Why Brand is your Organizational Glue
Palmer Houchins shares his insights into why your brand is your organizational glue, the consumerization of B2B marketing, and how transparency gains consumer trust.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome to "Demand Gen Visionaries."
I'm Ian Faizan, CEO of Cast Mein Studios.
And today I am joined by a special guest, Palmer.
How are you?
- I'm doing great, thanks for having me.
- Thanks so much for joining.
Really excited to have you on the show.
We had Amanda, the CMO of G2 on a previous episode.
And we wanted more G2 action coming back at us.
And who better than you to talk about brand,
how it relates to demand and marketing
and some cool stuff that you all have done
and are continuing to do at G2 on the state
of enterprise buying, which is super important
to all marketers.
So let's get into it.
What was your first job in marketing?
- Oh, my first job in marketing,
if we wanna call it a full-time job,
was right after college.
I joined a ill-fated music technology startup
where all of us got laid off after a year.
But that was a good lesson in marketing
and something that I tell folks,
it's great to have happen at age 23
versus 33 or 43.
But before that, I had kind of dabbled
in digital marketing through music promotion.
I kind of did some independent concert work in college.
And that was kind of my first foray into marketing.
And really just kind of gravitated.
This was kind of the early, early to middle part
of the 2000s gravitated towards the digital marketing side.
A lot of properties that we don't necessarily talk about
as much these days, like the My Spaces of the world,
but it was fun areas to sort of cut your teeth
and digital marketing back in the day.
- Indeed, cutting the teeth.
And now tell us a little bit about your role at G2.
- Yeah, so I'm the vice president
of brand marketing and communications.
So I lead all of our brand marketing and communications
as well as all of our events marketing.
So anything from sort of our in-house creative team,
creating all sorts of marketing assets
down to a few front end devs,
as well as project managers, copywriters,
then on to the events marketing side.
We do a number of different events
from kind of like third party sponsorships,
conferences, that sort of thing.
But being that we're G2,
we have a unique review booth program
where we actually go out to our customers events
and help them generate reviews on site.
And then the last portion there is just our PR
and social media.
So everything from kind of broader corporate communications
to how we activate on social media.
I've got a small but mighty team that helps run that.
- Let's get to our first segment.
The Trust Tree, this is where you can go
and feel honest and trusted in those deepest, darkest
marketing secrets.
So give us a quick refresher.
What does G2 do?
- So G2 is the world's largest
and most trusted software marketplace.
So we essentially help connect software buyers,
which really can be just about anyone.
These days anyone who needs to buy a business software
can come to G2 and learn across our one point,
I guess, 8 million reviews that we have across the site
to sort of better figure out what software
is gonna fit their needs.
So our origin story is sort of our founders
about 10 years ago, we're wondering,
hey, I can go on something like TripAdvisor
and find more information about $100 hotel room
than I can about $100,000 piece of software.
So sort of G2 was born out of that
as a better way for folks to get insights
and information on B2B software.
We've grown quite a bit since then.
And also in addition to the software buyer side,
we help software vendors, software sellers,
software companies connect with that audience
of software buyers, whether it's through a buyer intent,
offering or just helping them generate reviews
and get attention across our marketplace.
- Well, since we had Amanda on,
and now the cast means studios, G2 is up and running.
I mean, I talked about this on the previous episode with Amanda.
I mean, I love G2, I use it all the time.
It's crazy to think about a world without G2.
It's just crazy to think without having reviews,
without having this proof, it was just word of mouth.
It was just, hey, what do you use in?
And how did your implementation go?
And honestly, it's a little scary for marketers
'cause I think we had a little bit more control 10 years ago.
- I was gonna say, that's sort of where my head went
and not to put our sales brethren on the line,
but I think before G2, you had a lot of smoke and mirrors
from different software reps there.
And I like to think that we've helped bring a little bit more,
shine a little bit more visibility on folks,
especially earlier in the process,
when you're trying to figure out of,
hey, I need a marketing automation software.
What should I look at?
- G2 is a way for folks to call through some peer reviews
and find maybe the two or three that they actually
wanna engage with the sales team on.
So it is a big shift and I think it was somewhat slow
to come to the B2B software landscape,
but I think it's proven to be very valuable,
especially as we, the way that we buy software
is evolving and changing.
- Yeah, it is, it is changing.
And marketers, you have to adapt.
I mean, it's one of these things
we're thinking about this at Cashew recently
because we're trying to get our reviews up.
