Michelle Huff shares how an organization fundamentally driven by enterprise sales, rather than product growth, is achieving sustained digital demand gen success.
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[MUSIC]
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Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries.
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I'm Ian Faizan, CEO of Castbean Studios,
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and today I'm joined by special guest, Michelle.
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How are you?
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Very good.
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Thanks for having me.
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Excited to chat today, excited to talk about user testing,
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and all the cool stuff that you all are doing.
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And of course, your background, how
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did you get into marketing in the first place?
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It's funny.
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It was in the late '90s, and it was right
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when software was starting.
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So being in grown up in Seattle, I
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think I was going between something coffee-related or tech
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related and must have flipped a coin and went the tech route,
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which I think was great, and landed into a role at first
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was web marketing.
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And it was at a really small startup
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that was going through an acquisition,
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ended up playing a lot of different marketing roles,
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and really grew up over time through the world
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of product marketing, and then eventually product management,
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and then into running the entire marketing
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organization.
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And flash forward to today, tell us
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what it means to be CMO of user testing.
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I love it.
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So it's interesting.
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We do bootcamp for employees several times a month,
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and for onboarding people.
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And I usually like to explain a little bit about marketing,
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because I think every time you go to a different company,
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I always feel like marketing set up a little different.
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How they behave is a little bit different.
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And I think I've always thought of marketing
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as a function of scale.
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And if you think of really small startups,
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especially if it's more of an enterprise sales,
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enterprise led selling company, these normally,
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some people selling it to people building the service,
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and everyone else's right.
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We're all overhead.
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And I feel like as you start growing,
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sensing product market fit, it's scaling,
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and it's really where you start taking
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all these functions and marketing.
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And I see them in a few different areas.
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One of them is being the voice of the company,
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and being the voice of the CEO.
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And how do you make sure as you're evangelizing
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what you're doing and telling the store of user testing?
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For example, how do we get that brand story out there
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for trying to bring in new employees,
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but also out to the market for customers
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and prospective customers?
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And then I think the other part is really this arm
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that's linked arm and arm with the sales team,
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where it's all about building pipeline.
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How do we make sure we're building demand,
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building pipeline, driving revenue,
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and especially in a SaaS world,
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it's the bookings and making sure we're continuing
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to get new logos and growing.
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And then I think the third area is really especially in SaaS,
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is making sure that we're driving customer loyalty
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and adoption and partnering across the organization
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to really have that more end-to-end customer experience.
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And so marketing is really my mind,
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trying to like help scale these functions and organizations,
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and then partnering with the product and services side
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of the organization of how do we bring solutions to market?
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How do we think about our total addressable market,
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which ones we wanna go after and win,
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and then how we really bring that to market,
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enable the rest of the teams,
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but also really educate the rest of the market as well.
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- Let's get into our first segment, the Trust Tree.
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This is where you go and feel honest and trusted
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and share those deepest, darkest demand-gid marketing secrets.
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- Nice. - Nice.
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- Tell us a little bit about user testing.
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What does the company do?
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- I will say there's three aha moments with user testing.
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And the first one is,
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how often you're trying to really understand
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what it's like to be a customer,
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like you're trying to see if something resonates
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as a marketer, you're trying to understand what the journey's
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like, you're all supposed to really do things
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that resonate and make sense for customers, for prospects.
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And normally we look at a lot of data.
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And what user testing really does,
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it allows you to really understand the perspective
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from that prospect or customer's perspective.
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We really provide a whole solution
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that connects with millions of people.
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And you can really say,
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"Hey, I'm trying to find actually these sets of audiences."
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And then you can quickly,
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usually within a few hours, connect with them,
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allow them to say what kind of questions do you want?
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You want to share a certain part of the experience.
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So I want you to go to the website
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and see if you can actually find the pricing and packaging.
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And you literally get to watch
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while they're going through that experience,
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thinking their thoughts out loud,
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telling you what's like, what sucks about it,
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everything, you can really start seeing the needs
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and understanding those different customers.
