Marketing Strategies to Navigate Risk, Governance, and Compliance
Gina Hortatsos, CMO, LogicGate, discusses the importance of risk management as a strategic necessity and shares valuable insights into governance, risk, and compliance.
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>> Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios, and today,
I'm joined by special guest Gina, how are you?
>> I'm fine Ian, how are you?
>> Very excited to chat with you today,
excited to chat about logicate,
about marketing, about demand,
and everything in between.
How the heck did you get started?
What was your first job in demand-gen or marketing?
>> Well, before I get into what my first job was in demand-gen,
I think I should talk to about my first real job.
It wasn't in demand-gen,
it wasn't a B2B marketing.
I was actually a management consultant,
a very junior management consultant.
My job was to run meeting planner and
guest satisfaction surveys for luxury hotel chains.
I fielded the surveys,
we talked to all kinds of guests and people who ran
meetings at these very nice hotels,
and we analyzed the data to find out what
was it about their experience that made them most
likely to recommend or most likely to come back.
We prepared reports for each property,
and then I traveled around each property to talk to
management of these hotels,
and what elements of
the experience from their meeting planner clients or their guests,
they could most move the needle on if they changed,
and therefore make more money for their property.
Now, what does that have to do with marketing?
Well, it certainly formed the basis,
the foundation of my philosophy that marketing is all about,
listening to your customers in your market,
and making sure that you focus on the really important things
to get what they want right.
It was so important because it combined a data-driven process
with the individual and personalization,
because each hotel was different.
There were some hotels that were beautiful historical hotels,
and their guests didn't like the fact that their rooms were too small,
that the bathrooms didn't work very well,
the plumbing was old,
and that there were big shiny new hotels whose guests were
not really liking the service they were getting.
So each hotel was different,
but when I actually started working at BDB Marketing,
I drew heavily on my data-driven background,
my management consulting background,
and used it to forge how I approached
demand-gen strategies to really get to the root
of what the customer needed, what they wanted,
and how we could uniquely provide it with them in a personalized way.
And so flash forward to your time right now,
CMO Logic Gate, tell me about it.
I've been at Logic Gate for about three and a half years.
The company is about eight years old,
and so it's like 20 years, a few use dog years as a proxy for startup life.
Logic Gate is a disruptive player in an industry
that's been around for a long time.
Logic Gate provides a platform and services
to help businesses manage the risk in their organization.
And as you probably know,
because you read the headlines every day,
risk comes in all forms.
There is the macro risk, geopolitical, business continuity,
natural disasters, and there's also the micro risk in the organization
around how do you control for the people
that are sitting in the airport with their laptops open,
and they walk away, pose a security risk for your company,
or how do you make sure that every vendor you work with
to make your business go doesn't pose additional risk for your company?
Risk is becoming more complex.
The velocity, volume, and variety of risk
is compounding as living an increasingly global world
and all of the things that are happening.
And so companies really do need a platform
to help them automate, supercharge,
and be able to manage risk effectively.
And so what is so interesting about the industry that we're in
and the people that we serve is that this is not a fad.
I actually marketed the same category of software
over 10 years ago to a different company,
and it will continue to be a very salient pain
that buyers who work in cyber,
that buyers who work in risk management and compliance
are going to need to grapple with.
And it's also very important for business people like you and me
to understand the risk that we actually represent into the organization.
Most of us who've been around for a while remember
when GDPR actually became a thing.
And often for many of us, that was the first time we actually had to,
we as marketers had to think about the intersection of compliance
and risk management as part of our marketing jobs.
I don't know if you were part of this,
but I certainly remember I was in a demand-gen leadership role at the time.
And we had to start a task force,
and it was literally three months in a war room
trying to figure out how to operationalize the 700-page,
very vague law into making sure that we are not in violation of it.
And it wasn't just as simple as putting an opt-out message
and a big prominent button at the base of your emails.
We had to do all kinds of stuff to make sure we were compliant.
And so that's just one example of a significant risk
that carries with it significant penalties
if you are out of compliance or not managing the risk appropriately
that logic it helps to solve for.
So I guess we don't sell to marketers who are your listeners,
but I will say as a marketer,
if you are not friends with your risk manager,
with your information security leader,
or with your compliance person, your organization,
go and buy him a cup of tea and give him a fist bump
and make friends with them because they are protecting you every day.