We have 40 plus customers.
They have extremely nice things to say about us,
but are those things living on the internet
other than on our website, right?
And that's the thing that's tough.
When you think about marketing your product in any way
or creating demand in any way,
you want those customer stories out there.
It is your best marketing
and having those things live in one place like G2,
obviously is critical.
- I think it helps shine a light.
A lot of times folks would have,
those great customer stories buried in a sales deck.
That's like, you're well on your way
to purchasing something before you even see that.
And what we're helping do is like,
yeah, keep those there, have them there.
They're gonna solidify any of those deals
that you might have coming,
but let's get a little bit earlier in the process
and showcase those as folks are sort of
maybe just not even in market for your software,
but just perusing or taking a look at a broader category.
Those customer stories and just frankly,
those, that customer voice can be something
that becomes really tangible for folks
as they're researching.
- Okay, obviously working in brand,
you talked about events,
you talked about some of the higher level marketing initiatives
that you're doing.
How do you think about brand marketing
and getting G2 customers and prospects in the door?
- I think brand marketing is a little bit different
at every company 'cause it really is tied
to what your brand identity is
and sort of what the goals of your marketing
will be or is.
Past companies brand can have a very design centric.
It's like, it's the look and feel.
It's sort of like how we come across.
And that's absolutely one part of brand.
But I think something that's interesting
that I really try to bring to life from the G2 side
is there's an element of, for lack of a better term,
thought leadership that goes into brand.
Like we want G2 to be this sort of kind of rock solid resource
for folks as they're trying to identify
not only buyers and sellers getting connected,
but what's happening in the broader software landscape
like what trends are there?
What should I be aware of?
What should I know that's changing?
And so a lot of my brand lens is sort of like,
well, how do we activate a lot of the experts
that we have in house or even some of the data
that we uniquely have and sort of bring that to life?
So that can be as small as a,
hey, we'd love to jump in and add some commentary
to this ad week article about buyer intent.
It could be as broad as a big first party piece
of research like the software buying behavior report
that you mentioned earlier.
And so all points in between really sort of start
to encapsulate what brand is and what it can mean.
I think that the best brand marketers know sort of
the unique lane that they have to lean into
and they go with that.
I spent several years at Mailchimp before G2
and Mailchimp was a company where we could lean into that,
bring some life, some energy,
some frankly, just like funness to the world
of B2B software and every company's a little bit different.
Doing brand at G2, it comes to life in a different way,
but just equally as effective, hopefully.
- Mailchimp, famous for the most famous podcast
out of all time, the ads that ran in cereal.
- Exactly, that's a lightning in a bottle moment.
You won't be able to happen twice and we certainly did not,
if you had asked us six months before that happened,
do we see this being the most viral podcast ad of all time?
Absolutely not.
It was a happy accident.
- Yeah, I talk about this like portfolio approach
to marketing, Beth Comstock, famously talked about
this idea of like the 10% that are kind of like
your moonshot marketing rate that you're like,
"I don't even know what's going on,
"I don't even know where they're spending it."
But if it leads to nothing, then it leads to nothing,
but if it leads to kind of like a moonshot, then it does.
And I think that there's so few teams
that place those type of moonshot bets.
And like that, those cereal ads were the perfect example
of a moonshot bet, right?
It's like, if this does good, our ads are gonna go really far.
If it explodes into being the most popular podcast
like ever at the time, then those ad paid
for the entire campaign and then the next 20 with that.
- Yeah, and I wish I could say that we saw it
as like a moonshot, but we were literally at the time.
I mean, this was what, 2014, so eight years ago,
we just saw podcasts is a very cost efficient way
to reach a large audience.
Podcast that we know today were not what they were like then.
And it's like, great, we can sort of build
that brand awareness pretty cost efficiently
'cause we were the small bootstrapped company
and we just happened to luck in
to a moonshot opportunity there.
But I mean, I think that there's a lesson in that
for all marketers really about thinking,
a, being scrappy and looking for opportunities
wherever they might present themselves.
And we were trying to do that very cost efficiently.
And I think that's something that a lot
of startup marketers can certainly sympathize with.
But it's an area for us where, as I sort of look
back on it, we wanted to make sure that our marketing
to go to Europe sort of portfolio terminology there
was holistic, that we were feeding the top of the funnel
and the bottom of the funnel because we were really
keen on driving brand awareness at the same time.