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And we've had a lot of different solutions around that.
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But essentially, the first is,
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most people at that aha moment,
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is you're trying to figure out,
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"What is it?"
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And then you start seeing these videos
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and the highlights, reels, and suddenly like,
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oh, like literally they're going through the experience,
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telling you their thoughts,
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you can put messaging in front of them
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and have them see if it resonates.
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And then usually the second aha is when you realize how fast,
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it's usually over 80% of everything we do
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comes back within a few hours.
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And suddenly you have campaigns you're trying to get out,
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you're trying to actually run an A/B test
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and the fact that you can really,
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instead of just asking a coworker,
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or asking your spouse, what do you think?
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You can actually ask a legitimate user customer prospect
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that really changes it a lot of things.
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And then really the third is realizing,
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it doesn't just have to be your products or your experiences.
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You can really understand what it's like
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for people using a competitor's experience
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or anything that's out there in the wild,
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which is pretty phenomenal.
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- And who are your customers?
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- So our kind of core audiences at first
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were user experience designers and researchers.
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But as we've grown and scaled,
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people have really realized
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it doesn't just have to be about prototypes
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and doesn't just have to be about design.
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The idea of really talking to customers
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and getting access can be used across so many other functions.
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And so it's really people from a lot of product management teams,
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a lot of marketers, customer experience.
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We've even seen some on the HR side for employee experience
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and things like e-commerce.
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So a variety of different functions across the company.
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- And what size company, what industries all that?
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- Yeah, so it's fun on the marketing side
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because we actually scale to the really SMB.
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So Nathan company is less than 10
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or sometimes customers have user testing
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all the way up through the large enterprises
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where we'll have people rolling it out
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across a multi-million dollar kind of implementations.
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And it's fun thinking about demand gen across all of this.
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- Yeah, no kidding.
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What do those buying committees look like?
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As you said, obviously UX is always gonna be
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a key persona, but what else?
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- So in startup land,
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oftentimes what we'll see is if you think about that phase,
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you're trying to find product market fit,
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but yet you're really small and no one,
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you don't have access to a lot of people
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and they want to talk to you.
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You're trying to get people to give you feedback
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and see if what you're building fits market need.
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And so sometimes it's the CEO of the small companies.
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Sometimes it's the heads of product
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or heads of marketing at those companies, right?
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And that it could be a decision maker of one.
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And then as we go up market,
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we see lots of teams and their dynamics changing
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where sometimes it's a buying committee.
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So a lot of the digital teams on the marketing side,
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something the web teams, how you think of them
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are digital marketers.
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Those kind of buying teams happen on that side.
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- Yeah, so how do you structure your marketing work?
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Especially when you're going after that many different
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personas and size companies and industry verticals
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and all that?
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- We've organized through sales plays
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and we rolled out really just a core set
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of sales plays and personas where what's interesting too
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is even when I mentioned all those personas companies
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are so different too on how they're organized.
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Usually the role of a CFO is pretty consistent
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and the accounts payable is pretty consistent.
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And they are consistent across industries,
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especially in the world of definitely marketing, right?
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All the titles are very different.
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Everything in products can be that way in design
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and how they're organized.
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We've really honed in in some sense around people
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who are owning some form of research.
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And then there's the other teams
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where it's about conversion rate optimization.
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And then other teams where it's about
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if you're really designing or building products
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or experiences.
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And so we group the buyers 'cause you might roll up
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or have different titles that way.
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So it's more focused around needs versus always titles
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and that we share with the field like it's typical titles
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that you'll come across.
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And then we have different plays.
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So there's specific campaigns that we can run based on those.
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Give us a glimpse into your marketing strategy.
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How do you think about building a strategy?
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- A lot of the marketing strategy needs to line
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to overall business model and corporate strategy.
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So as a company, we've really aligned
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around being enterprise sales led organization.
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And so while we do have SMB as mentioned,
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even selling to one to 10,
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our style of marketing is not product led growth.
