Ramli John [00:00:00]:
People love serialized content. From TV shows like Friends and The X Files to podcasts like Dirty John and movies like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. B2B companies can tap into this obsession by quit eating serialized content. Today, Ian Fizon, founder of Kaspien Studios, shares his serialized content framework for B2B. In this Marketing POPs episode, you'll learn, first of all, why serialized content is effective in B2B marketing. 2nd, the 5 pillars of great b to b content series. 3rd, an example of a successful b to b podcast series. And number 4, Ian's career power.

Ramli John [00:00:33]:
Are you ready? Let's go.

Ian Faison [00:00:36]:
Marketing power ups. Ready? Go. Here's your host, Ramli John.

Ramli John [00:00:47]:
Ian, thank you so much for joining us. We're gonna be talking about S3L's content framework. I really love it. I'm a big fan of podcasts and video. And also, like, I've been checking out some of Castman Studios' show, like Murder in HR. We're gonna talk about that. Like, that's just like, absolutely fun. Like, it's, like, stuff that b2b marketers and b2b marketing teams aren't doing as much as they should be, especially with AI.

Ramli John [00:01:13]:
Like, you know, like, oh, now AI is gonna come and like you can you can write content, but it stuff like this is something that, even it I believe you know creativity is gonna be more and more important with it I mean let's dig in the let's talk about serialized content first like why why is it so effective? And like, I mean, I'm asking 2 questions here, but like why is it so effective and why should BDM marketers care about this? About like, sera, the content that's in series.

Ian Faison [00:01:39]:
Yeah. I, you know, I was I was recently listening to, an interview with one of the founders of of Marvel Studios. Mhmm. And and he was talking about how when they did the math back before Marvel was Marvel, like before the you know, when it was just comic books and toys and things like that. And he was talking about how if you look at how hard it is to bring a movie to market, extremely difficult. Right? But way, way, way easier to bring a sequel to market. And so I think in B2B, if we were to look at what we've been doing for a long time, it's just bringing single, you know, one off type content over and over and over and over and over again. And every time you gotta refine an audience for it, every time you gotta market that thing, every time you gotta do that, it's, like, just way harder to do that.

Ian Faison [00:02:29]:
Whereas if you build a series, you can promote episode 1, you can promote episode 7, you can promote promote episode, like, 25, but it all funnels back to that series, and you can build an audience over time. You know, there's a great, Coca Cola adage that they used to use back in the day. It's like, Coke isn't trying to get, you know, it's hardcore Coke drinkers to to drink more Coke. What they're trying to do is to get you to drink 1 Coke a year if you don't drink Coke. Right? And I think that that's, like, the way that we should be thinking about marketing is if you build a series and you build a bunch of inroads to your series, if someone comes and listens to 1 episode a month or 1 episode a year or whatever it is, and they start to know, like, and trust you, like, that's a really big win. And, hopefully, they become a subscriber. Now, hopefully, they'll listen to 5 seconds and then a minute and then, you know, 2 minutes and then a whole episode, and then they, you know, binge the whole back catalog and all that. And that might not always happen.

Ian Faison [00:03:25]:
But if you build a series, there's a place for them to subscribe. There's a place for them to that's a good question. And so I think that's a good question. And so I think that's a good question. And so I think that's confusion equals no sale. Well, in marketing, it's the same exact thing. And so if you build a series with a very clear premise, what, like, we at Caspian Studios called, like, the promise to the listener. If you're gonna build that promise and deliver on that promise every single episode, then they know what they're getting, and it's much easier to build an audience that way.

Ian Faison [00:03:55]:
And so, I think that, like, what I wanted to do in in writing the serialized content framework was to just, like, even though it's very wordy, sort of silly, title, was to figure out, like, how people can build serialized content, whether that's like, podcasts or video series or shows or events or whatever it is that can bring people back, over and over and over again that are interested in that sort of thing without having to, like, recreate the wheel every single time to create more one off content. And so that was the sort of goal of it. And, and as we studied a bunch of b to b companies that are doing this really well, we found that, you know, that they've been able to build audiences. And then when you study, like, non b two b, when you study Hollywood, when you study Marvel Studios, what they did with the MCU, when you study what, you know, what all of these sequels, why they've why they've done this, is that, you know, the data shows that it's much easier to do that. So, we're trying to take our cues from Hollywood, trying to take our cues from, b to c, and take our cues from, people that are building really good stuff, and trying to infuse that back into into our b to b marketing a little bit.

Ramli John [00:04:59]:
I I love that so much. The other thing that from from the audience point of view, like, sometimes especially with b to b specifically for b to b, it takes longer to purchase something sometimes where, you know, you can involve multiple people at the same time, you know, multiple stakeholders within that same team. And you're building that relationship over time rather than like, Hey, here's, here's content and then that's it versus this. Like, they keep coming back so that when they are ready to purchase, they're like, what was that podcast? Like, I was listening to Iain about that show. Like I should go check out, like, you know, what they're doing, what they're up to, what they're selling because now they've kind of built that relationship over, over time through through the serialized content. Is it probably another benefit that your b to b companies have with this?

Ian Faison [00:05:47]:
Yeah. For sure. I mean, it it goes back to, like, know, like, and trust. Right? They have to know you, then they have to like you, and then they have to trust you. And if they do know you, and if they do like you and if they do trust you, they're much more likely to buy from you. And I think that most of the time, like a one off blog, for example, is not really gonna get someone to know, like, or trust you. Maybe they know you by the fact that they're gonna, you know, from an SEO standpoint, like, stumble across your website. Maybe they're gonna read that and say, hey.

Ian Faison [00:06:17]:
This is pretty good. But at the current like, where we're at, if you stumble across a blog, and you're like, this is pretty helpful, you're probably just gonna close out and go on to the next thing. You know? Yeah. I think the stat is like people convert. So 1 in 1 in 400, you know, people convert. Right? And so, that's really hard. That's a really hard sort of like conversion number, for like a one off blog post. But if you were to do a series where you saw that same conversion number, but you, you know, build this thing out over time and you can bring people back over and over and over again, then that conversion rate is gonna go, you know, up a ton.

Ian Faison [00:06:54]:
And the other piece of, like, serialized content, which I think people don't really, understand is that, which is so obvious when you say it, but, like, meet your customer where they are. Right? Like, meet these people where they are. And if they wanna be on Spotify, you should meet them on Spotify. If they wanna be on YouTube, you gotta meet them on YouTube. If they wanna be on Apple Podcasts or if they wanna read your information in a in a email newsletter, then that's where you gotta do it. Where they're really not is just cruising around your website on your blog. Like, they're just not doing that. Like, people don't do that.

Ian Faison [00:07:25]:
And so it's silly to even try to, like, reverse engineer this process that doesn't work. Whereas where they are spending their time in LinkedIn scrolling around on, you know, Twitter or Instagram or TikTok or, or, you know, in in feeds, you know, listening to a a podcast while they're walking their dog or, you know, have a YouTube video on in the background while they're working. Like, if you meet them in those places, then you're much more likely to, to win the day. And and I think that a lot of people are sort of just making stuff that is not, not designed for those mediums. And then the listener or the reader or the viewer just turns out and is like, this isn't this isn't sort of for me.

Ramli John [00:08:08]:
I love that. That reminds me of, a story you told when, you know, your your, story of how Caspian Studio started where, like, you were talking about mentors. You're like, I'm gonna go to meet with Apple and then you're like, I'm I'm gonna meet with, I need to, like, listen to my mentor and your mentor the mentor was a podcast episode.

Ian Faison [00:08:29]:
Right.

Ramli John [00:08:29]:
And I I love that because, like, you're not you you know, maybe you're gonna read a blog post before you you do the pitch, but you're gonna go back to something that you listened to in the past, and maybe refer to it to to get that hype. And that's the other, I think, benefit to this is that you said know, like, and trust, but that trust piece is so important in that, you know, building a relationship over time. They start seeing whoever the host or the whoever, is in that show, as a mentor almost, especially if it's something that they're sharing to establish their their credibility and their, you know, their expertise or the topic?

Ian Faison [00:09:03]:
Jason Ehrlich (zero zero six:fifty four): there's an interesting thing that happened. I was listening to a pretty famous podcaster, And they were saying that when they used to do radio, that they were sort of had a celebrity status, that it was, like, they were sort of, like, a radio DJ sort of a thing. Right? Like, they they they would get seen places, and they're like, oh my gosh. This celebrity. And And then when they transitioned to podcasting, and they did a podcast for a long time, that people would just come up to them in the street like they knew them. What? So they just come up and be like, oh, hey. How's it going? It's like, do I know you? It's like, oh, no. I've just been listening to your podcast for years.

Ian Faison [00:09:39]:
And they know all this information about them. They know all that stuff. And I think that that's, like, such a really important data point for marketers because the idea that someone would feel comfortable enough to come up to you and, like, like they know you just shows how intimate the medium is. Right? Like someone is speaking directly into your ears. And and and there's a big that we could go, like, I could go on and on and on about podcasting in general because there's all sorts of interesting things that happened that sort of led to this. But one of the big things is is just the change in technology with, like, AirPods that is like, now you have this super easy way to just, like, you know, throw in an AirPod, continue listening where you left off, and that person is just, like, talking into your into your brain. Right? And, and, again, it's just it's just a much more intimate medium. And so that's why you see, you know, a lot of, success with that stuff.

Ian Faison [00:10:31]:
And I think, you know, all this to say, it's really hard to build a B2B podcast. Right? You are competing with all sorts of, you know, different, other types of shows that are, frankly, usually a lot better than yours. Whether it's like if you're competing with Smartless, right, for like ear time or whatever you want to call it, Yeah. They're professional comedians. They're way better at their job. They have a bigger team. They have more producers. Their content is always gonna be better than yours.

Ian Faison [00:11:01]:
Always. But you have something that they don't have on the SmartLess team or Joe Rogan or or whoever is you know your audience better than they ever could. And so, that's a huge advantage for you to say, like, if I'm making a podcast for, you know, developers, or, like, you know, whatever, like, UI designers or something like that, I know them better. So, I can make things that are much more tailored, that are much more interesting for those for those people. And usually what happens is when someone goes to make something, they sort of just, like, go 50% or they, you know, make something good enough, and they don't go sort of the extra mile. And, like, at Caspian, what we talk about all the time is, like, you know, there's no traffic on the extra mile. If you go the extra mile, if you make the show that's so good for that audience, that's delivering so much value to them, and you do that over and over and over and over again, you know, you know, consistently, and repeatedly, like, you can have a lot of success. And that's where you can sort of, you know, win win the the mindshare or the earshare or whatever of of an audience and to make something that's actually, like, you know, edutaining them, rather than rather than just sort of, like, you know, spitting some some stats at them in a in a blog post.

Ramli John [00:12:18]:
Yeah. And that's the other thing that's super interesting. You know, when you were talking about, like, the extra mile, I'm thinking about, like, murder and HR and, like, hacker Chronicles. Can you talk a little bit about, like, how how did that you can just choose either one of them or both. Like, how did it come about and, like, you're, you know, totally out there. Something that I've never heard. Usually, when I think about b two b podcast, it's like, let's get the founder or the the CMO or whatever to interview a bunch of folks, and we're gonna publish it. And we're gonna, you know, we're gonna be sound like experts, but, like, there's a ton of interview related podcasts out there.

Ramli John [00:12:53]:
But, like, when when I heard of Murder in HR, I'm like, dude, this is this is the future. Like, can you talk about that? Like, how did that come about? And, like, you know, it it got got that out there.

Ian Faison [00:13:05]:
Yeah. I so in the book, in serialized content framework, I have this little graph that I call the edutainment graph. And, basically, it has, the x axis is, educational or entertaining, and the y axis is is educational. Shows how good I am in math that I know that we even which is x and which is y axis. But, anyways and so what I sat down and did sort of a number of years ago was sort of try to figure out what would it take to get in the top right quadrant. Like, what could we create that actually is entertaining for a B2B audience? And what could we create that is actually educational at the same time? Like, it's a very hard thing to do. And so, like, how can we create something? And so what we did, and I'll use murder in HR as an example of this. So what we looked at was basically the the 3 most popular genres in podcasting are essentially, like, what I call murder stories, but basically, like, either true crime or murder mystery type things.

Ian Faison [00:14:04]:
Right? So that's very popular. Comedy is very popular. And then for us, like, you know, business content is the is the third thing. Right? So not not a very popular genre compared to the other 2, but popular for for what we're looking at. Right? And so so we said, well, if if we could tell a story that is a mystery that has, like, a propulsive element to the story. Like, a mystery is is very easy. Right? Like, murder in HR. You hear it and you know somebody there's a murder.

Ian Faison [00:14:34]:
Right? And so we gotta introduce the the detective at the very beginning of the mystery. Say, hey. This is our detective. There's a body that's gonna drop, and this person has to solve it. Right? So, you know, from the first, you know, 30 seconds of listening to this show exactly what you're gonna get. There's no, there's no, guessing, you know, exactly that this is a murder mystery. Right? And so then we looked at, this murder mystery genre and this comedy genre. So how do we infuse comedy into this to make this, you know, more more entertaining? So if you look at some of the really popular mysteries right now, if you look at knives out or any murders in the building, for example, these are extremely popular, franchises because they have this, this levity in in the story.

Ian Faison [00:15:30]:
And there's and I think people right now crave this type of story. I think that people want to be they like the mystery component to it, but they just want something that they can watch or listen with their spouse or loved one or a friend and talk about it. And it's lighthearted enough that it's funny and it keeps you smiling, but also there's this sort of, you know, other element to it. So we took those two things, and we sort of, like, mapped those together. And then we said, okay. Now let's take a business, you know, audience and draw that other concentric circle on there and say, could we make this hyper focused for a very specific persona? So we got, linked up with Gympass, and they have an awesome CMO, Ryan Benicci, and a bunch of really cool people on their team. And we pitched in this idea of of this murder mystery said in HR. They sell the HR.

Ian Faison [00:16:24]:
And, you know, they're awesome, and they were super gung ho about it, about being the sponsor and all this other cool stuff. And, you know, and then we sort of, you know, filled out the cast and, you know, filled out the story and and all those things. And so, really, like, you know, the the sort of rest is history, and we've done, you know, 1,100,000 listeners on the show, and it hit number 1 in in fiction, for all of all podcasts, hit number 1 in fiction, not not like b to b podcast or business podcast, but like all fiction podcasts.

Ramli John [00:16:52]:
Yeah. I

Ian Faison [00:16:53]:
think it was up to, like, number 36 on the top 100 charts for all podcasts. Wow. So it did it extremely well. It was, like, commercially very, you know, successful in that in that sense. And, and Kate Mara plays the lead. She's amazing. And Brett Gelman plays, her costar, and he's amazing. And it has has all of these elements, and it's funny, and it's silly, and it's, you know, this ridiculous sort of murder mystery.

Ian Faison [00:17:17]:
But we're able to tell all of these HR related things that are hard to do in nonfiction. Yeah. You can't really poke fun at the profession in nonfiction. And you need to be able to expose all of those little secrets and insecurities and idiosyncrasies that, like, make business ridiculous, but also, like, where we spend, you know, 40 hours a week of our lives. And so, what you get is this story that feels, like, grounded and real in a business sense, even though the circumstances are super, super insane. And you have something that is like you could literally listen to with with your mom, or you could listen to with your spouse, or you could listen to with your colleagues. And, yeah. And, you know, and it took off within the HR community, and it took off sort of, you know, with with another audiences.

Ian Faison [00:18:13]:
And I think that, you know, we we know that. And, obviously, you know, we're we're, you know, doubling down on that with a bunch of other stuff that we could talk about. But but that's sort of like how it all how it all came to be, was just looking at audience and looking at, like, how we could make something that, that is able to do that.

Ramli John [00:18:30]:
That's super cool. So what I heard was, like, you came up with this concept with your team, and then you looked at the the categories that are popular podcasts. I mean, it makes sense, like, you know, what murder stories you you mentioned, and then comedy, and then business. And I and you kinda smashed them together. I love that. It's like almost remixing like old classics to make them more relevant, and that creates something new. I forgot this book called, like, how to steal like a pro. And it essentially talks about, like, how to take 2 inspiration and put them together, and that's how you put this, pretty much together with Murder and HR.

Ramli John [00:19:02]:
Then you went to Gympass, and I guess it's interesting that it's the other way around. Usually, you know, you come to a client or a company and be like, oh, we wanna create a podcast for you. But this is the other way around where you already had the concept. It's very strong. Did you have, like, the stars already, like, signed up? Or was that part of the pitch where, like, we're gonna get kicked tomorrow and

Ian Faison [00:19:24]:
Eric Weiss (3five forty six): Yeah. We knew based off of the size of the budget that we were going to go after A list Hollywood talent for sure. All of these productions, we, you know, we have a budget. You know, it's a sizable budget. You know, like we're, you know, these type of productions are 300, $400,000. So they're they're you know, it's not like a cheap production. It's a very high end sort of production and and a lot of moving parts to be able to deliver that. And it's honestly incredibly complex, to build a production like this, and there's all sorts of moving parts, and it's very difficult.

Ian Faison [00:20:01]:
So we didn't have the stars, those particular stars, but we knew that we wanted A list talent. We, you know, we work with Hollywood agents and all that stuff, and and they're amazing. And so, yeah, we, you know, we we we pitched the story, and and and luckily, fortunately, that those 2, amazing actors, in addition to the rest of the, you know, voice actors that are that were on the cast, which were also amazing, were able to, truly like the story. And, you know, and and I think Gympass as a sponsor, you know, it it it works really well because they want they, you know, love HR people. Obviously, they're selling into HR, but they wanna, you know, uplift their profession. And they wanted to, you know, thematically talk about things like toxicity at the work in the workplace, which we were gonna talk about on the show. So, you know, it's it's a it was a really good synergy to have them as a sponsor, and the presenting partner for the entire series, in that way because we believe in the future that they believe, and we believe that, like, HR people who are extremely misunderstood. I used to work in HR, and, and get treated honestly like crap a lot.

Ian Faison [00:21:07]:
And so, like, we wanted to be able to tell a story that shows that they get treated like crap and also, you know, that, that they have a such an important job, to play, you know, in in companies. So, yeah. And, you know, it it all worked. And, you know, I'll juxtapose that with the Hacker Chronicles, which we created with Tenable. And that show was very different in the sense that that show, was a much lighter brand touch in terms of there wasn't as much product placement in there. But they wanted to tell a very real grounded story of how a hacker could become a hacker. Sort of like breaking bad, but for, like, a coffee barista that that that turns into a a cyber criminal, and how accessible it is and how it's possible. And we're not talking about, like, nation, like, you know, nation states and threats and all those sort of things.

Ian Faison [00:21:53]:
We're talking about something that is realistic. That someone going out of the dark web, spending a few bucks, and, and starting, you know, a budding career in this. And they and that is weird for a cyber cybersecurity company to wanna tell that type of story. But what they wanted to get across is that, like, these threats are real. This stuff happens. This is how it can be done, and have sort of an empathetic and have sort of an empathetic look at hacking and and exploring that.

Ramli John [00:22:19]:
That's super, super interesting. So it looks like hack, Merton, HR, the Hacker Chronicles came out first in terms of, like was that the first show where you had a list, Hollywood stars being, the guest, or did you have experience before that with other shows?

Ian Faison [00:22:36]:
Yeah. It's a great question. So I actually had experience, doing this in the past. In my previous job or my so at my previous company,

Ramli John [00:22:45]:
jeez.

Ian Faison [00:22:45]:
What is it? So my previous company, I co founded a media company, and we were making podcasts and a bunch of other stuff. And we were doing nonfiction work with actors, a bunch of different really cool actors. And so I had a chance to do that then to work with with a bunch of different really cool folks like Alec Baldwin

Ramli John [00:23:04]:
Oh, wow.

Ian Faison [00:23:04]:
And Jeffrey Wright and a few others. Yeah. And so we were doing nonfiction voice over narration, and and it sort of led me to to to where we are now with, with fiction because,

Ramli John [00:23:16]:
you

Ian Faison [00:23:17]:
know, I think fiction, nobody's doing it in b to b. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, I think it's a huge missed opportunity. It is. It's funny because we as marketers, we wanna control the narrative. We wanna control the story. We wanna do all the stuff, but nobody wants to make fiction. I'm like, this is your opportunity.

Ian Faison [00:23:30]:
This is how you do it. Like, you can control the entire story. You can control all the inputs. We should wanna be doing fiction. We should do way more fiction.

Ramli John [00:23:40]:
Yeah. You're right.

Ian Faison [00:23:41]:
But, but we focus on on nonfiction. So

Ramli John [00:23:45]:
Yeah. So that previous company was not B2B Focus. I think it's called The Mission. I just checked on on Isiah. And then then you moved to Caspian and now you're like bringing fiction and other types of shows to b to b world essentially.

Ian Faison [00:23:59]:
Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. It was, it was a network of podcasts and, and sort of like a new media company. There was a bunch of business focus there and a bunch of different types of shows that we're making, but it's very much like a media company. Caspian is is really different. So we're a services business in the sense that we're, like, working with B2B marketing teams to build content for them. And then we're also a production company that is, like, producing, you know, these fiction series, obviously in partnership with with, with b to b companies.

Ian Faison [00:24:30]:
So, yeah, it's just a different approach. I think that, I think that companies need to be making better stuff. You know, I think that, like, there's sort of a bunch of different reasons, but just like, you know, we all know b to b content is, like, pretty boring. And there's just so much room for experimentation, whether it's with fiction, whether it's with comic books, whether it's with, you know, music. You know, there's just so many great examples of people just like pushing it a little bit further, and having outsized results and, being more memorable, being more remarkable. You know? I have a podcast called Remarkable, and the reason why it's called that is because the point of marketing is that you talk about it, which means you have to remark about it. You have to, like, go tell someone else, I just saw this thing, or I just heard this thing. Like, that is the point.

Ian Faison [00:25:20]:
It's not good enough just to have it, you know, resonate in that person's heart. You need it to be, like, something that's so good that they wanna tell somebody that they have to tell somebody. And, and there's and if you if you honestly look at your work and if you're to use the edutainment graph, if you were to plot your content, how many and you say, like, at scale 1 to 10, how entertaining is it? Yeah. Yeah. I'm a 2. Scale 1 to 10, how educational? And you're like, it's, like, a 6. It's, like, you should not be making that. If it's a 2 and a 6, like, don't make it.

Ian Faison [00:25:53]:
Nobody wants that. Nobody needs more bad stuff. Like, take the 2 and the 6 and figure out how do I get this to an 8 out of 10 educationally? How do I get this to a 5 entertaining wise? Like, what can I do? And then publish it. But if you can't get it there, like, just you shouldn't do it.

Ramli John [00:26:13]:
That's so true. And often, the the pushback I hear is, like, well, you know, it's gonna take a lot of budget and blah blah blah blah, like, there's so many tools out there and things and tutorials on YouTube, like, that excuse doesn't fly. Like, this whole creator, like, economy and people, there's so much tools and cameras gotten cheaper and, like, wax has gotten cheaper, like, like, it's you're totally right, like, there, you know, that is getting a lot of things like rolling in my head that I think that it's not an excuse anymore, especially this is not on the list I had in the question but it's in the back of a lot of B2B marketers' minds around AI You know? Like, this is how like, can you talk a little bit about that? I I feel like this is a perfect way to stand out from bad like, we're gonna see a ton more crappy content because people are gonna use AI to, like, create blog posts or other things like that. And, you know, the one that stands out from the rest are ones that do what you're suggesting.

Ian Faison [00:27:15]:
Yeah. I mean, I I would say, you know, 1st and foremost, like, you need to have an angle that starts with the audience, that starts with creativity. Like, you with marketing power ups, like, you have this power ups angle that stems from, you know, clear love of video games and, mixing that with sort of, like, you know, business knowledge and and figuring that out. Like, you have this angle, and you have a clear concept of design in the way that you send the show notes for this and, you know, the prep doc and all that stuff. Like, you have a very, so I was excited to be on the show. Like, you have a very defined sort of, like, brand and thoughts around how, like, you're building the show. And just so many people lack any type of creativity or clarity of of a of a of a hook, of a premise that can set you apart, that that some reason for being that, like, your content's reason for being that can, like, do something that stands out from the crowd. And so I think that that's the first and that's like AI is not gonna help you with that.

Ian Faison [00:28:23]:
Right? It's like AI can figure out, you know, like, for serialized content framework, like, like, AI could help me write the book by plugging in a bunch of stuff. Like, it could help me write the chapters. And the reason why I didn't do that and the reason why I didn't, like, even write chapters in the book is because who cares? Like, you don't need to go read all those words. Like, you really don't. That's why, like, we went extremely, visual heavy. We went extremely, like, list heavy, short explanations, try to have, like, no words, no paragraphs more than a couple sentences. If you need a 150 words to write a book, like, for a 150 pages, like, dude, you're a bad writer, like, at this point.

Ramli John [00:29:07]:
Like,

Ian Faison [00:29:07]:
you know, that I always go back to the Mark Twain quote of, right. Sorry. I wrote you a a a long letter. I didn't I didn't have time to write you a shorter one. And, like, that that's the truth of the matter is, like, more people need to figure out a way to edit their work. This is sounding very, you know, the old man yelling at the cloud sort of thing. But people need to figure out a way to edit their work, not shove it into an AI to give you all sorts of of stuff and then plug that in. You can use the AI as your assistant.

Ian Faison [00:29:35]:
That's the best use of AI right now for for marketing, for this stuff. Use it as your assistant. Ask it questions. Have it help you do research. Have it help you refine your ideas, like, do all of that stuff. That's great. But you need to come up with the premise and the ideas yourself, to figure out, you know, what that is. And, you know, I'm a firm believer.

Ian Faison [00:29:53]:
There's a great, writer and podcaster named Jason Concepcion. And he, you know, he talked about, like, there's no such thing as writer's block. There's reader's block. Like, if you you need to go read more, if you can't figure out what to write, like, you need to go read more. And I think in business world, it's like, you need to go talk to customers. You need to go talk to your prospects. You need to figure out what they're asking. You need to go on to know, Slack channels and things like that.

Ian Faison [00:30:18]:
Go on to Quora and Reddit, all these places. Figure out the questions that they wanna know. Build a show around that. Make it shorter. Could you do it in 7 minutes? Could you do it, you know, could you do something that with faster cuts? Could you do, you know, better editing? Could you distill your information? I think that, the biggest problem with, like, chat gpt in my mind, is just people plugging it in and then cranking out a 1500 word article. Like, who who can I I don't ever wanna read a 1500 word article ever for anything? Like, no way. Tell it to me in tell it to me in, you know, one eighth of the amount of words, because you don't need them all.

Ramli John [00:30:55]:
I know that. That's totally true. I think that the creative piece is something that AI and chattybd can't like it can give you ideas but like to like come up with a premise like you mentioned like to come up with an angle like that, that comes from somebody's experience and somebody's brain and somebody's, you know, taste with music or videos or whatever. And it really does like, I think that's what I'm hearing here is that come on B2B marketers, You gotta get a little more creative.