We had a very strong sort of approach to Google Ads
and we're really trying to capture that demand
as quickly as, inefficiently as we could.
And I think that's something that's important
for brand marketers to kind of keep in mind
is where's brand fitting into your overall sort of acquisition
or demand-gen strategy?
Yeah, it's really silly to like break up brands.
It's all cohesive, right?
Especially in B2B where it's like, you know,
the rise of AVM, all that sort of stuff.
I like to turn like the brand halo effect.
But this idea that by the time you know,
you are searching for the solution that you're like,
haven't I heard, you know, male chimp a bunch of times,
you know, like wasn't that on that part?
Like, it wasn't they saying all the funny stuff?
Like that's the sort of thing where you're like,
wherever it is that you're putting your information.
I assume that's why Coms is in your purview as well, right?
It's brand and events, which in a lot of companies
are a demand-gen function.
So it's interesting how interspersed brand
has kind of transformed into this.
Brand Coms, events, all of these like experiential things.
There's paid acquisition that goes in there too.
It's just, it's all interconnected.
- It's really interesting because I think a lot of folks
look, you know, rightly so as B2B sort of being
the inverse of B2C and certainly most any software
decision out there is not gonna be a Coke versus Pepsi
decision.
But to me that just makes what you're talking about,
that brand awareness and that familiarity and affinity
even more important because it's like maybe once a year
you're gonna have that decision about what email marketing
platform do we use or, you know, what's the marketing
automation software or CRM that we wanna onboard.
And so to me that just where you can afford it
and where you can actually activate it,
it just makes it that much more important to have that there.
It gives you such a leg up on your competitors
if you've got that built in already when someone's searching.
And so, you know, that comes to life in any number of ways,
whether it's events, whether it's podcasts,
whether it's just traditional comms and NPR.
But I think folks, you know, good brand marketers
are partnering with their demand gen colleagues
to figure out, well, what's our way in there?
What's our opportunity to kind of go build that out?
And it's, I do think as someone who sort of worked
in the B2B software space for 10 going on 11 years now,
it's been nice to see that evolve and sort of that
thinking crop in.
So where it used to just be, you know, plug, plug, plug away
some very boring B2B marketing or just everything gated,
everything, everything's a white paper.
And it's like, well, I don't know that we're necessarily
engaging or creating the sort of, the reach or familiarity
or even awareness and affinity that we could or should be doing.
- Yeah, I think it boils down to that we just don't make
enough stuff that people love.
I talk about remarkable marketing means you have to actually
like get the person to talk about it to someone else.
Like it has to spark a conversation and there's so little
marketing out there that we strive to create, you know,
a remarkable experience.
Like that's why events are always so good and they'll
forever be good is because you talk to people and you talk
about it and you meet people and there's, you know,
interconnection there.
And this is a good segue into the state of enterprise buying.
So you all, you'll publish this report last year.
You're working on next year.
So we're in between reports here.
But what is the state of enterprise buying?
Like how should marketers think about it?
What's changing from where you all sit?
- To put it in context, we published this last September
and had some great insights that we gleaned about a year ago.
We're about to field another one.
So it'll be very interesting to see if some of the trends
that we identified last year hold true this year.
The long story short is we are seeing the consumerization
of B2B is absolutely happening.
You're seeing the buying cycle get shorter and shorter
year over year.
You're also seeing this a reluctance for folks to engage
with sales teams until, you know, almost to the point
where like a decision has been made that we want to engage
or that we want to onboard this vendor.
It's like sales is just the folks that want to help me buy
or actually, you know, seal the deal versus we're seeing
folks turn to other resources, whether it be websites,
whether it be peer review sites like G2,
or even just broader offerings across their,
their peer set and elsewhere.
So I think it's a, it's a very interesting time
for B2B software.
I think we've always, we've long thought that the sort
of consumerization of B2B was happening.
And now I think there's some data to really back that up.
Another area that started to kind of bleed through
and some of the data that we saw is really the product
led growth mentality is you can see it taking hold on B2B.
You know, folks who really want to try it before they buy it,
they want to get in, actually use the product
before they commit to a two year long contract.
I suspect we'll see more.
I think, you know, what will be interesting.
Watch is, if coming out of what we saw through the pandemic,
was that accelerating some of these trends?
Are they going to continue on that same acceleration pattern
or do we see them slow down, you know,
alongside the slowdown that we're seeing
kind of the broader economy?