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It's much more of this enterprise sales led motion.
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And then we have a big part of our strategy,
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so is digital.
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We do tend to get a lot of inbound leads.
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And so a lot of the strategy for supplying our SMB team
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tends to be mostly making sure that we have a scaled SMB team
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mostly on inbound.
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And then as we go higher up in the sales segments,
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then we have different marketing strategies
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that align to those segments.
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And so definitely the higher up we go within the market,
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we have much more high touch events,
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personalized events, more kind of ABM kind of campaigns.
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And then we operate globally.
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So we have different flavors of that
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when we go into AMIA as well as Asia Pacific.
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But we're trying to really this year also try
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to have a consistent campaign that we're rolling out
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to cross all those segments around
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how user testing can really help organizations mitigate risk,
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get and avoid the cost to rework.
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And so we're really trying to have that message
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that can go across a lot of the different audiences.
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- How does demand fit into that?
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- You touched on it a little bit there,
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but any specific strategies for demand?
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- We actually have an SDR and a BDR team.
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And so the way that we break them down
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is we have a BDR organization
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that's specifically doing outbound.
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And then the SDR organization helps qualify all the inbound.
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And so when our demand gen programs,
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it's all about how do we,
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how are we driving traffic to the site,
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but how do we drive different events and campaigns
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that we're continuing to generate leads?
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And then the SDR team,
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so one that really partner with
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to help qualify and turn those into meetings booked.
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And then we also have a set of programs
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that are really supporting the BDR organization
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with ABM to help them think about which accounts
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we wanna prioritize,
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especially as when we start going out
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to the really large accounts.
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Some of our largest accounts have dedicated teams.
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And so then we do one-to-one programs
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where we even have sites that are set up
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specifically just for that organization.
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We're even having an event here at the end of February
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that almost like a customer user group conference webinar,
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all these types of things,
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but it's really just for all the users
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within that company alone.
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And so there's really specific one-to-one
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demand gen strategies there.
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- All right, let's get to our next segment, the playbook.
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So we talked about the tactics to help you win.
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- You play to win the game.
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You don't play to just play it.
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- What are your three channels or tactics
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that are your uncutable budg atoms?
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- One of them I mentioned, the web, our kind of web channel.
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Definitely such a huge contributor to pipeline over the years.
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So all the things that we're doing around optimizing
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that channel is really important to us.
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Probably the next one is our paid advertising
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is a pretty big channel for us.
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And third is really been events.
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- Yeah, zooming into a web,
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is that anything to do with the website
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or how do you look at that differently?
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- We made some changes to the organization
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'cause I really am the spirit of what the economy is
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and kind of going out in the market.
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Basically the idea was to really see if we can make the most
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of every dollar that we're investing in our campaigns.
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And I think when we were growing and scaling really quick,
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it was really easy to almost have these isolated
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one-off campaigns instead of really trying to coordinate
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and have a series of digital touch points,
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even that might go along with live touch points.
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So some examples might be we started to change things
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so that if you're at a trade show at the booth,
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we would have an iPad there that allows people
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to directly book meetings or directly
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we have a digital free test offer
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that we can kind of sign people up right there.
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And yeah, the website we put,
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we crop together actually calling Digital First Demand Center
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because I wanted to make sure that all of those things
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were really brought together.
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And so it was really bringing our demand-gen function
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along with content search and SEO
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with our digital web experience teams
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when they're building all those experiences
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that also have the testing and optimization
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and targeting within that.
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And then marketing ops and then our analytics.
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And so, 'cause we've been really leading to build out
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all of our reports and data.
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It's been a big goal of ours to become much more
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data-driven as well and be able to show the ROI
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across these different touch points.
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And so it's really kind of bringing that together
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but thinking, how do we make the most
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of each particular touch point and then capture the data
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so we can arm our SDR team with more information
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than just like Lilly made.
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As part of the web piece, like how much optimizing
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are you doing on the site?
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Tons of personalization and things like that.
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We basically installed Adobe Test and Target within there.