Ian Faison [00:31:25]:
Well, and I can tell you the words, but, like, you have to like, with Murder in HR, like, you know, you we could've we could've asked it to write us a script for that show. And I guarantee you, it could've come up with a pretty good script. But that's not the reason why, like, marketing content you know, that's not the reason why it doesn't get consumed. It it doesn't get consumed because you have a bad premise. You have bad branding. You have a bad hook. You're not asking the right questions or answering the right questions. Like, all of those things like that can't be fixed by, you know, plugging into AI.

Ian Faison [00:32:00]:
You can get a 1,000,000 great ideas from AI, you know, if you're asking it stuff. But, you need to be able to package that stuff into something that's very digestible, for your audience, and and meet them where they are. You know?

Ramli John [00:32:13]:
I like that. You've been talking a lot about premise and hook, and you probably, you know, I you probably have, like, produced hundreds of shows already, and you have a taste already of what makes a good premise or a hook for a serialized content? Like, are there certain qualities where you say, hell yeah, and some qualities where like, that's crap. You need to go back to the the drawing board.

Ian Faison [00:32:35]:
Yeah. So first off, like, it starts with audience of of finding the smallest, most, you know, viable niche audience that you can possibly start with. So, like, find the person on LinkedIn. Find 5 people on LinkedIn who are the exact type of people that you wanna make that show for. What is their job title? What do they do on a day to day basis? Like, you know, all that stuff. So first, it always starts with audience. And then what is the most important thing that they are seeking information on, right? So, find that thing. And then create some sort of hook that makes it easy to digest.

Ian Faison [00:33:17]:
So, you know, listicle works great. You know, 3 ideas to improve your skills as a UI developer. Let's just, like, use that as an example. Right? How would you make a show about that? Right? Like, what's the show? Are you gonna do a long open? Are you gonna do quick cuts? Are you gonna do you know, how long is it gonna be? Why is it gonna be long? So I think it's about figuring that stuff out. And it's like, well, what do developers like? Oh, they're super into nostalgia or something like that. Right? And they don't like to be sold to, and they don't like, you know, and they like stuff that's super authentic. So why don't we I we did this, so I should just use an example. So we made the show, we made this show, that's really cool for developers called

Ramli John [00:34:01]:
Let me look it up.

Ian Faison [00:34:02]:
Oh, sorry. So we made the show called the dev morning show at night. And, it's a great show, and it's starring Cassie Williams. She's, like, an, awesome developer, evangelist personality. She's freaking hilarious. And we made it as a as a web show that we made for, YouTube. And we're like, let's, like, let's let's make a late night talk show, but for developers. And it's gonna be some somewhere between, like, a morning show and a and a late show, and it's gonna be filmed a 100% remote, and it's gonna Cassie's gonna be the host.

Ian Faison [00:34:35]:
And we, like, crafted a bunch of different stuff. And so we made that show, and it was super super successful. I think it did, like, listens on the 1st series, on the 1st season. And, yeah, it was just cool. It was was interesting. It was funny. It was different. It looked different.

Ian Faison [00:34:48]:
It had cool visuals. It had all that stuff. Like, that to me is a show. Right? You say, I'm gonna interview our customers. That's not a show. Right? Like, hopping on Zoom and and interviewing people. So that's what I mean. Like, you need that promise to the listener.

Ian Faison [00:35:05]:
What are they gonna get every time? Are they gonna is it gonna be fun? Is it gonna be funny? Is it gonna be fast paced? Is it going to be a super deep dive into topics? Is it going to be a super deep dive into like one type of topic? Is it going to be, you know, like all that stuff and, you know, and tweak and tweak and tweak until you get it right. And then keep your format and keep it consistent would be my recommendation for most folks.

Ramli John [00:35:28]:
Yeah. I love this as another example of how you bring b2c entertainment to b2b. You know, like, late late night talk show, you you know, like Jimmy Kimmel. There you know, people understand that premise. But like bringing in in like same with Murder in HR or like The Hacker Chronicles. Like I love that concept where like, how do you bring stuff that they enjoy outside of work? Yeah. Into their work. Exactly.

Ramli John [00:35:55]:
They listen to it. It's like, I get it. I understand it. I love it already. Like, you know, how do I get more of it? Is what you're doing well with this kinda shows.

Ian Faison [00:36:04]:
Yeah. And and Tyler, I think it's Lessard Lessard

Ramli John [00:36:08]:
from From Vidyard. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian Faison [00:36:09]:
From Vidyard. He he has a great phrase. Keep him laughing. Keep him learning. And and I love that. Right? It's like, you gotta be funny. And it's so hard to be funny. Like, it's really hard to be funny in b two b.

Ian Faison [00:36:22]:
Right? So you gotta figure out ways to be funny, to add levity. Otherwise, it's just boring. And people all the time, which drives me freaking crazy, when people are like, well, accounting is boring. So if I make an accounting show, it's boring. Or HR is boring. I'm like, dude, it's not boring to the people who spent their, like, career in this field. Like, you might think it's boring because you're a marketer trying to create an accounting show. But to them, this is their life.

Ian Faison [00:36:48]:
This is their livelihood. This is what feeds their family. This is what they've spent 20 years doing. You know, they don't think it's boring. They think it's important, and it is important. So, like, you need to get past, like, that sort of idea, but you need to figure out a way to make it more entertaining, to add those things in, to add in drops, to add in, you know, speed, very, you know, very the cadence in which things are delivered, you know, set things up. We use a lot of signposting, in our in our storytelling of, like, you know, tell them what is coming. Show them the sign that's like this.

Ian Faison [00:37:24]:
Okay. Now we're gonna be talking about this, you know, using segments, using things like that. And, you know, you if you go look at your favorite shows, like, they have that stuff. And some some don't. Right? Like, Rogan does. And this is what everyone says. Well, Rogan Rogan doesn't or or Tim Ferris doesn't. That it's a different utility.

Ian Faison [00:37:41]:
It's a different type of an interview. Like, the 3 hour long form type of an interview, it has a different utility for the listener. That listener is just going there to learn some stuff, to be entertained, and, and they're going there for a different reason. But, like, we're not trying to copy Rogan. We're not trying to copy Smartlist. Like, these are professional, you know, creators that have been doing this for a long time. And, and also they have guests that are also professionals that have been doing it for a long time. So, I would say, you know, trying to figure out your version of that is is a good call.

Ramli John [00:38:22]:
I love that. That's that we probably can go much further in this, but I'm gonna direct people into that ebook that you have. It's available on your site I'm gonna link it in the show notes and description you talk more about pillars and what kind of b2b companies should be taking advantage of this and how to do this but actually wanna shift gears and talk about career power ups things that help you accelerate your career now you've been the founder CEO of Caspian Studios now for 4 years You know, you were at The Mission. Before that, you were, in the army. I'm curious, what's helped accelerate your career, like, to where you're at now? It could be people, it could be community, it could be a tactic, it could be anything that's powered up your your career direction?

Ian Faison [00:39:06]:
Yeah. I would say so first off, I would say, you know, I've been fortunate having you know, I went to to West Point, and so that opens, you know, a lot of doors for you in general because of of, having a network, people once I got out of the army. It's like I got out of the army. I didn't know I didn't know anything about business. I just knew army stuff. And so it was really I was fortunate to be able to, you know, tap into my network of, you know, West Point grads. I got, you know, a lot of, you know, early meetings with people who, you know, frankly, were were very, very generous with their time of of humoring all of my little quests and side missions. But, you know, one of the things was the late great Anthony de Toto, who's a mentor of mine.

Ian Faison [00:39:49]:
He would talk about this thing called naive networking. So Anthony, was this guy. He was he was he worked for, like, family offices and, you know, managed people's money and and things like that. So network was everything to him. Right? So he had this really cool network, and and he used to he used to, you know, spend, you know, his entire life networking. And he, you know, he taught me this thing that he, you know, referred to as naive networking, which is basically this that don't ask for an in person meeting when a call will do. Don't ask for a call when a email will do. Don't don't, you know, don't send an email when a text will do.

Ian Faison [00:40:24]:
And, and always have a clear reason for meeting with a very specific purpose. I am trying to work out blank. And then, you know, at the end of that sort of asking like, how can I help you if there's any way? Now, early in your career or even sometimes in the middle of your career, like, you can't do anything. Right? Like like, me as, you know, whatever, a 28 year old, you know, that was out of the army. I really couldn't do anything for anyone, but I would you know, and he had to do, like, hey. Don't worry about us. It'll come back around. And, and just, you know, help somebody out the way that sort of you got helped out.

Ian Faison [00:41:03]:
So, you know, early in your career, it it's really hard to do that. And, but you can still ask. You'd still say, but is there anything that I can do to help you? And it's like, you know, for someone like, you know, Anthony, hey, if you know anyone with, you know, dollars 30,000,000, then, send them my way. Right? I'm like, let me let me check the role next there. I don't think That's fine. I don't think I do. But, you know, I'll ask around. So it's a big part about not wasting people's time.

Ian Faison [00:41:27]:
It's like all we have in this world. It's all we have is time. Right? That's like the only thing that we that that is every single person. We are losing it every day. Right? So you really don't wanna waste people's time, and you really wanna have clear ask for people of how they can help you. So before you go into that conversation, you need to know what you want, and you need to know what you need, and you need to know how you can get there. So I spent a lot of time early in my career sort of, like, mapping what I needed from people and being able to ask them for those things. You know, and, like, and ultimately, like, your network, you know, is your net worth thing? Like, it is.

Ian Faison [00:42:02]:
I think I spent a lot of time early in my career, especially because I was in sales, trying not to be transactional. And I think that it's really hard to do that. But, you know, I had a good I had a good mentor, my podcast mentor, that that, is is was, you know, one of the lessons that I always remember that they would talk about is, you know, sort of like, there's always another deal. Right? It's okay if you lose this. Like, that's okay. And so, I tried to build my career and I still try to build my career knowing that careers are transactional. There are transactions that need to happen. Like, you need to buy something, you need to hire someone, you need to sell something.

Ian Faison [00:42:42]:
Like, that is part of it. But the other part of it is you can be devoid from the outcome and say like, I'm still gonna support you. You can still support me. If the deal doesn't get done, the deal doesn't get done, but I still wanna be helpful and just always trying to help. And I always try to use my position of whatever advantage I had to be helpful, to try to help people. So, yeah, for Anthony, I didn't know any people with 30,000,000 or more, but it was always my thing that someday, when I know someone with $30,000,000 or when I have $30,000,000, I'll go to Anthony and be able to do that because of the stuff that he did for me. And so, you know, I just tried in any way that I could help people, I could do that. And then the big thing with that was, like, connecting people.

Ian Faison [00:43:29]:
Right? One of the things that that senior people are always looking for is young talented people. So if you have a peer and they don't know young people. So, like, if you're, like, let's just say a CEO of a, you know, big company, you don't know anyone who's young. Like, your kids are probably older than the young people are. Right? So, when you are young and you know other talented people, you can recommend them to be on people's teams. And so that's that's one of the ways that I always try to just think of people as like, hey. Do you need a salesperson? Like, one of my friends is in sales. Like, he's really good.

Ian Faison [00:44:04]:
Or, you know, hey. This person's in marketing or PR. She's awesome. I can connect you there. So, anyhoo, that's that's my, my piece for for naive networking. That's my career power up.

Ramli John [00:44:15]:
Hello. I love that term. That's the last thing the last part you mentioned around, like, introducing people. Like, when you say, hey. Do you need a salesperson? You're actually helping out 2 people there, because that salesperson might be looking for a job and the person that's, like, VP of sales or CEO is like actively looking for young talent. So he really does, you know, really come out to me

Ian Faison [00:44:37]:
all day, every day. Nobody does that. Nobody ever tries to do that for me. I get, you know, 100 and 100 of emails a day as a CEO. Nobody ever tries to do that. They're never like it's it's like, again, there's no traffic on the extra mile. Like, people don't do it. They will not they will ask you for stuff all the time, but they will not go the extra mile and be, like, it looks like you need this.

Ian Faison [00:45:05]:
I know someone in this. I'll happy to introduce you to them. Like, people just don't do that. And, and, anyways, that's one of the things I tried to do.

Ramli John [00:45:12]:
That's a good wrap. Like of everything we talked about, there's no traffic in the last mile. It's so visual. And, you know, it applies to to marketing as well as relationships and and even couriers. One final question before we wrap up where can people find out more about you? I'm gonna link them, Caspian Studio's website, Murder in HR, Chronicles, Hacker Chronicles, and any other shows you mentioned. But, you know, probably send them to LinkedIn. Like, where else can people find out more about you, your work, your company?

Ian Faison [00:45:39]:
Yeah. You know, I would suggest, you know, you could check out castbeanstudios.com. The other thing, we have pretty good newsletter that I send out every week that you could just subscribe to. But the other thing I would just plug is, so we're building out this murder verse of all these different Yes. All these different personas. So we have murder in sales, murder in marketing. We're going to build out all of these shows over the next handful of years. And so if you know someone, if you're in marketing or if you know someone in marketing who wants to do something really cool, whether it's like IT related or or marketing or sales or any business function, AI, data, all that stuff.

Ian Faison [00:46:15]:
We have really cool pitches ready for, people to check out. So if you wanna connect with me, I'm Ian at Caspian Studios. Shoot me an email. Would love to, put you some crazy ideas for, for some stuff we could do together. I love it.

Ramli John [00:46:29]:
What kind of budgets, are you looking at for for something like that? I mean, it could just be a range, but, like, just so that people are like, oh, yeah. That's right up our budget budget out.

Ian Faison [00:46:39]:
Yeah. Like, for for I mean, obviously, we we do stuff, so we have, like, multiple different services. But so, you know, anywhere in the, like, 80 k range, we can build a series for you for the fiction stuff because it has, you know, a listers and all that stuff. It's it's, you know, it's mid, mid 6 figures. But like I said, 300, 400 grand somewhere in there, then we can make something really cool.

Ramli John [00:47:01]:
Yeah. And thank you so much for your time. Really, really, had fun in this conversation.

Ian Faison [00:47:05]:
Cool. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Ramli John [00:47:07]:
If you enjoyed this episode, you'd love the Marketing Power Ups newsletter. I shared the actionable takeaways and break down the frameworks of world class marketers. Go go to marketing powerups.com to subscribe, and you'll instantly unlock the 3 best frameworks that top marketers use, hit their KPIs consistently, and wow their colleagues. I wanna say thank you to you for listening, and please like and follow Marketing Power Ups on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. If you feel extra generous, have to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Leave a comment on YouTube. It goes a long way in others finding out about marketing problems. Thanks to Mary Saldan for creating the artwork and design, and thank you to Faisal Kaigal for editing the intro video.

Ramli John [00:47:48]:
And, of course, thank you for listening. That's all for now. Have a powered update.

Ramli John [00:00:00]:
One framework that's had the biggest impact on my career is the jobs to be done theory. It's the idea that people hire products to accomplish a job. For example, you might be hiring marketing products to learn marketing frameworks to help your campaigns stand out. Now understanding what your customers are hiring a product to do can help you educate people better on how your product can help them become better than their competitors. Today, Ali Bloom, growth consultant hypothesis department, shares strategies to help you get org wide buy in for the jobs we've done through at your company. In this episode of Marketing Props, we learned, 1st of all, common objections to adopting the jobs we've done in theory. 2nd, tips to get org wide buy in for the jobs we've done. 3rd, how marketers can start using the jobs to be done.

Ramli John [00:00:44]:
Theory. And finally, 4th, Ally's career power ups. Are you ready? Let's go.

Announcer [00:00:50]:
Marketing power ups. Ready? Go. Here's your host, Ramli John.

Ramli John [00:01:01]:
Thank you so much for jumping on and talking about, something that's near and dear to my heart, the job's a bit on theory. It's like a a framework that's made the biggest impact in my career. But for people who isn't who, you know, for people who don't know what it is, this idea that products and services, people hire products and services to accomplish a job, to be done. And, you know, I know why it's important, but for people who are tuning in who might be skeptical, who might not have heard about it, why should marketers care about it at all? Do do you have anything that you can share as to why it's something that could make a big difference into in terms of marketers who are tuning in in terms of their work and their job?

Alli Blum [00:01:41]:
Yeah. So if you are a marketer, you chances are you are working with some kind of static representation of your customer. You have a user type, a user group, a user persona, an ICP. There's something that you're already using as a way to say, this is who my customer is. We sell supply chain software to supply chain managers. We sell, design software to designers and small business creators. And that's really, really helpful in orienting yourself to the world that you're in and the types of folks you might work with and sell to and have relationships with as a business. But it's really like looking at a photograph.

Alli Blum [00:02:18]:
It's a static moment in time. Whereas I like to say the jobs to be done is much more like watching the home videos or watching the movie, the documentary, getting a much more dynamic understanding of what happens over time. So, user group or user type could tell you the the who in in a single moment with very limited characteristics. And Jobs To Be Done is going to give you the the when, the why, the how, the the what if, the I thought I could, but or I thought I couldn't, but then I could, the objections. It's it's so much more, and it's such such a more holistic and comprehensive way of looking at your customers and the journey that they're going through to make the progress in their own lives and in their relationship with you as a business. So any any initiative that you are going to embark on can benefit from knowing much more about what's going on in your customer's worlds when they're when they're making that decision. So when you conduct a, jobs to be done project, you're going to end up with a set of job stories. That's what we call the the artifacts at the end.

Alli Blum [00:03:22]:
And they're going to have these statements that say, when I am in a set of circumstances, give me a way to make some kind of progress so I can achieve some kind of outcome baked within that there's going to be so much more rich data that you're going to be able to write better copy on your landing pages, on your emails, on your sales page, on your marketing site, come up with so many more ideas that your, that you could be putting on, on your site messages that you tailor to your audience. And you're also and this is really, really important for scale ups in particular or startups, anyone with way too many things on their list. A jobs to be done project is going to give you so much insight onto what you can actually just cross right off your list, things you just do not need to bother with because your customers aren't going to care nearly as much as you will.

Ramli John [00:04:07]:
Ali, thank you so much for sharing that about job stories and, like, why, like, jobs to be done is so so important and how impactful it is. I've seen it myself, but often, like, I hear some challenges. Like, you probably heard this yourself, some some objections around why mark marketing teams don't adopt this. I'm curious. What are some common objections you've heard? Maybe it's like, oh, there's a product thing. The the this doesn't apply to us. But, like, with with your work, like, what are those objections you've heard? And and, like, how do you how would you respond to them?

Alli Blum [00:04:40]:
The most common objections that I hear are regarding jobs to be done on whether it's marketing, product, executive, whoever wherever that resistance is coming from, the most common objection that I observe is inertia and momentum. So the most common ways that that presents is we already hearing something like this. We already have that handled. Like, we already have customer research. We don't we don't we have a way of doing things here. We don't need that. Or we have a long list of projects already. We don't need to pause research because jobs to be done research, it has a a little bit of a you're not familiar with it, it sounds a little bit like, let's slow down and think about things.

Alli Blum [00:05:21]:
But we're a start up, and we're scalable, and we move quickly, and we break things, so that won't work for us. And a lot of times, those that kind of marketing and product crossover, a lot of times there may be sort of different camps within an organization where one team might have, a position on this is how our research is. This is what we know about our customers. And the other part the other department may have a slightly different way. So there may be some, if you're if you're finding that you're having trouble getting by and beyond your department for spreading jobs to be done either out of out of marketing, if that's the department you're in or out of product, then a lot of times that can be that can come down to, like, an old, we're we've got a we've got a social political dilemma that that we've got to resolve here because we're look we're working off of different understandings understanding of who our customer is and a different philosophical basis for how we ought to be making decisions as a company about how we serve those customers.

Ramli John [00:06:19]:
I I love how you put it there, inertia and momentum. It's really about, like, you know, oh, we already know, and I think that's that's a challenge. I guess the follow-up question to that, and you talked about it a little bit around the political. How can a marketer, who's a individual contributor, like, get buy in to do it or start would you just, suggest applying it, like, secretly, like a ninja, and then What? And show the results show the results after and be like, oh, look at look at the results of this. Or, like, I'm curious as what your advice would be for a marketer who's an individual contributor to

Alli Blum [00:06:54]:
to get buy in around this. Yeah. If you are working on getting buy in for jobs to be done at your organization, one of the best recommend there's 2 big paradigm shifts that I I would invite you to make. And the first is to really start thinking about that work that you're doing of getting that buy in through the lens of change management. So done right and and I think you know this. You I heard you call jobs to be done a theory. So jobs to be done is a theory of innovation, and done right, it's something that goes it might start a marketing product, customer success. They might start somewhere, but done right, it's going to affect every aspect of the company.

Alli Blum [00:07:33]:
We're going to figure out what customers what our customers' job stories are, the progress that they want to make. We're going to figure out what does figure out what experiences of use and purchase there we ought to build so that we can help them make that progress. That's on that IC level. That's where we're really going to be making that kind of progress, building those things. But then, after we identify those those types of experiences and and build them, then we're really going to want to integrate our organization, organize ourselves around serving those customers in that progress. So, ideally, it won't just be a marketing campaign or marketing strategy. It's going to be something that we do share with the product. We're gonna march in lockstep, and we're gonna all have a really good basis for who it is that we want to be, who it is that we're serving, what matters to them.

Alli Blum [00:08:18]:
When we're going to have arguments, it's going to be about the best way to to solve the same problem rather than the dispute about which problem it is that we're trying to solve, and that things are gonna work so much better when we get to do that. So that's your starting point is I'm an IC, and I've got enough juice within my company that I know I'm gonna be able to influence my peers around the org. Maybe I'm I'm still I still need buying from my boss. Maybe I need it from a VP or above, but I I I still wanna be thinking about it through the lens of this is going to be really successful when a lot of people are involved. And when, what, what that does is starts to make it really easy for that second paradigm shift to take place, which is we come into this question of, oh, how do I get buy in on research or jobs to be done? How do I get more people to care about what my customers think? How do I get that DOC to be front and center? And the way to do this is to make that initiative less about what your customers care about and the progress that they want to make and more about what your boss, your coworkers, your stakeholders, whoever is going to be the one signing off on those initiatives and mobilizing that with you, more about what they want to think. So your change management initiative is going to be about figuring out what kinds of problems your colleagues have. I like to keep a library anytime, like, researching my my colleague yet who doesn't get understand jobs to be done. Let me let me take a list of everything everything that's bothering them.

Alli Blum [00:09:35]:
Let me get to know them. Let me do some research on them informally. If it's formal, it's a little bit might feel a little bit stiff, but let me get to know them and what's important to them. And then let me go find some VOC. So starting small, you're revealing yet, but you're starting to reveal little bits of VOC, 30 second snippets. I love using Descript audiograms to say, Hey, this is like, remember that problem you were talking about in all hands? Like I found, I found a customer who is dealing with the same thing, and this is how they're solving it. Or remember when we were when we were trying to get buy in on, or remember when we were trying to get more adoption for this feature? I have all of these customers. They didn't even know that we had it.

Alli Blum [00:10:13]:
They're asking if we could build it for them. So this is actually a problem I found, and I think I can solve it. I'm gonna go solve it. So showing that you're starting to make that having that slow startup, showing some of that research little bits at a time, connecting it to what's already really important to the people that you need that buy in from is going to set that foundation up for you to eventually make that ask and say, okay, look, we've got a lot of progress. We, we solved a lot of problems with the VOC that we have, and here's what that looks like. And here's the results we get. There's still these other questions we don't have the answers to. And, and I think if we're really gonna be take that seriously, this is what's going to be involved.

Alli Blum [00:10:50]:
And here's where I might get a little stealth. Maybe you're gonna need to hire somebody, or maybe you're if you really wanna get the buy in, I often recommend to folks, just do it yourself, Figure out a way to, learn how to run your own jobs, interviews, and go out and do that research and a lot and while building that case for buy in so that you can be the one to to go ahead and get it done. Fastest way to get buy in on something is to do it yourself. I like that. And it

Ramli John [00:11:14]:
seems like you're applying the the framework, the the jobs to be done. Like, what is the job that my boss is trying to do? What is the problem that they have? And use use that that, you know, your approach to getting voice customer and things like that to to the situation, which it's kind of it's a little bit of a meta thing where, like, use the job to be done to pitch jobs to pitch

Alli Blum [00:11:36]:
to pitch to pitch

Ramli John [00:11:37]:
to pitch. That's so cool. That's so cool. That makes sense.

Alli Blum [00:11:41]:
When I was working

Ramli John [00:11:42]:
Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No. Feel free to share your story. I think that's cool.

Alli Blum [00:11:46]:
When I was working with, EnjoyHQ, I worked with I I wanna say I helped 5th year or so companies get their qualitative research repository stood up. So this is a new, but starting to be relatively established category where you can store all of your transcripts, your interviews. You can have integrations with your customer support tickets. So you can keep all of your data in one place, and it makes it really easy to share and access. So you're making it as mobile as any of the quantitative data that you're already keeping track of at your company. And when I would meet with a lot of these, the folks who were starting to use enjoy HQ to a tee, they all struggled with this. Oh, I don't know how people like, we're really struggle, really struggling to get the buy in on the research, whether it's jobs or whether it's any other kind of VOC program, really getting folks to take that kind of qualitative data seriously is a struggle at, it was a struggle at 100% of the companies, that I had a chance to meet with. And it remains so fascinating to me because we are uniquely, if we are doing research, we are uniquely predisposed to having the skills to understand exactly what we need to do to connect, to figure out what kind of solution to build.

Alli Blum [00:12:53]:
It's what it's what we're doing when we do jobs to be done is figuring out what kind of experience have used or purchase we want to be able to build so that we help a customer make progress. We have those skills. It does start to feel okay. So this is where I'll say it. Part of me is like, ah, how come we're not just doing it? Another part of me is like, well, it is a little bit different when it's your colleague, when you have these relationships. You're seeing them every day when, you know, this isn't the only facet of your relationship. I mean, they're your boss, so they also control how much of a raise you're going to get or whether you're gonna be on the chopping block during the next round of layoffs. So there's a lot more, nervousness, and it's harder to see if we our lens can narrow there a little bit.

Alli Blum [00:13:32]:
But a lot of the same tools and principles can apply. Figure out what progress your boss or your stakeholders want to make and and find a way to show that you can help them make it.

Ramli John [00:13:42]:
I I like that. I think what I heard was I the something you mentioned earlier as well is, like, your you mentioned the word momentum, and it it's like if you can get a few and then almost like a domino effect. Yeah. It's like getting, one person to get bought bought in and eventually, hopefully, you get the the whole team bought into to that thing. So you're, like, slowly building it up. I'm guessing it's like a toll totally different experience from a marketing, marketer who's an individual contributor to, let's say, a director, VP, or C level. Do you have any advice for those people who are, like, higher up, who are, like, executive leaders and, like, yeah, I get it. Like, I I've seen it work in other companies.

Ramli John [00:14:26]:
Well, would you would it be the same pattern where, like, you get a few people bought in? I'm guessing there's a little bit more influence there, so maybe they can skip a step. So, like, what's your advice to those, those executives who who might have want want to, like, get this adopted by their team or other teams in the company?

Alli Blum [00:14:45]:
It's so interesting because there's so many things that are similar and so many things that are a little bit different. So the biggest difference is to look at your power dynamics with the people that you need to be getting that buy in from and how that is going to influence a lot of what you're doing. If you're a mid junior mid level IC, yeah, if you're junior level if you're a principal, or very senior IC, a lot of what I said earlier may or may not be the technique you want to use. You may it may come down more to experience level and power and influence that you already have related to your position. But if you are relatively, in that first group that I was just describing, most of the people that you need to buy in from are going to be higher up on the food chain than you are. And they're going to have less time. They're going to have more priorities that you don't maybe you don't ever know about. You're probably going to have a little bit of a different relationship.