I don't know, but these are all sort of hypotheses
that we want to, we really want to bring to life
and see what our panel of about a thousand software buyers
will tell us this summer.
Yeah, I am super interested.
We got to bring you back after you all released those findings
because I do feel like it's changing a ton.
And I think that on the type of company that you are,
it changes a ton.
I think it was Ben Horitz who talked about,
he wrote a paper years ago about this idea of like,
what size group is purchasing the software that you're buying?
And like, if it's an HR software,
your whole company is purchasing the software, right?
Every single person is a stakeholder.
Whereas like, if it's, you know, developer tool,
it's like, it could be literally one developer
that wants to use that.
And I think that where you see this product-led growth piece
is like, and how people are selling and marketing this.
And this is obviously, you know, very core to ABM as well.
It's this idea that if you're on the smaller end,
if you're on the smaller team levels,
you can do PLG, you can do that stuff.
If you're on the bigger end and it's a massive company
transformation or these like huge product implementation,
there's no way to try it before you buy it.
You have to commit, then that decision and that process
and the executive briefing center and all that sort of stuff,
then maybe that is more of the route you go.
And I think that that is super fascinating
because that's not, you know, one person doing a little bit
of research that's, you know, 10 people in the room.
We ask this show, we say, who is your buying committee?
Because everything is a committee now unless it's PLG.
And then you go that direction.
Couldn't agree more with you there.
And we saw that in the data from last year's report.
I think what you're seeing with PLG and some of these,
you know, great example, like a developer tool, you know,
that ICP never, they never really wanted to talk
to a salesperson to begin with.
They wanted the tool, they wanted to support it
and go use it and sort of that land and expand mentality.
When you think about what's happening
in some like an enterprise HR software, again,
great, great example there.
A lot more kind of hands in the cookie jar there
and a lot more cooks in the kitchen to sort of mix metaphors.
But I think what was interesting and that what we saw is,
we saw the buying committees are getting bigger and bigger.
And that data, that was something we asked about
in the report.
They're getting bigger and bigger.
Yet the time to purchase is getting shorter and shorter.
Which is a really interesting sort of development there.
I think that would be a little bit counterintuitive,
but I think frankly, a lot of B2B SAS
has just improved what that buying experience is like.
Again, we're seeing folks kind of engage
at a later period with sales teams.
So it's like closer to when you want to kind of close
or solidify that deal.
And you need more stakeholders involved to figure out
whether or not this works.
And it's less like when can we get everyone
in the room together to talk about it
and more how do we keep that pushing things forward.
So it's interesting to see how that can sort of move
in that direction and we'll be really curious
to watch that trend as well.
I love that.
And I think it's so interesting because what we've seen
at CASBian, and we're working predominantly
with enterprise companies and B2B marketing teams,
Parkinson's video series, stuff like that.
It's a really important piece of your marketing channel.
And it's so high touch because the customers
and all this stuff and many of the shows
have CEOs host them, the CEO of the company.
So it's obviously a very high level of ownership.
But what is super interesting that we've seen is
from a committee perspective, like the CMO,
whatever VPICOMs, maybe the CEO, the host,
whoever's the show, you get these people
kind of floating in and out of meetings now.
And it's like, oh, I'm in my car and I'm doing whatever.
So it's like the big formal meeting
where everybody's in the room and we're sitting
at a giant long table, that sort of stuff feels really gone.
And it's just like, and again, CEOs popping in like,
hey, sorry, I'm five minutes late.
Like I just wanted to listen in, I'm driving to work.
And you're like, what?
Like, this is the CEO of a $5 billion company
that just wants to pop in on this meeting for a few minutes.
The pitch that you gave, all that stuff,
all that information is no longer
all the marketing work that you got to that point,
all of that stuff is just, okay,
now you have seven minutes when someone's in their car.
>> Right, I think back to pre-pandemic days,
they feel like they were a very different paradigm.
And to your point exactly of where so much
of getting a campaign launch was like playing schedule
jingo with a bunch of executives.
It's like I know that we'll get in front of the CMO,
I probably need to brief our CEO,
can I get the VP of product marketing on board?
And it's just so refreshing to say,
hey, we're going to connect on this.
We'll record the meeting and share it out afterwards
if you need to sync on anything.
And just these little things that I think help us
get out of some of the bureaucratic necessities
that were there.
So it's interesting to see that play out
with outside of the marketing world
within very cross-functional buying committees as well too.
