Author: Natasha Websdale

How to Make B2B Marketing Exciting – Dan Ruby – Nobl9

Mike is joined by Dan Ruby, VP of Marketing at Nobl9, a leading reliability platform that helps manage and monitor application reliability. Dan discusses the challenges of marketing a product that aims to keep issues unnoticed by end users and how storytelling can make a traditionally "unexciting" product compelling and engaging.

The conversation also covers the importance of data-driven marketing, balancing brand building with lead generation, and innovative campaign strategies.

• ‎Marketing B2B Technology on Apple Podcasts
• Marketing B2B Technology on Spotify
• Marketing B2B Technology on napierb2b.com

About Nobl9

Founded in 2019 by ex-Googlers Marcin Kurc and Brian Singer, Nobl9 is the premiere Service Level Objectives-based platform for driving a reliable digital experience. With a strong enterprise customer base as well as strategic investments from Cisco and ServiceNow, Nobl9 is recognized as a bleeding-edge solution to modernizing Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) strategies, ensuring that reliability is not measured primarily by availability, but rather by users' ability to do what they expect to be able to do within an application.

About Dan Ruby

Dan is an eighteen year veteran of digital marketing, with the vast majority of his experience coming as the head of marketing for various B2B SaaS organizations in the Boston area. He has been acquired at various points by Google and Snap, and is currently the VP of Marketing for Nobl9, a B2B SaaS platform for user-centric site reliability. He holds a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Missouri as well as an MBA from Brandeis University. He occasionally teaches an undergraduate course on marketing at Bentley University.

Throughout his career, Dan has become increasingly stubborn about the fact that marketing must focus on creating value for potential leads, and is quite fond of telling anyone who will listen that "nobody gives a **** about your product, give them valuable information, not product pitches."

Time Stamps

00:00:42 - Dan Ruby's Career Journey
00:02:09 - Overview of Noble9
00:05:48 - Challenges in Marketing a Reliability Product
00:07:03 - Using Stories to Make Marketing Exciting
00:12:43 - Balancing Brand Building and Lead Generation
00:17:07 - Innovative Campaign Example: DORA
00:22:24 - The Importance of Partnerships in Marketing
00:22:41 - Best Marketing Advice Received
00:23:41 - Advice for New Marketing Professionals
00:25:44 - How to Contact Dan Ruby
00:26:18 - Closing Remarks

Quotes

"Marketing is such an interesting field. It takes pretty much any skill set and makes it useful.” Dan Ruby, VP of Marketing at Nobl9

"Nothing is boring if you can make it into a story that resonates." Dan Ruby, VP of Marketing at Nobl9

"You can find partners who believe in your product, believe in your company, believe in your people, who will work with you." Dan Ruby, VP of Marketing at Nobl9

Follow Dan:

Dan Ruby on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielruby/

Nobl9’s website: https://www.nobl9.com/

Nobl9 on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nobl9inc/

Follow Mike:

Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/

Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/

Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing B2B Tech and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We'd also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform.

Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast - The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547

Transcript: Interview with Dan Ruby

Speakers: Mike Maynard, Dan Ruby

Mike: Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today.

Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. Today, I'm joined by Dan Ruby, who's the VP of Marketing at Nobl9. Welcome to the podcast, Dan.

Dan: Hi, Mike. Great to be here. Thanks for having me on. Really excited to chat with you this morning.

Mike: That's great. Let's start off and find a little bit about you. Can you tell us a little bit about your career and why you've chosen Noble 9 as your current company?

Dan: Yeah, so I did my undergrad in broadcast journalism. That didn't work out, so I got an MBA and kind of fell into marketing just because marketing is such an interesting field. It takes pretty much any skill set and makes it useful. Being in Boston, surrounded by a ton of B2B startups, I've worked for various sizes of B2B enterprise companies, mostly in the tech industry. What brought me to Noble 9 is I basically kind of knew the founders because they had been acquired by Google a couple of months after a company that I had been working for was acquired by Google. So I got introduced. It's a unique product. It's selling to a customer that I know pretty well in the IT operations reliability DevOps space. I've got a really strong team here that I inherited, so it's been a great landing spot for me.

Mike: That sounds great. I mean, I love the thought about, you know, part of the reason for being at a company is actually the team that's there. Um, that's super positive before we go any further. I'm sure that, uh, given I know a little bit about the company, probably a lot of listeners won't be familiar with noble nine. So can you explain what the company does?

Dan: Yeah. So noble nine is a reliability platform. So site reliability, software reliability, app reliability, that kind of thing. And we are, built from the ground up around what's called service level objectives or SLOs. And basically what SLOs do is you set an error budget for a period of time and then you just track in real time as that error budget dwindles down to ideally zero by the end of the period. So what it does is it lets you set up your IT backend and your applications in such a way that errors are acceptable, but you really focus in on the ones that actually impact the user journey. So it's, it's a different way of measuring reliability and kind of allows you to a lot more quickly react to changes in your, what we call the error budget burn rate before they become outages.

Mike: And so presumably the concept behind this is there'll always be problems, there'll always be issues, but what you've got to do is if you keep them below a certain level, then hopefully the end users won't actually notice.

Dan: Right. It lets you do a few things. One is the reliability, you know, monitoring and making sure that your service is reliably performing. And the other is, you know, determining if you're overspending on IT investment. If you're spending a million dollars a month keeping a server at 99.999% uptime, but that's not positively impacting your user experience, you're wasting money. With Google, if Gmail is up, that doesn't mean that every little service connected to it is running perfectly like predictive type. If your predictive email typing is delayed or is not working, you're not likely to notice. So it's all about focusing on the user journey and making sure that that's as free of roadblocks as possible.

Mike: That makes a lot of sense. So are you primarily selling this product into IT teams, to IT managers? Who's your primary audience?

Dan: Up until about a year ago, our primary audience was a group of engineers called SRE, Site Reliability Engineers. And they're kind of the first line of defense in any enterprise organization, making sure that their services and their system are reliable. One of the things we found, though, is while they love the product and they're great as advocates, They almost never, or they rarely, I should say, have budget. So what we've been doing is we've been kind of poking around with a couple of different potential key audience profiles or key buyer profiles. And, you know, we're finding that like engineering managers, engineering directors, and product people. will have interest and need and also budget. You know, it all kind of goes back to Bant. Do they have budget? Do they have authority? Do they have a need? Then it's kind of almost up to sales to determine whether or not the timing is right.