Alli Blum [00:15:32]:
When you are already in an executive position or very, very high, IC, you're going to be getting a lot more lateral buy in from people across the board and a lot more, like, different a lot more education and instruction and training for the people who are either reporting to you or, working alongside you cross functionally or in different departments or, at your level as CIC. Here's what I mean by that. Unless you are the CEO, so you're still going to have a little bit of that element. You're still going to want to take that approach to say to get that CEO bought in. When the CEO is bought in on Jobs To Be Done, that's when it's the most effective because it will it will, answer so many of the questions across the organization, and it will make so many things, make so much more sense, and happen more, effectively. So you're still going to make sure you have that that person at the top really bought in. I actually have spoke with one company that because they wanted their entire board bought in on this approach. So that having that entire, most senior top down approach can be really, really powerful.

Alli Blum [00:16:32]:
But that next level so you're gonna have a little bit of a different technique here with that next level. The next level, it's going to depend a lot on the relationships that you have with your fellow executives on the team. So if you're a marketer and you're trying to bring in jobs to be done to solve one of the problems you have related to your growth targets or how many leads you're bringing in or the pipeline that you're building or whatever the your, targets are. Your counterpart in product or your counterpart in growth, depending on how your team is structured, is going to have similar adjacent priorities, but they're going to be solving them in a different way. And marketing marketing a product getting aligned is the absolute hardest part at that senior level, because these tend to be folks who are both really, really seasoned. They have gotten to their positions. If you were either of these folks, you had a lot of experience. You've seen a lot of things work.

Alli Blum [00:17:19]:
You've seen a lot of things not work. You've probably seen people try to get jobs to be done up and running and not succeed. Maybe you have even been in that position yourself. So it's really, really challenging because by that point, that are many, many folks have a really crisp perspective on what they believe works. So you want to make sure if you can try to get that alignment before you even started the company. But if you can't, or if you've been promoted into the role or someone gets hired into it, of course, you can't always do that. That's where you're going to want to really build out that relationship and really be, sharing a lot of information and and making sure that they're they're bought in. Any initiative that you push forward, you're probably going to want to make sure you have members from both teams in included.

Alli Blum [00:17:59]:
Product is is very unlikely to want to implement marketing's research. Marketing is I have seen marketers get swayed into products research, but I have seen it they're still not gonna wanna implement products research. We we want this to be done together. Yeah. Now the big the big thing that happens here okay. So you're gonna wanna start with that top level. So getting that top down approach is gonna be really, really important because if you don't have that, anything your team, your direct reports, or colleagues is going to do is going to take a lot. You're not gonna have that buy in.

Alli Blum [00:18:30]:
They're gonna be there's gonna be a lot of infighting that you're not gonna hear about it. You're just gonna hear some grumpies, and and it's gonna be a little bit it's gonna be tough on morale. So you wanna get that really, that top level really locked in, and that's gonna make it so much easier for your team and for everyone. Okay. Once you have that, and you say, okay. We're going to execute this drops to be done study either with our internal team, with an external partner. We this is why you're gonna want to do something similar where you're sharing why you're doing it. You're repeating that message often.

Alli Blum [00:19:00]:
I like to say leadership is repetition. You're going to want to say that over and over, why this matters, why this matters now, how you weigh the trade offs in the right you know, in different audiences depending on how your team your leadership So that executive level, maybe maybe you have the kind of company where everyone on your team is just as thoughtful as you are and just as dedicated to getting that deep level of understanding of the customers because they believe that it will transform everything about how they grow and will set them up for long term success.

Ramli John [00:19:39]:
That is so good.

Alli Blum [00:19:40]:
Not, though.

Ramli John [00:19:41]:
I see that.

Alli Blum [00:19:41]:
For decades. I'm still gonna recommend elements of that strategy where you're going to want to present different insights, and it's gonna depend on your team, but you may want to say, like, you know, we're during our dedicated leadership time for the next month, I'm going to share one highlights of what we learned about each one of our 4 job stories, for example. You're going to share little clips of the VOC 32nd. I love using, Descript. I think Canva has a feature of this now where you can upload you can upload a 32nd clip of a customer talking, and it will it will give subtitles. I have seen people who I've seen people eat these up. Like, they they're they they're so phenomenal.

Ramli John [00:20:19]:
Yeah.

Alli Blum [00:20:19]:
I don't care how much, I would say let me start that sentence over. Even if you have somebody who believes completely in jobs to be done, who's totally on board with everything you were saying, it is very unlikely that they are going to voluntarily take 10 hours out of their time to listen to all 10 interviews, unless there is some kind of push. I count myself in this. I was recently, oh my gosh, this is kind of embarrassing, but I was working on a project recently. One of my colleagues had done a round of jobs interviews. I knew exactly where they were. They'd been there a while. I knew all about them, and I was working on a different user group, so I knew they were there.

Alli Blum [00:20:56]:
I knew I was gonna have to read them. I was gonna listen to them. I'll get to it. I'll get to it. I'll get to it. And then I found a problem that I needed to solve. And I was like, oh my gosh. Okay.

Alli Blum [00:21:06]:
I'm listening to the interviews now. And I listened to them straight through in one sitting. Well, 2 sittings. It was 10 of course. But the, even for somebody who's a real believer, sitting down to listen to 10 hours is not likely that's not a fun request. Taking a snippet of that and putting into a 32nd clip and sharing that out, that's fun. Like, getting a description with a 32nd customer like, Cliff, oh, this is fun. It's new.

Alli Blum [00:21:28]:
It's novelty. I haven't seen it before. Maybe it helps me do my job and it only took 30 seconds. And there's also something really, like, deeply connecting and empathy building about hearing that, hearing that voice and that connection of that customer. So you're gonna oh, wow. That was a long handshake. You're gonna wanna do a lot of that, up at the executive level. Okay.

Alli Blum [00:21:48]:
Here's the really important part. Your ICs can also mutiny. Your ICs on your direct reports can also resist this, and they will have not only the same forces of inertia and momentum. I already know what I'm doing. They will have the force of, inexperience and Dunning Kruger. They will have the force of, my boss does not know what they are talking about. They will have the force of now my boss wants to me to do this. I thought they wanted me to do that, especially if there's any element of VUCA, which is, we were chatting about this earlier.

Alli Blum [00:22:19]:
If there's any element of VUCA volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, which are very it's a very common scenario for scale ups to be in this in this environment. That's a a term that comes from the US military. Nobody really knows what's going on. Things are changing. It's hard. It's it's hard to navigate if you're not used to it. So if you have that kind of environment and you introduce jobs and you're not really that, careful about teaching folks about it, it's gonna be really hard. But here's the cool thing.

Alli Blum [00:22:45]:
Yeah. There is a really great way for you to get your cuss your, your teammates, your direct reports who may who are your customers in this situation really, really bought in on what you're doing. And the way that I do that after I so my consulting work with customers will or with clients will do jobs to be done study. And then after that study, after everyone's, you know, at the executive level agrees, yes, we are pursuing this strategy. We check that, go through that checkpoint. Then we take that research and we turn it into a training, custom training based on those job stories for that customer, for that company. And it's a 3 day workshop where everybody all of the ICs will listen to that audio. We'll go through each of the interviews.

Alli Blum [00:23:27]:
We'll go over the 4 forces of jobs to be done. We'll build the Pixar story. We'll have some conversations about the social, functional, emotional fact forces at play. And then at the end, we'll have each of the folks participating who've never heard our customers before. Maybe they're hearing about jobs to be done for the first time. They're going to cluster, and they're going to find the same jobs that we would have found as very experienced researchers because it's going to jump right off the page. We're doing the same exercise. And then at the end, we're working with each individual department to say, okay.

Alli Blum [00:24:02]:
This is how we apply it to our copy programs. This is how we apply it to our landing pages or or our, funnels. This is how we apply it to our content strategy. And we're going to have those conversations where we're, like we the voice of customer data that's in those 10 transcripts is an essential building block for ICs to figure out what they're going to do to help design those experiences of purchase and use for those customers. And by giving them that immersive experience and helping them, find those connections and see those patterns, they're going to walk out of that with a much, much deeper understanding and belief and trust in that framework, lower likelihood of mutiny because they found the same thing that you found. Everybody goes through and everyone comes to the same conclusion, so everybody's bought in at the end. And then you're able to move forward with with that same, with that knowledge that you've all gone through that process. I also recommend this for executives to go through a 3 day workshop listening to the jobs.

Alli Blum [00:25:01]:
I I it is a much, much harder sell. It is a much, much harder sell to get that to get that. Not impossible, but much harder.

Ramli John [00:25:10]:
I love that. You're, like, really went deep there. Like, I really love how you're you're introduced in the 30 second clips of voice, of the customer. So that you mentioned the word empathy there. You're really building that empathy and getting that next step was like, how do you apply this to your copy? How do you apply this to, you can apply this to so many things. That's why I love it. In your sales pitches, in in how you do customer success, to to upgrade, like, there it just overall, such a great framework. Thank you for showing how to get by in here.

Ramli John [00:25:41]:
I wanna share gear.

Alli Blum [00:25:42]:
Oh, I wanna share so fun. I could talk about it all day. It's so fun. Thank you so much.

Ramli John [00:25:47]:
No problem. No problem at all. Thank you for sharing that. I wanna share with Garrison talk about career power ups. You've been in SaaS now for over a decade. You worked at different product and marketing and growth roles at Atlassian, Mural, and different other SaaS companies. I'm curious, what is the power up that's helped accelerate your career? And it could be anything soft, like soft skill, like community and making friends with other marketers and product leaders or something more of a a hard skill,

Alli Blum [00:26:16]:
you

Ramli John [00:26:17]:
know, around user research or or something else.

Alli Blum [00:26:19]:
Okay. I want to share 2, and we're probably running long. You can pick which one for 1.

Announcer [00:26:24]:
You can watch.

Alli Blum [00:26:26]:
Okay. So, so there's 2. And the first one that I'll I'll share is we're chatting about this earlier. The first one is learning how to play my infinite game.

Ramli John [00:26:36]:
Mhmm.

Alli Blum [00:26:36]:
So I learned about this concept. There's a finite game, which you play to win. You play a game of chess. You play soccer. You play you play a game. There's a clear winner, a clear loser, a clear timeline. You play it to win it. An infinite game is different.

Alli Blum [00:26:52]:
An infinite game is something that you play to play. There's actually, there's a there's a great quote. I think it's Walt Disney. Is it Walt Disney? I I'm probably gonna get this wrong. He says, we don't make money. We don't make movies to make money. We make money to make more movies. Mhmm.

Alli Blum [00:27:07]:
So I I love the way that he puts that because we're, like, we're doing this because we wanna keep doing this. And what I the one of the biggest power ups for me has been discovering what my infinite game is. Mhmm. And this took a long, long time. So 10 years in SaaS, 15 years working, I started in marketing, did a lot of PR, did research, did UX. And the whole time I'm like, am I is there something wrong with me? Like, I seem to get bored easily. I'm trying a new skill. I'm working in a new department, like, every 18 months.

Alli Blum [00:27:40]:
How it this doesn't seem like that common of a thing. And I started to come to a realization once I made my way through to, product and now engineering and hopefully hopefully next up finance, that this is part of my infinite game. I love finding these problems where I can use some of the things I already know how to do and find a new skill that I don't know how to do and find a problem that hat is gonna generate really great outcomes. If we know how to solve it, I'm gonna get to learn something really new and challenging that I'll be able to use on the next problem. Next time I see something else I don't know how to do. And then at the end, we're gonna get the outcomes. We're going to have the really great results. We're all gonna be really excited.

Alli Blum [00:28:24]:
I'm gonna have made some new colleagues, all new friends, and great results. So learning that and coming to accept that that is what brings me the most joy, and that's kind of what's been driving me all along has made it a lot easier for me to be able to say to reframe the conversation, which once was, oh, yeah. I do a lot of different things. I wanna change my mind. But now it's one of, I understand how SaaS businesses work because I want to work because I've made a a point of going across the teams and across the departments and across the functions and skills to say, what does a business look like when you're sitting in a marketer's chair? What does it look like when you're sitting in a researcher's chair? What does it look like when you're sitting in a VP's chair? What does it look like when you're sitting in a principal's chair? What does it look like when you're looking at a spreadsheet of finance data? What does it look like when you're staring at the user research? And you get a different perspective in each of those chairs that helps inform a lot of those, makes it, it makes me better at solving a lot of those problems because I can pull from all of the different disciplines as we go. All the frameworks all the time is, like, that movie, everything everywhere, all at once is is kind of, like, my I love a movie. Yeah. So that's the first one, finding my infinite game.

Alli Blum [00:29:41]:
And the second one is something that I call leading by coalition. So this is something I've learned about from a great book that I recommend. It's on change management. It's a hard for business review collection of essays. And kind of like you're you're talking about this a little bit earlier where, you're going to want to when you when you want to make something happen, when you want your company to adopt jobs to be done, that's change management. And I think step 1 of change management, there's, there's a great, like, this is a rubric. There are ways to do this. It's a well practiced plan, which was very exciting for me to learn new framework for all the time.

Alli Blum [00:30:15]:
And there are ways to you first, you need to find that reason for why you need to make a shift, to make a change, and it's gonna be different for everyone. And then you're going to start to build that coalition. That might actually be step 3. I think I may have missed a step. And I love this concept. And I started realizing that this is another one of my infinite games.

Ramli John [00:30:34]:
I'd

Alli Blum [00:30:34]:
love to find, find the thing that I know is most important based on the chair I'm sitting at, sitting in the data that I have access to, the the opportunities that are on the table, I might say, okay. This is what we need to do. Very often, it's getting jobs to be done off the table. Sometimes it's, you know, a product initiative. Sometimes it's a marketing initiative. There's some initiative that's going to operate cross functionally with lots of people involved, and it's probably gonna be a little bit uncomfortable to get going. So I love finding that thing and saying, okay. We're not leading by consensus here.

Alli Blum [00:31:10]:
We're not coming into a room trying to get everybody to agree on something. I know what I want to happen. And what I want to do is go find other people who are seeing a problem, but the way that I'm seeing it. So people who are also like, yeah. That is I have noticed that too, and I think I can solve it, or I've wanted to solve that problem, and, you know, this is what I've tried so far. I haven't been able to. We all kind of agree. And maybe we all have different skill sets.

Alli Blum [00:31:33]:
Maybe I have someone with greater technical, maybe greater engineering skills, maybe somebody has a greater, program management. And and then we're gonna come together, and we're gonna say, this is this is what we wanna do. And I love being able to to show up with a with a a plan that is just concrete enough or a prototype that is just enough of an example of what it is that I think a solution might look like to say, okay. I think this is the direction that I wanna head in, but I wanna get your take. Tell show me what needs to be better. Tell me how tell me what I'm missing about this for this to be really successful. What makes this fail that may not be on my, on my radar screen right now? And then over time, getting those positions, building it up. So it's not just something that Allie made.

Alli Blum [00:32:14]:
It's something that Allie and Romley made. It's something that Allie and Romley and Asia made. And it's something that a lot more people are invested in, and we're going to build it into something that's much bigger and much more significant, has more staying power. So learning to do that as opposed to what I did early on in my career, which was sit in my chair and grumble about how nobody wanted to listen to the customers, this has been something that has not only helped me advance my initiatives, but it's also brought me so much more joy at work to get to to work with my colleagues in in that way and and get to share feedback in a way that, helps me continue to apprentice under my colleagues and and learn from them and still get really great results.

Ramli John [00:32:54]:
If you enjoyed this episode, you'd love the Marketing Power Ups newsletter. I share the actionable takeaways and break down the frameworks of world class marketers. Go to marketing powerups.com to subscribe, and you'll instantly unlock the 3 best frameworks that top marketers use, hit their KPIs consistently, and wow their colleagues. I wanna say thank you to you for listening, and please like and follow Marketing Power Ups on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. If you feel extra generous, had to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Leave a comment on YouTube. It goes a long way in others finding out about marketing problems. Thanks to Mary Sullivan for creating the artwork and design, and thank you to Faisal, Kaiko, for editing the intro video.

Alli Blum [00:33:35]:
And, of

Ramli John [00:33:36]:
course, thank you for listening. That's all for now. Have a powered update.

Announcer [00:33:40]:
Marketing power ups. Until the next episode.

Ramli John [00:00:00]:
Getting your brand message just right can make all the difference with your marketing. But what really goes into crafting a message that sticks with your customers? Today, Vaseline Walsh Nova, a marketing strategist, shares her brand messaging framework. In this episode of Marketing Power Ups, you learn, first of all, why brand messaging is more than a catchy slogan. 2nd, Vaseline's brand messaging framework. 3rd, an example of a brand message that Vaseline really loves. And finally, 4th, a career power up that has helped accelerate Vaseline's career. Are you ready? Let's go.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:00:32]:
Marketing power ups. Ready? Go. Here's your host, Bradley Jones. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We're gonna be talking about your your brand messaging template. And particularly, you know, let's talk about why you think it's, like, important for you for marketers to to start off here. Really, in terms of of brand messaging in itself, why why is this so you have this you have this guide on your site. I'm gonna link it in the show notes.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:01:11]:
But you talk about what is and isn't in brand messaging, which I love because, like, before you dig into something, like, you don't just say what it is, but what isn't it. So let's start off there. What is your response to that? Like, somebody say, Brad, messaging. You know, like, that could mean a lot of things to many different people. But you're, you know, you have you've created this cool template. What is it and what is it for you?

Vassilena Valchanova [00:01:37]:
Yeah. So, the way I think of messaging in general and I've titled the the template and the and the guide, you're linking to as, brand messaging specifically, but it can also work for product messaging. If you're a multiproduct brand, then you want to to create different messaging for different brands. So essentially, the way I think about messaging is that it's sort of this bridge. On the one hand side, you have your positioning, which is more the where are you competing in terms of, like, what market you're competing in? What are your competitors and how are you different compared to them? And, what are you bringing to this very, very specific, very narrow, private customer that you're trying to approach? Positioning is essentially, like, the philosophy behind the the brand or the product. On the other hand side, you have, you know, your typical copywriting, which is the words you have on the page itself or in the sales deck or whatever you're using to approach your customers. So this is already like the very the very narrow and specific wording you're actually using. And messaging sort of falls in between these 2 and bridges them because it gives you it's not so much about how you're seeing things as with copywriting, but it's more about what you want to say.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:03:06]:
So what are these 4 or 5 different key, messages as it were that you want to stay in the mind of your customer once, they've seen your page or they've left the sales demo or whatever it is. So this it's sort of this this bridge between the two, which makes sure that your copywriting is not just gonna be cool and funky and interesting sounding, but it's actually gonna convey these key messages that you have identified already. And it will also keep your copyright aligned so you don't just, you know, go in all sorts of different directions just because, you know, you have this blank space on the page at me, still in.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:03:52]:
That makes sense. It it's almost like what I heard is really it's the message that you wanna like, after the audience or the visitor, your website visitor has come and, like, taking your information, It's what you wanted to take away and, like, recall, is what exactly I heard from you. Like, it's it's exactly would you say that's, that's exactly what that is?

Vassilena Valchanova [00:04:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:04:15]:
In terms of, like, what isn't it? Like, you know, it can get confusing. What are some stuff that, you know, oh, exactly not that? Maybe one of them is like, oh, it's just the stuff on your copy. But I'm what I'm hearing is that it's it's beyond that. It's actually the thing that ties all your your your whatever's on your site together, even your content, everything else.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:04:37]:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So messaging usually gets confused with copywriting and this is one of the main the main, sort of hurdles that we need to surmount with customers I usually work with. Because when we're starting to work on a messaging project and we start building this up, and I give them an example of this, brand messaging. And and they look at it and they immediately jump to, oh, but this word over here, that doesn't necessarily fit with what we're we have in mind, or this phrase here is a bit clunky. I'm like, guys, just forget about it. We first need to focus on whether or not this is what we want to say, And then we can polish the actual way this will be said when we go to actually, you know, implementing that messaging on a landing page itself. So this is where the choice of words will matter.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:05:37]:
And now what we wanna have is even, like, the most basic, phraseology that you can use, like, the simplest terms that you can use for your brand messaging, the better. It almost reminds me of there's I don't know if you follow this guy, of the xkcd comics. Yeah. He's like, a brilliant science nerd, and he has this book called Thing Explainer, which is a brilliant book. It explains complex scientific concepts using just the I think it was 10,000 most commonly used words in the English language. So, when he's talking about, like, the, the top of a rocket, it just like, the the diagram of it just says, this, point this needs to point up.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:06:32]:
So so

Vassilena Valchanova [00:06:32]:
it's it's kinda similar to that. Like, we don't want you to have, like, flowery language or this edgy copywriting style that's gonna fit your brand voice. We just want to have the facts straight and understand what are the key things that we want to say. So it's definitely not copywriting. It's not like a short slogan that you're gonna put at the top, of a landing page or at the end of an app. And it's also not, your brand's mission or vision. Messaging needs to be about all the customer is getting from you now rather than what your investors bought in when you presented your general idea of your of your product. You know? Like, it's not about the the 10, 15, 20 year plan.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:07:25]:
It's about what's happening.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:07:26]:
Like that. I think it's really about, you know, the what is the value? What is the benefit that they're getting right now compared to what they were doing previously? I guess at least to your brand messaging framework, you listed out on that page that before you fill out that template, there's, like, some key elements that the marketers need to have the customer's desire and also the competitor's promise. And you're really, like, trying to understand what are what is it they're getting at that moment by those two things, would you say?

Vassilena Valchanova [00:07:57]:
Yeah. So, in order to to create that, that messaging, you really need to understand why customers are interested in your product. And I really love, the way, for example, April Dunford talks about positioning in that same sense. Like, she she says, I wouldn't start, a positioning project with the company until they've had a bunch of successful clients to learn from. And it's sort of the same with messaging. You need to to have these, you you first need to have your, some initial traction at least. You need to have your idea validated, And then you need to to have, customers to learn from. I would generally, and, like, in 90% of the cases where I work with clients, it would, mean that we would either survey or talk to customers directly.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:08:53]:
Or if this is impossible, for example, in some cases where we are, working on complex enterprise solutions, we wouldn't necessarily have the luxury to talk to, like, 15 CTOs of big companies. Right? And in this case, we would talk to the people who actually talk to the target customer. So these would be the salespeople or customer success team. But in the end of the day, you need to be able to boil this down to what real life people are actually getting out of the product, and what do they want to achieve with it, and why do they actually like it or not. And this actually serves two purposes. First off, it it means that you are really basing this off on something that's concrete and objective and not just on, like, assumptions that boiled up from, like, a 2 hour meeting. And then also for me as an external consultant, it also means that when I present the brand messaging to the client, I can also say, this isn't just, you know, my opinion, man. Like, it's something that came out of of real discussions, and it's based on what customers are actually saying or or what they have said to your team.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:10:14]:
So it's it also facilitates that that buying within the company because sometimes the founders would be looking at the long term vision. And when they don't see that reflected in the messaging, they will feel, you know, almost cheated from this project. They'll be like, oh, but you're numbing or you're dumbing down the idea that we have. Like, you're you're making it sound like so much less than what we want it to be in the future. I'm like, no. Like, people want to know what you're giving them now rather than what you plan to give them in the future, you know. And and having that, again, bring this back to your original question, bring, having that that clear understanding why customers are coming to you for a solution means that you can much more easily convince new people to actually try your solution as well.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:11:05]:
Yeah. It's essentially like trying to find out what's working with your best customers so that you can repeat that same ingredient or process or recipe so that you can get more of that same customer over and over again, and really understanding that itself. That's super cool. Thank you for for sharing that. Let's jump into your your template, the brand messaging framework. What are some elements that you need? You you shared a few elements there, as people fill that out. Can you talk to can you talk about some of the elements that's involved in that that framework?

Vassilena Valchanova [00:11:39]:
So what we have in the framework are some parts that are more or less or rather will always be for internal purposes only, and this is where your market category frame of reference comes in. So what's what market are you competing in essentially? And the competitive alternatives that people usually look at and how you can differentiate, from them, when it comes to a specific, you know, potential customer discussion. Or even, like, if you're not, if you don't have a sales team where you talk to a customer directly, you may want to have that reflected in some shape or form on the site. And these 2, sort of, elements, they come, from April Dunford positioning, framework. So it's nothing nothing that I can take credit for. But I really feel that it's helpful to have that concept of what's what's the the market we're competing in. And, sometimes it it feels that this is so basic that we don't want to think about it or even, like, don't feel that it's worth mentioning. But oftentimes, it would require an additional discussion.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:12:56]:
For example, I'm currently working with a client where we have this this discussion on how to how to name the thing that they're selling. And I'm under NDA, so I'll need to keep this very, very high level. But essentially, they have a vision of what they want to bring into the market and how that's different. And at the same time, when we were doing the research, we were hearing different words from their existing customers. So what we ended up doing is in the market category frame of reference in the the format, we typed in the actual phrase that customers are using to for a solution in this moment and by extension coming to them, through this through this same key phrase. And, what came out of it was that, yeah, we want to position this in a bit of a different way, or rather we wanna talk how we build up on top of that existing category. But we need to start with that and we need to acknowledge that this is what people are actually looking for. And you can't just, you know, go about saying what you want to say.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:14:05]:
You need to listen to what people are are looking for and what are the answers they they're looking for. Right?

Vassilena Valchanova [00:14:12]:
I like that. And and that's important because sometimes, maybe it's marketers, maybe it's the founders, they try to make up a new word or a new category so that they're like, oh, we're Yeah. We're the best here. But it just creates confusion in people's mind. I remember, you know, I'm trying to think of a term right now that's made up. It's like, wow. I don't understand what that means. Like, revenue acceleration platform.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:14:36]:
I remember seeing that one time, and I don't wanna call the company out because I don't remember it. But I remember just like, what is that? I understand accelerating revenue, but, like, what the heck?