>> Well, I think the other piece there
is a very G2-centric, peer-review-centric thing,
which is the sales time is shortening
is because all you need to do is show a slide that says,
here's the people who bought this who are kind of like you,
here's a screenshot of G2 of how they look,
kind of like that with peer reviews now, right?
It's like, this company is a 4.7 on G2.
Like let's just pull the trigger, right?
>> We've been able to shine a light in that area
or just the collective sort of peer review side.
I think there's still a role for analysts
and those companies to play as well.
But you've got peer review sites,
you've got this idea of sort of like dark social
where you can kind of be connected to anyone at any time.
You're probably like me, I'm in multiple Slack,
Facebook groups where we talk about different marketing things.
And those are just like great resources of peers
that I can get feedback within 24 hours in 24/7 versus,
well, I'm gonna wait and see if the magic quadrants
updated this quarter and maybe get information for that
or wait for this agency that I hired to vet some things
to see what their report said.
I think we've just got a lot more at our fingertips
than we really appreciate.
I think it helps with sort of breadth and depth
as well as sort of speed to purchase.
>> Yeah, that is so true.
Any prediction, any insights that are coming up
that you think, I know obviously you haven't finished
the survey yet, but anything that you think
is coming on the horizon.
>> I will be interested to see the things that we've talked
about with buying committee speed to purchase.
I'm also interested in, we haven't really talked about
how those different traits are break down
in the SMB segment versus sort of the enterprise segment
to see what does that really look different.
And frankly, those were some of my biggest takeaways
from last year's report is that startup is moving
really quickly and they can get stuff done.
There are 50 person shop, again, they should do that.
But then you compare that to some feedback
from software buyers at a 5,000 person enterprise
and they're still moving.
We're seeing their time to purchase condensed
and also them move faster.
It's the future that we're headed into is pretty definite
because enterprise is always gonna be the laggard there.
And when they're moving just as quick,
I think that'll be interesting to watch as well.
>> When you're asking these folks for time to close,
is it like when they sign the docs or is it pay?
Because I know that every single big company
that we work with just throws up their hands
and they're like, yeah, procurement's just like a nightmare.
So I don't know when you're gonna get through that,
but don't worry, we'll figure it out.
'Cause I think if it's when they close the contract,
I think that that's also getting way faster.
But in terms of going through procurement,
I think we're still spinning our wheels
probably a little bit.
>> I don't know that we have that exact data,
but I think you're right and that most folks are assessing it.
Hey, when do we sign on the dotted line and say this is fun
versus when are all the Xs and O's in place
and taking care of there?
So we'll see it to be interesting to watch that,
but I think what you're talking about is still an area
that a lot of folks are keen to see move
a little bit more efficiently.
>> Yeah, final point on this,
and you brought it up,
analysts peer reviews and then in the DMs,
that I think that there's this sourcing that is happening
in the DMs.
Hey, who did you all use for this?
What's your HR software?
How do you like it?
Then there's also the sourcing on the peer sites,
like, hey, just choose the top rated, right?
Hey, let's look at the magic quadrant,
like who are we looking at?
And I think that now the triangulation of all these things
is coming into focus.
And like I said, it's just the slides on the side deck, right?
It's like, bang, here's how we stack up with our peers on G2.
Here's how we look on the magic quadrant.
Let's get into like features and benefits.
Is this really solving?
Like what we actually need?
And I think that that to me seems like the biggest catalyst
to shorten sales cycles is like the discovery work
that you have to do now is less than its ever has been
because that information is just way easier to get.
I think it's the time that it takes is shortened
and it truly is very much kind of at our fingertips.
And I even think back to five, six years ago
before you had a lot of the social resources,
the Slack groups, the Facebook groups, whatever.
And by no means mean this as a knock on SEO, which I love,
but it's like you're doing this,
just search through Google to try and figure out
to separate kind of the wheat from the chaff there
of like what is actually legitimate
that I should be trusting versus what is this?
And you end up on these SEO juice sites
that have like no authority versus ones
that are very trusted.
And I think that that was something
that honestly came through a lot
in the feedback that we got from the survey last year
is that like, yeah, I'm gonna check a company's website.
I'm gonna check their social presence,
but I don't give it the same level of trust
that I would give to other sites.
- 100% of course.
And like that's what I mean about the features
and benefits thing is like,
I think what's more important there is is your website.