Yeah, it's great advice.
It's one of those things that, like you said,
marketers just weren't prepared for them
and compliance and ever-evolving and a cochiolous future
and all those things now, if our life in a business way
and in a compliance way, and it's all something that,
like, it's like the product founder
that doesn't want to do accounting, right?
It's like at the end of the day,
like there's parts of your job that you have to do
and compliance is a part of all of our jobs now
and we didn't necessarily think that was ever going to be the case.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And it actually makes you a better business person.
It's not just about data privacy,
but think about all of the vendors that you work with
to make your business go.
You work with people who have access to your servers.
You work with companies that also have access to your data and lists.
And every single one of them, it's good business practice
to understand all the people you do business with the companies
and making sure that they have their ducks in a row as well.
It is opposed to thinking about it as a eye roll,
like, okay, we have to do the mandatory harassment training
and we have to fill out the form at the end
or you got to make sure that you're updating your privacy policy
on your website to be in compliance with the law.
It's actually good business practice to think about risk
as part of your day to day and a part of your culture.
And because we've found that a lot of our customers
are able to make better decisions,
take smarter risks because they are so risk aware.
They understand what they're dealing with so much better
than they would be if they did not have a risk aware culture.
- All right, let's get to our first segment, the Trust Tree.
This is where we go and fill on us and trust it
and you can share those deepest, darkest,
demand-gen secrets.
- Love it.
- You've already told us a little bit about Logic Gabe,
but dive into your customers.
Who exactly are you selling to?
What size organizations?
- Yeah, we sell to mid-market and enterprise companies
across all industries because no matter what business you're in,
you're gonna have to manage risk and comply
with rules and regulations.
And our buyers are typically information security professionals,
cyber risk professionals, compliance professionals,
and general risk management professionals
that work in legal or operations or in IT.
- And I'm curious because you have in that sort of buying
committee, you have people who seems every single day, 24/7,
they're thinking about compliance.
And then you have people who probably think about it
like we do in marketing with, I don't know,
4% of our brain or something like that or maybe more.
But I'm curious, like, how do you think about marketing
to those different personas in the buyer committee?
- Yeah, it all comes down to understanding
what the different pain points are
of the different personas.
Just as any other business, we have the main person
who's got the pain and then we usually have their boss,
we usually have someone in an insulator department
and we have the economic decision maker.
And each one of those people has a different buying job
during the different phases.
And each one of them has different levels
of engagement involvement in the purchase cycle.
So for us, being able to map out that buyer's journey
in a way that reflects the way that our specific market buys.
And this is all stuff that I'm sure you've heard
a hundred times before.
- Sure.
- But one thing that we're noticing,
especially in times of economic uncertainty
or just the past, weirdness of the past couple of years,
is that we're not always competing against our competitor.
We're competing against some other project
that rolls all the way up to the CFO or CIO.
And it's one thing to say, we understand our buying committee,
we understand what their different buying jobs are
along the way.
The person who's actually managing that project
has different buying jobs
and the person who comes in at the end
and the evaluation than the person who actually writes
the check or signs the PO.
But it's another to be able to say,
we did a great job differentiating against our competition,
but now we actually have to differentiate
for overall share of the customer's wallet.
So that's something that we've been hard to work on
as we've been seeing that trend in the market.
- How do you arrange your team to go to market?
- It's interesting because obviously in the news,
there have been all kinds of discussions around layoffs
and a lot of companies have been correcting that way.
And how that translates sometimes in CMO circles
is deciding if you have to make a decision,
what are the badged humans that really need to work
for your company?
And if there's anything else that you could potentially
get away with an agency relationship
or an outsourced relationship.
And I've done a lot of thinking around this over the years.
And even though we are a lean team
because we are a startup scale up in our growth trajectory,
it's incredibly important to have product marketing,
to have demand creation.
And within that demand creation team,
I actually have my demand creation team organized
in digital campaigns, ABM and field.
There's some, we don't have a staff of 50,
but we do have dedicated specializations.
And then we have communications and content function as well.
Again, lean team, but those humans.
And then we have a set of other folks that we work with
that can help with staff augmentation
with operations and analytics and that kind of thing.