Mike: So it sounds like it's, and I hope you don't mind me saying this, maybe not the most exciting product. I mean, basically it's designed so that from a user point of view, nothing happens, nothing goes wrong. I mean, does that present challenges when you're trying to market it and get people excited about the product?

Dan: It does. And it's been doubly challenging because again, up until about a year ago, SLOs as a reliability philosophy, if you will, they weren't mainstream. You know, Google every year puts out the SRE handbook. And Google has been promoting SLOs in that. But if you go into enterprise organizations, up until fairly recently, you'd go in and you'd say, hey, you ever heard of SLOs? And they'd say no. And then the sales and marketing process becomes teaching them about what SLOs are and why they matter. And anything in IT is a reasonably dry subject. So trying to make it exciting is, it's a challenge, but like any enterprise B2B marketing endeavor, you want to show value first and foremost. You want to say, look, if you implement my tool, if you buy my platform, you will see greater productivity, greater revenue, lower, you know, costs, et cetera, et cetera. But at the same time, kind of everybody is saying that. So how do you differentiate? So one of the things that we've really kind of focused on is all of the different ways you can use Anensilo. I'm going to kind of jart a little bit here, as my mom would call it, when somebody crosses three lanes of traffic without looking. One of the ways that I've made it exciting is that I've started using them for my own marketing metrics. You know, marketing metrics are the lifeblood of a good modern marketing organization. You have to know what's working. You have to know what's not. You have to know ROI, you have to know ROAS, and a lot of the stuff that would really tell us a story comes in daily snapshots or the static look at something. So one of the cool things about my product is you can take any dataset and feed it in. So what I do is, I'm a big HubSpot user. I used to consult, I used to be a HubSpot implementation consultant for a third party, and I love HubSpot. But what I've done is I've built a private app inside of HubSpot, just for data collection, connected that to Google BigQuery, and then connected BigQuery into our platform, because we have a native BigQuery integration. And what you find about SLOs is they work gangbusters on anything that's a ratio metric. So a couple of the things that I've been kind of piping in there for sales enablement, because I write, you know, the scripts that are outbound sales reps use, you pipe in number of phone calls made, number of pickups, and then number of actual conversations had. You pipe those both in as ratios and set an error budget on that. Say, I expect 10% of pickups to become conversations, on average, over the course of any three-hour period. And so I track my error budget. So every time that SLI, which is Service Level Indicator, is not met, it throws errors, takes errors out of my budget, and I can see that drop down over time. So in real time, I can see, well near real time I should say, I can see kind of the trajectory and I'll also get alerts if all of the sudden my error budget drops precipitously. So I'll get a slack from Noble 9 saying your error budget burn rate has tripled. And you go, oh, crap. Something is wrong with the scripts. Or you can say, same time, you can say, hey, your error budget around connect rate has dropped precipitously. And I say, oh, well, that means the list or the people that we're actually calling were not called the right people. It's really cool to get these real-time alerts around when things aren't going right. Before they become a massive issue, I can quickly pivot and quickly change. And then going back to your actual question that I've kind of spieled well beyond, honestly, that's how I make it exciting as I tell stories about it. How do people use it? How do I use it? How do our engineers use it? We eat a lot of our own dog food. And so we put out case studies and stories and just little best practice guides based on what we've managed to accomplish internally using our own tool set. Nothing is boring if you can make it into a story that resonates. And for the audience that we're talking to, It may be a dry subject, but making a story around it is going to resonate. Because an SRE is going to read that and go, oh my God, yes, I've had that problem. Or a product person is going to read that and say, yes, I have a problem with not knowing why people are churning from my app. And I have to go to seven different places and figure out what metric is relevant. You just got a burn rate. Look at it.

Mike: Fascinating. I mean, it's great. I love the way that you use stories. But the thing that strikes me is clearly stories are an important part of your marketing, but it also sounds like you're very data-driven as well.

Dan: I am extremely data-driven. Yeah. Like I said, I kind of fell into marketing. I had an MBA and a journalism degree. Didn't know S from Shinola. when it came to marketing. So I'm pretty much self-taught since then, but I've always had kind of a engineering mindset. I thought I was going to be a computer engineer. In fact, I thought I was going to do a major in comp sci and journalism, and that almost killed me. There's objectivity to data. And data is like, it's like a puzzle that I like to be able to kind of work through and figure out what's working, what's not, what's right, what's wrong. What does the data tell you? Cause there's, there's that, that cool balance of creativity and just like hard objective metrics that for me is just fun.

Mike: It's like figuring out a puzzle. I love that, you know, almost scientific approach, but I'm interested to know, you know, obviously when you're running marketing for a brand, you've got to look at balancing both brand building and, you know, the more direct measurable, you know, lead generation and use of SDRs. How do you do that? How do you achieve that balance while still being focused on, you know, analyzing and using the data?

Dan: It's hard because, you know, brand building is still kind of nebulous in terms of pulling data. You can say we got this many impressions or you can say you got this particular share of voice. I mean, share of voice is great because I've mostly worked for smaller companies with, you know, startup funding. a particular run rate, I kind of have to default to the generation of leads. But brand building doesn't really move the needle in the spaces that I've worked in nearly as much as lead generation. You want the brand to be prominent, but it's like I'm trying to build the brand with tools and techniques that also can generate leads. So it's about, you know, it's about compelling content. It's about taking, taking our messaging, taking our content beyond the niche that we live in, kind of an overarching view of, you know, DevOps, reliability, SRE, and presenting ourselves as experts in a space. we're very fortunate to have on our team, the guy who literally wrote the book on SLOs, a guy by the name of Alex Hidalgo, he wrote the O'Reilly book on service level objectives. So a lot of it comes down to then leveraging personalities that we have either within our organization or within our broader sphere of influence and working with a lot of partners on co-marketing stuff because, you know, our reach is not that huge. We've got strategic investments from ServiceNow and Cisco who are both massive, you know, the 800-pound gorillas in a lot of the space that we work in. So trying to work with them, trying to work with, you know, we do a lot of webinars where we invite in guests who have their own audiences and who can speak authoritatively. So we've, you know, we've had guests from Deloitte. We've had guests from AWS. And I guess the way it kind of works out for me is I trust that the brand growth will occur organically while I am focused primarily on driving and nurturing leads through the sales cycle. You've got to know what the economic realities of your organization are. If we don't build enough leads, if we don't close enough leads, we've only got so much investment now. We're doing well, I should say, but you've got to build that runway for yourself and let the brand grow semi-organically. As long as you're putting out authoritative content that is interesting to the people that you're wanting to talk to, then you should have some success because they operate in their own little networks as well. And if you write a white paper or do a webinar, that is of interest to one. you want to invite them to share it within their networks. Hey, we just saw this cool thing about, you know, e-commerce getting ready for Black Friday and reliability and go from there.