Vassilena Valchanova [00:14:48]:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, just don't get me started on category creation. I I think this this trend has, like, subsided a bit now, but after, you know, like, I I feel that no, you know, conference or the webinar or podcast I looked at or listened to in the past bunch of years could go without mentioning drift and the way they did conversational marketing, the end of the day, if you're confusing the customer, then it's it's just, like, not in anyone's, you know, and then and no one is standing to gain from this. And I really love I just recently, read, the original positioning book by, Auri and Jack Trout. And one thing that that struck, sort of a chord with me was the fact that they say, this is all about creating meaning from connections that are already in the mind of your customer. And the biggest issue we usually face is that this is about simplifying things down to what's already in the mind of the customer.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:16:00]:
And as human beings, we feel that something that's simple is too simplistic, and we crave some complexity or we want to add complexity to it. And this is exactly what positioning is not about. And it's in the same vein of law. Messaging is not about, you know, confusing your reader into, like, believing that there's a category. It's about telling them, oh, we're actually in this category you're already looking for, but we're better in this and that way, compared to the alternatives that are out there.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:16:33]:
That that's so such a powerful thing you just said there. I think often, maybe, you know, we think that the way we sell is making it sound like we're smarter. You know, that that is important. But, like, there's a point where you sounding smart becomes confusing. It was like, I have no idea. You have to speak. This is why I love this process that you're talking about. It's like you're using the words of your customer rather than using words that you wish that you use so that you can sound like that, that you're making up something new.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:17:07]:
Like, you're you're cutting edge or something like that, but it's essentially like, hey. What do your customers already use? Like, talk about how do they describe your product, and what is the value that they're talking about there so that it's important for you to say it that way. You shared that example with that particular product. Is there any other examples that you can share, you know, borrowing the obviously, there's DNA NDA, that potentially you might have, but if you, you know, fill this filled out for for a company.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:17:36]:
I think that, the one the one thing that almost always comes up is, when we're looking at the alternatives, which is actually the next the next component of the framework, I feel that when we when we start initially discussing alternatives, first off, there's gonna be 20 different brand names that people just throw at the wall. And then, the other common scenario would be to just focus on direct competitors alone. And, what I usually try to do is sort of expand that understanding of what an alternative actually is because it's not about just another tool or another platform. It can be even just, you know, doing nothing about this problem that we hear a solution is solving. Maybe some customers are fine with, you know, feeling that constant searing pain that in your mind should drive them to to try your problem, but maybe they just don't see it that way. Or the the other case could be, you know, we're just gonna throw warm volleys at the problem, and we're gonna hire more people to actually do this thing the hard way. And this is an alternative to doing it the easy way with your with your solution. And the third one in that category that always comes up is just using something that's already existing and that's already out there.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:19:08]:
And in this case, an example that comes up, before going freelance, I was an in house marketer for a resume building app. And what we were trying to do is, you know, we were keeping a really close eye at the competitors in the market, and this was a category that was booming at the time. And we were like, oh, this competitor added this feature and this competitor added that feature. But at the same time, what came out of customer interviews and of, you know, surveys we were doing during onboarding, it turned out that, like, literally 95% of people were just using Microsoft Word to to do their resumes. So it wasn't about showing people we are better than all the other, you know, specialized resume builders out there. It's about showing people that we are better than Microsoft Word.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:20:01]:
It's so good. You know, I was like, oh, we're better than Microsoft Word. And that's probably an easier comparison because people understand Microsoft Word. They use it for their resume. And it's like now you can tailor a message around that rather than Exactly. Oh, look at x, y, and zed. You might actually pushing them to try those other ones out, or they're already looking at it rather than, you know, making sure that you're communicating how you're better than Microsoft Word itself.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:20:28]:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:20:30]:
That makes sense. So you got the, the alternatives there. And then in terms of the other elements, what are some of the other elements in that framework?

Vassilena Valchanova [00:20:41]:
Yeah. So there's 2 other components to the framework. One is the overall, brand, messaging or product messaging, but that's actually the result of the final 4th component, which are the key pillars. I'm calling this key pillars, and it's similar to what some people call, benefits or value or, you know, even sometimes it gets a bit complicated with desired outcomes for the customer. So there's a lot of wording out there in the marketing world because, you know, we as marketers love to to complicate our lives, and we don't have, like, standardized language around anything. But, what I mean when I'm talking about key pillars is a combination of different, this can be be features. It can be your business practices, your pricing or business model. It can be a bunch of different elements that come together to provide some type of value for the customer.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:21:43]:
And I know that's that's very high level, so I can give you I can give you an example here. If we're thinking about, about Slack, let's say, their whole, messaging currently is about, increasing speed. And this happens in a bunch of different ways. On the one hand side, it's increasing speed by bringing all the information together. On the other hand side, it's about, building speed, through different automations. So these are, examples of product features. If we are thinking about, something beyond product features, which is what most product marketers would naturally go after. You can think about a pricing model as, as an element that goes into these pillars.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:22:35]:
So for example, I have clients who are competing against alternatives which have, at the start, what looks like very lucrative pricing for their clients. But as the product the company grows, because they're billing based on usage, the solution gets really, really expensive. So what we included in the messaging was more information about the pricing structure. Not so much the actual price itself in terms of, you know, dollars and cents, but how what we are charging you for and how that actually is designed to help growing, companies and bigger companies, which was our key target market rather than smaller players who are maybe just starting out and benefit from a different different pricing model. So this is how this can be this can be part of it. Or if you're thinking about, you know, services businesses, oftentimes what we'd include here would be, the way they are actually doing business. So some proprietary approaches they've used or how many, people are involved in a single account to provide better service, or anything else for that matter that's actually leading to to particular value for the customer. And, the way this is structured is that we start off by asking sort of, like, the simplest questions, which are what do customers value in the product itself? And you'll start hearing different bits and pieces if you're doing customer interviews or if you're conducting, like, some other form of research.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:24:17]:
You would hear, for example, these three features that come up time and time again. And then when you ask the follow-up question, like, what does that enable you to do? Why is that, you know, important to you? You hear what's the actual value that this feature brings. And you listen for these sort of value type phrases and you hear something, let's say, we're often hearing about how this, allows people more freedom to conduct business the way you're they're accustomed to. So that's that's a point where, you know, the flexibility of our product is helping, you know, people implement it in their existing workflow without need of a change. So that may be a big a big value point for a product. And then you sort of reverse engineer it. And when you look at this this category of value that comes up again and again, you're like, okay. So what are the different features, business capabilities, and so on that actually enable customers to receive that value.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:25:19]:
And this is how you sort of you first go broad to hear about the different the different ways the product creates value. And then you you narrow that down and you say, for this specific type of value, what are the features we have that are helping with it?

Vassilena Valchanova [00:25:33]:
I I I love that. You're, like, really mapping out, you know, the capabilities of the product to the desires and the value that the the customers are really looking for with that. Thank you so much for sharing this. I'm gonna link this in the show notes and description once again. I I wanna shift gears and actually talk about career power ups. These are things that's helped you with your particular career. You've been a digital marketing strategist and educator for, more than a decade actually as I if you're, you know, checking out your LinkedIn. But curious what's a career power up that's helped you accelerate your career throughout this this journey that you've had so far.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:26:12]:
So there are 2 that I wanna talk to. And 1, I fear it's it's gonna be nothing new because as a listener to the podcast, I've heard almost every marketer around there mention it again and again. And it's the network you build and the people you actually connect with. So I actually, came across that power pretty late in my career, just in terms of, like, the the marketing landscape in my home country of Bulgaria isn't that well developed. So as I started growing in my role, I I needed more connections and I needed more people to talk to who were in the same position and who were working on the same problems. And finding online communities out there where marketers gather and where you can talk to people, this is one of the the best hacks for, you know, on the one hand side, building up skills and learning new things. But on the other more human side of it, it's about feeling you're not, you know, alone in the journey and that you're not a complete scrub for not being able to, you know, figure this out. You gradually start seeing that everyone has the same problems and is struggling in much the same ways.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:27:29]:
And having that sense of communities is really key. And the other thing which I think has helped a lot is I have this rule where when I read something that's really interesting and really curious, I try to link it to a specific, action stem that I can put on my to do list. So I read a ton of stuff. I go through a bajillion different courses every year to level up. But just learning without implementing what you learn doesn't really serve any purpose. Anytime I'd read something curious or, find, like, practice that I haven't tested before, I'm gonna figure out a way to actually do it in real life and try to learn by doing rather than just, you know, consuming

Vassilena Valchanova [00:28:18]:
I love that. That's really, you know, the first one in Resideo suite me so much, the the power of community and, like, connecting with folks. This this is why you know, that's the reason why I'm here. There's a lot of people that's helped me, get to where I am today. So I appreciate you sharing that. That's actually how we met. I'm not sure. You know, I actually come across your work previously.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:28:41]:
A lot of my book in product led onboarding, this part there about jobs to be done. I came across your article around this. So, Fazzy, I'm not sure. I think I messaged this to you on LinkedIn once, but, like, that part was inspired by your writing. And we met at Caitlin Burgoyne and Neil O'Grady's course. I think I I saw you. I was like, oh, I know that person's I know that name.

Ramli John [00:29:03]:
I've seen that.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:29:04]:
Actually, I'm not sure if you know, but there's a few links that, in product led onboarding that goes to your to that specific article. I I mentioned that there. Right? So Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna look at the show notes, for people who are not familiar with that jobs to be done in an article interview, jobs to be done style interview that that you have yourself.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:29:26]:
That's great. Yeah. I'm 100% in love with jobs to be done as an approach, and it's basically, in some shape or form, present in any any customer research ideas. So, yeah, big thumbs up there. And, again, like, it's it's so great to finally, you know, see each other face to face after, you know, being on the course together and exchanging messages. I'd been following the podcast for a

Vassilena Valchanova [00:29:57]:
brand messaging template and framework. Your link, that brand messaging template and framework, your LinkedIn. I think, that's probably where you want to send them as well. Is there anywhere else you want people to go to to check out your work, online?

Vassilena Valchanova [00:30:09]:
Yeah. LinkedIn is the best place to connect with me. And if you do, just shoot me a message that you listen to this podcast, what you like them, what you didn't like about it. And, yeah, other than than my site and and LinkedIn, I have a newsletter, which, I try to keep up to a regular, you know, schedule. And every week, I send out, 5 resources that I've come across during the week that I think will help marketers and anyone interested in implementing marketing practices in their work. So if you guys are curious, just head to my website and, you'll also see the newsletter section there too.

Ramli John [00:30:49]:
If you enjoyed this episode, you'd love the Marketing Power Ups newsletter. I share the actionable takeaways and break down the frameworks of world class marketers. You can go to marketingpowerups.com to subscribe, and you'll instantly unlock the 3 best frameworks that top marketers use, hit their KPIs consistently, and wow their colleagues. I wanna say thank you to you for listening, and please like and follow Marketing Power Ups on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. If you feel extra generous, kindly leave a review on on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And leave a comment on YouTube. It goes a long way in others finding out about marketing problems. Thanks to Mary Sullivan for creating the artwork and design, and thank you to Faisal, Heiko, for editing the intro video.

Ramli John [00:31:31]:
And, of course, thank you for listening. That's all for now. Have a powered update.

Vassilena Valchanova [00:31:36]:
Marketing power ups. Until the next episode.

[00:00:00]

[00:00:00] Ramli John: Marketers are often too focused on acquisition and not enough on retention, renewal and advocacy.
[00:00:05] Ramli John: It's fair, acquiring new customers is exciting, but if you struggle to make them stick around to become advocates of your product, you'll struggle to build a sustainable business.
[00:00:14] Ramli John: Today, Nick Bennett, cofounder of Tax shares his people first go to market strategy.
[00:00:18] Ramli John: In episode 63 of the marketing Pop show, you learn first of all the importance of increasing renewals and advocates.
[00:00:23] Ramli John: Second, how to create campaign his focus on increasing renewals.
[00:00:26] Ramli John: Third, how Nick generated over 81 g two reviews in 48 hours and number four, a power up that has accelerated Nick's career.
[00:00:34] Ramli John: Before we get started, I've created a free power up cheat sheet that you can download and apply Nick's people first go to market strategy.
[00:00:40] Ramli John: Get it now marketingparups.com or find that link in the show notes and description.

[00:00:44] Developing a Go-to-Market Model for Airmeet with Nick Bennett

[00:00:44] Ramli John: Are you ready?
[00:00:45] Ramli John: Let's go.
[00:00:46] Nick Bennett: Marketing power ups.
[00:00:49] Nick Bennett: Ready, go.
[00:00:53] Nick Bennett: Here's your host, Rambly John.
[00:00:58] Ramli John: I'm super excited to be talking about first go to market model that you've been working with Mark.
[00:01:05] Ramli John: Maybe.
[00:01:06] Ramli John: Let's jump in.
[00:01:07] Ramli John: How did it come about?
[00:01:08] Ramli John: Like, you and Mark were chatting, you were both working at the same company, and then I guess through conversation they're like, this is what we need to focus on.
[00:01:17] Ramli John: And did it just come like, did it come naturally or did you workshop it through over time?
[00:01:24] Ramli John: I'm curious how this model that you and him have been working on came about.
[00:01:29] Nick Bennett: Yeah, so he was actually the CMO of Airmeat, and I was on his team.
[00:01:35] Nick Bennett: And funny enough, I worked for Alice before that.
[00:01:38] Nick Bennett: And Mark and I went to dinner.
[00:01:40] Nick Bennett: It was like October of 2022.
[00:01:42] Nick Bennett: And we were talking about like, hey, future, what's next?
[00:01:47] Nick Bennett: He's like, hey, why don't you come build out this creator thing at Airmeat?
[00:01:52] Nick Bennett: And for anyone that's listening, Airmeat is a virtual event platform.
[00:01:57] Nick Bennett: And so I was like, all right, cool.
[00:01:59] Nick Bennett: I was exploring what's next.
[00:02:01] Nick Bennett: And so I went and I had a team of about five or six people, but I led this creator piece.
[00:02:08] Nick Bennett: I led events, field, marketing, community, social media.
[00:02:13] Nick Bennett: So I had a lot of different pieces that reported to me.
[00:02:16] Nick Bennett: And June of this year, he was like, hey, I'm going to have to lay you off.
[00:02:22] Nick Bennett: And I was like, yeah.
[00:02:24] Nick Bennett: And I was like, oh, I've gone through this before.
[00:02:26] Nick Bennett: And I was like, you know what?
[00:02:27] Nick Bennett: No big deal.
[00:02:28] Nick Bennett: I get it.
[00:02:30] Nick Bennett: Tech is a bloodbath right now anyway.
[00:02:33] Ramli John: Yeah, it is.
[00:02:34] Nick Bennett: So I was like, all right.
[00:02:35] Nick Bennett: And then he was like, I'm going to be leaving as well.
[00:02:38] Ramli John: Okay.

[00:02:38] Starting a Company and Launching with Hype

[00:02:38] Nick Bennett: Have you ever thought, would you ever be open to starting a company together?
[00:02:42] Ramli John: Oh, what?
[00:02:42] Nick Bennett: And at the time, I was like, well, I just had twins.
[00:02:46] Nick Bennett: And I was like, at the time, they were probably, like, two or three months old.
[00:02:50] Nick Bennett: And I was like, I don't know, is this a good time?
[00:02:53] Nick Bennett: But I was like, you know what?
[00:02:54] Nick Bennett: Screw it.
[00:02:55] Nick Bennett: Who cares?
[00:02:56] Nick Bennett: Let's try it.
[00:02:58] Nick Bennett: The fortunate thing of building your brand online is if something doesn't succeed, you can go back and ask people for a job.
[00:03:05] Nick Bennett: You can reach out to your connection.
[00:03:07] Nick Bennett: Someone's going to help you find something.
[00:03:08] Nick Bennett: So I was like, listen, I'll give it a few quarters.
[00:03:11] Nick Bennett: If it doesn't work, I'll go find a w two job, and I'll just kind of, like, start over.
[00:03:17] Nick Bennett: And we did it.
[00:03:18] Nick Bennett: We soft launched it in June.
[00:03:21] Ramli John: That was cool, right?
[00:03:23] Nick Bennett: Yeah.
[00:03:24] Nick Bennett: And then we hard launched it August 1.
[00:03:27] Nick Bennett: So he finished up his time at airmeat through the end of July, and then come August 1, we were like, all right, we're going all in on this.
[00:03:35] Nick Bennett: And so we actually rented or we chartered a photo.
[00:03:40] Nick Bennett: Yeah, we hired a video crew and kind of, we went out and shot all this content of what Tac is, what people first is all that stuff, because we wanted to kind of like everyone.
[00:03:53] Nick Bennett: I mean, if you think about people first, you've probably been doing it a majority of your life, but people just don't connect the dots.
[00:04:00] Nick Bennett: And so if you think about a people first go to market, it's a pretty simple sentence.
[00:04:05] Nick Bennett: It's like a business strategy that uses relationships and partnerships to create, capture, and convert demand into revenue.
[00:04:12] Nick Bennett: But it's designed to put people at the center of every interaction and experience.
[00:04:19] Nick Bennett: You don't have to be a b two b company to do this.
[00:04:21] Nick Bennett: There's lots of, like, I mean, your butcher shop, your fish mongler, all these different shops that might be in your town or city or whatever, they're probably people first to a certain degree as well.
[00:04:32] Nick Bennett: If they're putting people at the center of everything and just kind of like, not relying on that company first mindset, it does a lot.
[00:04:40] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:04:42] Ramli John: First of all, I like how you and Mark launched it.
[00:04:46] Ramli John: There's this concept.
[00:04:48] Ramli John: I call it hype, people who can hype up something.
[00:04:51] Ramli John: And then I remember, just like, first of all, you started with a teaser.
[00:04:55] Ramli John: We're launching something.
[00:04:56] Ramli John: And then there was like a picture of a sailboat or something.
[00:04:58] Ramli John: I can't remember.
[00:05:02] Ramli John: Out comes this video, and it looked like a rapper music video.
[00:05:07] Ramli John: You're both on a big boat, and then you're just talking about it.
[00:05:12] Ramli John: How did that concept come about?
[00:05:13] Ramli John: I mean, maybe it's a play on the word with the word.
[00:05:17] Nick Bennett: So it a.
[00:05:19] Nick Bennett: I'm not a sailor.
[00:05:20] Nick Bennett: I didn't actually know what the name meant.
[00:05:24] Nick Bennett: Mark grew up sailing.
[00:05:25] Nick Bennett: He's from port, mass.
[00:05:27] Nick Bennett: So, like, on the water.
[00:05:29] Nick Bennett: And so attack is actually how you change direction on a sailboat.
[00:05:36] Nick Bennett: So when you put up the sails, you tack, and that's how you turn.
[00:05:42] Nick Bennett: And so it's like, all right, cool.
[00:05:44] Nick Bennett: The pressure on any business today is immense.
[00:05:47] Nick Bennett: And so you need to be able to tack in different directions.
[00:05:52] Nick Bennett: And so it's basically shifting like a tide shift kind of is a model that's, again, very much focused on partnering with software to partnering with people to grow, and so that's how you move.
[00:06:09] Nick Bennett: I've learned a ton about sailing, which is crazy.
[00:06:12] Ramli John: So good.
[00:06:13] Ramli John: And then the video around sailboat, I'm guessing Mark was the one, let's go get on a boat.
[00:06:18] Ramli John: Let's do this video.
[00:06:21] Nick Bennett: It was his idea.
[00:06:22] Nick Bennett: And I was like, oh, yeah.
[00:06:24] Nick Bennett: It was literally a beautiful day to be out on the water, too.
[00:06:27] Nick Bennett: And we were out there for, like, 3 hours.
[00:06:29] Nick Bennett: And it was just, like, so much fun to be able to just kind of, one, learn how to basically drive a sailboat, but two, understand what this all means and how it plays into the larger story.
[00:06:43] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:06:45] Nick Bennett: I like that.
[00:06:47] Ramli John: I think we're seeing that more and more where people are thinking about doing creative ways to launch us.
[00:06:53] Ramli John: I'm seeing mutiny do this where last Christmas they hired a rapper to sing like a song.
[00:07:02] Ramli John: I think that's part of this model here.
[00:07:06] Ramli John: Visually, I'm going to show it on the screen.
[00:07:08] Ramli John: For people who are watching this YouTube, it's like this circle, this loop with community led growth, member led growth, and customer led growth.

[00:07:18] A conversation about the people-first go-to-market strategy

[00:07:18] Ramli John: Can you talk a little bit about how.
[00:07:20] Ramli John: I mean, you don't have to go through every single one, but why this particular shape with this circle and how to essentially describe it?
[00:07:32] Nick Bennett: Yeah, so there's really, like seven go to market pieces that fall into this whole people first thing.
[00:07:39] Nick Bennett: And so you have channels, you have offers, and they all kind of play a different way.
[00:07:45] Nick Bennett: So ultimately what you want to do is using the three different types of channels, the three different types of offers in an overall partnership strategy that kind of encompasses the entire thing.
[00:07:57] Nick Bennett: And so each channel is designed to create, capture, and convert demand at different stages of the customer journey.
[00:08:04] Nick Bennett: And the offer gives your business an infinite ways to create value and build trust with your buyers and customers.
[00:08:12] Nick Bennett: Now, each channel becomes more efficient when you partner with others.
[00:08:15] Nick Bennett: No one should go to market alone.
[00:08:19] Nick Bennett: Just think about that.
[00:08:20] Nick Bennett: It's kind of like a loaner.
[00:08:23] Nick Bennett: It's like, why not go to market with others?
[00:08:25] Nick Bennett: And so each channel should ideally be crafted through a partnership with either other people or businesses.
[00:08:32] Nick Bennett: And so partnering with people is like the heart of the model, which kind of wraps around the entire thing.
[00:08:38] Ramli John: That makes a ton of sense.

[00:08:40] Customer Led Growth: Building Strong Relationships with Customers

[00:08:40] Ramli John: I know particularly you wanted to chat around this customer led growth concept.
[00:08:46] Ramli John: Let's dig into that and double tap into that.
[00:08:49] Ramli John: I feel like most marketing teams often focus on.
[00:08:53] Ramli John: This is something I think I saw on LinkedIn, how you mentioned that most teams, marketing teams focus on acquisition and not enough on building those customer relationships and those renewals and advocacy.
[00:09:06] Ramli John: Is that what that piece means, or.
[00:09:09] Ramli John: I'm curious how you would define customer led growth.
[00:09:13] Nick Bennett: Yeah.
[00:09:14] Nick Bennett: So we've actually put together kind of like a maturity model to a certain degree of how we view customer led growth.
[00:09:22] Nick Bennett: So when you think about stage one, the outcome that you're really trying to achieve through stage one is customers and adoption.
[00:09:29] Nick Bennett: You need customers and adoption before you get into all that other stuff.
[00:09:33] Nick Bennett: And so how can you identify the most engaged customers?
[00:09:36] Nick Bennett: How can you partner with them to share their stories, their examples, their successes, creating content together, education that ultimately is going to help other customers use more of the product.
[00:09:47] Nick Bennett: That's stage one.
[00:09:48] Nick Bennett: When I think about it now, stage two takes it to, all right, cool, you have the customers, you have the adoption.
[00:09:54] Nick Bennett: Now, how can I focus on retention and advocates?
[00:09:57] Nick Bennett: So this is where like a customer advisory board might come into play or like a voice of customer program, and you're going to partner with customers to really drive product innovation that's going to activate other audiences.
[00:10:10] Nick Bennett: So it's like you're designing all of these marketing campaigns and these offers that feature your customers.
[00:10:19] Nick Bennett: It plays into that whole net revenue retention number, all those things.
[00:10:23] Nick Bennett: The third piece, now that you have retention, you have advocates, you have customers, you have adoption, is how do you take your advocates one step further?
[00:10:31] Nick Bennett: So it's like the outcome is advocates in referrals because the referrals is going to fuel the net revenue growth there.
[00:10:38] Nick Bennett: And so it's like, how can you build tiered customer programs?
[00:10:42] Nick Bennett: How can you build different experiences for different segments of customers across your go to market team?
[00:10:48] Ramli John: I don't know.
[00:10:48] Nick Bennett: Maybe it's enterprise, maybe it's commercial, whatever it is.
[00:10:52] Nick Bennett: Maybe you're hosting a flagship summit event for your customers.
[00:10:56] Nick Bennett: Maybe you're building a model that's going to predict renewal and referrals.
[00:11:01] Nick Bennett: You can do a lot when it comes to customer led growth.
[00:11:06] Nick Bennett: The important thing is when you think of the tenants that make up customer led growth, there's really four that come to mind to me.
[00:11:14] Nick Bennett: Value first reciprocity, voice of customer and deeper education.
[00:11:21] Nick Bennett: So those are the things that make up customer led growth.
[00:11:24] Nick Bennett: Now, what are the components that drive those tenants?
[00:11:27] Nick Bennett: Ultimately?
[00:11:28] Nick Bennett: Customer stories, references, reviews.
[00:11:31] Nick Bennett: I know we talked about like g two reviews.
[00:11:32] Nick Bennett: I've done this before, advisory board, product training, customer examples.
[00:11:38] Nick Bennett: So all those things, the components plus the tenets, make up what customer led growth is.
[00:11:45] Ramli John: I love how you describe the stages.
[00:11:47] Ramli John: That's how you naturally would build a deeper relationship with a friend.
[00:11:52] Ramli John: First you would like, hey, let's hang out.
[00:11:54] Ramli John: The next thing you know, let's go on a trip.
[00:11:56] Ramli John: And then next thing you know, it's like, hey, bring your other friends so that they can, I guess, have a bigger group of friends.
[00:12:02] Ramli John: I'm not sure.
[00:12:03] Ramli John: I think that's kind of the maturity, it's almost like a friendship maturity model.
[00:12:08] Ramli John: How do you get deeper relationship with your customers?
[00:12:11] Nick Bennett: Exactly.
[00:12:12] Nick Bennett: And that's the thing.
[00:12:13] Nick Bennett: Relationships are at the center of everything.
[00:12:15] Nick Bennett: I mean, you know, people buy from people.
[00:12:18] Nick Bennett: This is the way forward.
[00:12:22] Ramli John: That makes a ton of sense.
[00:12:23] Ramli John: And you're talking about the different pieces here.
[00:12:26] Ramli John: If you were to advise a company who is just starting with customer led growth, I guess the first step is like, hey, let's focus on adoption.
[00:12:35] Ramli John: What kind of stuff would you advise them around customer education, to educate them around the product, or I'm curious what your approach is for a company who's never done any kind of customer related marketing.
[00:12:48] Nick Bennett: So I did this at alice actually.
[00:12:49] Nick Bennett: So I took over customer marketing there for a short period of time.
[00:12:53] Nick Bennett: And so what I realized was we had a really strong relationship with our admins that again, they knew all the features, they were talking to cs.
[00:13:03] Nick Bennett: But the thing is, just because they're the admin of the account, what about all the users within the actual account itself?
[00:13:10] Nick Bennett: We literally weren't sending them emails.
[00:13:12] Nick Bennett: They didn't know anything unless the admin told them specific stuff.
[00:13:16] Nick Bennett: So what I would recommend is whether it's a weekly, whether it's a bi weekly, I think it has to be one of those two things.
[00:13:23] Nick Bennett: There has to be some type of product education that comes out to all users.
[00:13:29] Nick Bennett: And maybe there's two different paths.
[00:13:30] Nick Bennett: Maybe there's an admin path because the way they're going to use the product is going to be different and then there's kind of like a user path, because what they're going to care about is going to be different.
[00:13:39] Nick Bennett: And there could even be third or fourth path depending on maybe it's like a CMO or VP of marketing.
[00:13:44] Nick Bennett: They may use the product or care about it in a different way as well.
[00:13:48] Nick Bennett: But it's a great way in an easy way with really no cost to drive adoption of new features, new integrations, new releases that you have coming out, and a great way to amplify.
[00:14:01] Nick Bennett: Kind of ask that.
[00:14:02] Nick Bennett: You may need to ask for them for referrals or other things.
[00:14:07] Nick Bennett: It's very low lift, but high reward.
[00:14:10] Nick Bennett: And if your goal is to decrease the time of value that someone sees of your product, because let's be honest, most SaaS products, you sign a one year contract.
[00:14:20] Nick Bennett: So if it takes you three months to see value for that product, you really only have nine months left before your contract is up.
[00:14:27] Nick Bennett: And most likely that renewal conversation is going to happen seven months into the contract.
[00:14:33] Nick Bennett: So you're saying you really have like three or four months outside of the ramp time to be like, all right, is this worth 5100 thousand dollars a year?
[00:14:43] Nick Bennett: It's not good.
[00:14:44] Nick Bennett: And so my whole thing was, how can I decrease time to value to sub 30 days?
[00:14:50] Nick Bennett: Because if you can get time to value achieved in that 30 day window, they have eleven months of using that product.
[00:14:57] Nick Bennett: And obviously a little bit before the renewal conversation, but it changes even like 30 days to 90 days.
[00:15:04] Nick Bennett: That's a huge window in where someone may be able to see additional value or adoption or additional users coming into the product.
[00:15:14] Ramli John: That makes a ton of sense.
[00:15:15] Ramli John: I'm a big fan of really setting up people for success and making sure that they know further, more advanced use cases or adopt the product even deeper.
[00:15:31] Ramli John: I guess if I was to take a step back, it makes sense to start this from the beginning because I've had this.