If in order to be able to compete in our market
in a fast pace, B2B, SAS, and the industries that we seek
in the market that we play in, we have to have these people
in these specializations.
And we also have to have them working very tightly together.
If you look at a campaign map,
and you see the sequencing of awareness activity and content
to demand creation, taking the customers and prospects
along that journey and giving them content
to satisfy their buying jobs at that phase
for that particular person at that time,
it takes every single one of those specializations
working together to provide for a cohesive campaign.
And so it's not just about the individual pillars
and the departments within marketing,
but it's also about how do you operationalize the interlock?
How do you make sure that the people who are producing
the content, the people who are thinking about the awareness
job and the people who are thinking about the more
that demand creation engagement take them through the first steps
so they want to take the next step with you
are all working together for a consistent experience
for that prospect.
And where does demand fit within your marketing strategy?
So demand is my largest team.
And actually my demand team consists of full funnel marketing.
So we have the team that specializes in making ourselves
found and getting people to come to our website,
engage with our content.
We have teams that execute on integrated campaigns
to keep those prospects moving along and engaging
with our content to get them warmer and warmer.
We have field marketing team members that are actually
working with active sales stage prospects.
And we have a customer marketing team
who takes care of our customers post purchase
to keep them engaged and educated, making them
more principal, making them excited to be part of the logic
family.
And that's my largest team.
They obviously have the lion's share of the budget.
But again, they do work very closely
with our product marketing team and messaging and positioning
and our content comms team to make sure
that we are saying the right things out in market
at the awareness level and with our ecosystem with analysts,
journalists, and other influencers
to get our name out there so that people can not only
understand that we have something that can help solve their problem
but we also help cut through the noise
because it is a very old, loud and crowded industry
that we play in.
Like that old, loud and crowded.
It's old, loud and crowded.
No, we're not creating a brand new category.
I think that's been a very popular thing,
kind of a very popular trend.
But the reality is governance risk and compliance
has been around for decades.
And it will continue in perpetuity
because everybody needs to strategically manage risk.
And we are providing a very disruptive,
cool, cost-effective and very interesting,
needed solution to a very old problem,
which means there's a lot of competitors,
there's a lot of companies out there
that have way more money and way more people than we do.
So combining our efforts, making sure that we're running
those integrated campaigns, making sure that we're really
cutting through the noise because we're getting right
to the heart of what that prospect's problem is
and that we're giving them that content that serves them
in their buying job, everything has to be working
in order for us to be able to compete.
So we've been growing way faster than the market.
The market's been growing and so I think our efforts
are paying off.
- Yeah, that's a fascinating thing
'cause obviously we do talk a lot about category creation
on the show about people who are swimming
in the proverbial blue oceans or whatever.
Much more about positioning when we're talking about
an existing market or a legacy market or things like that.
So much of marketing and positioning being about
what you do and nobody else does,
how do you think about that in terms of like
your overall strategy?
Are you still marketing a future that changes
your customers day to day lives?
Even if you're not changing quote unquote the industry.
- We are absolutely and we're not just saying
that as a pain of vision of the possible,
we have real results.
We have customers that tell us stories like one of the
members of our customer advisory board had to produce
a report once a month that he'd have to give to the CEO
to report out to the board on just like
how well is the company managing risk?
And the way that they used to have to do it was
have a person on staff print out reports
from all different systems, take them home,
spread them out on their dining room table
and spend four days re-keying the report.
This still happens.
It happens all the time.
And once they bought a system that allowed them
to put everything in one place, that same report
took that person five minutes.
All they had to do was press a button and write a summary.
We have one customer that tells us that their lives,
their working lives was a game of whack-a-mole.
If you've played that game whack-a-mole where
you've got the hammer and the thing pops up
and as soon as you hit it, another thing pops up,
the business of risk management can feel like
constant fighting of fires.
And you often don't know if the fire you're fighting
is the most important one.
And so in order to be able to manage risk better,
like their lives afterwards, literally they log in,
they take a look at a report that looks like a heat map,
they click on the stuff that shows in red
and that's how they plan their day.
And so the problem is not new, managing risk and compliance
and making sure they're not accidentally in violation
because somebody didn't do something somewhere
or making sure that you can compete in your market
because your business practices are sound,
that is always going to be an issue the companies face.