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We use a lot of testing tools.
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We use user testing as a part of it as well.
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But basically, we're able to now, for example,
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like the drop-down banner, we're able to kind of customize
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and personalize that on the different audiences.
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We've also been on an initiative of lining
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our data warehouse.
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We actually segment to really help have a single view,
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a unified view of a customer profile.
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And then basically, we've been testing all the CTAs,
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testing the visualizations, being able to,
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we've created almost like a inspired by B2C,
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kind of a merchandising area for promos.
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We're trying to build digital buying journeys
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and there's things around not just the industries
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but like what segment you're in,
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different kind of solutions.
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So you can better understand if there was browsing
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certain roles that have more interest in these types of things.
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And we've been building many journeys on the website
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and optimizing for that.
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And so we've had some really good wins.
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One that was really fascinating,
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it was almost maybe a low hanging fruit
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was optimizing our chat experience.
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And so there's a lot of work on optimizing.
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When that comes up, testing kind of the scripts
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and then getting really aligned with the SDR team
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that was managing that.
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And we ended up, gosh, it was like five times
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the amount of revenue booked from that channel
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just through those different modifications.
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And we just feel like there's still so much more left
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to really optimize there.
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And so we also have been applying all these practices
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to now what we're doing in Marchetta with our emails.
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And so we're doing a lot more testing
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and just the layouts of the email,
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the particular subject lines.
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We also just had an interesting campaign with Amia.
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It was great to see all the areas that they tested.
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We've been working on a lot of messaging
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and testing them at trade shows and seeing like,
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there was one where it was standing room only,
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people were seated on the floor.
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So we're like, okay, how do we bring this
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to our next kind of campaign?
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And we were testing the format,
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but also just at the end of the webinar,
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asking people if they wanted to have a live consultation,
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personalized consultation and people were chatting in.
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So we were able to kind of book meetings
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just right off the bat of closing out the call.
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So we've been trying to think about that whole end-to-end
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sequence of the campaign and optimizing around there.
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- Seems like you really dig into the details on this stuff.
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Like you see, you're not just setting the course
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and doing one-on-ones.
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- I feel like maybe it's 'cause it's my tech background.
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So I started off my career building websites.
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The whole product was web content management
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and there were portals like I used to have to install
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app servers and all that type of stuff.
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And then did marketing automation and sales force.
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And so maybe it's just I'm like wired to learn
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about those things,
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but I also just recently had an all hands
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and the way I format things is I get other people
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in the organization to share learnings
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and share what they're learning.
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And that one in particular was just shared actually this week
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by someone on the Mia team and it was fantastic.
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I was like, oh, that's amazing.
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And so they shared the results
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and she was kind of walking through.
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So all those details.
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If you dig into every part, there's no way I could know all that.
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- Any favorite campaigns that you've ran?
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- I feel like that one really stuck 'cause that one,
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it was actually this starting with the mitigating risk
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and it's been this journey throughout last year.
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And so what I loved also about it
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wasn't just the campaign optimization,
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but how we worked with the sales organization.
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So last year, there was a lot of product marketing,
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kind of getting aligned with the field around the messaging
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and we're having some early testing
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with different buyers for onsite meetings.
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And then we would send out the recordings to people
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so that people could learn like,
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oh, how did people respond to that?
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And then we were testing things at the different events,
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but basically the head of sales,
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the head of solutions consulting,
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the head of the BDR and SDR organizations,
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as well as marketing, we're all super aligned on the message
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and what they wanted the next steps to be.
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What was great about this one
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is really just having that alignment all the way through
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and being able to just make sure everyone's committed
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to getting everyone trained up.
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So even while this was going on,
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the head of sales was in a me,
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I was having all the reps do like practicing their pitches
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and everything along those lines.
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So it just it made, I feel like that's,
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I think what I love the most about it.
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It was, I guess maybe not just the campaign,
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but the kind of the whole end-end view of it.