Mike: I think it's a really interesting discussion, Dan, because you gave a really good overview of those kind of challenges in a startup where you're dealing with limited resources, you don't have unlimited branding budgets, and you're also dealing with really quite compressed timescales to grow the business. So I think for a startup, you gave a really good view there. I love that. I'm interested, you've talked about that at a high level. What about a specific campaign? Do you have an example of a campaign you really felt delivered great results or was particularly innovative?

Dan: Yeah. So you're in the UK, so I assume you're familiar with DORA. I know it's not, UK is not EU anymore, but DORA is a new regular, a banking regulation. And we did a campaign around, it was a multipoint campaign that that was focused on compliance, reliability, and risk people in banks that either were based in the EU or did business in the EU, which is, you know, most of the big ones. And we put together, you know, this was when I said we had Deloitte and AWS as guests. This was a roundtable discussion with Amazon's head of EU regulation, regulatory compliance. and a guy from Deloitte who focuses on the finance industry and has really good insight into the regulatory statutes that either exist or are about to. And so we kind of built this integrated campaign where we would reach out, be it via paid acquisition, not a ton of it, We would talk a lot about it on social. We would take any news articles about Dora coming and share the news article and say, hey, by the way, we're having this roundtable discussion with some real solid experts, wrote some articles about it, worked with our wonderful PR team to kind of seed some conversations about it within the press for Try to get some earned media around it. And then we had the webinar. It was well attended. It was extremely compelling conversation, provided you're interested in, you know, EU banking regulations. And it was really informative, actionable. You know, it was value being created. And then after that, Once it's done, you have the recording. You share the recording with everybody that you know in the banking industry. You cut up the recording into little snippets here and there, and you use them for short-form videos, like Google Shorts or Instagram videos. God help us, TikTok. And, you know, you walk with with your sales team, say, all right, here's a fresh new whole selection of short, medium, long form content that you can share out with your with your contacts, with your leads in the banking and finance industries. And then you make sure that the content that you've created you can repurpose it into as many ways as you can. And I'm still working on a white paper follow-up to that. For people who don't want to watch a video, distill the outcomes, the main points of the webinar into a white paper series of blogs. yada, yada, yada. So you keep hitting that particular campaign, the key notes in that campaign over and over and over again, but with fresh and interesting and compelling stuff. You know, I teach marketing occasionally at a local university. And one of the first things that I want students to understand is that there's a hierarchy of content. There's the very top, there's you know, an industry expert with unique data or unique insights. And then below that is some schmuck like me with unique data or unique insights. Below that is an industry expert with an opinion. Below that is some schmuck like me with an opinion. And then down here, about three feet below the floor, is a pitch about your product. You got to give value. In enterprise B2B, oh my god, is it congested. This isn't 20 years ago when we could just call somebody on the phone and say, hey, I want to tell you about my product. It does this. And they'd be like, yeah, right, tell me. Everybody's so inundated with marketing messaging from every possible angle. You got to give them value. This integrated DORA campaign was so good for us because we focused on very specific, very timely value. That was probably a longer spiel than necessary, but I get a little worked up over content and the difference between good and bad.

Mike: Sorry. I love the enthusiasm, Dan. I mean, I think talking about content in that way is, is awesome and really fascinating where you're talking about mixing kind of a newsjacking tactic alongside using really the brand equity of some of the speakers. I thought it was a great, a great campaign.

Dan: I was very pleased with it. We have wonderful partners. And having people in your corner as a startup or as an enterprise, you can't do it alone. You can find partners who believe in your product, believe in your company, believe in your people, who will work with you. Yes, because it helps them too, but also because they see the value in you and a relationship. You'll go a lot farther.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, partnerships are so important. I mean, Dan, it's been fascinating. I think we've covered a lot of interesting things. Before you go, there's a couple of quick fire questions we always like to ask people. And the first is, you know, I'm always interested to know what's the best piece of marketing advice you've ever been given?

Dan: Best piece of marketing advice? Ironically, it was an insult from a long time ago. like 2009, I worked at a startup and I reported into the CTO and he used to call marketing the last bastion of unaccountable spending. And on top of that, he called me the last bastard of unaccountable spending. And ironically enough, that became the best marketing advice that I ever got because I wanted my spending to be accountable. And that was really the kick in the butt that I needed to get into the whole data-driven side of things.

Mike: That's awesome. I love that the insult became advice. I mean, that's the best revenge, I think, for an insult. The other question we like to ask is about helping people who are new to the industry. So if you were talking to someone who was looking to start a career in marketing, maybe a graduate, what would be your advice to them?

Dan: Think about what your skill set is. What do you do? What do you love to do? Like, if you're trying to get into marketing and you have a passion for coding, great. That's going to fit really well. You can get into marketing operations. You could get into web development. Kind of adjacent to that, Learn enough HTML to be dangerous. Again, this comes from years and years of startup work, but not having to wait for somebody to fix an issue on your website is worth its weight in gold. But think about what you love to do and think about how that can be leveraged to create value for potential customers. You know, that that will help because whether it's podcasting, whether it's coding, whether it's writing, whether it's you know, design work, whether it's just pure strategy, if you can take what you love and hone that to fit or to not to fit because that feels like you're putting it in a box. But if you can hone what you love in such a manner that you can confidently say this will interest and compel potential customers in this kind of industry, you've got a lot stronger of a starting point. I think that marketing, when it comes to marketing, marketing training is secondary to whatever your real passions are and find a way to work that in.