And it makes absolutely no sense for you to use emails
and spreadsheets and phone calls and paper
to be able to do this, there's a better way.
I am not, I've worked in a category creation business before
and I understand what that looks like,
I understand what that pacing is,
I understand what that positioning looks like.
I would submit that in markets that are going to be,
that solve for a pain that is going to continue
to be a pain forever like governance risk and compliance.
You don't necessarily have to be a category creator
to be incredibly impactful, incredibly truthful
in your position that you are creating a better future
and there's room for a lot of players
because it's an absolutely huge market.
- Yeah, that's really cool.
Are risk people risk averse in their buying
of software and products?
- Sometimes, but you'd be surprised.
I would say that just like any other market landscape,
we definitely had our crossing the chasm moment.
In our early days, we were definitely selling
to the early adopters, right?
The people who were motivated by,
I don't know if you have a copy of crossing the chasm,
I still reference mine and it remains true.
When you're early in your development of your product
and we knew from very early on
that we had good product market fit
just because we didn't have a good understanding
of the industry, but the personas that we were selling to
in those early days, if you remember crossing the chasm,
those early adopters tend to be motivated by different things.
They tend to be like really looking to be a game changer
within their company.
They're looking at being a change agent.
They're looking at whatever system or thing
that they bring to the table
can actually act as an amplifier for them in their career
and by virtue of that, they're willing to take a risk
on a more disruptive piece of technology.
They tend to be more experimental.
They tend to be more tolerant of early on
in the software company's lifecycle.
You're gonna have buggy stuff
that you're gonna have to release.
Companies, people in those early adopter mindsets
tend to be more tolerant of buggy stuff
and lean customers support staff.
And we are now in that early majority.
We are now selling to buyers
that have a different set of motivations.
They're not looking for revolutionary.
They're gonna be the one person that changes
their whole company. They're looking for something
that solves their problem, something that's proven
and where they can get customer references
of customers that look like them,
whether it's industry or similar buyers, similar use case.
And they're looking for incremental improvements
and they're not necessarily looking for
the game changer stuff.
And therefore, they're slightly less tolerant
of buggy software.
They're slightly less tolerant of taking a chance
on an unknown upstart.
And that's a testament to our maturity as a company.
And it's a testament to the fact that we do have
hundreds and hundreds of customers now.
We can point to that success
and that our product has the reputation of actually working.
Regardless of whether you're in the governance
risk and compliance industry like I am
or if you are in podcast software company,
you will, in your early days,
you are just going to be working with buyers
even if they have a same role and title.
The early adopters think differently
than the early majority think differently
than the late majority.
And that's when you're more commoditized.
So that's kind of how I think about it.
So some of them are not necessarily risk-averse,
but you have to understand what their motivations are.
- Yeah, we talk about on the show a lot this idea of like,
how can I spend more time with my kids?
How can I get time to go camping?
How do I not have to work on Thanksgiving morning
or whatever it is?
And like those are the, those type of role
as someone who worked in the government
and knows that anything that--
- I love to hear stories about that Ian.
- Yeah, it tends to be slower by miles
and lots more things that are printed out
and using Sharpies and highlighters.
That saving people time in their lives
is such a motivator, but it's so individual, right?
That's sometimes, and then them having a budget for that
is very difficult, right?
'Cause you're like, hey, this is gonna save me weeks of time.
And your employer's like, why pay you the same amount
anyways, so like saving two weeks of time,
that's your job, like, are you gonna take a pay cut
so we can buy the software?
You know what I mean?
So to your point that you have that sort of friction,
not only of like, hey, this is a, this is a,
it's a nice to have, it's not a need to have right this second
'cause we don't have a budget line either for this yet.
And that's gonna be a conversation that says,
hey, if I get out of the weeds, I can be more strategic.
And if I'm more strategic, we can get in front of things.
And that sort of stuff, which is,
it's a much different type of a sales cycle
than what you were talking about earlier,
which is, hey, this industry is changing
and I need to be at the forefront of it.
- I always find it very interesting
in times of economic uncertainty and down cycles
that the first thing people look to cut is systems spent.
And while I understand because oftentimes there is a lot of waste
and it makes sense to sharpen your pencil on that.