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- You talked to your uncuttable budget items,
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about your cuttable budget items
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or something that maybe you're not going to be investing
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as much in next year or something like that.
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- There were definitely events that we were looking at
18:47
from ROI or certain trade shows
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that just didn't have a great return.
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So I think it was hard,
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I think I'll always just say a certain channel
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is an effective, but definitely there's been programs
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that we cut back on.
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I guess in the spirit, we've done some cuts,
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for example, with content syndication,
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not 'cause we don't think it's a great channel,
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but again to that, the handover.
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When we were looking at what's actually converting,
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I think we need to, we're trying to change a few things
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to make sure that there's different ways
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that we're trying to test to see
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if we can get those ones to convert just as well,
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otherwise it just doesn't feel like
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it's worth spending the dollars.
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- We hear content syndication pretty often.
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And again, I'm biased by my company makes video
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and podcast series, but I think it's just a broader trend
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of people just build their own now.
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And for example, you all have a podcast
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that's been going for six seasons,
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that's successful, the Human Insight podcast,
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if people want to check it out.
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And so if you have your own channels
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that are doing really well in that way,
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it's that effort is sometimes better spent
19:50
on building your own stuff.
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- We found other ways where we can leverage it to find,
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use it as like a touch point within a broader campaign.
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But anytime we were just thinking of it
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as like a standalone, and looking at its demand shed
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and converting, it just, it didn't,
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it wasn't working for us and it's not that I don't think
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it doesn't work for others,
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but I think there's a few things within our process
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we need to improve upon.
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- That's super fair.
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We had someone come on that was like,
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"Yeah, it's one of the uncuttable budget items
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was content syndication."
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And I think that you're exactly right,
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that it just depends on what phase you're in
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and how you can use things like that,
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because much like anything,
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it's like we don't want to be over reliant
20:28
on spending money to get in front of other people.
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And you want to have like,
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what can we do in house that can scale and grow?
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And what can we do that we just pay for?
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And like pulling those levers at different times
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is super important, right?
20:40
Programs versus people and that kind of ebb and flow.
20:44
- When we look at it across the quarters,
20:46
cutting back sometimes on that spend
20:49
to invest in other things
20:50
or trying to make sure you're hitting that
20:52
like perfect Goldilocks to spend
20:54
to get the most bang for the buck in that particular area.
20:57
- Yeah, the two things that I found really interesting
21:00
about cutting paid that have come out recently.
21:03
So you had the Airbnb case study where they were like,
21:06
"Yeah, we're gonna cut all the CPA type stuff
21:09
that they're doing and go brand campaigns,"
21:11
which obviously totally different type of company
21:13
that a BDB tech company.
21:14
And then Rand Fishkin did some studies basically
21:17
that were just literally paying Google
21:20
for stuff that would have come to us anyways.
21:22
And so it's interesting to hear those sort of things
21:25
that I think we always just said, we're like,
21:27
"Well, we have to capture the demand."
21:30
It's like we have to be there
21:32
and then you dump a bunch of money into stuff that's like,
21:35
"What does people look under us anyways?
21:36
I don't know."
21:37
- Right, I know.
21:38
And then I feel like it's so interesting
21:40
in marketing where you like the levers all change, right?
21:44
Because it's like in some sense,
21:47
you don't always have visibility into certain data sets.
21:51
And so some of it's all qualitative while you're like,
21:53
"Yeah, this feels like a good one,"
21:55
or you're just seeing things come in top
21:56
and you're like, "I'll never change this."
21:58
It's amazing.
21:59
And then you start seeing data and you're like,
22:01
"Maybe this isn't actually as rosy as I thought."
22:03
You kind of like start tweaking some things,
22:05
but then simultaneously the market's changing
22:07
and your solutions are maturing or your buyers, right?
22:09
Like in things that you've not held true aren't,
22:13
or it only is like you start getting more data
22:15
and you realize actually it's true,
22:16
but just for this segment or this audience
22:19
and not true for the others.