Mike: I love that. I love the idea of using, you know, what you love to actually add value. So Dan, this has been great advice. It's been a fascinating conversation. I really appreciate it. If people want to get in contact with you, what's the best way to reach you?

Dan: You can find me on LinkedIn, linkedin.com slash in slash DanielRuby. Pretty easy. You can email me at druby, D-R-U-B-Y, at Nobl9.com. That's pretty much the two easiest ways. I have long since abandoned Twitter.

Mike: Brilliant. Dan, thank you so much. It's been a great conversation. I'm sure there'll be some questions. Thanks so much for being a guest on Marketing B2B Technology.

Dan: Thanks for having me, Mike. It was a pleasure.

Mike: Thanks so much for listening to Marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or on your favorite podcast application. If you'd like to know more, please visit our website at napierb2b.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.

by Natasha Websdale

Navigating the Future of Marketing: Insights from Fractional CMO Andy Culligan

Ever wondered what a Fractional CMO does? Andy Culligan, the latest guest on the podcast, dives into the fascinating world of Fractional CMOs. He walks us through his career journey and explains how his role has become a game-changer in today’s fast-paced marketing landscape.

Andy discusses the benefits of hiring a Fractional CMO compared to a full-time employee and shares valuable insights for businesses aiming to adapt quickly. He also offers his perspectives on the SaaS market, highlighting the importance of speed in marketing and the evolving dynamics shaped by AI and shifting buyer behaviors.

• ‎Marketing B2B Technology on Apple Podcasts
• Marketing B2B Technology on Spotify
• Marketing B2B Technology on napierb2b.com

About Andy Culligan

Andy Culligan is a marketing leader specializing in revenue growth and scaling SaaS businesses. With close to a decade of experience in both marketing and sales, Andy excels as a Fractional CMO, CRO, and Marketing Advisor. He is known for his straightforward approach to Account-Based Marketing (ABM), aligning marketing and sales teams to drive commercial success. Andy has held key marketing leadership positions at multiple SaaS companies including, Emarsys (acquired by SAP), Exponea (acquired by Bloomreach) & Leadfeeder (now Echobot). He focuses on personalized marketing strategies that create meaningful touchpoints, ultimately boosting revenue for his clients

Time Stamps

00:00:18 - Meet Andy Culligan: Career Journey
00:00:39 - From SDR to Fractional CMO
00:02:58 - Growth and Challenges in SaaS Marketing
00:06:43 - Benefits of Hiring a Fractional CMO
00:12:40 - The Importance of a Marketing Plan
00:14:07 - Evergreen Marketing Tactics
00:19:33 - The Role of Speed in Marketing
00:20:45 - Future of Marketing and AI Impact
00:23:51 - Quickfire Questions: Marketing Advice
00:29:31 - Advice for Aspiring Marketers
00:32:05 - Closing Remarks and Contact Information

Quotes

"Speed is something that's important to a lot of companies." Andy Culligan, Fractional CMO

"If it's not working for you, then it's not working for me." Andy Culligan, Fractional CMO

"If you know your niche, nail it." Andy Culligan, Fractional CMO

"A lot of companies don't have a plan." Andy Culligan, Fractional CMO

"Creativity always wins." Andy Culligan, Fractional CMO

Follow Andy:

Andy Culligan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-culligan/

Andy’s website: https://andyculligan.com/

Follow Mike:

Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/

Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/

Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing B2B Tech and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We'd also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform.

Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast - The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547

Transcript: Interview with Andy Culligan

Speakers: Mike Maynard, Andy Culligan

Mike:
Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today.

Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. Today, I'm joined by Andy Culligan. Andy is a fractional CMO. Welcome to the podcast, Andy.

Andy: Thanks very much.

Mike: Well, like we always do, let's start off by learning a bit about you, Andy. So can you tell us a little bit about your career and how you've ended up being a fractional CMO?