And certainly you don't wanna have to cut staff
unless you absolutely have, it's absolutely necessary.
It's how we're intuitive.
If you use your systems correctly,
you can indeed do more with less.
I feel like the pendulum is swinging back the other way.
But let me give you an example.
The best and my favorite campaign that I ever ran,
I worked for a software company who,
we had a verticalized go-to-market
and one of our main verticals was healthcare.
And we had noticed the slowdown in our business.
It was during a minor economic downturn.
And one of our insights was when we started talking
to the customers and talking to the prospects
that didn't end up buying from us,
is that the shift was that we were no longer competing
against our core competitor.
We are more often competing against,
do you buy a new ROI machine, sorry, MRI machine?
Do you hire another doctor?
There's a hospital, hospital concerns?
Or do you send the money upgrading your epic system?
And so we had done such a great job
of positioning ourselves against our competition
that we realized we actually had to pivot
and position ourselves against not buying us
because they needed a new MRI machine,
which is a completely different thing
than a piece of business software.
And so we decided to create an integrated campaign
that involved a ton of video content
that helped to paint the picture of how software,
yes, an MRI machine is vitally important.
And spending money on something that could be a rising tide
that raises all boats across the entire hospital system
should be weighted differently than a physical purchase.
And so we had to get scrappy
because we didn't have a lot of money,
but we found a customer, a local hospital
that allowed us to shoot video in the hospital.
We dressed our own people up as doctors and nurses
and people that were and administrators
that were interacting with the system.
And we created a whole series of videos
and other campaign content that showcased
like the compare and contrast of how you would,
how your life was before you invested in the system
to help you do your job more efficiently and after.
And it went like gangbusters.
The results were amazing.
And we were able to atomize that content
across digital channels, the big like anchor rock trade show
that we had six months after the campaign launched.
And it was really because we really dug into
what those customers' needs were.
And we were really able to arm our core buyer
with the ROI, the references, the compare and contrast
like painting that picture visually through video content
that they needed to get our project over the finish line.
And we've noticed that again today,
like every academic downturn,
you start competing against bigger projects,
other projects, not necessarily like the one project
that your one champion has,
all the projects at the CIO level,
they're actually looking at them
and trying to figure out how to weight them.
And so I think that's an important lesson
that I've seen over and over again.
And it really speaks back to the very marketing's job
is simple and concept and not easy in execution.
And that job is to put content in the right form
with the right message in front of the right person
at the right time and do it in a way
that makes them want to not only go move forward
and fight for their project,
but fight for you in particular.
If we keep doing that,
we keep thinking about what each of those elements means
and how to staff against those elements,
how to execute against those elements
and how to make sure that's being presented
in a cohesive way, then you're gonna win,
even when the market's funky like it is right now.
- I love that that's an awesome story.
- Oh, I love that campaign.
I miss that campaign.
- All right, let's get to our next segment,
the playbook where you open up the playbook
and talk about the tactics that help you win.
- You play to win the game.
(upbeat music)
- Hello, you play to win the game.
You don't play it, it's just play it.
- What are your three channels or tactics
that are your uncuttable budget items?
- Digital, making ourselves findable.
The uneducated non-marketer thinks that organic traffic is free.
We know it is not.
We know it requires a lot of time, humans and systems
and resources to make yourself findable
so those digital channels.
The second would be figuring out how to get human beings
to interact with other human beings.
We took a big hiatus on events,
live in-person events, wearing the pandemic
and I don't think anybody really wants to go back there.
I don't think that we will ever go back to,
you have to go to this trade show or else.
So I think hybrid events are here to stay.
But at the end of the day,
human beings buy from other human beings
and being able to look someone else in the eye,
perhaps even shake their hand or give them an elbow bump,
is crucial to making connections that last.
And then the third part, the third channel tactic,
I would say is marketing needs to pay attention
to the full funnel from first,
hey, I stumbled on your website, what do you do?
All the way to healthy lifetime customer.
So keeping that engagement going,
making sure that you have customer marketing as a discipline,
even if you can't staff it,
that you're taking care of your customers,
buy your journey research shows
that the most tender part of a relationship
and one, and the part of the relationship
that has the most impact on whether a customer churns
after their contract is up,
is between contract sign and go live.
