I think it's so important that
something that you know we're
doing here at Caspian it's something that you know my philosophy on this is
basically like if someone
makes something that's so good that you're either jealous of it or you consume
it you should just
reach out to them be like let's work together on something like I can sponsor
your stuff or whatever
and that's just like how I view things the partners that Caspian works with are
just people like I dig your
stuff I'm part of your community or I pay attention to what you do and like if
I can help pay your rent
or you know or even you know help you you know buy your new boat or whatever it
is that you're trying to
do like you know smooth out the the the even months like and be like a truly
good partners like hey
whatever January always sucks for me could you sponsor us that month sure like
those are the sort
of things that go like a really long way and you just become part of their life
in a way that sort of
being transactional even though that's good too but but just being transact
ional is not necessarily
as winning of a strategy no it's not and and I don't think I think audiences
can see through it
at the modern consumer is the smartest consumer of all time I have never seen
people be able to
sniff out ads or fake posts or people who are just inauthentic you'll get found
out with
these these internet detectives so oh yeah I think it's it's really important
yeah couldn't agree more
yeah I think my my final piece on that it's just like if there's a brand who's
marketing you like
uh you know and you have an idea just like reach out to him you know like it's
just um and it's hard
like it's like dating right you know you have to if I do you want to work with
this team then you're
going to be like do I want to work with them for the next year you know like
all those things I
encourage people to like look at time horizons or like do I want to work with
them for the next three
years if I have to do a weekly meeting with them for the next three years like
am I going to get sick
of this and if it's someone that like energizes you then pull the trigger if it
's someone that does
not you should definitely not do it uh couldn't agree more with that in our
next segment the dust up
we're talking about healthy tension whether that's with your board your sales
team competitors or
anyone else have you had a memorable dust up in your career yes I've had I've
had a few um I try to
avoid conflicts as I can but um certainly you'll run into that at at any level
um after a while
so I would say for me the the biggest dust up was um with a company uh that I
ended up leaving as a
result of of the dust up but it was a result of um me being the vice president
and they're being a
CMO who was unfortunately let go um and they they sort of were like well we
have a VP uh but was
asked to do a lot of the CMO responsibilities which I shared you know that that
should make me the CMO
at that point which it didn't do um so I had to walk away but it was the right
decision because I landed
where I am now um even after a couple of companies uh and I I am a CMO but it
took a couple of companies
being a VP and not sort of hitting that next level and feeling like I had a
glass ceiling over my head
that I wasn't going to get there um for whatever reason even though I was doing
the job and and so
I've had I had to leave um but it was the right decision and uh I would do it
again you have to know
your worth and you have to fight for it because no one else is going to fight
for you. All right let's get
to our final segment quick hints it's your quick questions and quick answers
just like how quickly
qualified helps companies generate pipeline happening a great assassin website
to identify your
most valuable visitors and instantly and I mean instantly start sales
conversations right there on
that website quick and easy just like these questions could qualify.com to
learn more quick hints
Christie are you ready I'm in let's do it number one what's a hidden talent or
skill that's not on
your resume I make jewelry I make earrings oh fun I give them to my team who in
turn feel obligated to
wear them so I really enjoy just the act of making them and I do give them away
to people so that's
awesome do you tell people that you made them or do you ever just like just say
like hey I got you
this oh no I feel like it's their hand made I'm afraid they look handmade but
um working I'm working
on I'm getting better they're like CG on the back oh what I've never heard of
that brand. No that's
a cool brand. Do you have a favorite non-marketing hobby that indirectly makes
you a better marketer?
I study psychology. I read psychology today I'm always online browsing the
latest articles
about consumer behavior it's something that just fascinates me and I know that
it makes me a
better marketer I've learned body language I've learned how to how to work with
difficult people I've
learned sort of how to avoid conflict but the most important part is I've
understood my own brain
and I seek to understand the consumer's brain my audience is brain so I can be
a better marketer.
If you weren't in marketing or business at all what do you think your job would
be?
Psychology I would be a psychiatrist hands down I've never had a question if
marketing didn't
work out I always thought I'm going to med school. That's awesome. Yeah. What's
your best advice for
first time CMO? Be yourself and remember that you are borrowing that title and
you need to earn it
every single day because there are 10 people behind you that want that title.
That's great.
Christy wonderful chatting with you for our listeners you can go to impact.com
Welcome to the partnership economy. If you're B2B company definitely we'll give
some pretty good
insights here check out impact.com if you're B2C company you definitely should
do it.
Christy any final thoughts anything to plug? We have a great podcast ourselves
called
partnership economy where we interview our customers and talk about all things
partnerships so
just another another podcast to listen to. Love it in a book. Yeah in a book.
Got it all figured out.
We're trying trying to educate. Fantastic. Well, Christy wonderful chatting
with you and we
will chat again soon. Thank you Ian. I had a great time.