Ian Faison & Michelle Huff

Digital Demand Gen Success in a Sales-Driven Organization


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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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

17:03

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,

17:18

it was actually this starting with the mitigating risk

17:20

and it's been this journey throughout last year.

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And so what I loved also about it

17:26

wasn't just the campaign optimization,

17:31

but how we worked with the sales organization.

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So last year, there was a lot of product marketing,

17:39

kind of getting aligned with the field around the messaging

17:42

and we're having some early testing

17:44

with different buyers for onsite meetings.

17:47

And then we would send out the recordings to people

17:49

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,

17:55

but basically the head of sales,

17:58

the head of solutions consulting,

18:01

the head of the BDR and SDR organizations,

18:03

as well as marketing, we're all super aligned on the message

18:07

and what they wanted the next steps to be.

18:11

What was great about this one

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is really just having that alignment all the way through

18:15

and being able to just make sure everyone's committed

18:18

to getting everyone trained up.

18:20

So even while this was going on,

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the head of sales was in a me,

18:23

I was having all the reps do like practicing their pitches

18:27

and everything along those lines.

18:28

So it just it made, I feel like that's,

18:31

I think what I love the most about it.

18:32

It was, I guess maybe not just the campaign,

18:35

but the kind of the whole end-end view of it.

18:37

- You talked to your uncuttable budget items,

18:39

about your cuttable budget items

18:41

or something that maybe you're not going to be investing

18:43

as much in next year or something like that.

18:45

- There were definitely events that we were looking at

18:47

from ROI or certain trade shows

18:50

that just didn't have a great return.

18:52

So I think it was hard,

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I think I'll always just say a certain channel

18:56

is an effective, but definitely there's been programs

19:00

that we cut back on.

19:01

I guess in the spirit, we've done some cuts,

19:03

for example, with content syndication,

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not 'cause we don't think it's a great channel,

19:07

but again to that, the handover.

19:09

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

19:15

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,

19:41

that's successful, the Human Insight podcast,

19:43

if people want to check it out.

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And so if you have your own channels

19:47

that are doing really well in that way,

19:48

it's that effort is sometimes better spent

19:50

on building your own stuff.

19:52

- We found other ways where we can leverage it to find,

19:56

use it as like a touch point within a broader campaign.

19:59

But anytime we were just thinking of it

20:00

as like a standalone, and looking at its demand shed

20:04

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,

20:10

but I think there's a few things within our process

20:12

we need to improve upon.

20:13

- That's super fair.

20:14

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

20:23

and how you can use things like that,

20:25

because much like anything,

20:26

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?

20:34

And what can we do that we just pay for?

20:36

And like pulling those levers at different times

20:39

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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