[00:15:37] The Importance of Customer Marketing and When to Start

[00:15:37] Ramli John: I'm curious what your advice is for this question around when is the right time for a company to start thinking about customer marketing.
[00:15:44] Ramli John: Is it when they're a scale up, they're over 150 employees?
[00:15:49] Ramli John: Or is it like they should start thinking about it right from the beginning?
[00:15:53] Ramli John: Because what you're suggesting is that sets them up for deeper relationship.
[00:15:58] Ramli John: I'm curious what your take is on that.
[00:16:00] Nick Bennett: So I would say in today's economy, you should be thinking about it a lot sooner.
[00:16:04] Nick Bennett: If you ask me two years ago I would say maybe a little bit different, but now budgets are being frozen.
[00:16:13] Nick Bennett: So your biggest growth channel for maybe expansion or renewals or money.
[00:16:19] Nick Bennett: Just revenue in general is through your customers.
[00:16:21] Nick Bennett: And if you're not focusing, I've seen a lot of companies not hire a customer marketer per se, but use customer success as kind of like that lever.
[00:16:32] Nick Bennett: And that's fine.
[00:16:33] Nick Bennett: You could definitely do that early on, but you're going to need someone in marketing and maybe they do customer marketing plus something else if it's super early.
[00:16:42] Nick Bennett: But I would say early on in today's economy makes way more sense because if you think about how much it costs to retain a customer versus how much it costs to go out and acquire a new customer, in tech specifically, it's a no brainer to double down on the retention, especially if you're kind of like a land and expand type of product.
[00:17:05] Nick Bennett: You would see so much more success if you can already establish the adoption, the advocates, all of those things.
[00:17:13] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:17:15] Ramli John: And this is based on my experience that if there's not enough budget for a whole customer marketer, it often falls in the content team or maybe in product marketing.
[00:17:27] Ramli John: Is that what you see?
[00:17:28] Ramli John: You see like, oh, it's like, oh, content marketers.
[00:17:31] Ramli John: You talk to customers, create some content around that.
[00:17:33] Ramli John: Or it's product marketing, hey, create some enablement stuff instead of sales.
[00:17:40] Ramli John: Do it for enabling our customers to adopt bigger futures.
[00:17:45] Ramli John: Is that what you're seeing or is it?
[00:17:46] Nick Bennett: Yeah, I've also seen product marketing play a big piece in that too, in some companies.
[00:17:50] Nick Bennett: And again, it depends how the organization is set up because I've worked for some marketing teams where there's like five of us and like airmeat, for example, we had like a 25 person marketing team, so we had very specialized roles.
[00:18:05] Nick Bennett: And again, it depends, are you early stage?
[00:18:08] Nick Bennett: Are you late stage?
[00:18:09] Nick Bennett: Big, small, all those things.
[00:18:11] Nick Bennett: But product marketing, content enablement, seen all those pieces, play a piece into the customer marketing kind of.
[00:18:21] Nick Bennett: If you don't have that role, I.

[00:18:24] Using NPS Surveys to Drive G2 Reviews

[00:18:24] Ramli John: Like that we're talking about adoption, but I want to talk about referrals around g two because you shared something on LinkedIn a while back around how you were able to get quite a few g two reviews in.
[00:18:38] Ramli John: I think the exact number is 72 in two days.
[00:18:41] Ramli John: And you use some kind of like NPS survey.
[00:18:44] Ramli John: How did you do that?
[00:18:45] Ramli John: Because I think a lot of companies, even here at appuse, like, hey, we need more g two reviews, what do we do?
[00:18:50] Ramli John: But you actually did something super cool that I think people should hear and listen about using NPS to get more reviews.
[00:18:57] Nick Bennett: Yeah, I mean, honestly, it was super simple.
[00:19:01] Nick Bennett: So going back to the user piece.
[00:19:03] Nick Bennett: So at like, I had to have engineering pull our users because we didn't have access to it in Salesforce.
[00:19:13] Nick Bennett: We only had access to the admins of the account.
[00:19:16] Nick Bennett: So I was like, all right, well, we're not emailing these people right now.
[00:19:20] Nick Bennett: So they haven't heard from us, but they're using the product.
[00:19:24] Nick Bennett: I can see they're leaving mps surveys like it's something that we had in product.
[00:19:29] Nick Bennett: But I couldn't actually pull those results without engineering for some weird reason.
[00:19:33] Nick Bennett: So I pulled it and I was like, all right, great, I'm going to take all these customers who recently rated us on an MPS survey.
[00:19:42] Nick Bennett: I'm going to add them to Marketo.
[00:19:44] Nick Bennett: So again, I took the marketo path because I was like, no one wants Bcc.
[00:19:50] Nick Bennett: Hell, you get all those emails on there, does it look a little less personalized?
[00:20:00] Nick Bennett: I guess maybe because, you know, it's coming from an automation platform.
[00:20:03] Nick Bennett: But I wrote it.
[00:20:04] Nick Bennett: I crafted an email that sounded like me.
[00:20:06] Nick Bennett: I kept it real, kept it simple.
[00:20:09] Nick Bennett: I told them, hey, I noticed your feedback.
[00:20:11] Nick Bennett: I offered them a gift because we were a gifting platform.
[00:20:14] Nick Bennett: It wasn't just a gift card.
[00:20:16] Nick Bennett: I personalized it to this specific thing and I said, listen, I want you to leave us a g two review.
[00:20:23] Nick Bennett: I'm not incentivizing you to give us a positive review.
[00:20:26] Nick Bennett: Honestly, if you have negative stuff, please tell me so I can tell our product team.
[00:20:30] Nick Bennett: So many people think that this is bribery to a certain degree.
[00:20:33] Nick Bennett: I got a lot of hate from people thinking this was bribery.
[00:20:36] Nick Bennett: But you're incentivizing people to give you feedback, good or bad, and that's the way that you need to think about it.
[00:20:45] Nick Bennett: So I shot the email out to about 310 people in Marketo, sat back and I was like, all right, let's see what happens.
[00:20:53] Nick Bennett: And so my inbox quickly filled up with screenshots of, reviewed, some solid feedback, some things that we could do better.
[00:21:00] Nick Bennett: But I said, all right, if you want your gift, you have to send a screenshot of your review, reply to this email and get back to me.
[00:21:07] Nick Bennett: And then I would reply back again just through my regular Gmail and they would be like, oh, wow, you're a real person.
[00:21:16] Nick Bennett: But we had a 24% conversion rate from those 310 people that actually left us a review.
[00:21:23] Nick Bennett: So it was 73 over two days, but it actually, over a week ended up getting to about 85.
[00:21:30] Nick Bennett: Wow.
[00:21:31] Nick Bennett: Which was crazy.
[00:21:33] Nick Bennett: And so I think as marketers we like to overcomplicate things and simple can still drive massive impact.
[00:21:40] Nick Bennett: This isn't, like, earth shattering what I did.
[00:21:42] Nick Bennett: And I know people that are using this as they were like, you've helped me so much.
[00:21:46] Nick Bennett: Figure this out.
[00:21:47] Nick Bennett: I was like, listen, I take no credit for this.
[00:21:49] Nick Bennett: I just was trying to figure out a way to incentivize feedback and get stuff.
[00:21:53] Nick Bennett: And obviously we were a g two customer, so we wanted to move up in all these charts.
[00:21:58] Nick Bennett: The more reviews you get, the better you move up.
[00:22:01] Nick Bennett: But, I mean, it wasn't like, earth shattering, what I did.
[00:22:04] Nick Bennett: It was four simple things, and that was about it.
[00:22:09] Ramli John: What I like, what you said was that you kept that email human.
[00:22:12] Ramli John: It sounded like you.
[00:22:13] Ramli John: I think often it's like, oh, let's find a template online and copy and paste and tweak it to our voice.
[00:22:19] Ramli John: But you're like, how do I make this sound?
[00:22:21] Ramli John: Like I'm asking a person, which goes back to what we've been talking about, know, it's about building a relationship with that.
[00:22:27] Ramli John: And I'm guessing that was not the first time that they've heard from you before, so they know the name Nick, right?
[00:22:32] Ramli John: It wasn't like, who the heck is Nick?
[00:22:34] Ramli John: Who's messaging me?
[00:22:35] Ramli John: Would that be a fair assumption?
[00:22:37] Nick Bennett: Yeah.
[00:22:38] Nick Bennett: Again, as a user of the product, I was brought on to so many customer calls, so many prospect calls, because I was a field marketer.
[00:22:47] Nick Bennett: So in event marketer, customer market, I knew the pains that these people were trying to solve, because I was trying to solve them for ten or eleven years.
[00:22:55] Nick Bennett: And I was like, listen, no salespeople need to join this call.
[00:22:59] Nick Bennett: Let's just talk marketer, marketer.
[00:23:01] Nick Bennett: And they valued those conversations so much.
[00:23:05] Nick Bennett: And I think more companies should lean into that human element, lean into your subject matter experts.
[00:23:11] Nick Bennett: Why does a salesperson always need to be involved?
[00:23:15] Nick Bennett: I was the salesperson to a certain degree.
[00:23:17] Nick Bennett: I didn't get paid like a salesperson, although I should have because I closed a lot of deals, but I was doing it to drive the mission of the company.
[00:23:27] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:23:28] Ramli John: You're like an evangelist essentially, of that company.

[00:23:34] The Rise of B2B Influencer Marketing

[00:23:34] Ramli John: I'm curious what your take is on.
[00:23:35] Ramli John: I'm seeing more and more companies pick an internal employee to be an evangelist.
[00:23:41] Ramli John: We saw this early with Dave Gerhardt with drift and Elena Verna with amplitude and different places.
[00:23:48] Ramli John: Is that something you would encourage to find?
[00:23:51] Ramli John: Like, it could be the founder, it could be somebody who is an expert in that space to be, I guess, not necessarily the face, but an evangelist, evangelist of the product and the company.
[00:24:04] Nick Bennett: Yeah.
[00:24:04] Nick Bennett: So I actually did this at like, that was part of my role, that was part of my role at airmeat as well.
[00:24:09] Nick Bennett: So I was kind of like the face of the brand.
[00:24:11] Nick Bennett: So I would talk to customers, prospects, I would speak at the events.
[00:24:15] Nick Bennett: Again, when you're a user of the product, it makes it a lot easier and you are the ICP.
[00:24:21] Nick Bennett: But I think the next wave that we're going to see is these b, two b companies are going to start to leverage internal creators to drive huge impact in 2024, we have the external creators people and there's obviously a difference between creator and influencer.
[00:24:39] Nick Bennett: But I think there's a lot of creators, content creators that work within these companies that the companies need to figure out how to leverage them.
[00:24:48] Nick Bennett: And I'm not saying that, hey, go pump company content because you shouldn't do that, but go tell your story because you'd be surprised at how much revenue and impact you can drive just by evangelizing the category or what you stand for.
[00:25:05] Nick Bennett: That ultimately is going to drive impact to the business because they're going to see where you work.
[00:25:09] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:25:11] Ramli John: You're writing a book or I think you've written a book around this.
[00:25:14] Ramli John: Am I crazy?
[00:25:15] Nick Bennett: So I'm writing a book.
[00:25:16] Nick Bennett: Yeah.
[00:25:16] Nick Bennett: It's in the process.
[00:25:17] Nick Bennett: It's coming out summer of 2024 and.
[00:25:21] Ramli John: The title is b two b influencers.
[00:25:23] Nick Bennett: It's basically b two b influencer marketing and how to use it within marketing to drive like maximum leverage.
[00:25:30] Ramli John: Interesting.
[00:25:31] Ramli John: That's super cool.
[00:25:31] Ramli John: And it's not just internal influencers there you're talking about.
[00:25:34] Ramli John: You're also talking about tapping into finding people who are influenced in that space.
[00:25:40] Nick Bennett: I'm guessing exactly, because I think whether you call it influencer marketing, creator marketing, whatever, companies are going to start to leverage creators because let's be honest, a lot of these channels are saturated.
[00:25:54] Nick Bennett: You have to turn to additional people that have the trust and authority that you want to tap into.
[00:26:01] Nick Bennett: And so I think we're already seeing early adopters in 2023, in tech specifically.
[00:26:08] Nick Bennett: I think in 2024 we'll see even more.
[00:26:10] Nick Bennett: I think by 2025 we'll see mass adoption in tech within this whole creator.
[00:26:16] Ramli John: Economy, that makes sense.
[00:26:17] Ramli John: It's something that we've started exploring this quarter at Appcus and what the genesis of it was around how organic, our organic has taken a hit, especially with AI and search.
[00:26:28] Ramli John: We need to find a new channel.
[00:26:30] Ramli John: And it was like, okay, who is like the voice?
[00:26:33] Ramli John: So we sponsor, like Andrew Kaplan, who's like a voice around user onboarding and other folks with that.
[00:26:40] Ramli John: So I think you're totally correct with that.
[00:26:44] Ramli John: When things are changing so much in search and things are saturated with ads, it's getting more expensive.
[00:26:52] Ramli John: You go to people who own their audience and people who have a list, people who trust their voice for that specific thing.
[00:26:59] Ramli John: And I'm seeing a trend more also with those influencers like Kevin Indigor.
[00:27:07] Ramli John: They're posting up about the product right in LinkedIn.
[00:27:10] Ramli John: I've only seen that the last six or so months.
[00:27:14] Ramli John: Is that something that you're going to see more and more going forward or is that.
[00:27:22] Nick Bennett: I'm betting my entire career that this is path forward.
[00:27:26] Nick Bennett: I'm literally all in.
[00:27:29] Nick Bennett: We built our own faTac, we built our own media network.
[00:27:33] Nick Bennett: So we have a media network that runs on audience plus right now.
[00:27:38] Nick Bennett: And so we have five shows that are currently on it.
[00:27:42] Nick Bennett: We're bringing on 20 shows in Q one.
[00:27:45] Ramli John: Wow.
[00:27:46] Nick Bennett: That are going to power.
[00:27:47] Nick Bennett: Yeah.
[00:27:47] Nick Bennett: So we're making it a place where creators come and not only creators come, but then brands are going to want to come and partner with these creators.
[00:27:57] Nick Bennett: So it drives a whole monetization model around creator brand on an owned media network.
[00:28:06] Ramli John: That's super cool, man.
[00:28:07] Ramli John: I'm super excited for that feature.
[00:28:09] Ramli John: And when did you say the bookcase coming out?
[00:28:11] Ramli John: Where can people sign up for it?
[00:28:13] Nick Bennett: Yeah, so if you go to tacnetwork.com, it's actually live now.
[00:28:16] Nick Bennett: So I have a show on there called creators going to create.
[00:28:19] Nick Bennett: There's a couple of other shows on there, but we're going to be bringing on a lot of shows that already exist, plus other shows that we're building out under this umbrella for the shows that already exist.
[00:28:32] Nick Bennett: We're doing it because it's an additional channel for distribution for them and for us.
[00:28:38] Nick Bennett: We leverage SEO to drive growth of the network overall.
[00:28:42] Ramli John: That's super cool.
[00:28:42] Ramli John: And then your book is on this website as well.
[00:28:45] Ramli John: Or is it like.
[00:28:48] Nick Bennett: I don't really have that anywhere right now.
[00:28:49] Nick Bennett: It'll be summer of 2024, but I have a few Creator 101 guides coming out.
[00:28:55] Nick Bennett: I have this twelve chapter ebook that's like, hey, if you're a creator, if you want to figure out the very start, it's very tactical.
[00:29:04] Nick Bennett: There's resources in every chapter that's coming out, like the second week of January, I'm going to probably give it away for free.
[00:29:10] Nick Bennett: And then I have a 201 and a 301 as you kind of progress as a creator coming out in February and March leading up to the book.
[00:29:19] Ramli John: That will be on your website.
[00:29:21] Nick Bennett: Yeah, exactly.
[00:29:22] Nick Bennett: It'll be on the website and then it will be on my LinkedIn as well.
[00:29:25] Ramli John: Nice.
[00:29:26] Ramli John: Awesome.
[00:29:26] Ramli John: Well, thank you for that.
[00:29:28] Ramli John: Let's shift gears.
[00:29:29] Ramli John: That's been fun.

[00:29:30] Building Relationships for Career Success

[00:29:30] Ramli John: Talking about people.
[00:29:31] Ramli John: First, go to market, model and customer led growth.
[00:29:35] Ramli John: I want to talk about career power ups for you.
[00:29:38] Ramli John: You've been in marketing.
[00:29:39] Ramli John: You said you've been marketing many years.
[00:29:42] Ramli John: Alice Airmeat.
[00:29:43] Ramli John: Now you're attacked.
[00:29:45] Ramli John: What's helped you in your career accelerated.
[00:29:48] Ramli John: It could be community, it could be people.
[00:29:50] Ramli John: It could be a tactic.
[00:29:51] Ramli John: I'm really curious as to what's powered up your marketing career so far.
[00:29:57] Nick Bennett: I would say building relationship horizontally and vertically within an organization.
[00:30:05] Nick Bennett: As a marketer, for example, you're not only building your relationships with your marketing peers, but you're also building it with executives within other departments, like marketing.
[00:30:19] Nick Bennett: A lot of times wants to stay siloed to what they do, but the only way you can truly grow is like having relationships with sales, Cs, product, engineering, finance.
[00:30:29] Nick Bennett: You've got to be able to be okay with building relationships outside of that, because one, you'll never know, hey, these people might help you.
[00:30:38] Nick Bennett: Say you get laid off.
[00:30:40] Nick Bennett: They might be able to help you.
[00:30:41] Nick Bennett: And that relationship that you build might go a long way.
[00:30:44] Nick Bennett: Or if you need something as a marketer, I've had this before where it's like I needed a little bit extra budget approved, and finance loved me and was able to help me out.
[00:30:55] Nick Bennett: And again, it's the whole people first mindset.
[00:30:58] Nick Bennett: Like, relationships are everything.
[00:31:01] Nick Bennett: And so in your organization, you've got to be able to build it both vertically and horizontally.
[00:31:08] Ramli John: Horizontally is across the function.
[00:31:11] Ramli John: Vertically is like finding somebody and just building a deeper relationship with them.
[00:31:17] Nick Bennett: Exactly.
[00:31:18] Nick Bennett: Outside of other departments, further up the chain.
[00:31:20] Nick Bennett: I mean, especially if you're up the chain.
[00:31:22] Nick Bennett: Yeah, especially if you're a marketer that wants to, I don't know, maybe be a CMO one day or maybe be a CEO one day.
[00:31:29] Nick Bennett: Don't limit yourself to just marketing.
[00:31:32] Ramli John: Right?
[00:31:32] Ramli John: Is that what you want?
[00:31:33] Ramli John: You want to be a CMO one day?
[00:31:34] Ramli John: I'm curious.
[00:31:35] Nick Bennett: What?
[00:31:36] Nick Bennett: No, honestly, now that I own my own business, I wish I did this a lot soon, right?
[00:31:43] Nick Bennett: To be honest with you, every day you don't report to anyone, do what you want, you take on the work that you want to do.
[00:31:52] Nick Bennett: And it's like if you don't like how someone's acting, you tell them to go off, kick rocks and head out because I don't need your money.
[00:32:05] Ramli John: That's so good.
[00:32:06] Ramli John: I like that.
[00:32:07] Ramli John: Yeah, I think that's something that people, marketers need to explore more, because there's this path like, oh, how do you progress your marketing career?
[00:32:17] Ramli John: It's like, oh, you become a director, become a vp, then CMO.
[00:32:20] Ramli John: And I look at some cmos in their schedule.
[00:32:23] Ramli John: Even my boss, Eric, VP marketing, he's stuck in a lot of meetings, right?
[00:32:28] Ramli John: And is that what people like?
[00:32:30] Ramli John: Is that what I want?
[00:32:31] Ramli John: Is that what you want?
[00:32:32] Nick Bennett: Yeah, it's not what I mean.
[00:32:36] Nick Bennett: I was a senior director at Airmeat, and the amount of meetings that I sat in, at some point you don't even become like you're doing marketing anymore.
[00:32:45] Nick Bennett: You're a meeting shepherd.
[00:32:46] Nick Bennett: You sit in meetings all day, you talk about all of the things you're going to do for the next meeting.
[00:32:52] Nick Bennett: And lots of times you sit in these meetings and it's basically just one big circle where there's no outcome that actually comes of the meeting.
[00:32:59] Nick Bennett: If you enjoyed this episode, you'd love.
[00:33:01] Ramli John: The marketing Powerups newsletter.
[00:33:03] Ramli John: I share the actionable takeaways and break down the frameworks of world class marketers.
[00:33:07] Ramli John: You can go to marketingpowerups.com, subscribe and you'll instantly unlock the three best frameworks that top marketers use, hit their KPIs consistently, and wow their colleagues.
[00:33:18] Ramli John: I want to say thank you to you for listening.
[00:33:20] Ramli John: And please like and follow marketing powerups on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
[00:33:25] Ramli John: If you feel extra generous, kindly leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
[00:33:30] Ramli John: And leave a comment on YouTube goes a long way in others finding out about marketing powers.
[00:33:35] Ramli John: Thanks to Mary Sullivan for creating the artwork and design.
[00:33:37] Ramli John: And thank you to Faisal Kaigo for.
[00:33:39] Nick Bennett: Editing the intro video.
[00:33:40] Ramli John: And of course, thank you for listening.
[00:33:43] Nick Bennett: That's all for now.
[00:33:44] Nick Bennett: Have powered update marketing power ups until the next episode.

[00:00:00] The Importance of Customer Education

[00:00:00] Ramli John: Customer education is such a potent marketing powerup, it can lead to increased product usage, higher customer satisfaction, and stronger brand loyalty.
[00:00:08] Ramli John: Now, Brian Childs, founder of Learning Outcomes.
[00:00:10] Ramli John: He has worked with companies like Moss Toilet industries and more.
[00:00:14] Ramli John: Today, he shares his customer training program Scorecard.
[00:00:16] Ramli John: In episode 62 of the marketing Power up show, you learn, first of all, why customer education is so important.
[00:00:21] Ramli John: Second, at which stage should companies care about customer education?
[00:00:24] Ramli John: Shirt, how to measure the Roi of customer education programs.
[00:00:28] Ramli John: And number four, a powerp that has accelerated Brian's career.
[00:00:31] Ramli John: Before we get started, I created a free powerup cheat sheet that you can download and apply Brian's customer training program scorecard to your business.
[00:00:38] Ramli John: Get it now@marketingparups.com.
[00:00:39] Ramli John: Or find the link in the show notes and description.

[00:00:42] Training programs and customer education are important for success

[00:00:42] Ramli John: You ready?
[00:00:43] Ramli John: Let's go.
[00:00:44] Brian Childs: Marketing power ups, ready, go.
[00:00:51] Brian Childs: Here's your host, Rambly John.
[00:00:55] Ramli John: So excited to have you come on the show.
[00:00:58] Ramli John: Talk about training programs and customer education.
[00:01:02] Ramli John: It's been a big part of my career.
[00:01:03] Ramli John: I've been in the training space for some time.
[00:01:07] Ramli John: But for people who are not familiar with it, you built your career around this, and now you have this company, learning outcomes, which is built around this topic.
[00:01:18] Ramli John: Why is it so important to you like this customer education and training?
[00:01:23] Ramli John: You probably have seen it in your work, and you've probably seen it in the companies and clients that you work with.
[00:01:29] Ramli John: Why customer education is so important?
[00:01:32] Brian Childs: Yeah, well, I've had a lot of different roles in my life.
[00:01:38] Brian Childs: I've always enjoyed teaching.
[00:01:40] Brian Childs: So I'd say that one of the things for whatever, I don't know if you could measure it, but it's like the people who tend to end up in this space, like sharing information with other people.
[00:01:50] Brian Childs: And so that's just a quality that tends to exist with folks that are here.
[00:01:54] Brian Childs: But I think for me, it's like, way back in the day, I used to be a commercial pilot and worked in aviation for about ten years.
[00:02:02] Brian Childs: And it was interesting to leave aviation and go into enterprise software and b to b businesses.
[00:02:11] Brian Childs: And it's like, in aviation, it's like we would train towards a very specific metric, which was like safety.
[00:02:18] Brian Childs: And so you'd literally have these stats down to multiple decimal points in terms of how to impact, positively impact safety.
[00:02:27] Brian Childs: And when I got into more business functions, it was as if to take the equivalency of saying, we want to reduce crashes in planes, but every time a customer churns, we're sort of like, that's like a plane just hitting a mountain, but we're not looking at it at all.
[00:02:45] Brian Childs: There was this question of, like, I'm also kind of an operations person.
[00:02:50] Brian Childs: I think people in customer education roles or training roles also tend to be somewhat operationally minded, is you'd be like, what are the things that are contributing to these negative outcomes?
[00:03:01] Brian Childs: Like, how can we root cause analysis, provide a root cause analysis of that and figuring it out?
[00:03:06] Brian Childs: And so I think that aspect of trying to correlate what causes these negative aspects in businesses is just kind of generally interesting to me.
[00:03:18] Brian Childs: And then there's also this kind of people aspect to it, which is education.
[00:03:24] Brian Childs: And training is about changing human behavior.
[00:03:27] Brian Childs: And so it's like, I have an undergrad in anthropology, and so even way back then, it's like I kind of was drawn to trying to understand how human behaviors can be impacted, why people do things that they do.
[00:03:39] Brian Childs: And so education is kind of like this marrying up of an operations problem.
[00:03:43] Brian Childs: So you're like, I got to figure out how I can drive this percent change on the back end of some activity, along with the percent changes that you're trying to impact are people's behaviors.
[00:03:54] Brian Childs: And so training is a way that you can materially transform someone's trajectory through whatever it is that they're going to do.
[00:04:04] Brian Childs: It can be in software.
[00:04:05] Brian Childs: It could be literally in anything.
[00:04:07] Brian Childs: It's like people learning to drive a car.
[00:04:09] Brian Childs: If you just drop somebody in a car and go knock yourself out, it's like accident rates quite high.
[00:04:15] Brian Childs: It's like, we train people on it because you're like, well, we got to have some expectation of that you're able to control this thing.
[00:04:21] Brian Childs: And that same concept can be applied to just about any business, any business problem.
[00:04:28] Brian Childs: The training wrench can be applied in some way that tends to lead to more positive outcomes.
[00:04:33] Brian Childs: And so I'm attracted to that because it's like, I like producing business value and business strategy and operations and all that.
[00:04:43] Brian Childs: There's a lot of components that go into it.
[00:04:45] Ramli John: What I'm hearing is that the big part of it, I love the analogy with a car or even with a plane.
[00:04:52] Ramli John: You're not going to drop somebody in a plane and be like, fly 200 folks to Hawaii without giving them the training.
[00:05:00] Ramli John: And I feel like sometimes that's what we do with our customers.
[00:05:03] Ramli John: We're like, for sure, here's the tool.
[00:05:05] Ramli John: Go figure it out.
[00:05:07] Ramli John: Here's some product tours.
[00:05:08] Ramli John: And I think that's without any thought around it, those kind of approaches set them up for failure.
[00:05:18] Brian Childs: Really.
[00:05:18] Ramli John: You're talking about, how do you set up customers for success?
[00:05:22] Ramli John: Essentially and make sure that they figure out how to use a tool.
[00:05:26] Ramli John: And not just that, but how do we do their jobs better?
[00:05:30] Ramli John: What they do.
[00:05:31] Brian Childs: Yeah, and I think the parallels, I mean, this is not a foreign concept to people who have backgrounds in marketing because you could look at the, if you think about sort of like a customer lifecycle analysis where you'd say we're going to have awareness campaigns and then comparison campaigns and conversion activities, it's like training activities are either run parallel to those or are part of those.
[00:05:54] Brian Childs: It's like you're educating people on your brand.
[00:05:56] Brian Childs: You're educating people on the value that that brand produces and whatnot.
[00:06:00] Brian Childs: And just like a marketing campaign, it can be done poorly really easily.
[00:06:07] Brian Childs: But just like a marketing campaign, what you're trying to do is you're trying to eliminate and streamline the flow of people towards the value that you like, if know, launching an email campaign and I want to send them to a landing page and I want the CTA to take them to the know.
[00:06:28] Brian Childs: It's like all along that path you have little measurements that you can look at that say like page views versus conversion rates versus button clicks or whatever, and it's really no different in training.
[00:06:40] Brian Childs: You're still just trying to streamline and eliminate any kind of blockage within that flow.
[00:06:46] Brian Childs: It's just the main value metric that you be measuring against is further down the path than purely just like a sale.
[00:06:57] Brian Childs: Like you would look at it as be like I'm going to take that main metric that I want, which is like maybe sales qualified leads and I'm just going to move that further down the customer lifecycle and say, actually I'm going to do all those same things, but then I'm going to actually measure against the adoption rate of the customers that come through.
[00:07:13] Brian Childs: And so all it's doing is moving your main metric further down the path and yet you can still retain all of those same sort of interstitial measurements along the way.
[00:07:25] Brian Childs: So it marries very closely to the way that marketing is because marketing is still, you're still trying to impact people's behaviors to go towards the value that you're producing and follow that.