22:20
And so in some sense, that's why I think marketing's fun
22:24
'cause it's always changing,
22:25
but it can make you wanna figure out too.
22:27
- And that's why they call it a marketing mix, right?
22:29
It's not like baking a cake, right?
22:31
You're not like, if you put this much butter in
22:33
and this much sugar in and this much flour
22:35
and like that's not how it is,
22:37
it's the exact opposite where it's like the amount
22:39
of butter changes by day, by week, by month,
22:42
the seasonality of the product when people are buying
22:44
all that stuff, it's so fluid.
22:46
- I totally have to talk to me six months later
22:48
and maybe I'll be like, "No, I just totally changed my mind."
22:52
But it's almost, that's why I even finally
22:53
benchmark's interesting 'cause we always wanna know
22:56
how other people are structured, how they spend,
22:58
what their rates are, what their conversion rates
23:00
and how much pipeline 'cause those are so interesting to see,
23:05
but then it's not a recipe book.
23:07
Like you can't just be like, "Okay, so if I literally
23:10
"just duplicated that exact same mix,
23:12
"that exact same structure and just put it here,
23:14
"does it all work?"
23:15
'Cause there's even like maturity level
23:17
or enablement processes on I think the selling side
23:22
of the world.
23:23
And then also I feel like sometimes the benchmarks
23:25
are compared to product-led growth organization.
23:27
You're like, "But that's all different
23:29
"than the different marketing organization."
23:31
- Yeah, the rise of these like solo creators
23:35
that are now as powerful, if not more powerful,
23:39
then they're like, quote unquote,
23:42
industry counterparts of old or like traditional
23:45
media companies where you have these like macro influencers
23:49
within a small community that's like,
23:52
"Oh dang, that person who has 50,000 people
23:55
"who follow them on LinkedIn posted about this thing
23:58
"or put it in their newsletter or like we had Dave Kellogg
24:01
"on this show, like tons of people reference Dave's
24:04
"newsletter," stuff like that.
24:05
It's a great way to get a little bit more
24:08
of a trusted feel if they're the type of person
24:11
who is not just gonna let anyone in the door
24:13
and say, "Yeah, you can sponsor my newsletter."
24:16
- Totally, well it's so fascinating, right?
24:17
'Cause you almost feel like there's this interesting world
24:19
of like centralization, decentralization, right?
24:22
Where they used to be, right?
24:24
Just the ones where they had all the audiences
24:27
and you were always trying to get in.
24:28
And then suddenly I was like, "No, like I can build
24:30
"my own audience, I can have my own content,
24:32
"my own podcast, my own right."
24:33
And then I think ultimately sometimes you're like,
24:34
"Oh shoot, that takes a lot of resources.
24:36
"That takes a lot, right?"
24:38
And then you're thinking, and then you're competing
24:40
if everyone else has that voice,
24:42
then you throw in the mix the whole chat GPT thing
24:44
and then you're like, "Wait, does that change?"
24:45
However one thinks about that
24:47
and you go back to some centralization again.
24:50
- Where you have those, CIO.com,
24:51
I could pay to reach their audience
24:53
and then you're like,
24:54
but I could just build my own version of CIO.com
24:56
and the audience is there anyways.
24:58
I could just pay to get them in a different way.
25:00
But I think the thing that is the most interesting thing
25:02
we talk a lot about is like co-creating
25:04
with your prospects and customers.
25:06
And it's the same idea of having them speak
25:08
into your user conference where it's like,
25:10
when you can put one put like the thing
25:12
that we're making here together.
25:13
But I think that the sort of approach
25:15
is really interesting in novel and puts one in one
25:18
to make three versus like just more older,
25:22
like chucking ad dollars at display ad type of a model.
25:27
- Totally, right?
25:28
'Cause I feel like once that becomes so saturated,
25:31
it is the high quality, interesting thought leaders,
25:33
right?
25:34
And it is always the content that makes the difference.
25:37
- And the nuance.
25:39
- And the nuance.
25:40
- Totally.