And here we talk a lot about websites on this show
'cause we have an amazing sponsor qualified
who helps us create this podcast.
The website is about your experience
of how you can learn about the company and buy.
And if the website is good and clean
and you have an experience and you have, you know,
chat functionality using qualified or something like that.
And you can talk to a sales rep as soon as you're ready to buy.
That experience makes you feel good
of how the product will feel once you buy it.
And it's the house for all your content, right?
So it's like, how do you position your content?
How do you have it for personas?
Do you have it for use cases?
Do you have a resource hub that makes sense?
Do you have all the SEO,
juice content that you've been like?
That's what I think is so important in the process now.
Whereas just like, hey, I'm just gonna like
look on a bunch of competitors websites and compare it all.
Okay, let's get to our next segment, the playbook.
This is where you open up that playbook
and talk about the tactics that help you win.
- You play to win the game.
Hello, you play to win the game.
You don't play, it just play it.
- What are your three channels or tactics
that are your uncuttable budget items?
- This is gonna be very much informed
by where I like to put my focus and my team's focus.
I would say one area right now
that's gonna be a little bit counterintuitive
that I would absolutely fight tooth and nail
to keep there is in person events.
Just we've seen so few of those in the past two years
that every opportunity that we have to connect in person
with customers and prospects is very valuable.
In person events are certainly not as cost efficient
as virtual ones, but I think that they've got
a very tangible value there.
So that's my number one.
My number two is going to be a broader comms or PR budget.
It doesn't mean that you're going out
and having necessarily to hire an agency to do PR.
It may bring that to life,
but it's that there's some focus on
what's your corporate message,
how are you going to market with that?
How are you staying relevant?
And that can take shape in a number of different ways
depending on what the company is.
And then I think the last one for me,
and this could come to life in sort of organic or paid,
but I think social is an area where we're just,
depending on what your go-to-market strategy is
and who you're trying to reach,
that there's still even in this day and age
a lot of value on social.
So for us, that comes to life.
And LinkedIn is just a great channel
and somewhere that we can reach.
Are customers and prospects efficiently and at scale?
That's what we see.
I mean, we see LinkedIn is amassively.
I mean, these type of series that you're getting,
video content specifically on LinkedIn
performs like 10 times more,
better results, posting videos on LinkedIn.
That's better good.
I should specify that are produced high quality video,
not like garbage.
- And that's what we've seen.
I think especially when you're in sort of that
B2B marketing, B2B software side,
just a lot of folks are there.
They're in that mindset.
They're ready to engage.
And that's just not true for,
if you're talking video, going to YouTube,
it's not, I'm not saying there's not value there.
There's obviously a huge scale,
but it's harder to reach folks in that same mindset.
- So I am curious, how much do you think about G2's brand
as it relates to the consumer side
versus G2's brand as it relates to your product?
- I think it's a trap that marketplaces
can fall into very easily of saying,
hey, our real revenue drivers are the software vendors
of the world that are there.
And so they're the ones who write us the,
they sign the annual contracts
and we need to go make sure they're happy.
But it's very much sort of a virtuous cycle there.
Those folks are going to lose interest, not see value.
If we can't keep growing the other side of the marketplace,
so helping bring those software buyers in.
And so reaching into new pockets of software buyers,
new software across new GOs
and at different sizes and scale,
that's really important to us.
We've, on the marketing side here at G2,
we have a user lifecycle team that sits alongside it.
So we're doing not only demand gen outreach
towards the software sellers that I mentioned,
but we've got folks who are there
making sure that we're supporting,
that we're bringing in and that we're engaging
with the software buyers who really are,
you know, sort of power the flat will, so to speak there.
>> Yeah, I mean, it's so interconnected, right?
I'd imagine obviously you work closely
with the demand team on the consumer side.
How do you think about crafting those type of campaigns?
Like what's, what would be a goal of a campaign like that?
>> I would say we work hand in hand with both groups.
It would be tough to do them holistic in the sense
of we're going to go to market with both a seller
and buyer campaign.
What I think, and this is where brand becomes sort of a glue,
is that we make sure that the way that we're presenting
ourselves is cohesive as the same that we're not.
This is our identity to software buyers
and this is our software sellers.
There's a different value prop obviously for those folks,
but it shouldn't be a different G2.
For those folks, it should be the same site.
And frankly, what's unique for us and the folks
that are there are also turning to us to look for,
hey, we need to onboard this new HR software
and you really helped us kind of find the
hone in on the right areas there.