Andy: All right. So I ended up being a fractional CMO by accident, and I'll get into that in a minute. But I started my career, or I grew up in Ireland, right? So I'm clearly Irish. You can hear that from the accent. I moved to Austria in 2009. Basically, my wife is Austrian, so I blame her for living in this beautiful, beautiful country, right? So I've been living here for, since 2009 and, uh, I started my career as an SDR. Then after studying marketing, I wanted to go in more towards the marketing piece. So after being an SDR, which is a sales development rep and also going into account management, I then, when I moved here, wanted to put more of a focus on marketing, then worked at a multinational for a number of years and implemented all of their marketing automation. Back then it was Marketo with the tool that I was using that back in 2010. So that's very early stage of Marketo. Right. So one of the first people I was actually at that point in time is probably the only person in Austria with Marketo experience. Right. And then very quickly for that multinational became like the global champion for Marketo, but I wasn't just running. Those types of programs, I was also running offline programs. I was doing a lot of events and stuff. Learned a huge amount about lead generation, basically, through that company. Then went into the tech space then, and I've been in the tech space ever since. So funny enough story, the chief operating officer for a company called Imarsys was checking out my profile on LinkedIn, and I just pinged him and I said, hey, Ohad, why are you looking at my profile? And that sort of brashness was accepted quite well by the Israelis. It's an Israeli company. The Israelis can be quite brash as well. So he was like, okay, I think we need to work with this guy. They were looking for somebody that had marketing automation experience because they were looking to implement a marketing automation platform themselves. And yeah, so that was my first stint in the tech space. And the multinationals I previously was very slow moving industry. Not much had changed in decades really within that space, very slow moving, and then went into tech where it's like going from a merry-go-round onto a roller coaster. It's wild. And I really enjoyed that and quickly started to go up through the ranks for various reasons. We managed to get a hell of a lot of funding at the same time to go into the US market. So very rapidly, I was learning how to run a global marketing team because I was helping the then CMO build out the marketing team for various reasons. From there, I just kept on progressing and progressing, then had a global team. So all of the leads that were being generated for this large organization were coming through my team, both digital and offline. And then I got offered a job as a VP of marketing for a direct competitor. So I took that, which went down like a cup of cold sick, as you can imagine, for the Imarsys guys. But to be fair, the CEO, Ohad, and myself are still very close and a very good friend, actually. Yeah, so I worked at Exponia then for a number of years and we grew that team rapidly and grew the business rapidly. Then went on to another CMO gig at another company, which was a sales tech called Leadfeeder. And again, rapid growth during a relatively tough time, I would say, because that was during the COVID years. And we managed to grow, that was a volume SaaS business as a comparison to the high ticket sales SaaS that I was in previously, Nemarsis and Exponia. And the volume SaaS play was interesting, very, very different. Your customer acquisition costs need to be remained super low as opposed to the enterprise sale that you'd go into it with the others, with the high ticket sales. And yeah, it was interesting. We were growing MMRR by 5% month on month. while at the same time reducing churn, which was, you know, a challenge. And after COVID, you know, it came to June, 2021, and I'd doing this for almost two years at a tight budget and still growing rapidly. And, and a lot of the, a lot of the business growing through the marketing efforts. I was just exhausted. A young family, five lockdowns or whatever it is we had here. I was just like, I can't do this anymore. For various reasons, I was just spent. So I just knew that if I continued going at the pace I was going at, I was going to burn out. So I just decided to step away from the business. Life's too short, right? Very aligned with the CEO and everything. Very good relationship with him and we still speak. And I just said, look, my heart's just not in it anymore. And I think if I keep going at this pace, it's going to end in trouble for me. fully understood from his side. And I just stepped away from the business without having anything settled, nothing. I just knew that I needed to take a break. And, uh, when people started to find out that I left need feeder, they started to reach out and said, Hey, would you be interested in full-time employment here, et cetera. And, um, I just said, no, not really, but I can maybe help. And that's where this gig came about. And I really was just looking. My plan then was, Hey, I'll give a couple of these companies a bit of a hand, see how I get on. And then maybe one of them is a good fit for me to join as a full-time employee. And that's three years ago. And I've worked with over 20 companies. And now I've built a team around me and so on. So actually that was in June, 2021. And I didn't even have a website until October, 2021. I didn't even have an email address or anything. I was working on my Gmail up until October, 2021. And, um, it just sort of dawned on me after a couple of months of doing this. I was like, Oh, there's actually something in this. And I only knew I was called a fractional CMO when, um, a CEO of a company that I was working for introduced me to their board as a fractional CMO. I just thought I was, I'm a marketing advisor or whatever. And then I was introduced to, I was working with a company in the States and in the States, it was, it was a growing phenomenon, let's say back then. Now it's quite well established, but the, uh, I was introduced as a friend. Hey, this is Andy, our fractional CMO. Oh, great. You have a fractional CMO. And I was like, Oh, that's what I have. Great. And I doubled down on that and that's, that's how I ended up where I am. So I sort of started this business by accident. It wasn't planned. It just sort of happened. Right.

Mike: I love that, that absolute honesty, that there wasn't a plan. It wasn't something you worked out. I think to your credit, you know, what you did was you saw the opportunity and doubled down on it and really took advantage.

Andy: Yeah, absolutely.

Mike: Absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about fractional CMOs. I mean, as you mentioned, they're becoming more popular, particularly in the US. What's the benefit of having a fractional CMO versus hiring someone to be your full-time CMO?

Andy: Well, speed is something that's important to a lot of companies. They know if they're going out and looking for an exec, that it's going to take months to probably find the right fit. And also to find the right fit, that will be able to pick up a bag and start running with things relatively quickly. I think that speed thing is is very important. A lot of companies that I work with, for them, it's like, oh, great. You can start tomorrow. Brilliant. We have an existing team in place. This team needs to be managed. This team needs a plan. They need to be pushed forward in the right direction. That's a big thing. The second thing is risk. My contract is very clear and simple. I don't want to work with a customer if the customer is not happy with me. Again, life's too short for me to be trying to prove myself within an organization. If it's not working for you, then it's not working for me. So with that, again, we can cut ties and then that's it. There's no additional costs on top of it. That's again, going back to time being wasted and so on, and also money being wasted in terms of recruitment costs, et cetera. And then maybe a payout as well, if you have a CMO on for a year, for example, trying to get rid of somebody is not that easy. And in some organizations, for example, they're just not ready for a full-time CMO, but they think they are, but they're not ready. And then they figure out after a year, they're like, oh, shoot. Actually, this was not the right time for us, right? If we're talking about in, in the SaaS business, I've seen businesses that even at 40, 50 million ARR and they were recurring revenue that are still quite ready for a CMO based on the team setup that they already have. So I think there's the timing, the risk, and then the cost. So the cost option as well, as I just mentioned, there's a few things that you don't need to worry about any recruitment fees. You have CMO that has the experience of working across multiple organizations at the same time. for a fraction of the cost of what a full-time CMO is gonna cost you. The important thing is though that you have somebody or people on the team that are able to go execute based on how I advise them to go execute. But I'll be the one that will be checking them, making sure they're doing the right things, et cetera, right?

Mike: That's interesting. So I can see some benefits. But I guess the obvious question is, as you live in Austria, and Europe's not always portrayed as being the most dynamic in terms of adopting new approaches, I mean, America's, you know, really leading on the fractional CMOs approach. So is it tough marketing a service like a fractional CMO from within Europe? Or doesn't it matter because you simply work remote for American companies?

Andy: I do both. So like I, I work in Austria. It's funny for a long time, Austria was not really a focus for me. It still isn't too small of a country, right? But right now I have two clients in Austria, which is funny. That just sort of fell on my lap, but not because I was doing any big promotional work for Austria. It just, I have built out a very good network over the past, maybe five years in LinkedIn and LinkedIn basically feeds my inbound. That's where I'm getting all my inbound from. I've also got very good relationships with venture capitalists that I've worked on. at various different organizations. A lot of the companies I've been working with have been BC backed. They know me, they know my style, and it suits them as well to put me in front of some of their portfolio companies. So that's been really like feeding my inbound. But in terms of adoption here, I don't see anybody pushing against it. When I go and speak with an organization, they're always very, very open to it, regardless if they're in the States or of Europe, right? So right now I work with companies in the UK, in Ireland, Germany, Austria. I've been approached by companies in Israel, also the States as well. So I've also been approached by companies in Australia and so on. I just don't want to do that because the phone will never stop if that's the case. So, uh, you know, I don't want to be working around the clock. But yeah, I see it being something that people are open to, even if they're not familiar with the concept. If I bring them through the concept, it makes sense to them, right?