- Yeah, totally.
- And so marketing absolutely plays a part
in that tender part of the customer journey,
making sure that those customers,
even if a lot of times your customer has to wait
for their turn in line for implementation, right?
It's like sometimes it can be a couple of weeks.
And so how do you keep that new tender, excited,
cash a lot of changes coming early part of your relationship
that they get more and more excited,
even if they got away a little while
before their go live happens?
It builds up goodwill,
and make sure that if things go wrong down the road,
at least they feel like they can trust you.
So I would say that would be the third thing.
- I totally agree.
It's one of the things that we did at Caspian,
'cause launching a podcast is a very intimate type thing,
'cause especially if you have your CEO as the host
or you have something like that.
A lot of energy and effort going to it.
We invest a ton of resources into our launch team.
Our launch team is freaking amazing.
We have three senior leaders at our company
that are on the launch team.
So we can hit a 60 day launch,
which for an enterprise company,
and for this type of campaign and complexity
and all that stuff,
we have seen huge dividends from that investment.
And it was like super, I mean, we're not a very big team.
So it was like a huge investment on our part to do that
and to just put so much effort and energy into that.
And the funny thing is we still have the same rigor
that we used to have.
That didn't really change,
but the way we did it and being,
increasing touches and increasing communication
and increasing the number of meetings
and those sort of things,
like those all made it feel like things were moving,
even though in the old way,
all those things were moving anyways.
Those gates were all being met,
but they were being met in dark in the black box.
And I think that's one of the things
that is a good marketing lesson is like
marketing the steps of integration that are happening.
'Cause otherwise it just feels like close contract,
sales is off to do their thing.
And wait, who's really holding my hand through this process?
- Who's holding my hand through this process?
Yeah.
- How do you build that trust?
10 years ago, we weren't talking about
Glassdoor ratings being part of the buyer journey
or user reviews being part of the buyer journey.
You differentiate on your tech and your offerings
and they had a checklist.
And if you check more of the boxes
and you gave them the good discount
and you could work with their procurement people
and you were done.
Buyers look at Glassdoor ratings.
Buyers look at user ratings.
They look for words like trust support.
They want to be partners with their providers.
They want to know that you have their back
and that old adage know whatever got fired from using IBM.
It's more than that.
It's more than that.
Because human beings buy from other human beings.
And to know, and what are the elements of trust?
How do you build a trusting relationship?
Transparency, communication.
If you make a mistake, you own up to it.
If things go wrong, you make it right.
And they know that mistakes happen
and they can still count on you to make it right.
And it sounds a lot like a personal relationship
but we're still humans and that whole thing still applies.
So Kudos to the casting team for recognizing that early
and really having that as part of your DNA as you grow.
That'll be a key factor in your future success.
- Gee, thanks.
I feel like it's kind of the least we could do.
That's really fully honest.
- Which again, is like, again,
if that's part of your DNA,
that's gonna be a big part of your future success.
- I'm curious, how do you put that stuff in your marketing?
Because that's the part that I always feel so tricky
is like one of the things like for Caspian,
one of the things I noticed is
when people get to the onboarding call, the kickoff call,
they're like, they sit this all the time.
So like, holy crap, your team is like amazing.
Like I would get like text messages
like during our kickoff call from the people like,
like, dude, I didn't realize like how awesome your team is
'cause the sales process we didn't like have them in it.
So I started like integrating them more
into the like pre-sales process.
And, but I've never put any of that stuff in our marketing,
right?
Because it's like not sort of like the value prop
of launch a world class podcast in 60 days.
So I'm just curious, how do you think about like putting
that stuff in your marketing and like that experience
in your marketing?
- The easiest hack is an assignable really a hack.
The easiest way to do that is by amplifying customer quotes
and stories.
We have, we're a small company, we're growing fast,
but we've managed to garner over 90 reviews on G2.
And these customers use plain business language
to talk about why they chose us, what they like about us,
what they don't like about us, what they're using us for
and all the things.
And we can literally copy and paste
this reviews are anonymized, right?
And we can copy and paste that those quotes.
So many of the quotes for us has been around
your customer success team is awesome.
We have felt so supported.
Your team took such great time to listen
to what we really needed.
