Ian Faison & Micheline Nijmeh 34 min

Organic Marketing for Long Lasting Results


Micheline Nijmeh shares her insights into why organic marketing pulls in better quality leads, the importance of educating your customer, and why your website is the face of your company.



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[MUSIC]

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Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries.

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I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Cast Me In Studios.

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And today I am joined by a very special guest,

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Michleen, how are you?

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Doing amazing.

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Thank you for having me.

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Yeah, excited to have you on the show.

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We've been working on this for a while.

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I'm thrilled to have you on today.

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You come from the Markatras group,

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which we kind of always end up talking about on this show

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in some form or fashion.

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Obviously Craig is the CEO, qualified,

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who puts the bill for this podcast, who we love dearly.

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And you worked for one point.

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So fun from that perspective and just fun to have you on the show.

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Thank you.

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Yeah, amazing team and looking forward to our conversation today.

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Yeah, so let's get into it.

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What was your first job in Demand Gen?

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My first Demand Gen rule was at Sun Microsystems,

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back in the day where I was part of the software DG team.

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Actually, my career started off in sales.

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And during my tenure at Sun, I was

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asked to join the software DG team.

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And I remember thinking, oh, no, I have--

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I'm back to holding a code again.

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And I was dreading it, to be honest.

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And it was the best thing I could have asked for.

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I wouldn't be a CMO today if I actually

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didn't have this path and this background around Demand Gen.

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So flash forward to today.

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Tell us about your role at JFrog.

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Yeah, so as I said, I'm the CMO JFrog.

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And like many marketing leaders, I

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wear different hats as the responsibility is so diverse

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or from day to day.

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But actually, at the end of the day,

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my job is to really provide a unified approach

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across our company in terms of who we're trying to reach,

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explain simply what we do and what makes us different.

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And how do we build these emotional experiences

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using modern marketing methods?

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That's how I kind of simplify it in three terms.

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Let's get to our first segment, The Trust Tree.

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This is where we go and feel honest and trusted.

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And you can share those deepest, darkest Demand Gen secrets.

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What does JFrog do and who are your customers?

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Yeah, JFrog is a DevOps platform that

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enables enterprise developers to automate the seamless and secure

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delivery of software updates to their end users.

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And actually, all the way to the devices.

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And when you think about what we do today,

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everything we use is managed by software-- cars, medical devices,

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airplanes, everything.

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Software touches everything.

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And for companies these days, for them to remain competitive,

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and for them to service their needs for their customers,

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they need to deliver fast and secure software releases

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faster than ever before, more secure than ever before.

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And you hear this like it's called digital transformation.

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And that's what we do.

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We provide this automated, seamless delivery of software

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updates all the way to the developers,

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to the end user as well as to the devices.

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And so who is the buying committee for your product?

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Yeah, when you think about who we go after,

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it's really a partnership.

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We build this relationship with our developers and DevOps

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engineers.

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We started off as a bottoms up approach.

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And we wanted to make sure that the developers and DevOps

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engineers had this amazing experience.

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So our priority is to win the hearts and minds

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of the developers because they influence the sale.

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They are the ones who try the product,

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and they're the ones who are going to tell their managers.

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They actually buy in some cases,

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but also tell their managers the value that we provide

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when they're playing with it in their sandbox.

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And what does that buying process look like?

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How do you structure your organization

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to mirror that buying process?

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Yeah, JFrog was really built out of a bottoms up approach.

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They engage with, as I said, developers and DevOps engineers.

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And when we give them this experience,

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this kind of product-led approach,

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we have a dedicated team to engage with this community.

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We listen to their needs.

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We meet with them.

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We bring them back to our product and R&D team

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to learn from them.

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So we're giving them that best experience, as I mentioned.

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And so we've grown the company really

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from the start from a bottoms up approach.

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And in the last year and a half, really, when I joined,

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we started to introduce a traditional enterprise top down

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motion to complement the bottoms up.

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Because we've added a strategic accounts team.

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We've added a field marketing team.

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We've added an outbound BDR team to complement

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the bottoms up approach, but also have a top down approach

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where we're going after the technical leaders

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and decision makers, such as the sea level VP of engineers.

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Tell me about your marketing organization.

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Where does demand sit?

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What does the rest of the org look like?

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I have a global team that crosses all geographies.

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We have about 10 offices around the world

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with remote employees as well.