[00:07:37] Proving ROI for Training Initiatives in SaaS

[00:07:37] Ramli John: I love how you keep this is like the third or fourth time you mentioned how this is really about changing behaviors and really that's what this is about.
[00:07:46] Ramli John: People are not just adopting a product, they actually have to change their behavior around it, especially if it's maybe a new product and they're moving away from spreadsheets or like nothing sometimes no tool at all where there is a new habit they have to form, essentially, and training can really help with that.
[00:08:09] Ramli John: You mentioned around the impact to it is around reducing churn.
[00:08:15] Ramli John: Have you seen any ranges of how.
[00:08:19] Ramli John: Yeah, I guess I'm trying to get at is how do you prove ROI around this and show that there's impact in when you're creating these programs to leadership specifically?
[00:08:34] Brian Childs: Yeah.
[00:08:35] Brian Childs: So I would say that there's a couple of different ways of looking at the ROI question, and I think it depends on where the program is originating.
[00:08:46] Brian Childs: So if it's originating or it's sort of like if you're looking for the ROI through the lens of maybe marketing, there's a couple of ways of looking at it.
[00:08:55] Brian Childs: There's also ways of looking at it through the lens of customer success.
[00:08:59] Brian Childs: And so when it comes to marketing folks or marketing minded folks, I would look at training activities as no different than a product.
[00:09:08] Brian Childs: So it's like it's a product or a feature.
[00:09:10] Brian Childs: When you're launching a training initiative, you are launching a product or a service, right.
[00:09:16] Brian Childs: And so they have a lot of the same qualities as a product you have to focus on.
[00:09:21] Brian Childs: Are people going to be aware of this?
[00:09:22] Brian Childs: Are they going to adopt it?
[00:09:24] Brian Childs: Are they going to engage in it?
[00:09:26] Brian Childs: Are they going to continue and repeat and drive repeat usage within it has all those same qualities within it.
[00:09:32] Brian Childs: And so it helps to look at it through that lens.
[00:09:37] Brian Childs: And so then when you think about the ROI, what you could be looking at then is an uptick in the customer lifetime value.
[00:09:47] Brian Childs: Right.
[00:09:48] Brian Childs: And so customer lifetime value, it can be sort of a conceptual idea or you could just tie it to dollars or money, whatever.
[00:09:58] Brian Childs: And so it's best if you can tie it to money and say, like, look, we are going to launch a training initiative or I'm going to take on the marketing of a training initiative and we're going to try to drive an increase in customer lifetime value.
[00:10:15] Brian Childs: So things that make that a little bit easier are you could look at it two ways.
[00:10:23] Brian Childs: One is either I'm going to increase the size of, increase the number of people that I'm pushing into my campaigns or pushing into my sales qualified lead funnel.
[00:10:38] Brian Childs: That's one way of increasing it is it's purely like I'm going to increase the number of people that are going into it and so therefore I can have an increase in revenue.
[00:10:47] Brian Childs: If you want to use a pure customer lifetime value for an individual account, then what you'd say is it's the number of people who are maybe interacting with this training, but I would look at it with those kinds of ROI metrics through for the lens of a marketing person is like customer lifetime value is really what you're trying to impact.
[00:11:07] Brian Childs: Some ways to do that that are sort of like the easy ways to do that is charge for training, right?
[00:11:12] Brian Childs: Have it be something that's like a professional service or tie a dollar amount to it.
[00:11:17] Brian Childs: That is particularly impactful for b to c companies that have a monthly SaaS business model.
[00:11:28] Brian Childs: Because oftentimes with b to c companies that have monthly SaaS or some kind of free trial or whatever, you see fairly horrific drop offs after your first month.
[00:11:38] Brian Childs: Month, zero to month one drop off is like a huge problem, right?
[00:11:42] Brian Childs: Or even if you look at the first three months of a typical account, you would say like, you see pretty significant drop off rates in those first three months.
[00:11:50] Brian Childs: And so training becomes a good upsell opportunity for people that are trying to learn a product.
[00:11:57] Brian Childs: So when I'm comparing a couple of different products, if I'm selling training, this is a way to sort of attach a feature to them that's a paid feature where you could say like, yeah, we charge back in the day, whatever, 1999 a month maybe, it's probably like $79 a month now, but if we can add an additional $299 in a training program to that or 499 or something where it's just like, look, there's a boot camp, and attach that to those accounts, you will see a dramatic increase in the value of a place that typically is like a low value segment, which is like all those people that drop off the first three months.
[00:12:32] Brian Childs: It's like, what if you could increase them from being a $79 account or lifetime value to like a 579?
[00:12:40] Brian Childs: And so, training is a great way to do that.
[00:12:44] Brian Childs: If you think about it as a product, I'd say that on the success operations, the customer lifetime value question becomes a little bit more of a retention challenge.
[00:12:57] Brian Childs: So that's not necessarily tends to be a marketing problem.
[00:13:01] Brian Childs: But if you can think about this value also in terms of increasing customer lifetime value over a much longer period of time, and that becomes more of like a retention play.
[00:13:09] Brian Childs: And those retention plays would say that deeper adoption of your product will result in the actualization or realization of more value from what you provide.
[00:13:20] Brian Childs: And so a higher likely stickiness rate.
[00:13:24] Brian Childs: Because what often happens with most people don't like to admit this, but with a lot of SaaS businesses, the majority of accounts will only use a very small number of the features that you have.
[00:13:35] Brian Childs: And so if you can get greater penetration, then you unlock all that value of all that product that you've invested in building.
[00:13:42] Brian Childs: So there's a couple of different ways to look at it, but I generally look at the ROI as being like a customer lifetime value increase, whether or not that's through sales or through retained revenue.

[00:13:51] The Importance of Training Programs and Brand Positioning

[00:13:51] Ramli John: I really like the lenses that you put there where the marketing side, I guess that was one of the side questions I had for you around whether you should charge for it or not, and you kind of answered it there.
[00:14:05] Ramli John: Do you have any guidelines around that?
[00:14:07] Ramli John: Where I see some companies that do charge for it, let's say Salesforce, they charge for their training versus something like, I'm not sure, something smaller like pipe.
[00:14:21] Ramli John: I forgot that company that's smaller, but they don't charge for their training.
[00:14:27] Ramli John: It might depend on segment, but do you have any advice for people specifically if they come to you and ask you, hey, Brian, should we charge for our training program or $500 or like $30 or not?
[00:14:39] Brian Childs: What would be your advice to them?
[00:14:41] Brian Childs: Yeah, my advice, it's pretty simple advice.
[00:14:44] Brian Childs: My advice is that if you're training about your product, then it's probably free.
[00:14:50] Brian Childs: If you're training about how to do the job related to your product, now you have a capacity development on the team, and that's of extreme value.
[00:15:00] Brian Childs: And maybe an analogy would be like, you buy a car with every car or a lawnmower or whatever.
[00:15:09] Brian Childs: It's like when you buy something, there's this little book that comes along with it that's like, here's how to put the oil in, and here's what the lights mean or whatever, right?
[00:15:16] Brian Childs: That comes with the car.
[00:15:18] Brian Childs: If they're charging you for it, go to a different dealership.
[00:15:23] Brian Childs: But nonetheless, it's like when you get that little manual that goes along with the thing that you've purchased, that's free, and the expectation in the market is that's free.
[00:15:30] Brian Childs: It's like, you shouldn't charge me to use your tool.
[00:15:33] Brian Childs: For some enterprise platforms, there's a professional service that goes along with it, which people expect.
[00:15:38] Brian Childs: But for the most part, that's like professional service.
[00:15:42] Brian Childs: Not necessarily like a training program.
[00:15:44] Brian Childs: It's more like an onboarding expectation.
[00:15:46] Brian Childs: Right.
[00:15:47] Brian Childs: If you're going to go move into helping that person do their job better, regardless of what tool they're using, if it's your tool, if it's your competitor's tool, whatever concepts I'll use.
[00:16:00] Brian Childs: An and I worked for Moz.
[00:16:02] Brian Childs: It was a search engine optimization software.
[00:16:05] Brian Childs: I used to run boot camps on how to do search engine optimization.
[00:16:09] Brian Childs: We would sprinkle in Moz into this because obviously that was a tool that we had access to.
[00:16:14] Brian Childs: I mean, I had admin access to this thing, so it's like, I would do it, but the concepts that were there were more like, how to do this effectively.
[00:16:20] Brian Childs: Regardless of what tool you use.
[00:16:22] Brian Childs: If you get into that stuff, you are building a capability on your customers team and you're sort of starting to move into places where the university and education systems have failed, where you're like, if you can't find this information elsewhere, we as a brand are going to do it.
[00:16:48] Brian Childs: And it's really powerful.
[00:16:49] Brian Childs: It's a place where brands can move in and say, like, not only do we build this, but we really know this stuff.
[00:16:56] Brian Childs: And that's the distinction that I make.
[00:17:00] Brian Childs: You're talking about your product for b to c, it's probably free.
[00:17:04] Brian Childs: If you're talking about how to do the job and do your job better and the best practices, now you got the rudiments of a paid training program.
[00:17:16] Brian Childs: The payment increases the value, the perceived value too.
[00:17:19] Brian Childs: That's the other thing too, is like, sometimes people will be like, oh, I don't want to charge that much.
[00:17:23] Brian Childs: I'm like, charge for it.
[00:17:25] Brian Childs: See what people will pay.
[00:17:26] Brian Childs: Because the willingness to pay for that kind of information can be quite high.
[00:17:30] Ramli John: That really gets more into career development or like skill development where they have certain budget.
[00:17:37] Ramli John: Most people in working in companies have a certain budget for training, and this helps them do their job better, or especially with certification programs as well.
[00:17:46] Ramli John: It makes them look more hireable per se.
[00:17:50] Ramli John: If they're looking to go to another workplace where I'm not sure if there's Moss certified, but it was or SEO certified by Moss.
[00:17:59] Ramli John: That looks good to them.
[00:18:01] Brian Childs: Yeah, badging programs are huge.
[00:18:05] Brian Childs: Skills based training is going to continue to increase.
[00:18:09] Brian Childs: I mean, I just heard some metric that 50% of families right now don't know whether or not the value of a higher education is worth it.
[00:18:21] Brian Childs: So compare that to ten years ago, where like 95 or 99% of people thought that higher education was an essential thing.
[00:18:30] Brian Childs: It's like that edifice in our society is degrading and it's degrading quickly.
[00:18:36] Brian Childs: People still need to develop skills, they still need to build a constellation of capabilities of them and help them within the job market.
[00:18:47] Brian Childs: But the idea that the higher education system is going to be the place where you go for that is dramatically changing.
[00:18:54] Brian Childs: And I think brands have a huge opportunity to step into that and say, like, we can capitalize on that value we can create the infrastructure around that knowledge and be the place to know about it for most activities that we are involved in.
[00:19:14] Brian Childs: Right.
[00:19:15] Brian Childs: Like anything that we do, there's usually only a couple of really good ways to do it.
[00:19:20] Brian Childs: And if you can just be like, we're just going to document it and create the training for it and teach exactly how to do it, you can put your brand right in the middle of that conversation and sort of capitalize on that.
[00:19:30] Brian Childs: I think that that's slowly happening, but I would expect that over the course of the next couple of years, it's going to accelerate as people get into more skills based training and wake up to the realities of what a badging and skills based badging system can do.
[00:19:42] Ramli John: What I'm seeing also as an added benefit to that is the whole brand perspective where because Moss trained me on this, now I feel good about Moss.
[00:19:52] Brian Childs: For sure, so to speak.
[00:19:53] Ramli John: They've helped me get the next job that I have.
[00:19:56] Ramli John: Where I'm more likely to bring moss to my next job is such an important play.
[00:20:01] Ramli John: We've seen this with HubSpot, with HubSpot Academy, where they really make them, people feel good about them because they have free training program, but it's just built this relationship with people that they feel good about the brand and they use it because of that, essentially, yeah.
[00:20:21] Brian Childs: I mean, there is a thing that I'll often repeat, which is people only learn something the first time once.
[00:20:32] Brian Childs: So think about that.
[00:20:34] Brian Childs: You only learn something the first time once.
[00:20:38] Brian Childs: And if you're the brand that is the one that teaches you the first time.
[00:20:45] Brian Childs: That's a special place that you hold with them.
[00:20:50] Brian Childs: And it's interesting because we're talking about training, right?
[00:20:55] Brian Childs: We're kind of like talking about what training programs can do.
[00:20:58] Brian Childs: But think about how important brand positioning is and how difficult it is to build a brand that is noticeable.
[00:21:07] Brian Childs: Training for marketers should be a place that they look to to establish that brand positioning.
[00:21:15] Brian Childs: It's relatively easy, right?
[00:21:17] Brian Childs: You could be like, oh, we're going to be the apple of whatever.
[00:21:20] Brian Childs: And it's like, that's really hard.
[00:21:23] Brian Childs: That's a hard thing to break out with because you can say it, you can tell me all day long.
[00:21:27] Brian Childs: You're like, yeah, we're the apple of whatever.
[00:21:28] Brian Childs: And I'm like, maybe, but if you're the place where I go to learn about it now we have a special relationship.
[00:21:36] Brian Childs: We have a special reason.
[00:21:38] Brian Childs: Right?
[00:21:38] Brian Childs: If you think about lower down on the sales funnel now I have a very special reason to come back to you and see how that training impacted your life.
[00:21:48] Brian Childs: Think about a BDR that's been trained or an SDR that's been trained to go and be like, so how did that go?
[00:21:54] Brian Childs: It's been a couple of weeks since you've done that.
[00:21:55] Brian Childs: Anything going on, you can create your funnel around that brand positioning around training.
[00:22:01] Brian Childs: And instead of it being a cold email or a cold call, being like, hey, can I buy an Amazon card or whatever, no one likes that.
[00:22:09] Brian Childs: But if it's all of a sudden like a consultative approach where we gave you some tools, are you using them?
[00:22:16] Brian Childs: You're deep into the sale all of a sudden.

[00:22:19] Using Training as a Sales Qualification Tool

[00:22:19] Brian Childs: And I'll add another thing to this as well for marketers to consider is go to your sales organization, go to your demand gen team, your sales ops team, and ask them what are the hard things to do in qualification.
[00:22:34] Brian Childs: So you got these BDRs that are out there who have a marketing qualified lead and they got to get on the phone or send an email and they got to go dig into a couple of specific pieces of information to turn them into an SQL training.
[00:22:48] Brian Childs: Because you end up talking about things in such an open way.
[00:22:52] Brian Childs: If you structure it in a way where you're asking people questions about their organizations or about their roles, you can collect pieces of information that are those hard to gather, SQL, bant, whatever you bant, or medic, whatever your qualification criteria is, you can ask somebody in a training organization, well, what kind of budget are you working with?
[00:23:12] Brian Childs: And it's not going to come off as sounding like a sales pitch, but if you can do that in a way that captures it in structured data, you can attach that to their account.
[00:23:21] Brian Childs: So training is also, not only is it a brand position, it's a huge opportunity to collect sales qualified lead criteria so you can move people quickly down the funnel and apply your sales resources in a much more sophisticated way.
[00:23:35] Ramli John: That is just blowing my mind.
[00:23:37] Ramli John: I don't see a lot of organizations doing.
[00:23:39] Ramli John: Have you seen any companies do that well where they've really integrated a training program into their sales process or qualification process?
[00:23:49] Brian Childs: It's new.
[00:23:50] Brian Childs: I'll say that when I talk about this to companies, they're like, oh my God, right.
[00:23:59] Brian Childs: But I'll often show them examples that are not training examples where they can see where it's like, this is a thing that we're actually pretty familiar with.
[00:24:09] Brian Childs: It's just not a thing that people really pull on from a training standpoint.
[00:24:12] Brian Childs: Because again, the challenge with a sales qualified lead conversation is that no one likes to be sold to and our phones won't even let BDRs call me anymore.
[00:24:20] Brian Childs: They'll be like spam.
[00:24:21] Brian Childs: And I'm like, goodbye, rocket.
[00:24:23] Brian Childs: Yeah.
[00:24:25] Brian Childs: But I'll give you a non training example where this is the case, okay?
[00:24:31] Brian Childs: So when I go to Zillow or Redfin or something like that, it's like, and I'm going to plug in information about my mortgage calculator or whatever, these kinds of calculators that are out there where people are plugging in information that's going to help me determine what I can do or whatever.
[00:24:51] Brian Childs: If you're like, I don't know, say like a DevOps software, right?
[00:24:57] Brian Childs: And you're like, well, fill this out and provide some information in this training environment, or we're going to do an exercise, we're going to look at blah, blah, blah, and you're going to put some information about maybe the size of your network or the needs that you have around security issues.
[00:25:14] Brian Childs: Go and look at anytime you've ever filled out a calculator that's associated with whatever thing you're interested in.
[00:25:22] Brian Childs: And imagine what if you could have that data in, hand that data over to your sales organization or that they have a sales organization that's sort of like this guy put in.
[00:25:30] Brian Childs: He wants to buy a house that's like 200,000 versus 2 million.
[00:25:33] Brian Childs: There's a big difference between that person.
[00:25:34] Brian Childs: They willing to put the AE on the person that has like the $2 million budget, not the $200,000 budget.
[00:25:40] Brian Childs: So it's still pretty new.
[00:25:42] Brian Childs: But realize that this is a thing that you can do with training.
[00:25:47] Brian Childs: It's a very special relationship.
[00:25:49] Brian Childs: It's a low barrier relationship.
[00:25:50] Brian Childs: And people like to share in that training experience where if you can tie that into your account record in Salesforce, really amazing things happen.
[00:26:00] Brian Childs: It takes a lot of coordination with.

[00:26:01] Patterns in Sales Training Program Challenges

[00:26:01] Ramli John: Your sales.org, though, actually, funny, I'm actually going to bring up your updated training program scorecard.
[00:26:09] Ramli John: So it grades programs based on four dimensions, structure, integration, resourcing and process.
[00:26:16] Ramli John: One of the questions I remember was, does your program integrate with your CRM?
[00:26:22] Ramli John: And it's like, okay, this is all kind of connecting together essentially.
[00:26:26] Ramli John: But you've relaunched this core card.
[00:26:29] Ramli John: It's updated.
[00:26:31] Ramli John: I'm curious, you must start seeing patterns in terms of the data.
[00:26:36] Ramli John: Are there any specific pattern in terms of where programs need help the most or any other interesting patterns you've seen based on conversations or the data that you're getting through the scorecard?
[00:26:50] Brian Childs: Yeah.
[00:26:50] Brian Childs: So the scorecard that you're talking about is we've relaunched this thing on learning outcomes, which is an opportunity for program leaders to get an assessment of their program.
[00:27:06] Brian Childs: And like you say, we measure on four different dimensions and then it creates a little report, gives you a score across these four different dimensions.
[00:27:15] Brian Childs: And that report, what people are doing or what they're telling me they're doing is they're taking that report and then going.
[00:27:19] Brian Childs: And that's a good way to sort of start a conversation with your executive sponsors and be like, look, these are the areas we need to really focus on.
[00:27:26] Brian Childs: So I'll take you behind the scenes on what's going on with the scorecard a little bit.
[00:27:31] Brian Childs: The scorecard is measuring two different main dimensions, okay?
[00:27:37] Brian Childs: Those two different dimensions are the person who's filling it out and the organization that they're in.
[00:27:43] Brian Childs: And I'll use an analogy to say that if you go try to plant an apple tree in concrete, you're not going to really get a lot of apples out of it, right?
[00:27:55] Brian Childs: So it's like you could have a sophisticated, viable program leader, but your organization might not be set up to make or capitalize on that person's capabilities.
[00:28:08] Brian Childs: And so this scorecard really measures these two different things.
[00:28:11] Brian Childs: One is there's a lot of questions in there that about you.
[00:28:13] Brian Childs: So it's like, do you do this?
[00:28:15] Brian Childs: What are the capabilities you bring to the table?
[00:28:18] Brian Childs: And there's a lot of stuff that talks about how siloed is your organization?
[00:28:23] Brian Childs: Do people share backlogs, these things that are relevant to the organization?
[00:28:28] Brian Childs: And so what the interesting aspect of the data that's coming out of it.
[00:28:32] Brian Childs: And maybe this is no surprise, but it's like the people who are taking it, more often than not, are scoring relatively high on the things that they themselves are in control of.
[00:28:43] Brian Childs: So maybe you've worked in these roles before, maybe you've done these kinds of activities before.
[00:28:48] Brian Childs: Maybe you have a good sense of process and you know the language of how to do all of this, you can execute it if given the opportunity.
[00:28:55] Brian Childs: The biggest challenges are faced at the organizational level.
[00:28:59] Brian Childs: Siloing, a lack of shared backlogs, a lack of cross functional engagement, those kinds of things.
[00:29:06] Brian Childs: So it's like, even if I was to give you all the power in the world and the biggest budget in the world possible, the organization that you're working in is not ready to capitalize on the opportunity of customer education.
[00:29:19] Brian Childs: And I would argue that the same kinds of things, the similar types of questions could be said about sophisticated marketing campaigns where it's like you might be a really great marketer, but the organization that you're planted in is not really capable of doing, of executing what is required, which is like a cross functional engagement with a customer that follows them down the lifecycle and keeps the value story consistent throughout the whole thing all the way to the point where they buy and adopt your solution.
[00:29:51] Ramli John: Yeah, I've seen that time and time again.
[00:29:53] Ramli John: It seems like it's more organizational, political issue or more like a data issue or maybe both, where systems are not talking to each other and the organization hasn't, I guess, set all the pipeline and all the process in place so that they can take advantage of the program, the training program more across the.