And was able to guide us because we thought
we needed something, but it really,
we really needed something else.
And your team was patient, your team took time to listen.
The best way to actually inject that ethos
into your marketing is to like that your customers
tell your story.
If you are working with customers on case studies,
even outside the review process, make sure you have
included in your questions.
Questions specifically about their experience
between contract sign and whatever, what they liked about it.
And if they don't like something about it, my gosh,
take that back to the team and be like,
we gotta fix this immediately.
But let the customers tell your story
because quite frankly, if you sit there,
it's like, if you stand on top of the mountain
or if you're at the cocktail party being like,
hey, my name is Ian, let me tell you why I'm awesome,
what I think makes me awesome.
It's not a way to make friends.
But if you walk into a cocktail party full of people
that you don't know and people like, oh yeah, that's Ian.
He is the nicest guy, he's such a good listener.
He's definitely something you should meet.
That's what your customers represent to your brand.
So let your customers tell that story,
but make it easy for them to do so.
Through a review cycle, through a reference motion,
or even in a private one-on-one conversation
with a prospect, asking them to kind of index on like,
you loved your customer experience,
but you tell our prospect about that
because I think that might actually make the difference
between whether they go with us or somebody else.
- What about your most cuttable budget item?
What's the thing that you might not be investing
as much this year?
- We are being very intentional this year
to not do what I call random acts of marketing.
We all know what those are, right?
Under the guise of you have to experiment,
be innovative and try something new.
Sometimes you will spend money on something
that you really does not appeal to your audience,
does not have any kind of cohesion or congruence
with the stuff that you're already running in market.
And yet, some of these things are represented
as shiny new objects, right?
A new show to try out, or, hey, we were in this one
purchase cycle and we saw this one new persona,
so we have to do a whole campaign to this new persona.
Maybe, but instead of firing off, like,
spending time in cycles and removing those time,
those resources from something else that we know
is very important and cohesive as part of an integrated
campaign, maybe we figure out how to make some time
in space to do a little bit more research.
So I'm not saying that we're slowing down on being bold,
being innovative and experimenting,
but we all know when someone comes to us
with a shiny new object idea that's super, super tempting,
but in your gut, you're like, maybe, but maybe not now.
So we're trying to really cut down on those
random acts of marketing that require a lot of time
in bandwidth.
While at the same time, trying to make sure
that we're maintaining our flexibility to pivot
where we need to, if we actually do see different market
dynamics or want to take advantage of a market situation
that has a very finite window to it.
- How do you view your website?
- I view our website as an engagement engine.
Back in the day, websites were a storefront, right?
You put your stuff there and if people liked,
they would come in.
Now it's really about being a true engagement engine.
So instead of just being a storefront,
you actually have somebody out front asking,
hey, you look like you could use these pink shoes.
You look great and pink, come on in.
So how do you use all the tooling that's out there?
There's an amazing array of tooling out there
to not only make yourself findable,
but once the person gets there,
that they have an experience that meets their expectations
and is able to fill their buying job.
We talk a lot about how we make sure
that our website is engaging for all of the humans
that need to consume our content,
whether they're current customers, research stage prospects
that don't even want to tell us who they are yet,
or an analyst or a journalist or a partner.
And so we try to create experiences
that again are reflective of the different people
who have the different jobs
and what they expect when they come to see us.
- Okay, let's get to our next segment.
Dust up where we talk about healthy tension
whether that's with your board, your sales teams,
your competitor, anyone else,
do you know have you had a memorable dust up?
- Yes, marketing holds the largest non-headcount budget
in the company, generally speaking.
And when times are hard,
it doesn't take long for the door,
for the money people to come knocking and be like,
you might need to give some money back to the business.
That has happened, gosh,
more times over my very long, multi-decade career
than I can count.
And when that happens,
I always look at conflict as,
you know what, let's try to find,
we all have the same goal.
We all want the company to be successful.
And typically speaking,
we're just talking about different paths to get there.
So let's understand what that path is
and what those needs are.
And if we do, for example,
we have to give some money back,
that the business understands with potential impact
that we'll have in our ability to execute.
And giving us the challenge of going
and operating more efficiently.
I love working with my sales teams.
I love working with my finance teams.