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And my team specifically, I have a product marketing team

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in comms.

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I have a growth marketing team where the demand gen team sits

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there.

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It also includes BDRs, SDRs.

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It includes field marketing.

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We have country managers in different regions,

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like China, Japan, India.

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We have a digital marketing team and a website team.

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And that all falls under the growth marketing structure.

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In addition, we have the marketing ops team,

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the brand marketing team.

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And rare for many companies, we don't usually see this,

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is a community happiness team.

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So we want to make sure that, again, we

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have developer advocates thinking about the community.

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And also in there, we also have an events team.

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So all of that is under the community team.

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So they're thinking and prioritizing our audience's happiness

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and best experience.

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We can give them.

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Yeah, I love that.

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I'm so curious where this head of community

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or this function of community lives.

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And on our last episode, we were talking to someone

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about this idea of, does community live within brand?

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Is brand and community one in the same?

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If customer experience is the new brand,

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and for B2B, a lot of the times community

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is very indicative of how you're treated by the company,

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is that a brand play?

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I'm curious where you stand on that.

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Yeah, the way we built it here at JFOG,

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is actually, I have to say, is a smart way.

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We brought in the best developer community expert

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in the industry.

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And he has a very technical experience

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and understanding of the community.

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He runs, actually, I have also a partner engineering team

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on my team.

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So he runs that.

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And so he understands the persona inside and out.

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But he also owns and has that kind of business mindset.

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So he understands the need for marketing.

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So that balance is so critical.

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And we wanted it in marketing because we

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wanted to make sure marketing wasn't creating fluff.

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I call it marketing fluff.

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But that our messages resonated with this audience,

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our experience, the engagement, was relevant to this audience.

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Otherwise, if we separated the two,

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we'd have them maybe in product versus marketing.

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And so I thought it was very important to--

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and it started this before I joined.

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I have to give them credit.

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And to bring this team inside marketing,

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and they report directly to me.

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So we can stay close to building the message, the story,

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making sure they're aligned with the product marketing team,

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making sure they're aligned with the demand-gen team.

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They may not hold a number, but they

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hold a KPI that is very aligned with the demand-gen team

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that supports our efforts.

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So I'm a big believer having them in marketing.

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Yeah, and so how do you think about demand

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as part of your marketing strategy?

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For me, obviously, it's a big priority, right?

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We have pipeline as our number one.

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And I'm on the hook for it as the CMO.

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That's my top priorities to generate demand and create

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pipeline.

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And we built a two-prong approach, as I mentioned.

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So we have a core growth strategy that has gotten us

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the success so far, which is a product-led approach.

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It's a bottoms-up approach, reaching out to developers

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and DevOps teams.

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And then we've also built that top down.

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So for me, demand-gen encompasses everything that we do.

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So even when we build brand programs,

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it's to support our demand-gen strategy.

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Our developer advocates think about how do we generate demand

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by building those relationships?

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So every single part of my organization

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plays a big role in driving that demand-gen strategy.

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So it starts there first, and then everyone plays a role

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and has KPIs to support that plan.

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Let's get to our next segment, the playbook.

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So are you open up that playbook and talk about the tactics

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that help you win.

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You play to win the game.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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Hello.

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You play to win the game.

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You don't play, it's just play it.

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What are your three channels or tactics

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that are your uncuttable budget items?

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The three categories I would bucket into

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is paid media and organic search.

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Those are critical to me.

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And balancing organic overpaid is something

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that we strive for all the time.

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We're not there yet.

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My freemium and free trial offering that we have,

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we do offer a SAS offering as well as self-hosted offering.

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So giving that developer that experience.

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And then in-person events and online events like webcasts,

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podcasts, things like that, those are the three kind

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of big channels I would never cut.

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I love it.

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Let's dive into those a little bit more.

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Jumping into the final piece first, in-person events,

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online events, is that community stuff?

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Is it product driven?

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Is it bit of both?

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How do you think about events?

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Yeah, it's both, right?

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So there's product led webinars or events.

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But there are also community events

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that it's not pipeline generation.

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It's really educational.

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It's meant to get them again using our product

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because we have that bottoms up product led approach.

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And then there's ones that we want to drive demand

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and thought leadership at a high level.

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So we bucket them by persona.

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So our plan is to build them by persona,

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build them by the nurture, the content journey

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that we're building.

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And then we identify events to support those journeys,

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where we are.