[00:30:15] The intersections between customer education and data silos

[00:30:15] Brian Childs: Yeah, I think you're touching on the two.
[00:30:18] Brian Childs: So there's three dimensions.
[00:30:20] Brian Childs: So I'm mentioning one is like the person and the other is the organization.
[00:30:23] Brian Childs: I would break the organization into two aspects and you can think of this as a two x two matrix.
[00:30:27] Brian Childs: So if your audience wants to visualize this, the two x two is.
[00:30:32] Brian Childs: I do love a two x two.
[00:30:34] Brian Childs: The two x two is on one side would be data architecture.
[00:30:39] Brian Childs: Right.
[00:30:39] Brian Childs: And so data architecture would be like, how do you store it?
[00:30:41] Brian Childs: How do you join it?
[00:30:43] Brian Childs: The availability of analysis.
[00:30:45] Brian Childs: To what degree are you able to ask sophisticated questions of your data?
[00:30:50] Brian Childs: And by your data I mean across all of the different systems that you have the other dimension.
[00:30:56] Brian Childs: So one would be data architecture.
[00:30:58] Brian Childs: The other dimension would be cross functional collaboration.
[00:31:01] Brian Childs: So to what degree do different teams across your customer lifecycle work together or don't to set priorities.
[00:31:09] Brian Childs: So those are the two that's on the side of the company.
[00:31:14] Brian Childs: It'd be like data architecture, cross functional collaboration.
[00:31:17] Brian Childs: If you don't have good data architecture, you're not going to be able to answer sophisticated questions.
[00:31:22] Brian Childs: It doesn't matter if you want to be like, we want to hit retention.
[00:31:24] Brian Childs: It's like if you can't measure things with data very hard.
[00:31:29] Brian Childs: The cross functional collaboration, I would say is probably the both of these are significant, but I'd say the cross functional collaboration is a thing that people verbalize a lot more, which is like we are so siloed or these other people are doing this other thing over here, that sort of thing.
[00:31:42] Brian Childs: So the third dimension would be the thing that's related to the program leader.
[00:31:47] Brian Childs: I would simplify.
[00:31:48] Brian Childs: The qualification of this is just, have you done this before?
[00:31:54] Brian Childs: So you have this two x two matrix.
[00:31:56] Brian Childs: So you can be like, here's where our organization is.
[00:31:57] Brian Childs: And then you could lay on top of that the program leaders experience and you could say, if the organization has a high sophistication of data, the use of data, and a high degree of cross functional collaboration that represents the potential for customer education.
[00:32:16] Brian Childs: I would even argue like sophisticated marketing programs, then you put on your leader on that and say, can they execute or take advantage of that opportunity that's presented by the organization and that will rely on the experience of the program leader.
[00:32:31] Brian Childs: And so in this scorecard, this scorecard functionally measures these things.
[00:32:35] Brian Childs: So what it does, it kicks out a score that says, to the degree to which, based upon the questions we can assess whether or not you have the potential around your data to impact the kinds of things where customer education can play a role.
[00:32:49] Brian Childs: Is there cross functional collaboration taking place?
[00:32:51] Brian Childs: And do you have the experience to be able to make or capitalize on the opportunity that's presented by your organization?
[00:32:58] Brian Childs: And more often than not, the likelihood is that the person who's taking it has the process knowledge to be able to capitalize on it.
[00:33:06] Brian Childs: But the organization itself either lacks the data architecture or the cross functional collaboration, or both to high degrees.
[00:33:13] Brian Childs: And so those would be things where it'd be like if you're going to focus on something, focus on impacting those two aspects.
[00:33:18] Ramli John: Interesting.
[00:33:19] Ramli John: That's just blowing my mind.
[00:33:21] Ramli John: I think that makes a ton of sense.
[00:33:22] Ramli John: I've seen a lot of organizations who have struggle with that as well.
[00:33:26] Ramli John: I guess there's also evangelizing the training program within the organization is what I'm hearing, where you're really like, here's what we could achieve with this.
[00:33:37] Ramli John: What you mentioned earlier around using the data for the sales process or impacting in terms of customer lifetime value, and this is what resources I need to get that installed really is what hindering a lot of training programs to reach its full potential is what I'm hearing you're saying.
[00:33:58] Brian Childs: Yeah, and it's the classic, like best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, next best time today.
[00:34:05] Brian Childs: So it's kind of like recognizing that.
[00:34:10] Brian Childs: I think the most important outcome of some of that is just being able to have a conversation about where the priorities lie and honestly whether or not the organization really wants it.
[00:34:19] Brian Childs: They could say that they want to have this kind of sophisticated program and they want to do these kinds of impacts, but at the end of the day, training programs, customer education, it's a wrench.
[00:34:30] Brian Childs: So it's like if I got a wrench and it's a solution in search of a problem.
[00:34:36] Brian Childs: So I think the first thing to ask is, what are we trying to solve?
[00:34:43] Brian Childs: If I'm talking to an organization that says they have the problem around maybe lead qualification or whatever, it's like, okay, well then let's talk about all the different potential ways that we could solve that.
[00:34:54] Brian Childs: If they want to solve a retention problem, then I would say, well, customer education is a very successful way of doing it.
[00:35:01] Brian Childs: But to do it, we need to recognize that the journey that we're going to take to get there is going to be about us having a very informed conversation about our data architecture and across functional collaboration.
[00:35:13] Brian Childs: If we're not willing to talk about cross functional collaboration data, then we're not really talking about driving retention.
[00:35:20] Brian Childs: You're trying to plant some magic beans in some poor customer education leader and have them just kind of like, they're trying to like, I'm going to be an apple tree.
[00:35:30] Brian Childs: We're going to build them like right in the middle of a freeway.
[00:35:32] Brian Childs: You're not going to get any apples off of that thing.
[00:35:35] Ramli John: I love it.
[00:35:36] Ramli John: I appreciate all this analogies you've been sharing now with the beans and the driving.
[00:35:41] Brian Childs: Sorry, I'm like, beans and apples and roads.
[00:35:45] Brian Childs: You're like, okay, man, where's the thread?
[00:35:48] Ramli John: It's good because it's such a great education technique where especially with very non tactical or non physical concepts, people can visualize it.
[00:36:01] Ramli John: So do appreciate it.

[00:36:03] Top Tips for Creating a World-Class Training Program

[00:36:03] Ramli John: I want to ask around specifically a company that you've worked with in the past or you've seen where their training program is world class.
[00:36:15] Ramli John: Is there one that sticks out for you?
[00:36:17] Ramli John: Or like if people are going to check out what training programs should look like on the outside, you should check out this company.
[00:36:25] Ramli John: Is there any ones that specifically stand up for you that you've seen in the past?
[00:36:31] Brian Childs: Well, I would go back to the statements around.
[00:36:36] Brian Childs: So rather than saying like, this brand does it really well, I think it's important.
[00:36:41] Brian Childs: You could point HubSpot and be like HubSpot Academy and like Courtney Sembler or what she does is really incredible.
[00:36:46] Brian Childs: But the qualities that make it, I think it's better to focus on what are the qualities that would make for a good program?
[00:36:53] Brian Childs: Rather than why is it good?
[00:36:54] Brian Childs: Because it's very easy to look at some programs, particularly smaller, maybe like mid market SaaS companies.
[00:37:01] Brian Childs: And what you're observing from the outside is herculean effort on the part of an individual or small group of people that are pushing that forward and that they might be working against headwinds.
[00:37:12] Brian Childs: So it's kind of hard to tell from the outside.
[00:37:14] Brian Childs: Sometimes you're looking at a program as to what's actually functionally causing it.
[00:37:19] Brian Childs: I would encourage people to think about and develop ways or use things like the scorecard.
[00:37:28] Brian Childs: You can use the scorecard when you're going as an interview guide, too.
[00:37:33] Brian Childs: So if you're looking for work in customer education, ask those questions to the company that you're interviewing and get them to divulge those things, because if you can, you can build a profile around it.
[00:37:46] Brian Childs: It's not that a company is doing it really well.
[00:37:49] Brian Childs: The question is, what are the underlying factors that are resulting in a company being able to do it well?
[00:37:55] Brian Childs: And each one of those cross functional collaboration, data architecture, program leadership, each one of those can change.
[00:38:03] Brian Childs: So what was good two years ago at a company, maybe through a reorg or through the realities of budget changes or a person left and got a new job, each one of those could dramatically change the current state, even if they were really good a couple of years ago.
[00:38:21] Brian Childs: So I would refrain from saying this company is doing it, but well.
[00:38:27] Brian Childs: And I'd encourage people rather to understand that the fundamental architecture of what causes programs to be good is more important than the brand name itself.
[00:38:38] Brian Childs: There are good programs out there, but I'd equally say that there are really phenomenal people driving them, and they might be working against severe headwinds to do it.
[00:38:49] Ramli John: All right, I will link the scorecard.
[00:38:51] Ramli John: I love that.
[00:38:51] Ramli John: A suggestion.
[00:38:52] Ramli John: If you're going to an interview about customer education, ask them those questions.
[00:38:55] Ramli John: That will be helpful.
[00:38:58] Brian Childs: The original version I ever built with those things was actually like an interview guide for myself.
[00:39:01] Brian Childs: When I was looking at programs, I'm like, I don't want to go into dumpster fire.
[00:39:04] Brian Childs: So how can I avoid this and get people to answer questions that they don't?
[00:39:08] Brian Childs: I was doing my own sqls.
[00:39:09] Brian Childs: I'm just sort of like, is this a sales qualified lead for me to join this company?
[00:39:13] Brian Childs: So use it in that way if you want.
[00:39:16] Brian Childs: I don't care if people filled out multiple times.
[00:39:19] Ramli John: I love it.

[00:39:20] Career Power-Ups and Creating a Star Map of an Organization

[00:39:20] Ramli John: I want to shift gears and talk about career power ups.
[00:39:23] Ramli John: I know you've been in marketing now for over a decade.
[00:39:25] Ramli John: You mentioned some of the companies you worked with.
[00:39:27] Ramli John: Moss, looking at your LinkedIn profile.
[00:39:30] Ramli John: You also work at top industries in GE.
[00:39:33] Ramli John: What's a power up that's helped you accelerate your career?
[00:39:36] Ramli John: And it could be something that's a concept, or it could be something that's specific to marketing.
[00:39:44] Brian Childs: Yeah.
[00:39:44] Brian Childs: So I have this habit that I developed that comes from, I was an undergrad in cultural anthropology.
[00:39:53] Brian Childs: Okay.
[00:39:54] Brian Childs: And so I do this thing that I call creating a star map of an organization.
[00:40:00] Brian Childs: So think of it as like trying to diagram the constellation.
[00:40:04] Brian Childs: And in anthropology, one of the activities that you do is developing a power structure diagram of a community.
[00:40:15] Brian Childs: And I will develop a power structured diagram of organizations to try to determine where reputational power or influence comes from.
[00:40:30] Brian Childs: And so here's the way I do it, is when I enter in an organization, particularly in the very beginning, I will keep track of where people point to.
[00:40:41] Brian Childs: When you ask, who knows this information?
[00:40:43] Brian Childs: And be very intentional about it.
[00:40:44] Brian Childs: Be like, oh, this is a really interesting report, or who knows?
[00:40:48] Brian Childs: I'm trying to figure out about x, who knows about that?
[00:40:52] Brian Childs: Keep track of the person that you're talking to and who they point you to.
[00:40:56] Brian Childs: What you're going to find is that people, after you ask the same question, like, who knows the most about our data analysis or who knows the most about the salesforce, like, what's going on in Salesforce?
[00:41:12] Brian Childs: After you talk to enough people, everyone starts pointing to the same.
[00:41:18] Brian Childs: Usually, like, you'll find that information resides in very few people in an organization.
[00:41:24] Brian Childs: And those people, because they own the information or because they're relied on by everybody else, they have an outsized impact on decision making.
[00:41:35] Brian Childs: And oftentimes, particularly in engineering or very technical kinds of organizations, like when I worked at GE, those people are not the ones that get invited to leadership meetings.
[00:41:47] Brian Childs: They're the ones that are down in the basement crunching numbers the whole time.
[00:41:50] Brian Childs: But they might not be in the meeting, but you know what?
[00:41:53] Brian Childs: They are in the meeting, because everybody else is relying on their version of the information that they think that that person knows.
[00:42:01] Brian Childs: And so if you can identify who those people are, if you can create a star map.
[00:42:04] Brian Childs: So, like, think of the stars of an organization.
[00:42:07] Brian Childs: If you can create a star map, you're going to find out.
[00:42:10] Brian Childs: Developing relationships with those people gives you an inordinate amount of power in an organization, because you can then say, like, well, I was talking to Jerry, and know as a person who knows Jerry, and they're like, you know, like, if you can get to be that person's friend, you can get direct access to a lot of influence.
[00:42:30] Brian Childs: And more importantly, you can skip past a lot of what is derived knowledge.
[00:42:35] Brian Childs: And in organizations, there tends to be a lot of derived knowledge of people who saw a report that that person made, and that's their interpretation of it.
[00:42:42] Brian Childs: It's kind of this whole go to the primary source material, and if you ask questions of who knows this and keep track and be like, this person said that there was that person, this person said it was that person.
[00:42:54] Brian Childs: This person said it was this other person over there.
[00:42:56] Brian Childs: And then when I asked them, they said it was the same person.
[00:42:58] Brian Childs: So you can start realizing that everybody's actually just referencing very few sources of information.
[00:43:06] Brian Childs: It's a hack to get to where the power and influential power resides within an organization.
[00:43:11] Brian Childs: So create a star map.
[00:43:14] Ramli John: That's such an interesting advice.
[00:43:18] Ramli John: I'm going to try this out.
[00:43:20] Ramli John: I'm going to try this out where I work at AppCus and see how it goes.
[00:43:25] Ramli John: I guess it also depends on what you're asking for.
[00:43:28] Ramli John: If it's about Salesforce, Jerry, if it's about, I don't know, another topic around our CRM or maybe our email marketing program, it would be this person.
[00:43:39] Ramli John: So now you might have different maps based on specific knowledge.
[00:43:44] Ramli John: Is that how you're thinking about that?
[00:43:47] Brian Childs: Yeah.
[00:43:48] Brian Childs: What you'll end up with is you'll end up with a lot of people pointing to the same individuals around the most important topics or the most important pieces of information within a company.
[00:44:04] Brian Childs: And so there'll be a lot of stuff that's just sort of like, I don't know, everybody knows there's some people that know HubSpot.
[00:44:09] Brian Childs: So sometimes it'll be like, who knows a tool best?
[00:44:11] Brian Childs: And that's helpful because you can skip past a lot of folks.
[00:44:14] Brian Childs: The more interesting things are around.
[00:44:17] Brian Childs: To extend sort of the cultural anthropology analogy here is it's like to understand the ethnography of an organization to be like, which of these people?
[00:44:26] Brian Childs: Maybe they're not the CEO, maybe they're not even the senior executives.
[00:44:29] Brian Childs: Which of these people are the ones that are describing for this entire organization how the sun goes up and down in our world.
[00:44:35] Brian Childs: Why do we believe that this is what the competitive landscape looks like?
[00:44:39] Brian Childs: Well, it's like, it might be because there's one or two people that either have data or have a tremendous amount of influence on the way that the perception is.
[00:44:49] Brian Childs: If you can understand that, it's like you can just short circuit a lot of the cross functional inefficiency that goes with hierarchy and just go directly to those sources and be like, hey, I have a couple of questions.
[00:45:01] Brian Childs: Tell me how this works.
[00:45:02] Brian Childs: And you can get right to the individuals that have that.
[00:45:06] Ramli John: I love that.
[00:45:07] Ramli John: And it's all about what you mentioned earlier around helping you get buy in cross functional collaboration and really helping you level up, I guess, and get stuff going if you need to.
[00:45:21] Brian Childs: Yeah, it's like, use the influence of the organization to your advantage and oftentimes more often than not, it is disconnected from the hierarchies that are installed around leadership structure.
[00:45:36] Brian Childs: Oftentimes there's a whole separate, invisible, horizontal aspect to it about how information flows.

[00:45:42] Brian Childs on Thought Industries, Moz, and Learning Outcomes

[00:45:42] Ramli John: Your organization if you enjoyed this episode, you'd love the marketing Powerups newsletter.
[00:45:46] Ramli John: I share the actionable takeaways and break down the frameworks of world class marketers.
[00:45:51] Ramli John: You can go to marketingpowerups.com, subscribe, and you'll instantly unlock the three best frameworks that top marketers use, hit their KPIs consistently, and wow their colleagues.
[00:46:02] Ramli John: I want to say thank you to you for listening.
[00:46:04] Ramli John: And please like and follow marketing powerups on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
[00:46:09] Ramli John: If you're feeling extra generous, kindly leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
[00:46:14] Ramli John: And leave a comment on YouTube goes a long way in others finding out about marketing power ups.
[00:46:19] Ramli John: Thanks to Mary Sullivan for creating the artwork and design.
[00:46:21] Ramli John: And thank you to Fisal Kygo for editing the intro video.
[00:46:24] Ramli John: And of course, thank you for listening.
[00:46:27] Ramli John: That's all for now.
[00:46:28] Ramli John: Have a powered update marketing power ups.
[00:46:34] Brian Childs: Until the next episode.

Loren Ipsum

[00:00:00] Guerrilla Marketing Tactics for Conferences with Kamil Rextin of 42 Agency

[00:00:00] Ramli John: Attending and sponsoring conferences can be a hefty financial investment, often reaching up to 100 grand.
[00:00:06] Ramli John: But Camille Rexon and the 42 agency team chose a more creative and cost effective approach through guerrilla marketing tactics.
[00:00:13] Ramli John: Rather than spending on traditional conference boots at SaaSTR and HubSpot's inbound conference, they opted for a more unconventional and engaging method to capture attention and acquire new customers.
[00:00:24] Ramli John: One of the things they did, they rented limousine buses to shuttle attendees from their hotels to the conference and drove trucks with billboards, turning those vehicles into mobile advertisement.
[00:00:34] Ramli John: Today, Camille shares a few guerrilla marketing tactics for conferences.
[00:00:38] Ramli John: In episode 59 of the marketing pop show, you learn, first of all, why in person events shouldn't just be an opportunity to sell and pitch.
[00:00:45] Ramli John: Second, the results of 42 agencies limo shuttles at Saster 2023 3rd, Camille's take on the future of performance marketing and number four, power up that has accelerated Camille's career.
[00:00:56] Ramli John: Before we get started, I've created a free power ups cheat sheet that you can download and apply Camille's brilliant marketing tactics at conferences.
[00:01:02] Ramli John: You can get it now@marketingpowerups.com or find the link in the show notes and description.

[00:01:06]

[00:01:06] Ramli John: You ready?
[00:01:07] Ramli John: Let's go.
[00:01:08] Ramli John: Marketing power ups ready, go.
[00:01:16] Ramli John: Here's your host, Rambly John Camille, I'm so excited.
[00:01:22] Ramli John: It's been like a long time coming.
[00:01:24] Ramli John: I invited you very when this podcast started and then I'm not sure what happened, but I'm glad for you to come here.
[00:01:32] Ramli John: We're going to be talking about your team strategy around SaaSTR event, which is a very expensive, very fun event.
[00:01:40] Ramli John: And inbound, yeah, you did a bunch of stuff there.
[00:01:44] Ramli John: Your team wrote a whole piece about this.
[00:01:47] Ramli John: But I'd just love to hear why Saturn inbound.
[00:01:52] Ramli John: Was it like your customers was there or you saw as an opportunity to just put the word out with about 42 agencies and anything else.
[00:02:02] Kamil Rextin: So I went to SaaSTR last year by myself.
[00:02:08] Kamil Rextin: It's all the companies and all the people who want to sell to vp marketing, CMO, CRO and BITB SaaS companies.
[00:02:15] Kamil Rextin: So last year we did this thing that got some attention was we hired somebody off Craigslist and we said we're going to give you $42 bills.
[00:02:24] Kamil Rextin: And as people come in for registrations each morning of the event, just hand them out as many as you can.
[00:02:31] Kamil Rextin: And we got some like Emily Kramer got one and she texted me, she sent me a picture and she's like, hey, I just got handbooked this brilliant idea.
[00:02:39] Ramli John: It got some attention is a $42 bill.
[00:02:43] Kamil Rextin: Yes, I can send you a picture of that with my face on it.
[00:02:46] Kamil Rextin: It's designed as a dollar bill, but it's like $42.
[00:02:50] Kamil Rextin: So that was pretty fun.
[00:02:53] Kamil Rextin: So this year we were brainstorming, and this year I was like, okay, I'm not going to go solo.
[00:02:59] Kamil Rextin: I'm going to go take some people from my team.
[00:03:01] Kamil Rextin: So I went with Alejandra Betty, and then we were brainstorming ideas on, like, we can't get a booth for 100, balcony, 50,000, whatever.
[00:03:10] Kamil Rextin: Crazy.
[00:03:11] Kamil Rextin: Whatever the boot amount is.
[00:03:13] Kamil Rextin: So what's a more cost efficient way to just get attention, right?
[00:03:18] Kamil Rextin: Marketing is all about getting attention.
[00:03:21] Kamil Rextin: So Alejandro came up with the idea of a limo.
[00:03:25] Kamil Rextin: She's like, why don't we hire a limo and then we can run a 42 shuttle?
[00:03:29] Kamil Rextin: So we printed out some magnets, we put it on top of the limo, so it was like 42 branded, and we would literally just go to every hotel and say, hey, are you guys going to Sapster?
[00:03:39] Kamil Rextin: We're running a shuttle.
[00:03:41] Kamil Rextin: Would you like a ride?
[00:03:43] Kamil Rextin: And we managed to fill up.
[00:03:44] Kamil Rextin: We did, like four or five trips back and forth with the limo filled a couple of times.
[00:03:48] Kamil Rextin: We were so full that we couldn't fit in ourselves, so we had to wait for the limo to come back.
[00:03:53] Kamil Rextin: And while people were in the limo, it was a good opportunity to just talk to the mobile stuff, right?
[00:03:57] Kamil Rextin: Like, hey, what you do?
[00:03:58] Kamil Rextin: This is what we do.
[00:03:59] Kamil Rextin: Here's a $42 bill.
[00:04:01] Kamil Rextin: If you ever need demand and DevOps marketing help, go give us a call.
[00:04:06] Kamil Rextin: And somebody actually called it a moving booth.
[00:04:11] Kamil Rextin: I'm like, yeah, this is kind of what it is.
[00:04:15] Kamil Rextin: So that was pretty fun.
[00:04:17] Kamil Rextin: Initially, I wanted to.
[00:04:19] Kamil Rextin: When we were brainstorming ideas, I was like, maybe we can fly a plane overhead and just drop the flyers of the plane all over the event.
[00:04:29] Kamil Rextin: And that's where I was like, maybe get a billboard by SFO airport around the event venue when people are driving in.
[00:04:37] Kamil Rextin: But that was like 20k or something like that.
[00:04:40] Kamil Rextin: Crazy.
[00:04:40] Kamil Rextin: Yeah.
[00:04:41] Kamil Rextin: Seven k for the billboard and the billboard at the event.
[00:04:44] Kamil Rextin: So, like, in the parking lot, I don't want to drop seven k on two days.
[00:04:50] Kamil Rextin: So we did that.
[00:04:51] Kamil Rextin: We got the same girl from Craigslist to give out flyers, but she actually got chased by security, so you couldn't give out all the flyers.
[00:05:01] Kamil Rextin: And then the limo worked really well.
[00:05:04] Kamil Rextin: And then we had some custom design t shirts that got some attention.
[00:05:07] Kamil Rextin: People like, these are really cool t shirts.
[00:05:09] Kamil Rextin: And the amazing thing is a few people are like, oh, yeah, 42.
[00:05:12] Kamil Rextin: I've heard of you guys before.
[00:05:16] Kamil Rextin: And then at inbound, because Saastr and inbound were just the same kind.
[00:05:21] Kamil Rextin: So I found a company in Boston that does these mobile billboards, and it was like, alhanta did the design, and we got these mobile billboards at inbound whenever none of us from the team was at inbound.
[00:05:33] Kamil Rextin: But I wanted to have a presence because we're pretty big.
[00:05:36] Kamil Rextin: We work with a lot of cupspot customers.
[00:05:39] Kamil Rextin: So he just parked the billboard in front of the event venue, so when people coming in, they can see the billboard.
[00:05:45] Kamil Rextin: And then he drove around the event venue at the lunch spots, when people are leaving for lunch and all that stuff.
[00:05:53] Kamil Rextin: So to me, a lot of people treat events like sales activity, which I think is part of it.
[00:06:00] Kamil Rextin: Like, you go to the booth, you stand the badge itself.
[00:06:02] Kamil Rextin: But I also think it's an experiential marketing activity, and you just want to maximize brand impressions that you want people to remember you.
[00:06:09] Ramli John: Yeah.
[00:06:09] Kamil Rextin: And that was like, the whole driving idea behind it is like, how do we become memorable and get attention?
[00:06:15] Kamil Rextin: And we don't spend a lot of money because we can't focus, like event.
[00:06:22] Kamil Rextin: So we just did some scrappy stuff, I think, including travel tickets, everything.
[00:06:28] Kamil Rextin: And the inbound billboard, our total costumes are only like $10,000.
[00:06:32] Kamil Rextin: What?
[00:06:32] Kamil Rextin: For everything?
[00:06:34] Kamil Rextin: Including the limo, including tickets, including flights, including hotels.
[00:06:38] Ramli John: Interesting.
[00:06:38] Kamil Rextin: Including tickets to the event, including the billboard printing, the flyer printing, like, all in.
[00:06:45] Kamil Rextin: I think our cost was like ten k, which is pretty reasonable given ourselves.
[00:06:48] Ramli John: I mean, compared to 150 grand.
[00:06:52] Kamil Rextin: Right.
[00:06:53] Kamil Rextin: That's pretty impressive, right?
[00:06:55] Kamil Rextin: Yeah.
[00:06:55] Kamil Rextin: Thank you.
[00:06:56] Kamil Rextin: So we tried to be scrappy, we tried to be creative, and we're like, what's the low budget way?
[00:07:03] Kamil Rextin: And then we had some pens, we gave out to people, and we had a lot of conversations with people, but it was just like trying to stand up.

[00:07:10] Standing Out at Events: A Creative Approach by 42 Agency

[00:07:10] Ramli John: It's interesting that something you mentioned earlier, people come to events thinking it's just a sales event.
[00:07:17] Ramli John: Sure, people are looking to measure roi with number of demos done during that time, but it's interesting how you've kind of.
[00:07:27] Ramli John: It's not just on a sales event you mentioned, it's also about staying top of mind, and people are going to talk about the limo.
[00:07:34] Ramli John: It's like, I got a free ride.
[00:07:37] Ramli John: It's an experience.
[00:07:38] Ramli John: Compared to walking up to a booth where they've gone to maybe 50 booths, they've only gone.
[00:07:45] Ramli John: Was there anybody else doing the limo?
[00:07:46] Ramli John: I can't imagine.
[00:07:49] Ramli John: There's only one limo and it was 42 agency.
[00:07:52] Ramli John: You stood out compared to the booths out there.
[00:07:56] Kamil Rextin: And then also it's like how many people hear about 42?
[00:08:00] Kamil Rextin: How many people see 42?
[00:08:01] Kamil Rextin: How many people talk about.
[00:08:03] Kamil Rextin: That was our main KPI.
[00:08:05] Kamil Rextin: Yes, we had some good conversations and hopefully we closed some deals out of it.
[00:08:09] Kamil Rextin: But I wasn't strictly worried about how many sales leads we get.
[00:08:14] Kamil Rextin: It was just like can we stay top of mind for these people and can we just leave a positive impression?
[00:08:20] Ramli John: I love how you're thinking about this the long way, the long game versus the short game.
[00:08:25] Ramli John: Or like I'm curious, like the last time you went, you gave away those $42.
[00:08:32] Ramli John: You should call it something 42 Camille Bucks or something like that.
[00:08:41] Ramli John: Did you end up a customer or you talked about Emily Kramer who's like this amazing marketer who owns market one, but she got one of those.
[00:08:52] Ramli John: Was there anybody else who furthered down like oh, I remember getting one of your $42 from that event?
[00:08:59] Kamil Rextin: No, but I got some good introductions from the event.
[00:09:02] Kamil Rextin: So from people I met at the event I got some introductions.
[00:09:05] Kamil Rextin: So I'm not looking at it like we handed out these many dollars bills.
[00:09:08] Kamil Rextin: How many people, like some People came to the side, we got a sticky traffic.
[00:09:13] Kamil Rextin: I'm okay with not having a direct line to revenue.
[00:09:18] Kamil Rextin: It was something creative that I can offset about and talk to about a podcast and then putting you guys away creative.
[00:09:27] Kamil Rextin: It's also the third level effects, the fourth level effects of doing that exercise and then using that as a story to tell our story.
[00:09:38] Ramli John: That's so good.
[00:09:41] Ramli John: The Plane.
[00:09:42] Ramli John: Like you were going to hire a plane to drop flyers.
[00:09:45] Ramli John: Like wow, you're really thinking out there and really thinking about this, about grabbing attention because nobody else is necessarily doing that.
[00:09:54] Ramli John: People are going to come.
[00:09:55] Ramli John: People typically a company comes, they have their booth, they have their stands and their design their flyers.
[00:10:02] Ramli John: And then you're like I'm going to go bring a plane or a limo to this event.
[00:10:07] Ramli John: And people are like yeah, it's going to really stand out here, which is super interesting, basically.