Mike: Yeah, that makes sense. As I understand it, Andy, you focus around SaaS as being your key market. I'm interested to know what the reason for that is. Is it because you believe you can bring the most impact, or is it simply a result of your previous experience?

Andy: I don't think it's just SaaS that I'd be able to bring the most impact. It's just because my experience over the past 10 years has been in SaaS. So people see that, and it's also hard to find SaaS marketers. So I'm very much of the opinion, if you know your niche, nail it. So that's my niche, is in SaaS, just mostly because it's very, very hard to find experienced SaaS marketers, right? Because it's a relatively, in the general scheme of things, new concept. But honestly, the approach that I take should translate across non-SaaS businesses also. There's no reason for it. And it's very simple. I just come in and create a plan alongside the existing team, and then we go execute on that plan. I think the majority of times When I go into a business, one of the core issues is that the team just don't have a plan. It's there's firing from the hip. There's no, there's not a line to any, any target. If there is a target, it's not aligned to company targets. It's not aligned to revenue targets. I think it's, it's aligning the marketing up to the vision of the organization, but also not just to the vision, but also to the target of the organization. And then at the same time, creating a plan around that. You'd be surprised. A lot of companies don't have that.

Mike: That's interesting. I can certainly see the benefit of having that vision and bringing that to your client. I'm interested though, you know, in terms of what you bring, is it transferable skills that are a high level of marketing knowledge and expertise? Or is it, you know, being able to understand the company and come in and, uh, you know, really get under their skin? Is that what matters for a fractional CMO?

Andy: Well, yeah, so I really need to understand the company and the space that they're operating in as well. Right. So a lot of times when I come into an organization, they also need to do a positioning and messaging exercise. So for that, I really need to get to know the space. Like I've just signed a customer. I was actually just starting with them today. And they are trying to be everything to everyone. Right. And I've just said it there a couple of minutes ago. The thing is, what you should really be trying to do is nail your niche. And today your niche, you need to then make sure that you have messaging and positioning, which is suited towards that niche, right? and they've got a lot of work to do on that. And any marketing that they're doing is not going to be as successful if they don't do that exercise alongside the work that they're already doing and try to narrow it down a bit better. And that's the case that's probably 90% of the organizations that I come in and work with. It's very few that come in and say, oh, we have everything perfect and everything's running wonderfully, which is never the case anyway. But normally, if there's a change of guard in marketing or something like that, there's normally The focus from the rest of the C-suite is normally, hey, how can we maybe tailor our message to suit our market better, which is an ongoing exercise anyway. It's never, it's a living exercise. And that happens at every single organization that I come into. So to go to your point, to get to know the org and to get to know the environment and the category that they're operating in is very important.

Mike: So do you have a process for that? Do you have a way that you go in, you learn about the company, their market, understand what they're doing, and then build a plan? You know, is it a fixed approach or is it more flexible?

Andy: I'd say I try to keep it simple, you know, so look at what their customers are saying about them. There's simple platforms. You can look at that in the tech space, at least if you look at G2 or Capterra. So you'd be able to figure out very quickly what people are saying and if they're happy, unhappy, where they're at. And then also look at what their competitors are doing or how their competitors are pushing themselves in comparison to company X. So what are you saying versus what your competitors are saying? And if you're telling me that your competitor is 10 times the size of you, they must be doing something right. So how can we use some of the stuff that they're already doing to bring it forward and do it a bit different? I'm not saying go copy your competitors. But I'd be, I'd be understanding that competitive landscape and how everybody else is positioning themselves and how we benchmark ourselves against that. And then that's really how I would start. And then again, it's about speaking with customers. So getting close to the customer, what's the customer saying about you? What are their grievances? What are they happy about, et cetera, et cetera.

Mike: Yeah, that process kind of makes a lot of sense. One thing I think people would be interested in is, you know, you work in the SaaS market and it has a reputation for focusing a lot of budget on bottom-of-the-funnel tactics like page search. Do you have tactics you feel are evergreen tactics that translate across multiple clients, or is it always a start from scratch and build the plan from the ground up?

Andy: No, it's not always start from scratch and build a plan up. I think there's one thing I've learned and it's, again, this sort of happened by accident as well, because as I mentioned, when I introduced myself and my career, I was in high ticket SaaS, right? So minimum deal sizes of 100 to 200K a year and the type of deals when I was working in my earlier sort of Marses and Exponia, then I went to a volume SaaS business. And when in that volume SaaS business, I sort of brought a mindset of, let's do things that are building brands, not just spending all of our money on Google, right, or paid, which was the case. So when I first went to Leadfeeder, it was like, okay, let's not do anything that's not going to drive trial signups, immediate trial signups, like an immediate sugar rush of trial signups. Why would we do it if we're not going to bring people into a free trial motion immediately? And to me, I just felt as though we were missing something. And, and again, this sort of happened by accident, but COVID hit. And, um, I spoke with a mate of mine who at the time, or I think he still is chief revenue officer and founder of a company called Reachdesk, which is a direct mail tool based out of the UK SaaS business. And we were just chatting and COVID had just hit. And I remember he was sitting in an airport terminal in, uh, in JFK trying to get the hell out of New York. Because they were starting to shut everything down. And I was like, well, this is, this is getting a bit weird. We should try to capitalize on this weird situation and maybe do some content. So we said, okay, let's, let's try to organize a webinar. So, um, we did this maybe on a Thursday we were chatting and we put it in on the Friday. We started promoting it on the Friday for like the following Thursday. And we had like overnight, we were talking, so we put the topic of how to, how to sell during these uncertain times. And man, like people, like we had like 2000 signups in the space of a day or something, you know, which was just unheard of. Right. And I was like, Oh, there's something in this. So I just kept on doing it and getting more and more people on. And we started getting 3000, 4000 registrations in over a couple of space days. And I was like, okay. People were asking me, investors were asking, Hey, is this leading directly to signups? Why is it like, can we track? I'm like, it's not, it's not immediately. You're not gonna be able to track it, but I'm telling you, this is having an impact on the market. And all of our competitors started to try to follow suite, but they were too late and it didn't work for them. So my point being. The playbook that I try to go in, especially if we're going into a volume SaaS business is, of course, go after that, like making sure that you're efficient on your paid spend. So are you getting efficiency metrics right? So is your LTV to CAC, so your lifetime value to customer acquisition costs? Are you operating a three to one on that specific channel, whether it's a Google or whatever, right? That means you're being very profitable, right? If you're over three to one, that's a general rule of thumb, I think. If you're over three to one, so if you're, for every euro you spend, you're getting three back, right? And if you're operating at that, or if you're operating over that, then you can spend more. You can be a bit less efficient, right? But try to aim for three to one. And then at the same time, you should always be trying to do a brand play. And brand play is a long burn. But if you don't do a brand play, the problem is that when the time comes for the prospect to look for a solution like yours, you won't be top of mind. So that's always my thing is, okay, like if you're doing a brand play, make sure you offer some actionable piece of information that doesn't necessarily have to do anything with your product. It just helps them in their role. And then when they have the need, they're gonna come back to you to purchase. And that worked so well for us at Leadfeeder. We've seen it over time. We dropped paid budgets down from 100 grand a month down to 30 grand a month, and we're still seeing the same results. So that was after a couple of months of doing this brand piece. So without being able to fully connect the dots, but I can tell you now that that brand play was massive and had a massive impact on revenue.