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So we think about who we're going to reach

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and what we want to say and where should we find them.

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We're taking our message to them.

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I have to tell you, when during COVID time online events just

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was not the best experience to driving those conversations.

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And now we rotate so heavy on in person the last six months.

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It's been amazing.

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We just held our own user conference.

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And they're so excited to be together.

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It felt like a reunion.

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But it's feeling like that at every in person event.

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And those play such a big role for us

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and in a huge opportunity from a demand gen side.

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Such a good point.

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I think that there is so much fatigue around digital events.

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And there still is.

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I think people often misinterpreted

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why people would go to in person versus not.

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And what would hold their attention

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or why they would do certain things.

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And I think one of the things that we've seen pretty clearly

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is that if you're in a situation where you can't make an event,

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if you can't be there, if your team doesn't have budget,

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or if you live somewhere, it's great to have options

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for those type of people to engage.

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That historically we're being left out anyways.

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But for the in person stuff, like you said,

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there's a real appetite there.

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I mean, what types of things are the signals

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that you see from the appetite to get together?

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Is it just the feel in the room, the conversations?

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Is it surveys afterwards?

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How excited people are?

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Is it driving signups?

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Like, what were the reasons there?

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It's all of the above, really.

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And when we held our user conference,

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we heard from our customers that they didn't even

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have budget this year.

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When they planned last year for this year,

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they didn't know where we were with COVID,

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where we're going to be in the same situation,

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especially in November, December,

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with On the Crown coming back.

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They, I don't think they thought how big of an event

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budget that they would plan for.

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So many of our customers said,

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you know what, we'd love for you to come to us.

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So we actually held our user conference,

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and now we're holding city tours to go to them.

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And we actually didn't do an online version.

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We specifically said, you know what,

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we're going to come to you.

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We're going to build the best experience.

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And it's been such a huge response.

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Like, during the last week or two weeks ago,

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I really felt like we were at a reunion.

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I was watching, and people were hugging each other.

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And I mean, it was like a big party.

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I missed it, right, for sure.

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It wasn't my first event, but it was our first user conference.

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And it was really a response, right?

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They were telling us this, the surveys,

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everything that, you know, they're ready to come back.

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We always have to offer a hybrid, but you know what,

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we always offered hybrid when we wanted to.

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It's just now, I don't think we build the same experience.

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The hybrid has to be a dedicated strategy.

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Just, it can't be like, here, let's stream it,

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and you'll be fine.

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It's got to be a dedicated strategy like we did last year.

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We've learned from that, but now we've got to, you know,

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make it where it's digestible.

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It's not this long conference that we've had,

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where people started taking those in-person,

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make them the same virtual.

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We got to, you know, we're rethinking how we do those for sure.

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- I love it.

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And you noted, we were just so unintentional

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of how we thought about both those things, right?

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Like the whole idea of, hey, we go to a conference,

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we've talked about this one on the show,

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but like, you go to a conference,

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and then you just live stream all of the talking points.

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It's like, yeah, but I don't go to a conference

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to just listen to people talk.

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That's like the 20%, the 80%

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is the connections and the meeting people

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and the networking sessions or the workshops.

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Those are the things that drive a ton of value.

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And I think that that's like being intentional

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about what is for what and why people go to certain things.

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I think is super important for people to figure that out.

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Otherwise, if you kind of just sit on the fence,

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like it's just kind of like be a bad experience on both sides.

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- And let's be honest,

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of who sits through an entire virtual event.

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You pick and choose your sessions,

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and when you're home or you're in the office,

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you get distracted, you get, no one sits through them.

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So in reality, we may say we've acquired this many people

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to attend our conference, but are they really,

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like they're not really contained, like in person event.

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We have them locked in and they're, you know,

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they're there, they're having the conversations,

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we're having those meetings,

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and you don't get that from the virtual.

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So, you know, we're definitely rethinking how we do them.

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We're, you know, cutting them even further,

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not to say we didn't do that a couple of years ago,

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but now we're doing it again in terms of

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how do we partner with the in-person ones?

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- Well, I think that, you know, like the way

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that you'd create an in-person event is like very regimented

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at this point, like so many people have done it.

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We know how to do it, the speakers, the this, the like,

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breakout sessions, all that stuff, like we know how to do it.

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We had no idea how to do virtual events, right?