[00:10:13] The Balance Between Short-Term and Long-Term Results in Marketing

[00:10:13] Ramli John: Can you talk a little bit more about that?
[00:10:15] Ramli John: Like the importance of attention, especially nowadays with economy, I think there's increased competition.
[00:10:21] Ramli John: There's things like that.
[00:10:23] Ramli John: How important is it for companies to think about?
[00:10:26] Ramli John: Not just direct, like okay, I did x, now I got Y in terms of sales calls.
[00:10:32] Ramli John: But you're thinking about, I love how you put it, the second, 3rd, 4th, even the fifth event effect of doing an activity and really thinking about it long term.
[00:10:43] Ramli John: How important is it now for companies to be thinking about that or is it even important?
[00:10:48] Kamil Rextin: So always about balancing both.
[00:10:50] Kamil Rextin: I think agency sales is very different than software sales.
[00:10:54] Kamil Rextin: I'm going to put a caveat there because in agency sales you're working with people and the relationship matters 100% time more than buying a piece of software.
[00:11:03] Kamil Rextin: So I think there's that difference.
[00:11:05] Kamil Rextin: I think agency sales are more about building trust and showcasing expertise.
[00:11:10] Kamil Rextin: WhIle a Product, you have just what the product actually works and how good does this thing actually work as an agency?
[00:11:21] Kamil Rextin: I think our strategies and stuff is very different.
[00:11:23] Kamil Rextin: But I think if you're a B two B Saastr brand, you have to always balance the short term and the long term.
[00:11:32] Kamil Rextin: If you are selling, I don't know, performance management software and it's a 30 day sales cycle, you have to invest in the immediate drug response stuff to pay the bills and then you invest in the longer term brand building.
[00:11:49] Kamil Rextin: Because brand over time makes performance marketing easier because more people are familiar with your brand.
[00:11:55] Kamil Rextin: So you get higher click through rates, lower CPC, higher conversion rate.
[00:11:59] Kamil Rextin: So you have already built that trust in the market.
[00:12:02] Kamil Rextin: But it's also a fool's errand to be like I'm an illicit startup, I have sub $1 million revenue.
[00:12:07] Kamil Rextin: I'm going to invest everything in my brand marketing.
[00:12:09] Kamil Rextin: You can't do that.
[00:12:11] Kamil Rextin: You're going to run out of money before that brand marketing starts to pay off.
[00:12:15] Ramli John: Yeah.
[00:12:16] Kamil Rextin: So I think you have to take it with a grain of salt to say that typically with our customers we do like a 60 30 model, 70 30 60.
[00:12:29] Kamil Rextin: We over index on performance, direct response because that is what's going to drive the short term results because that is ultimately important.
[00:12:36] Kamil Rextin: But that shouldn't come at the expense of the longer term brand building because you also want to be doing longer term brand building and performance ads.
[00:12:44] Kamil Rextin: And performance marketing can also build longer term brand.
[00:12:48] Kamil Rextin: It's not that Monday.com spends I don't know how many, 90% of their revenue on YouTube rank and stuff.
[00:12:54] Kamil Rextin: And they're all directly slots.
[00:12:55] Kamil Rextin: They're all like sign up for a trial, go try Monday.
[00:12:58] Kamil Rextin: But you see them so often, so much everywhere that you start to just become top of mind for you.
[00:13:04] Kamil Rextin: Right, but those are not brand campaigns, right?
[00:13:06] Kamil Rextin: Those are essentially performance campaigns.
[00:13:09] Kamil Rextin: But just by virtue of frequency and virtue of like you've seen them on YouTube, on search, on this, that you just think about Monday when you think of product or ClickUp or whatever, any of these things.
[00:13:20] Ramli John: Yeah.
[00:13:21] Kamil Rextin: So I think to say that performance campaign can only drive performance and a brand campaign can only drive brand is a false argument.
[00:13:30] Kamil Rextin: I think performance can be a brand and brand can drive false.
[00:13:35] Kamil Rextin: It's just how you approach it and the time frames you're looking at.

[00:13:39] Balancing Brand Experience and Direct Sales at Events

[00:13:39] Ramli John: How do you see that applied to events where most people see events as like, okay, this is like direct performance.
[00:13:47] Ramli John: Bring salespeople in, do as many demos as possible, versus, you can also see it as a split between brand experience.
[00:13:55] Ramli John: Like the limo, man, that's such a great experience on its own, but it's also a little bit of like, you call it a moving booth where there's a balance there.
[00:14:05] Kamil Rextin: It's both.
[00:14:06] Kamil Rextin: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:14:07] Kamil Rextin: But with the limo, our main goal wasn't to direct sales, drive leads.
[00:14:14] Kamil Rextin: Our main goal was to drive brand impression and more people to know about the limo and talk about 42 agency, as an agency that wrote the limo, that was our main goal.
[00:14:24] Kamil Rextin: The secondary effect was like we had to work conversations with people writing the limo, and that was like, oh, yeah, okay, this is what you tell.
[00:14:30] Kamil Rextin: Yeah, let's talk after we write that stuff.
[00:14:32] Kamil Rextin: For sure.
[00:14:34] Kamil Rextin: I think events are expensive, so it's normal to be like, I'm putting fifty k on a booth.
[00:14:40] Kamil Rextin: What am I going to get out of it?
[00:14:42] Kamil Rextin: For us it was different because we didn't buy a booth for 50k.
[00:14:45] Kamil Rextin: We put like $10,000 and for us it was like, if we close one customer out of it, we'll get the return.
[00:14:52] Ramli John: Right, exactly.
[00:14:55] Ramli John: That makes sense.

[00:14:56] Creating Memorable Event Experiences: Lessons from 42 Agency

[00:14:56] Ramli John: Do you have any advice for, I mean, this might be different for agencies versus companies, but I just love the scrappiness of this.
[00:15:03] Ramli John: And I feel like more companies can approach the same, whether they're a software business or agency business, in terms of events, rather than like, traditional, let's just get a booth.
[00:15:14] Ramli John: Do you have any advice or tips for companies?
[00:15:17] Kamil Rextin: I just think you should look at it as, here's a bunch of people who are from our ICP.
[00:15:23] Kamil Rextin: They're going to be all at the same place at the same time.
[00:15:25] Kamil Rextin: How do we make ourselves memorable?
[00:15:28] Kamil Rextin: It could be a limo, it could be a dinner you host, it could be anything.
[00:15:33] Kamil Rextin: But I think face to face time adds a lot.
[00:15:37] Kamil Rextin: It builds more trust and more familiarity.
[00:15:39] Kamil Rextin: So you have to maximize that.
[00:15:41] Kamil Rextin: And you can think about it as, how do I make sure when they leave this event, they still remember who we are and what we do?
[00:15:49] Kamil Rextin: Because there's so many boots.
[00:15:51] Kamil Rextin: Everybody has a boot and boots are crazy.
[00:15:54] Kamil Rextin: People spend an insane amount of money on boots.
[00:15:57] Kamil Rextin: So some people were making like ice cream and coffee and blah, blah, blah, but that's just the event itself.
[00:16:04] Kamil Rextin: But what can you do outside of the event that can drive more conversation.
[00:16:08] Ramli John: Right.
[00:16:11] Ramli John: I'm trying to recall this, but there's theory around how to remember things.
[00:16:16] Ramli John: There's this guy who's watching on YouTube, like he is like a memory expert.
[00:16:19] Ramli John: And the way that he remembered things is by thinking of something weird.
[00:16:23] Ramli John: If some guy has a purple hair, he's more likely to remember that over somebody.
[00:16:27] Ramli John: I mean, Seth Godin also said this with purple cow, where people are more likely to remember a purple cow over a brown cow, so to speak.
[00:16:36] Ramli John: And I think that's the thing that I love about this.
[00:16:39] Ramli John: And I keep saying I love it because it is so good.
[00:16:41] Ramli John: But they're going to get hundreds of pens and swag, right?
[00:16:47] Kamil Rextin: Yes.
[00:16:47] Ramli John: But what they're going to remember is not that because let's give the swag because it's going to keep a stop of mind, but what's going to get them to remember is something that is unexpected in a limo.
[00:17:01] Kamil Rextin: Right.
[00:17:02] Ramli John: It's like super more memorable.
[00:17:06] Ramli John: Was that something that you were thinking?
[00:17:08] Kamil Rextin: Yeah, like a blue ocean.
[00:17:09] Kamil Rextin: Right?
[00:17:09] Kamil Rextin: Like everybody's going to get a booth.
[00:17:10] Kamil Rextin: Everybody's going to be doing sales pitches.
[00:17:12] Kamil Rextin: Everybody's going to try.
[00:17:13] Kamil Rextin: We're not going to do a sales pitch.
[00:17:14] Kamil Rextin: We're just going to try to be generally helpful.
[00:17:16] Kamil Rextin: People struggle.
[00:17:17] Kamil Rextin: People have to pay for uber every morning to and from the event.
[00:17:21] Kamil Rextin: If you can save them that money and headache and give them a free ride and create that memorable experience, hopefully they remember us as a positive.
[00:17:31] Ramli John: I love that.

[00:17:33] Innovative Marketing Ideas from 42 Agency

[00:17:33] Ramli John: Was there anything, any other ideas that didn't.
[00:17:36] Kamil Rextin: Oh, so many ideas.
[00:17:38] Kamil Rextin: Yeah.
[00:17:38] Ramli John: Any other ones that you'd want to share?
[00:17:40] Ramli John: The airplane idea was crazy because I just love to hear how you guys were thinking about that.
[00:17:45] Kamil Rextin: I wanted to buy billboards at Sofo airport.
[00:17:49] Kamil Rextin: I wanted to run a shuttle from the airport to the hotels and go there myself, say, hey, are you here for Saturday?
[00:17:57] Kamil Rextin: Let me give you a ride to the airport.
[00:17:58] Kamil Rextin: You're going to rent a car and drive people.
[00:18:00] Kamil Rextin: I do car pool, karaoke type stuff.
[00:18:03] Kamil Rextin: While they're in the car?
[00:18:05] Kamil Rextin: Yeah.
[00:18:07] Kamil Rextin: While I'm driving them from the airport to the hotel, we record some videos in the car, talking about something, I don't know, quick marketing questions or.
[00:18:17] Kamil Rextin: I don't know, whatever happened.
[00:18:20] Kamil Rextin: The other thing that we talked about was the billboard in the parking lot.
[00:18:26] Kamil Rextin: We talked about, oh, my goodness.
[00:18:29] Kamil Rextin: There's a whole list of things I don't remember now.
[00:18:32] Kamil Rextin: Airplane, I can't remember.
[00:18:37] Kamil Rextin: Sorry.
[00:18:38] Kamil Rextin: But there's a whole bunch of crazy ideas.
[00:18:40] Kamil Rextin: I was like, let's just throw stuff out there.
[00:18:42] Kamil Rextin: It doesn't matter how feasible it is, we'll figure out the feasibility later.
[00:18:46] Kamil Rextin: If it's inbound, outside of our budget is even realistic.
[00:18:50] Kamil Rextin: But let's just try and get the momentum going.
[00:18:55] Kamil Rextin: And the inbound thing, because Alejandro designed a brilliant creative.
[00:19:01] Kamil Rextin: We found a reasonable vendor that could print and do the billboard for under $2,000 for two days.
[00:19:08] Kamil Rextin: I'm like, fantastic.
[00:19:10] Kamil Rextin: If we can have even 10% of people who go into inbound see our billboard and remember that we're a HubSpot agency.
[00:19:19] Kamil Rextin: That's all I want.
[00:19:20] Ramli John: Yeah, I love that.
[00:19:22] Ramli John: That's so cool to hear this.

[00:19:27] Innovative Marketing Ideas from 42 Agency

[00:19:27] Ramli John: What was the next step?
[00:19:28] Ramli John: You had this list of ideas.
[00:19:31] Ramli John: Did somebody from your team kind of costed it out and like, okay, the limit from hotels to thing is feasible?
[00:19:37] Kamil Rextin: Yeah, we kind of worried on the ideas.
[00:19:38] Kamil Rextin: We're like, okay, what's like real estate?
[00:19:41] Kamil Rextin: What is know?
[00:19:42] Kamil Rextin: Throwing out flyers on a plane is not the best.
[00:19:47] Ramli John: Somebody's going to get angry.
[00:19:48] Ramli John: The cities.
[00:19:49] Kamil Rextin: Somebody's going to get angry.
[00:19:50] Kamil Rextin: It's going to create lots of garbage.
[00:19:51] Kamil Rextin: It's an environmental.
[00:19:52] Kamil Rextin: It's not a great environmentally.
[00:19:54] Kamil Rextin: So, like, let's scratch that idea off the table.
[00:19:56] Kamil Rextin: Billboards in San Francisco airport are super expensive.
[00:20:00] Kamil Rextin: You have to buy a minimum of, like, four or five weeks.
[00:20:02] Ramli John: Yeah, true.
[00:20:03] Kamil Rextin: Okay, let's cross that idea.
[00:20:05] Ramli John: Crazy.
[00:20:09] Ramli John: I'm just brainstorming.
[00:20:11] Ramli John: If you had a plane and you can do the cloud trail and write 42 on the sky.
[00:20:17] Kamil Rextin: Oh, somebody did that.
[00:20:18] Kamil Rextin: Somebody did that company called command bar.
[00:20:23] Ramli John: That's a long thing.
[00:20:24] Kamil Rextin: They do some.
[00:20:26] Kamil Rextin: They were flying a plane with a banner.
[00:20:28] Ramli John: Oh, no.
[00:20:29] Ramli John: Okay, cool.
[00:20:30] Kamil Rextin: They had a booth at the event, and they were flying an airplane with a big banner behind it saying a manbar.
[00:20:35] Kamil Rextin: I don't know, something, but I remember their name because I saw them, the plane, and I saw the booth.
[00:20:40] Ramli John: So I'm like, oh, okay, that's cool.
[00:20:43] Ramli John: I was thinking cloud trail with the smoke trail.
[00:20:46] Kamil Rextin: Oh, yeah.
[00:20:46] Ramli John: And you ride 42 on the sky because it's permanent there for hours.
[00:20:51] Kamil Rextin: We also thought about not permanent graffiti on the entrance.
[00:20:57] Kamil Rextin: So, like, going the night before, hiring somebody to do graffiti on the floor.
[00:21:01] Kamil Rextin: As people walk in, they see graffiti of 42 on the floor or toilets.
[00:21:05] Ramli John: People need to go to the toilet.
[00:21:06] Kamil Rextin: Toilets.
[00:21:07] Kamil Rextin: Yeah.
[00:21:09] Kamil Rextin: So last year when I went by myself, I left, like, I saw that dollar bill at the toilet, at the water table, and I just kind of left them everywhere.
[00:21:19] Kamil Rextin: Hockey stack.
[00:21:19] Kamil Rextin: Amir, who did up there, they did some cookie boxes around, like, random places and stuff.
[00:21:24] Kamil Rextin: So there was a lot of interesting cookie.
[00:21:26] Ramli John: I would not pick up that cookie box if it was randomly dropped on the street.
[00:21:29] Kamil Rextin: Yeah, it was on the table.
[00:21:33] Kamil Rextin: There was lunch.
[00:21:35] Ramli John: Okay, so it opens up like, you take this box home, like, oh, my goodness.
[00:21:39] Kamil Rextin: No, it was there.
[00:21:39] Kamil Rextin: It was on the table.
[00:21:40] Kamil Rextin: Yeah.
[00:21:41] Kamil Rextin: You just look at it.
[00:21:43] Ramli John: That's cool.
[00:21:44] Ramli John: I love that.
[00:21:45] Ramli John: That's super cool.
[00:21:46] Ramli John: I love to hear this.

[00:21:49] Changes in the Landscape of Performance Marketing

[00:21:49] Ramli John: I want to kind of shift gears and talk about what you're seeing.
[00:21:53] Ramli John: You've worked with dozens of, maybe even hundreds of b, two b SaaS companies.
[00:22:00] Ramli John: Are there anything right now that's working that you're seeing, especially with what's happening in the economy?
[00:22:06] Ramli John: Like what is working, what used to be working and isn't working anymore?
[00:22:13] Ramli John: What are some trends you're seeing in terms of performance, content, growth?
[00:22:18] Kamil Rextin: I think it just goes into some of what Becky wanted me to talk about.
[00:22:22] Kamil Rextin: But the landscape of performance marketing is changing with generative AI and everything else.
[00:22:29] Kamil Rextin: I think it's getting harder and harder.
[00:22:31] Kamil Rextin: Channels are reaching saturation.
[00:22:33] Kamil Rextin: There's more competition.
[00:22:35] Kamil Rextin: More and more people are trying to get attention.
[00:22:37] Kamil Rextin: So I think content and good content is always going to be working.
[00:22:43] Kamil Rextin: Like, you want to create that type of funnel that is really strong brand association for you.
[00:22:48] Kamil Rextin: But also on the performance side, I think Google search is still working.
[00:22:52] Kamil Rextin: It's been there for decades and still driving a lot of results for us.
[00:22:58] Kamil Rextin: Interesting.
[00:22:59] Kamil Rextin: It's competitive, it's getting more expensive.
[00:23:02] Kamil Rextin: But if the economics work for you, then it works.
[00:23:05] Ramli John: Right?
[00:23:06] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:23:08] Ramli John: Yeah.

[00:23:09] The Shift Away from Product-Led Growth

[00:23:09] Ramli John: I think the other thing we chatted before we were recording, we were talking about PLG, how that's like two years ago, cheap money.
[00:23:22] Kamil Rextin: Talk about that.
[00:23:22] Ramli John: You have some strong opinions that you've shared on LinkedIn and Twitter.
[00:23:28] Kamil Rextin: I think PLG was a zero interest rate phenomenon where people had a lot of money to spend and they were more willing to get.
[00:23:36] Kamil Rextin: I think PLG is great for top of lead time.
[00:23:39] Kamil Rextin: You get leads, you get people to sign up, but I don't think they're converting to big customers.
[00:23:43] Kamil Rextin: And I think in this, where budgets are tightening up financially, people are more careful about where to spend money.
[00:23:49] Kamil Rextin: I think the buying cycles are getting extended.
[00:23:50] Kamil Rextin: So even if you want to buy a tool, you have to talk to the C approval.
[00:23:54] Kamil Rextin: Build a business is then budget approval.
[00:23:56] Kamil Rextin: And that's where salespeople come in.
[00:23:57] Kamil Rextin: And good salespeople are great at helping you navigate those internal circumstances.
[00:24:02] Kamil Rextin: So I think PLG is going to.
[00:24:05] Kamil Rextin: I think it was great as there's a lot of money in the ecosystem, people are throwing money at different tools and you don't need to talk to anybody.
[00:24:12] Kamil Rextin: You can buy a tool for $500 a month and nobody's going to question you even if it doesn't have utility.
[00:24:17] Kamil Rextin: And I think there was a lot of companies that went down that route, but I think we're going to see the pendulum swing back to good fundamentals.
[00:24:27] Kamil Rextin: PlG is great for landing SMB deals, but SMB deals don't help you.
[00:24:33] Kamil Rextin: And it's not a problem.
[00:24:35] Kamil Rextin: All companies go up market because you need to be profitable and you need to burn more money.
[00:24:40] Kamil Rextin: And I think there's more pressure on companies now to show pre key and be profitable quicker.
[00:24:51] Kamil Rextin: And I think PLD doesn't get you there.
[00:24:54] Ramli John: Yeah, it's something that we've seen at appkeys where traditionally we were like, oh, let's invest in our low zero touch experience.
[00:25:03] Ramli John: But we've been driving more and more people to sales within the trial experience.
[00:25:10] Ramli John: Because you mentioned it before, we recorded a lot of people, they close quicker, they close at a higher rate because they're talking to somebody versus there's also.
[00:25:21] Kamil Rextin: That mental, like, it's on me as a user to go figure out the product by myself versus talking to sales for 15 minutes.
[00:25:30] Kamil Rextin: Might answer all my questions and show me how it applies to my use case and works for me or not.
[00:25:34] Kamil Rextin: So it takes that mental load off me.
[00:25:37] Kamil Rextin: We have quite a bit of customers that do that.
[00:25:40] Kamil Rextin: They have a free trial, drop a funnel, but then they route out most of those sales for qualification and demos because that closes at a 40% rate versus premium customer might close at a 10%.
[00:25:53] Kamil Rextin: And also those deal sizes are bigger.
[00:25:55] Ramli John: Bigger, exactly.
[00:25:57] Ramli John: Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:25:58] Ramli John: And that's something you've seen with the companies you're working with, where it's like, oh, let's do free sign ups.
[00:26:05] Ramli John: The focus is now more like, oh, the trial is just like a door towards them talking to sales, which is something.
[00:26:14] Kamil Rextin: Okay, so it's like jump up on a LinkedIn.
[00:26:16] Kamil Rextin: So instead of saying, hey, download this ebook, you're saying, hey, sign up for a free trial.
[00:26:22] Kamil Rextin: Cool.
[00:26:22] Ramli John: That makes sense.

[00:26:24] The Future of Growth and Performance Marketing

[00:26:24] Ramli John: I'm curious.
[00:26:25] Ramli John: We've kind of touched a little bit about it, but what do you see is something that people need to be focusing on going forward, especially around growth.
[00:26:37] Ramli John: You talked about good content.
[00:26:39] Ramli John: Is that something?
[00:26:41] Ramli John: I'm curious what you mean by that especially?
[00:26:43] Ramli John: You mentioned search and AI.
[00:26:47] Ramli John: They're looking at content differently, of course, where traditionally, listicles and content crafted for SEO has been the focus.
[00:26:57] Ramli John: But it seems like things have been changing.
[00:26:59] Ramli John: Here's what you see, I think everything is getting noisy.
[00:27:03] Kamil Rextin: And with generative AI, everything's going to get more noisier, especially on the performance marketing side, like Google and Facebook and all these guys already have sophisticated algorithms that can optimize ads much better than you can.
[00:27:14] Kamil Rextin: I think the emphasis is going to go back to creative, having good solid creative that works for your target market and standing out from interesting.
[00:27:24] Kamil Rextin: And then I think field in person events, I think those are going to get human, whatever involves more human involvement is going to get valued higher.
[00:27:35] Kamil Rextin: And I think performance marketing as we know it today might not exist in five years.
[00:27:40] Ramli John: Interesting.
[00:27:42] Kamil Rextin: I think the role of the media buyer who goes in and tweaks your ad optimizations and uploads ad creative, it's going to slowly evolve because machines can do it much better than we can.
[00:27:53] Kamil Rextin: We give machines certain inputs on here's my creative, here's my website, here's what I'm targeting.
[00:27:58] Kamil Rextin: It can generate copy for you.
[00:28:00] Kamil Rextin: It can potentially generate creative for you down the line.
[00:28:05] Kamil Rextin: I think that's going to evolve with time.
[00:28:07] Kamil Rextin: I think performance marketing started as like, hey, I'm going to send you coupons and I'm going to do this.
[00:28:12] Kamil Rextin: I'm going to run ads, but manually bidding on keywords.
[00:28:15] Kamil Rextin: I think the algorithm has so much data, the machine learning algorithm has so much data that they know at what time showing message to what purchase will result in a higher conversion.
[00:28:25] Ramli John: And what would be the role of performance there where like AI, you might have mentioned it there, but I might have missed it, where the machines are the one who are optimizing it.
[00:28:34] Kamil Rextin: We're providing the inputs.
[00:28:36] Ramli John: The inputs right there needs to be that human who provides inputs.
[00:28:40] Ramli John: Still the strategic stuff, the positioning, the.
[00:28:44] Kamil Rextin: Insights and then interpreting the results and insights and generating the feedback loop.
[00:28:49] Kamil Rextin: But I think even today you can go into Google, you can put in your website and Google auto generate ads for you and targeting and everything.
[00:28:57] Kamil Rextin: It's not perfect like performance max.
[00:28:59] Kamil Rextin: A lot of these things were very much automated.
[00:29:02] Kamil Rextin: You still need someone to enrollment at this time.
[00:29:04] Kamil Rextin: But it's not unrealistic to think that in five years just do it by itself.

[00:29:09] Standing Out and Being Memorable in a Noisy Market

[00:29:09] Ramli John: What you mentioned there around going back to creatives kind of brings back to mind that you mentioned it's getting noisier out there and standing out like what we've talked about with what you did as faster and being memorable and having strong creatives that stand out.
[00:29:27] Ramli John: Blue ocean stuff is kind of like kind of looping back to what you mentioned earlier where you did that for events in person events.
[00:29:34] Ramli John: But that's something that companies need to be thinking about.
[00:29:37] Ramli John: Not just events but like everything, content, creatives where standing out video is more important than ever because there's more noise.
[00:29:49] Ramli John: All right, is that what I heard from you?
[00:29:54] Kamil Rextin: I think traditionally b two b companies over index on drug response.
[00:29:57] Kamil Rextin: And like short term, I think we need to balance more the short term with the long term.
[00:30:02] Kamil Rextin: I think sales cycles are getting longer.
[00:30:05] Kamil Rextin: So it means that you need to stay top of mind reading the consideration set of a customer because they're thinking about like if I'm thinking of CRM software, there's probably three names that come top of mind and how do you become one of those names that they think about when they become, when they're like, oh, I need a CRM software.
[00:30:22] Kamil Rextin: They think of Salesforce and you, if you are selling CRM.
[00:30:26] Ramli John: Yeah, true.
[00:30:27] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:30:27] Ramli John: I love that.
[00:30:29] Ramli John: Well, thank you so much.
[00:30:30] Ramli John: I love that chat.

[00:30:31] Marketing Power Ups: Kamil Rextin on Understanding Marketing KPIs and Broader Business Impact

[00:30:31] Ramli John: I want to actually shift gear one last time and talk about career power ups in terms of you.
[00:30:37] Ramli John: You've worked in marketing over a decade, worked at Uber Flip, a crowd drift, in demand gen, and now you've started, you've been running 42 agency now for quite some time here.
[00:30:51] Ramli John: Gearis, what's a power up that's helped you in your career?
[00:30:54] Ramli John: Something that's helped you get a leg up over others or could be something that know like a networking or it could be something more like marketing skill related, but it's totally up to you.
[00:31:05] Kamil Rextin: I think a couple of things come to mind.
[00:31:07] Kamil Rextin: One is I was lucky enough to have a lot of people who helped me and gave me good advice as I was going to have a career.
[00:31:14] Kamil Rextin: I think I was always curious and I always wanted.
[00:31:19] Kamil Rextin: I think marketing can sometimes think about marketing too much and we don't try to connect you to the broader business.
[00:31:25] Kamil Rextin: And now that I'm running a company, I understand how a business owner thinks.
[00:31:31] Kamil Rextin: And as a marketer, it's not just about the, you have to think about business KPIs and business performance and thinking about broader outside of marketing, what is a third order effects that your marketing has?
[00:31:44] Kamil Rextin: So understanding churn rate and just being familiar with what those business KPIs are and how they tied to the work you do.
[00:31:54] Kamil Rextin: And I think broadly, I think marketers over index, you should be curious about learning about other industries like how economics work and how whatever.
[00:32:12] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:32:13] Ramli John: That whole curiosity really does help.
[00:32:15] Ramli John: And thinking of.
[00:32:17] Ramli John: I love how April Dunford, she was one of the very first episode where she mentioned one of her career props was thinking less about marketing and more about the market, which is such a good way to put it, where you're thinking about how the impact of your work broadly in terms of the company, and also in terms of thinking about it from beyond the organization.
[00:32:43] Ramli John: If you enjoyed this episode, you'd love the marketing Power ups newsletter.
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[00:33:18] Ramli John: Thanks to Mary Sullivan for creating the artwork and design.
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[00:33:24] Ramli John: And of course, thank you for listening.
[00:33:26] Ramli John: That's all for now.
[00:33:28] Ramli John: Have a powered update marketing power ups until the next episode.