Mike: One thing, you know, really interests me about what you said was speed. You mentioned speed a couple of times and you said, Oh, we've decided a webinar. It was the end of the week. And you basically set that webinar up for the following Thursday, turning around the webinar in a week. I mean, I know a lot of our enterprise clients would, you know, imagine trying to do that and they'd freak out if you said it would be a week. So how important is speed? I mean, is it something that's changed, you know, with more uncertainty since when COVID hit or do you think it's always been important? And actually, you know, are there benefits in some organizations being a bit more perhaps thoughtful and slow?

Andy: If you can put thought into it and also have some speed, then I think that's the best mix, right? I understand on an enterprise perspective, it may be harder to get things over the line, but I would still try to have people within that, whoever's leading the team to still put people under pressure to get things delivered quickly. I've been in the enterprise setting whereby it takes months and months and months to get anything over the line and 10 people need to decide on this. And honestly, the outcome is not in any way as successful as the outcome that we would see if we tried to get things over the line quickly. And being very open with those webinars, not everyone was a hit. We had one or two that didn't go well, but we just continued with us. And actually, if I look at that as a whole, we probably did 20 to 25 of them over the space of two years. Right. For example, early on, when I seen that opportunity after initial webinar, as soon as I got off that first one. I called my head of demand, Jen, and was like, we need to organize another one for next Thursday. And he was like, oh, you're kidding me. I was like, yes, we're doing it. We did it, got somebody on from my network, quickly move it over the line. Again, 3,000 people. We actually broke the webinar software because it was too many people trying to get in. And again, to go to your point, does the speed matter here? Is the speed going to impact us? In that case, it 100% did. For enterprise businesses, I still am of the belief that speed is very important in these things because otherwise others are just going to get ahead of you. And as an enterprise, you probably don't care too much about that because nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, right? That's the old adage, right? But at the same time, those larger organizations, enterprise organizations that can be quicker to market with things. That are more exciting like they're typically the ones that are more exciting day trigger an emotional response within a community or within a network. That then leads to a sale at some point right and the point from these what we were doing there is without me actually focusing on it we were building a community because the same people were coming back week and week. And if an enterprise brand can build a community like that, that ingrains them with that brand, right? It brings people closer to that brand. So I was working within an enterprise organization. I would still deploy the same tactic week in, week out, let's go. And it would get pushback. Don't get me wrong. 100% pushback. But I think in that specific case, I would still have done the same way.

Mike: I love that, Andy. I think it's great advice, but it's also probably scary, as you suggest to people in the enterprise, to have to push people to go that quickly. I really appreciate you talking about what you've done, Andy, and how you approach being a fractional CMO. Now I'd like to look forward to the future. There's a lot of change in marketing. I mean, you mentioned that you were probably the first Marketo expert in Austria. That was less than 15 years ago. So clearly, things are changing very quickly. There's now a lot of people running Marketo in Austria, as there are everywhere else. Clearly, things have made a big impact in recent years. How do you see things changing in the future? What's going to be the changes for, say, a fractional CMO over the next five to 10 years?