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So it's like the idea that like, you know,

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you have someone talk for 45 minutes,

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and then you have like Q&A and then rap,

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it's like you don't need to do any of that anymore.

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You could have someone talk for 10 minutes,

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and then you can do all breakout rooms,

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or you can do like, there's so many different things

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that you can do, and I think that that's the sort of stuff

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where like again, in events, the reason why it's like,

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hey, Michelin and I both went to the, you know,

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how to, you know, upgrade your, you know,

17:17

supercharge your SEO.

17:19

Hey, I saw, were you in that thing?

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Yeah, you were like, I was pretty cool

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that they were talking about X-Y or Z,

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like it's still about like driving word of mouth,

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driving connections between people

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to talk about what they just learned.

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It's not just like, hey, I'm just gonna take notes on this

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and take it back to my team.

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In-person events are still about getting actual people together

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to talk about that stuff.

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It is, it is the psych conversations where you learn so much.

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So I completely agree.

17:43

You mentioned organic.

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How do you think about organic as it relates to that

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versus paid versus, you know, both together

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and what's your strategy for building that?

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We have two very strong plans for organic

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and paid and obviously paid costs more than organic.

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So I always try to tell my team,

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you gotta, gotta change the balance.

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That's their objective and that's their KPI.

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Is how do you get to generate more demand

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and leads from organic versus paid?

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And organic is just better quality leads

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at the end of the day, right?

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They're searching for it.

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They're, we're driving them.

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They're seeing their right content

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and then they're taking action.

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So for me, they're top priority.

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But if I had it my way and I could fast forward everything,

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I would do more organic than paid for sure.

18:32

- Do you think about like doing, you know,

18:36

the definitive guide to XYZ,

18:39

the kind of pillar content marketing strategy

18:42

and driving everyone to one thing

18:44

and having that sort of like anchor content

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or do you think about, you know,

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what type of stuff are you all kind of working on creating

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for that?

18:53

- There's an old saying, right?

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The content is king and there's a reason for it, right?

18:56

And organic search is all about content.

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Same with paid search, but organic much more so.

19:01

And the nurture you're building

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to get them to engage with you.

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I used to do those, you know, my past career

19:09

but with JFrog, it's all about technical content engagement,

19:14

right? So it's not the fluff.

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They can see behind, they can see behind the fluff.

19:19

So it's gotta be very educational, deep technical content

19:24

with this audience, you really have to educate them.

19:27

So it's taking them through a journey, right?

19:30

So we think about the user experience,

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the moment they come to our website,

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what is it the first thing, you know, we wanna do,

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where did they come from and what's the next step

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they wanna take?

19:39

And then we built workshops, again, to educate them.

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Very hands on, they're an hour and a half workshops

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so they can play with our product.

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And we bring them to try our product.

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We bring them to do these kind of demo days

19:55

where, 'cause they don't wanna talk to us a sales rep.

19:58

So right away.

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So how do we take them on this journey

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in a way that resonates with them?

20:04

That doesn't feel like marketing fluff

20:07

or that doesn't feel not authentic, right?

20:10

It's gotta be authentic, it's gotta mean like,

20:13

hey, we are trying to take you and educate you

20:15

down this journey because we want you

20:17

to have the best experience 'cause we believe

20:19

that we're giving you the best product

20:22

in the industry and we want you to try it.

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And once they try it, we know we've got them excited

20:27

and energized about it, but it's just taking them

20:30

down that journey.

20:30

And organic search and content plays a huge part in that.

20:34

- Yeah, it seems like, isn't that the hard part, right?

20:36

It's like, if you're paying whatever, one to two dollars

20:39

a word to get content created or whatever it is,

20:43

or if you're creating a house, either way,

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like you have to find the really sharp technical writers

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or creators or people outside the organization,

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they're gonna be able to co-create that stuff

20:54

because otherwise, like you said, if you're just trying

20:58

to slap together a thousand words to throw it on the blog,

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we all know that's a losing strategy anyways,

21:02

but how hard has that been for you all

21:06

to find those technical creators?