25:40
Like one of my, again, so I always have my all hands
25:43
and people presents.
25:44
One of them was one of the gals in content marketing
25:47
and she was writing out a white paper
25:51
into the spirit of co-creating.
25:52
And so one of the things we use your test before
25:54
is she's like, she writes an outline
25:57
and then actually gets the people she's trying to target
26:00
to read it, just the outline, just skim it
26:02
and say like, what's interesting?
26:04
What would you stand over and just say,
26:06
it's so fascinating 'cause you hear people literally talking
26:08
about like they translate everything into their own words
26:12
and they talk about, oh, no, no, like I wouldn't even read
26:15
a section on like that's not phrased, right?
26:17
It's really, I feel like makes it so much more powerful
26:20
when you are co-creating it with a customer
26:24
and then helping to come up with something other than just
26:26
like the quick things that you can find on any other site.
26:29
- That's the future, right?
26:30
It's like if you can go the extra mile for your customer
26:33
to figure out what they want to do all that stuff, you'll win.
26:35
I'm curious, any cool stuff that marketers are doing
26:38
with use your testing?
26:39
- And a few different areas,
26:41
definitely the whole world of A/B testing.
26:45
And I think what I've heard from so many other marketers
26:49
where we can be really focused on data.
26:52
And I think a lot of the testing sometimes you end up
26:56
finally having all testing out all the low hanging fruit
27:00
and doing all the things that feel obvious
27:02
and then you're stuck in this world where A wins over B
27:05
by like 0.2% and you're like,
27:09
(squeaking)
27:10
and it's almost like you're trying to figure out now
27:13
the new hypotheses.
27:14
It's like how do I come up with something totally different
27:17
to test and so a lot of times use your testing has been
27:21
really helpful for kind of sparking new ideas,
27:24
helping to see something from a different perspective,
27:26
really bringing in a diverse voice when you're like,
27:28
oh, I never really thought about doing it that way.
27:30
So I think it's become in the more innovative marketing teams
27:34
is like triad of a targeting tool, a testing tool,
27:38
the user testing to help be a hypothesis
27:40
and testing engine in some sense.
27:42
And then we've also seen on the other side
27:44
where oftentimes the marketing organization ends up
27:48
helping to really be a champion of helping the whole
27:51
organization better understand their customers.
27:53
And so we've seen ones where during weekly meetings,
27:56
especially right now,
27:57
when everything's changing with the CEO and leadership team
28:00
and having them literally watch few little snippets
28:04
to help people understand the perspectives of their buyers,
28:07
the perspectives of their customers
28:09
and pulling them through that way.
28:10
So we've seen it in a much more as a tool for the users,
28:14
but also one that's much more strategic
28:15
in helping align the organization around buyers,
28:18
especially if they're trying to go outside
28:20
and find new buyers and new users and use cases.
28:22
- Let's get to our next segment.
28:24
The desktop talk about healthy tension
28:25
or events with your board, your sales teams,
28:27
your competitor or anyone else.
28:29
Have you had a memorable desktop in your career, Michelle?
28:33
- How do you define desktop?
28:34
- It could be a knockdown drag out.
28:36
You could have gave someone a fish hook
28:38
and pulled them out of the bar.
28:39
It could be whatever you want.
28:40
- It's funny.
28:41
I've always been a little bit more of disagree
28:43
and commit type of person.
28:45
- I'm just gonna say disagree and commit.
28:47
- I think the more that you can just align on,
28:49
what do you like, what's the strategy and the goal?
28:51
I feel like sometimes you get into these worlds
28:53
where you're arguing about all the tactics
28:55
and then if you kind of align on that,
28:56
then you can kind of do a disagree and commit sometimes.
28:59
Okay, we're gonna do this
29:01
and then we're gonna check back in three months
29:04
and see if it's still working enough.
29:05
We're gonna change it.
29:06
Yeah, tend not to have huge blobs
29:09
but I don't know, there's always moments along the way.
29:13
- Let's get towards it.