I try to build those relationships early
so that when things get hard,
everybody's always happy when the numbers are good.
But when there's economic uncertainty
or you have a bad quarter,
it's really easy to get real chippy with each other.
And if you don't have that foundation of trust,
mutual respect and a shared understanding
of the goals we're all trying to get to,
it could be a lot worse.
So I'm not saying I haven't had uncomfortable
or sometimes downright ugly conversations.
But I can say that by and large,
all humans want to do the same thing.
They want to do their job well,
they want to feel good about the work that they do.
And we're all working in service to the same goal,
which is a good revenue and good results for the company.
So you just have to find a way to get there.
Sometimes after those exchanges,
I definitely come home and watch some stupid reality TV show.
But generally speaking,
ready to get up the next morning,
dust off and get back at it.
All right, let's get to our final segment, quick hits.
These are quick questions and quick answers.
Just like how Qualified.com helps companies generate pipeline
quickly tap into your greatest asset,
your website to identify your most valuable visitors
and instantly start sales conversations.
Quick and easy, just like these questions.
By the way, Qualified just released that
in the past year that they generated two billion
in pipeline with their platform for their customers,
which is freaking crazy.
Go to Qualified.com to learn more.
Gina, are you ready?
- I'm ready, Ian.
Hit me, go.
- Number one, was it hidden talent or skill
that is not on your resume?
- I sing really good 80s karaoke.
(laughs)
Do you have a favorite song that you sing?
- Kind of depends on the audience,
and you always gotta know your audience.
I did realize by accident some years ago
that I had the exact same vocal range
of David Coverdale from Whitesnake.
So here I go again, is a pretty popular one.
- Oh, that's awesome.
- Maybe we can do a duet someday.
- Yeah, I cannot say, I sing to my son,
and that's about it.
My wife is really good at singing though,
so whenever we can go.
- Maybe she and I can do a duet.
- Yes, you could definitely go.
- That's her go-to song.
- Winnie Houston, I wanna dance to somebody.
- I wanna see that someday.
- Yeah, it's pretty, it's great.
I mean, nobody can hit Whitney's notes,
but she gets pretty close.
So it's really, she's great.
Shout out to Becky.
Do you have a favorite book, podcast,
or TV show that you'd recommend?
- The book that's on my desk right now
is called The Advantage.
So that's been around for a long time.
Let's see how there's named Patrick Lencioni.
I think that's how you pronounce his name.
It's all about high functioning teams.
I've read it before and I'm reading it again
and I'm learning something new every time,
so I would definitely recommend The Advantage.
- Yeah, I don't know it.
That's cool, very cool.
Why organizational Trump,
why organizational health Trump's business,
or helps Trump something, anyways.
Check it out, The Advantage.
Okay, Gina, what advice would you give to a first time CMO
who's trying to figure out their marketing
and demand strategy?
- Spend time with your customers.
Ask them insightful questions.
Make it a practice, build a muscle.
Just like if you go to the gym every day,
you should be able to do several pushups
by the end of six months.
You should be able to build a muscle
listening to your customers.
And while listening to gong or chorus calls,
helps it is not the same,
is actually talking to your customers.
If you can meet them in person
and buy them a cup of coffee, so much the better,
but get time every month with a cohort of customers.
- Yeah, you gotta be the one asking the questions.
That's why listening to gong or chorus, whatever's great,
but you gotta be the one asking the questions
'cause the marketer has those additional little things
that are lurking in the back of your mind.
- And it builds trust.
Guess what?
Your customer actually sees some of the feedback
that they've given you in your marketing materials.
They like to be listened to because they're right.
And they're the ones that'll point you in the way
of good positioning and how you're offering in particular
makes a difference in their lives.
- And it's been absolutely wonderful chatting with you,
catching up, our listeners should go tell the risk people
to check out logicate.com.
And they can transform risk management with risk cloud
from logicate.
Any other final thoughts?
Anything to plug?
- And they should also tell their risk managers
that they appreciate them because those people
do have a problem every day.
You gotta appreciate your cyber person.
You gotta lock your laptop every time you walk away.
Each of us, risk is everyone's business folks.
Hug your risk manager.
- I love it.
Gina, thanks again.
- Thank you, Ian.
It's great to be here.
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