21:08

- Yeah, we've been lucky to be honest

21:10

because we market to engineers and developers,

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we have a very large R&D organization,

21:17

so we actually created a JFrog Gurus program,

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and the JFrog Gurus program are people

21:22

all over the company who want to present,

21:27

who want to go to events, who want to come on webinars,

21:30

so they're actually like real life,

21:33

the persona that we go after,

21:35

they're presenting on our behalf and they're sharing,

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so we've been lucky to have that,

21:40

we built our developer advocates team

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'cause that's 100% of their job,

21:44

but we also leverage our R&D and our product team

21:46

to build content, so on our side,

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we actually don't lack the content creation,

21:52

for us it's like making sure that it resonates,

21:55

that we're, it's focused, that we,

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there's a purpose to it, right?

22:02

I'm not a believer of, I call it,

22:04

don't create content that sits on the shelf, right?

22:07

Have a purpose of how you want to use it,

22:09

how is it going to, you know, going out to market,

22:11

how are we going to engage with the audience

22:13

more than once, right?

22:15

Creating one piece of content, letting it sit,

22:17

it's not worthwhile, so that's the hardest part

22:20

because there's so much content

22:22

and we deliver a platform that has multiple products,

22:25

so it's not just one story all the time,

22:28

we, you know, we want to showcase a certain product

22:30

of our another, and so therefore,

22:32

that's probably the hardest, it's the storytelling,

22:35

not the technical content that we deliver,

22:37

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's hard work,

22:39

but we have so many experts in the company

22:42

that that's less of a concern for me.

22:44

- What about your most cuttable budget item

22:49

or something that you might not be investing in, you know,

22:52

in the coming years?

22:53

- Yeah, I tend to find, you know,

22:57

content syndication, not, you know,

22:59

it's not like it's cuttable, I would cut it,

23:02

it's just the least amount,

23:04

and the reason why we would continue doing that

23:05

is it's very top of the funnel,

23:08

so if we're, if you're starting out,

23:11

like when I first joined,

23:12

we wanted to make sure we had enough names

23:14

and our database, so that was a tactic we used

23:19

for a very long-term evolution of good quality leads,

23:24

so we would bring them in, we would nurture them,

23:26

we would build that engagement with them,

23:29

and then we start, you know, thinking of them as leads, right?

23:33

So I find that probably the least that I would cut the most,

23:37

if I had to choose, this is what I would pick,

23:41

but that's the most I see in terms of, you know,

23:46

channels that are not doing as well as I'd like to see,

23:51

'cause every company that I've seen at,

23:54

when we try it, it's not that great for me,

23:57

from a lead perspective,

23:59

and then again, virtual events,

24:01

making sure that the ones we do do are meaningful,

24:05

they have, that we build meaningful conversations

24:08

around these virtual events,

24:10

because we are getting that fatigue as we discussed.

24:13

- Okay, do you have a favorite campaign?

24:16

- There's several, but probably the one worth mentioning

24:19

is our recent security campaign that we ran,

24:22

JFrog has a security solution called JFrog X-Ray,

24:25

and it enables customers to kind of deliver software

24:28

securely, right, faster, and with the recent,

24:31

I don't know if everyone's aware of this,

24:32

but with the recent software pandemic

24:34

that we had with Log4J,

24:36

you know, it was a very horrifying experience

24:40

to so many enterprise companies,

24:42

like they were panicking across the industry.

24:45

Luckily, our customers were safe,

24:48

but it was kind of a marketer's dream in a way,

24:50

because we like quickly launched this campaign,

24:53

showcasing the value of X-Ray,

24:56

our JFrog X-Ray solution,

24:59

how we're strengthening their supply chain,

25:01

how we brought customers forward,

25:03

how we showcased them,

25:04

and it was beautiful,

25:07

it beautifully executed.

25:09

We launched a myriad of content,

25:13

blogs, social, customer stories,

25:17

and the result was amazing.

25:19

You know, we saw huge spikes in our website, traffic,

25:22

journalists that have not written about us before

25:25

started writing about us, putting us in their headlines.

25:28

So for me, that was a beautiful, very relevant,

25:32

recent one that we use now,

25:34

and we're figuring out how do we do this,

25:36

replicate this for any campaign

25:39

to drive that kind of air-covering

25:40

such a short period of time, it was amazing.

25:43

It also validated the need for the teams to be aligned, right?

25:48

When you have this passion and this focus

25:52

across the entire marketing organization,

25:55

like magic happens,

25:56

and it just shows that as leaders,

25:59

if you focus them on so many different things,

26:02

you don't get that type of return,

26:03

and that's the difference that we learned from it,

26:06

is that we're always doing

26:07

so many different things all the time,

26:09

and to have that type of focus was just amazing.