So I think for more than anything, it's not,
well, how do we do it together and more?
Just make sure that G2, the brand shines through
to both of those.
>> Yeah, that's fascinating.
>> I think for us, it's about just making sure
that that circle is continuing to extend
and that folks can go to us and know that they can trust us
and that we're being transparent
and what we're providing and highlighting there.
And that holds true whether or not,
no matter what side of the marketplace
that you're talking to.
>> Let's go to our next segment.
The Dust Up is where we talk about healthy tension,
whether that's with your board, your sales team,
your competitors or anyone else.
Have you had a memorable Dust Up in your career?
>> I'm definitely the peacemaker type.
So that's typically how I personally operate.
I've been able to avoid most of those.
So we collaborate closely with our sales team,
get along great there.
So I can't point to a memorable Dust Up during my time here.
I would just say in general as a marketer,
the two areas that I'm always keen to make sure
we're seeing eye to eye or with the finance side.
So making sure there's no surprises there
in terms of what's happening,
what's sort of going on that there's no budget
that unexpectedly shows up that they weren't expecting.
And so building up that relationship is important to me.
And then I think maybe I know I said two,
but I'm going to add,
depending on what the organization is,
two more that I think are important to avoid those Dust Up's.
One is legal, making sure that if we're doing something,
broader campaign, something like a need activation
that we've got the right buy-in from our legal side,
that there's no surprises
in getting called into the principal's office there
is no fun.
And then lastly, it depends on the organization,
making sure that design was sort of bought in
to whatever marketing head plan was part of it.
So while I can't say like,
"Oh, this is the major Dust Up that I've had,"
it's to me like creating that great sort of rapport
and good cross-functional working relationships
with finance, legal, and design
have been kind of the keys of my marketing career so far.
Let's get to our final segment, Quick Hits.
These are quick questions and quick answers.
Just like conversational marketing with Qualified,
you can talk to somebody quickly if you go to Qualified.com.
Qualified prospects are on your website right now
and you can talk to them quickly.
Quick and easy, just like these questions,
go to Qualified.com to learn more quick hits,
Palmer, are you ready?
- I'm ready.
- Number one, what's a hidden talent or skill
that's not on your resume?
- I really love working and building teams,
so I would say that's something
that's not necessarily skill you can list there, but I love.
- Do you have a favorite book, podcast, TV show
that you've been checking out recently?
- I got two that I'm in the midst of watching
Under the Banner of Heaven on Hulu.
It's been a good one based off the John Crackhauer book
and then also P.H.E.B.inder, season six just started.
That's a guilty pleasure of mine.
I don't know the guilty about it,
it's just a pleasure of mine.
(laughing)
And my favorite book is a book called
"Confederacy of Dances" that's a novel set in New Orleans
and I was recently in New Orleans,
so it inspired me to pick it back up
and read it for the third or fourth time.
- Do you have a non-marketing hobby
that maybe sort it indirectly makes you a better marketer?
- I'm a big sports fan, so love the Atlanta Braves,
love watching International Soccer
and I'd like to think that there's an aspect
of putting myself as like a sports fan
and like how you organize a team
and focus on different efforts
that like it's not a one to one marketing thing,
but it helps me think about utilizing skills
and like setting up a team for success.
- Pumber, last questions.
If you weren't in marketing, what do you think you'd be doing?
- I think in another life I would have come back
as someone on the talent recruiting HR side.
I love that aspect of the job
and I get to do a lot of that on the marketing side,
but I think that if things had gone a little bit differently,
I could have ended up on that side.
- Final piece of advice for a first time
VP of brand trying to figure out brand marketing.
- You learn by doing and so don't be scared to act
and size it right so that you're not necessarily
staking your entire job or the entire future
of the marketing department or what you're doing,
but feel free to lean in to what you think would work
and go try that and go back three months later,
figure out what worked and what didn't
and then iterate and do more.
- Well, everybody go check out g2.com.
If your company's profile is not good enough,
then definitely improve that.
- Palmer, any final thoughts, anything to plug?
- Thanks for having me on.
I will have the new software buyer behavior report out
in September.
Our plan is to debut it at the Saster Annual Conference
and then we'll release it on our website right after that.
So pencil that in for September
and excited to share that with the broader SaaS world.
- Awesome.
Thanks, Palmer.
We really appreciate you coming on.
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