29:14
These are quick questions and quick answers.
29:15
Just like how quickly you can talk to someone
29:18
if you go to Qualified.com right now.
29:21
Qualified helps companies generate pipeline faster.
29:24
Tap into your greatest asset, your website,
29:26
to identify your most valuable visitors
29:28
and instantly start sales conversations.
29:31
Quick and easy, just like these questions.
29:33
Go to Qualified.com to learn more.
29:36
Shell, are you ready?
29:39
- Maybe, I don't know, maybe.
29:41
- Number one.
29:42
- Yes.
29:43
- What is a hidden talent or skill that's not on your resume?
29:45
- I'm a good networker.
29:47
That's not my resume.
29:48
- Oh, that's a good one.
29:49
We've never heard that one.
29:50
That's a good one.
29:51
Do you have a favorite book or podcast or TV show
29:52
you've been checking out recently?
29:54
- Actually, my favorite book I'm reading is about,
29:56
it's, I don't know, I read a lot of parenting books,
29:58
but it's about how to drive empathy and children.
30:02
So I think that was pretty cool.
30:03
- I'll need to check it out.
30:04
I'm not reading enough parenting books
30:06
because they don't sleep.
30:08
So what advice would you give to a first time CMO
30:11
who's trying to figure out their marketing strategy?
30:15
- I think what's hard is people kind of come in thinking
30:17
that if you're the CMO, you're supposed to know everything,
30:20
right?
30:21
Like you're supposed to be one setting,
30:22
everything's setting the vision
30:24
and always wanna feel like you don't have the answer.
30:27
And the whole point is you own the decision.
30:31
Even if that advice, if the idea comes from anywhere,
30:35
either your colleagues or your team,
30:37
you ultimately own the decision and the result,
30:39
but drive this strategy, definitely partner here,
30:43
especially if you're just first time coming in.
30:46
I think really getting aligned with your heads of sales,
30:50
understanding what's working,
30:52
what's not, build your strategy around that.
30:54
And then you can keep layering in all the things
30:57
that you've learned in your past.
30:59
And then I feel like building out your team,
31:01
you know what your strengths are
31:04
and where you come up through from the marketing ranks
31:06
and make sure you find some solid people
31:08
to plug the holes and help you get better
31:11
on some of the other parts of the marketing function.
31:14
- Michelle, fantastic.
31:15
It has been awesome having you on the show
31:18
for listeners, you can go to usertesting.com.
31:21
They got stuff for marketers,
31:22
so definitely check that out.
31:24
We all need more user testing, that's for sure.
31:26
And we all want to know more about our customers.
31:28
So go check out usertesting.com.
31:30
Shall any final thoughts, anything to plug?
31:32
- I'd say there's an amazing tech talk
31:35
that talks about how getting feedback can be a skill
31:40
and I was listening to the other day
31:42
and I thought about how,
31:43
honestly, I think that's a user testing thing, right?
31:46
Suddenly you're hearing people call your baby ugly.
31:50
And you have you okay with that.
31:52
But I also feel like it has such great message
31:54
in a way to think about it from just yourself,
31:57
being a leader, running teams.
31:59
If you can really think about feedback as a way
32:03
to just understand that perspective,
32:05
maybe there's a way that there's a grain of truth
32:07
in there somewhere that you can either realize
32:08
maybe it's a perspective you have to change
32:10
or maybe that's actually something that you can change
32:12
and try to look at it in a way without getting all emotional.
32:17
And it was a, I don't know, I loved it.
32:19
I feel like if we all can get better at not just giving
32:22
but receiving feedback,
32:23
I think we'd all be better at the end of the day.
32:25
- I love it.
32:26
Great final thoughts.
32:27
We'll link up the TED Talk in the show notes here.
32:29
Shall we, and I'll get some feedback on this episode
32:31
from you after this.
32:32
- I'd love feedback from you.
32:34
It's great.
32:35
- Likewise, thanks again.
32:36
Take care.
32:37
- All right, bye.
32:38
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