26:14

- Yeah, I always reference Chandar,

26:17

'cause he's one of my all-time face,

26:19

but he said on the podcast,

26:22

is like you can do three things,

26:24

like you can have basically three elements of focus

26:28

at any given time for your marketing team, and that's it.

26:30

And I break the rule all the time,

26:34

like I constantly break the rule,

26:36

but then you go back and you're like,

26:37

oh, it's way better to just do three things

26:40

right and thoroughly than try to just boil the ocean.

26:44

- Right, and as marketing leaders, it's hard, right?

26:46

'Cause you get asked for so many different things

26:48

from across the entire company

26:51

that we have to try and protect them,

26:52

but it is, I do the same thing.

26:54

I try to remember, but it's hard not to focus them

26:58

on more than three things. (laughs)

27:01

- How do you view your website?

27:03

- Gosh, our website is the face of the company, right?

27:08

It's something that people come to,

27:11

the first thing they come to when they're learning.

27:13

It's the, it plays many different roles.

27:17

It's the highest producing channel for us

27:20

for conversion rates.

27:21

It's the leading indicator of how well we're doing

27:24

from a brand awareness perspective.

27:26

Are we driving more traffic?

27:28

Are we driving more unique users to come?

27:30

Are they engaging?

27:31

So those are all leading indicators to me

27:33

to the health of the business.

27:35

And it's a place where we can tell our stories, right?

27:37

It's not just from a product perspective,

27:39

but they can come to our blogs where we can learn

27:42

and excuse me, teach them and showcase our existing customers

27:47

and inspire future customers.

27:49

So it's the number one property.

27:52

And I hired someone just dedicated to think about

27:55

the health of the website.

27:57

That is, I'm gonna give a whole team around it,

27:59

thinking about it, but one person is waking up

28:02

and sleeping, thinking is my website a success.

28:05

And that's number one for me.

28:07

- I love that.

28:09

I haven't heard it put quite that way.

28:13

I was just like single point of success.

28:17

Like, as we said in the area, pin the rows

28:21

on the one person who it's like,

28:24

you know, this is what you think about every single day.

28:26

And this is like the classic marketing thing.

28:28

If you don't resource it, it's never, you know,

28:31

and if you don't give an owner,

28:33

how can you expect it to be successful?

28:38

- Absolutely, that's exactly it.

28:40

If you don't have the focus,

28:41

you're not gonna get the results.

28:43

- Well, and to expand on that,

28:44

the website is such a complex thing.

28:46

Now, I mean, we talked about it every episode.

28:48

It's such a complex thing because you're selling

28:51

on the website, especially, you know, you all have PLG

28:53

and bottom up.

28:55

It's so complex now.

28:57

All your content is living there.

28:59

Like, there's just so many different things

29:00

that are going on.

29:01

It's like if you don't,

29:02

if you create, you know, the center of excellence model

29:04

and nobody's owning it, owning it, you know,

29:08

it's just not, it's just not gonna,

29:12

it's still just, you know,

29:14

too many cooks in the kitchen and not one person saying,

29:16

like, no, this is how it has to be

29:18

because we have these 55 other things

29:21

that are happening at any given time.

29:24

- Yeah, I mean, you know, one person is not enough

29:26

and we're just starting to grow that organization as well,

29:29

but it's, we need to have that focus.

29:32

And for this person, her job is to make sure

29:35

everything's optimized.

29:36

So we take our top generating content

29:39

and is it converting on our website?

29:41

Is it, are people coming?

29:42

She's not responsible for people to come,

29:44

but once they go on to the website,

29:47

her job is to ensure conversion and engagement.

29:51

So we take the top kind of performing, you know,

29:55

content pieces or web pages and make sure

29:58

that they're converting and optimizing at all time,

30:00

partners with the SEO team,

30:02

partners with the product marketing team.

30:04

So it's a tough job, it's never ending.

30:06

And we're just, you know, that was probably my second,

30:09

third hire when I joined the company.

30:12

And we just need to grow it.

30:13

It's just, you know, there was so much other things to do,

30:16

but it's definitely something that I can see

30:17

a whole team around focus on different aspects,

30:20

whether it's optimization on conversion,

30:23

optimization on, you know, like exit pages,

30:26

how are they moving from one page to another?

30:29

I can build a whole team around this in the future

30:32

and that's the plan.

30:34

- Let's get to the desktop when we talk about healthy tension,

30:37

whether that's with your board, your sales team,

30:39

your competitors or anyone else.

30:40

Have you had a memorable dust up in your career?

30:43

- I've had many.

30:47

Really, I've been lucky not to have anything

30:49

with the board.

30:50

I've been, you know, the board,

30:51

every single engagement I've had with the board,

30:53

they're really there to support and guide you.

30:55

So I can't say I've had, you know,

30:58

anything to say about that.

31:00

I've been lucky so far to have an amazing supportive board

31:03

in any company that I've worked at.

31:06

You know, usually the healthy tension is around sales.

31:09

You know, if you don't have that transparency

31:14

and open communication and if they don't know

31:17

what you're doing or they're not seeing the mistakes

31:20

that you make or the challenges that you have,

31:23

then they, you know, they assume certain things.

31:26

So having that kind of healthy tension is good.

31:29

I actually, I welcome it.

31:31

I want that amongst our team,

31:33

but it's gotta be healthy as the word that we need to focus on

31:38

to ensure that they're working together

31:41

and they're holding each other accountable,

31:43

but then they're meeting together as one, right?

31:46

I just, today I was meeting with a sales team,

31:49

we called it, you know, one mission, one team, one mission.

31:53

And it doesn't matter where the challenges are,

31:56

it's our challenges, the collective hour.

31:59

And luckily for JFrog, and I have,

32:01

I'm not saying that 'cause I happen to be at JFrog,

32:03

but I work with an amazing phenomenal CRO

32:07

who is really truly a partner.

32:09

But we have that healthy tension,

32:10

but really she's, for us, it's an open book.

32:14

So yes, in my past, I've had many,

32:17

especially early in my career,

32:19

where, you know, people assume certain things,

32:22

but as I've, you know, been at more experience nowadays,

32:26

I try to have less and less of that as an option.

32:30

All right, let's get to quick hits.

32:32

These are quick questions and quick answers.

32:34

Just like how quickly you can talk to somebody

32:37

on your website.

32:38

If you use Qualified, go to Qualified.com

32:41

to learn more qualified prospects

32:43

or on your website right now.

32:44

And you can talk to them quickly.

32:46

If you're using Qualified, quick and easy,

32:48

just like these questions, we love Qualified.

32:50

Go to Qualified.com to learn more.

32:52

Quick hits.

32:54

Misha-line, are you ready?

32:55

- I'm ready.

32:56

- Number one.

32:58

Do you have a hidden talent or skill

32:59

that's not on your resume?

33:01

- Mixed drinks.

33:02

I just started to learn how to make great mixed drinks.

33:06

So that's probably one that's on my, not on my resume.

33:11

Favorite drink?

33:12

- Gosh, Negroni.

33:14

I have many.

33:15

Wine's my go to, but Manhattan, I've started to like more.

33:19

- Do you have a favorite book, podcast, TV show

33:21

they've been checking out recently?

33:22

- I just started, opened this book recently.

33:24

It's by Simon Sinek, Infinite Game.

33:28

It's more of a, teaches leaders how to plan for the long term.

33:32

It's more around helping our organization plan better.

33:36

So that's just something I started

33:38

and I'm enjoying reading it so far.

33:40

It's a quick, easy read.

33:41

- What advice would you give to a first time CMO

33:46

who's trying to figure out their demand-gen strategy?

33:50

- Know your audience.

33:51

Know your audience and product first,

33:52

understand their pain.

33:54

See what makes them happy, see what challenges they have,

33:58

what excites them, inspires them to purchase,

34:01

to try your product.

34:02

Know your data, bring on a marketing ops leader first,

34:07

if you don't have one, if you don't have an amazing one.

34:09

- And probably my third, it's probably obvious,

34:12

but hire great people around you.

34:15

- Muchelene, it's been awesome having you on the show.

34:18

Thanks so much for joining.

34:19

For our listeners, you can check out jfrog.com.

34:23

Go give a nudge to your DevOps leaders

34:27

and say check it out if they're not.

34:29

The majority of the Fortune 100 is already a JFrog customer.

34:32

So, I mean, you gotta get on that.

34:35

Any final thoughts, anything to plug?

34:37

- This has been so much fun.

34:38

Thank you so much, it's great talking to you again again.

34:40

- Yeah, awesome having you in, take care.

34:43

- All right, thank you.

34:44

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