Andy: It's a good question, right? I spoke with somebody about this this morning. Actually, my brother, I spoke with my brother about this this morning. He's a chief product officer at a tech company as well, a SaaS company. So SaaS is in the family, let's say. And he was asking me the same question, like, am I seeing from a, cause I also run sales teams and SDR teams as well as doing the marketing piece. I need questions are you seeing marketers or sellers being replaced by solutions now i seeing that all and my simple answers that was no like across the businesses i'm working with now. Any business there's an example that he brought up was a intercom intercom of doing a lot on the front and. I believe a lot of the stuff that they're doing in product is AI. Instead of having people working on it, their AI is working on it. And they've rolled out an AI product piece, which they've gone all in on, and supposedly it's not getting the uptake that they were expecting. And so I still think there's this wariness around AI. So a lot of people are have been playing around with ChatGPT, right? Which is great, right? And there's certain workflows and stuff that you can create to help. For example, I use ChatGPT if I need to put together a job spec, like something that would in the past taken me a long time to put together, two hours or whatever to put together. I just say to ChatGPT, hey, can you put together a job spec? or, hey, I need a landing page copy for an event that we're running. This is the event. These are the key details. This is what it's about. Can you come up with a landing page copy? And I'll go and just start tailoring it, right? So really, my answer to that is I think it's far too soon to tell how AI is going to impact on things. Other things where I see a bigger impact happening is algorithm related, right? So stuff like, for example, LinkedIn. LinkedIn was a huge driver of marketing leads and decent quality leads over the past years for many businesses, especially when they were doing things like account-based marketing, targeting the accounts that were in their total addressable market and so on, getting email addresses in exchange for eBooks, et cetera. I think that behavior, first of all, the behavior on the buyer side has changed or on the prospect side has changed. And I also think that LinkedIn, based on their algorithm, how they are doing things, first of all, it's got much more expensive cost per lead, and the impression count has gone down rapidly. So they've made some changes there, which have heavily affected how things are going. So I think that's probably playing a bigger role in the immediate future so that marketers need to tailor how they're doing their approach towards marketing and the old channels not working the same way as they did two years ago. And now looking at, okay, what's the best way for me to move forward? And also in the SaaS space, one of the things that's changed significantly in the past six to nine months. is things like people requesting demos. So buyer behavior has changed massively just because of uncertainty due to, for example, the war in the Ukraine and Russia, due to the election in the US, due to inflation, due to instability globally. And with that, people are not going to your website any longer to fill out a form to see your software. Every company that I know has seen a hit in that. However, they're still going and doing their research. So with that, there are tools, for example, like Leadfeeder, but there's also other tools like Sixth Sense and so on that work perfectly as well. There's more for the enterprise, whereby you could see the buyer intent of companies, for example, searching for a specific category of software, and as well also seeing those companies visiting your site. So that then gives your sales team and SDR team, if you have one, a pointer in the right direction to go after these companies and the buying council that you would typically go after, rather than just sitting there and waiting for the requested demos to rain in, right?

Mike: Yeah, I think that's very insightful. And although perhaps you ducked a little bit what impact AI is going to have, I think what you're saying is actually the biggest impact we're probably going to see is behavior over the next 10 years, rather than the actual technology itself. So I really love that.

Andy: With the AI piece, I don't know, to be honest, which is the very answer because it's so early. AI is developing so quickly. If you compare chat GPT to, for example, other technological breakthroughs that we've seen over the past years, for example, smartphone. Like AI is moving so much faster than any smartphone technology did. And it's just, it's so hard to tell which way it's going to go. But there's also things like the Google is a Google, not Google lens, but, um, the Apple computer where you wear the glasses and it's, it's, it's the computer in the, in the glasses, basically. Everybody, I haven't tried it, but everybody that I know has tried is like, that is 100% the future. 100%. This is the way that we're moving. Is that the case? I don't know. It was the same with virtual reality 10 years ago. Did it go that way? No. 3D? 25 years ago, did it move that way? No. I don't know. I just know that right now AI can be helpful in terms of interpreting data, large data sets, finding meaning within data, and also helping from a number of areas, for example, creating copy and stuff like that, and making things a little bit easier just to maybe speed things up on your side that would have taken a lot of manual effort prior. But now it's too early to tell.

Mike: Yeah, that's probably the most realistic way to summarize AI. Andy, I really appreciate your time. I know you're super busy. So before we go, we've got a couple of quickfire questions we'd like to ask people. So I'll dive straight in and ask you the first one. What's the best piece of marketing advice you've ever been given?

Andy: Ah, that's a very good question. So I worked for somebody before that just focused heavily on execution. So as long as you're executing, something is going to work. So the worst thing you can do as a marketer is not execute. And you might not execute because you're maybe not confident enough to do it. You have an idea, you're unsure about it, whatever it is. This, this marketing leader told me, make sure that you're always executing. And that was probably the best piece of advice because people see that you're doing that stuff is coming out, right? That's a, it's first of all, it's a visuals thing. Otherwise it was like, what's marketing doing? Nothing. Secondly, if you continue to do it that way, you will have stuff that will stick. And then an additional piece of advice on that, creativity always wins. So if you're executing and you're being creative with your execution, then you are ultimately going to win eventually. It's not always going to work, but it will work sometimes. And that's the most important thing.

Mike: That's great advice. Love it. The other question we like to ask is if you're talking to someone who's just about to enter marketing as a career, perhaps as a graduate, what would be your advice to them? Don't do it.

Andy: No, I'm joking. So yeah, my advice to them would be make sure that you understand the numbers. So many marketers come in and don't really understand the Table got the old school, might be old school thinking nowadays, but the old school lead gen funnel, as an example, or understand how something is impacting the business goals or how something is going to impact a seller when they're going out to market. If you understand that, then you will ultimately be more successful. And another thing is that people don't, for whatever reason uses common sense, If you're creating, for example, content that's getting eyeballs on it, and those eyeballs are coming from your ICP, but you're not able to maybe connect back the dots to closed one business, that doesn't mean it's not working. So there's so many CEOs that have come across as like, could all content spend because I don't see any deals. I don't see any million euro deals coming from this one blog post. And you need to be able to say, no, This is driving this amount of eyeballs from this particular ICP. Therefore, it is having an impact somewhere in the sales cycle. You're just maybe not going to be able to measure it. And that's okay. You don't need to measure everything. You just need to be able to show the numbers where it matters.

Mike: Yeah, I think that's really helpful for anyone starting in marketing. Hopefully, people won't take the first advice if they don't do it. They'll actually go in and get dug into the numbers and recognize that whilst those numbers are important, they're not the whole story. This has been such a great conversation, Andy. I really appreciate it. It's so insightful. If there's anyone listening who wants to find out more or perhaps even is looking for a fractional CMO, what's the best way to get hold of you?

Andy: You get me on LinkedIn, Andy Culligan, or you get me on my website, andyculligan.com. Yeah, they're probably the best two places to get me.

Mike: Awesome, Andy. Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate you being a guest on Marketing B2B Technology.

Andy: Sure. No worries. Thank you.

Mike: Thanks so much for listening to Marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or on your favorite podcast application. If you'd like to know more, please visit our website at napierb2b.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.

by Natasha Websdale

Building Relationships in Digital PR - Vince Nero - BuzzStream

Vince Nero, Director of Content Marketing at BuzzStream discusses the changing landscape of digital PR and SEO. Learn how BuzzStream helps marketers build strong relationships with journalists and navigate the evolving landscape of digital outreach.

Vince discusses the importance of personalization in email marketing, the impact of recent Google updates on SEO strategies, and the shift towards quality-driven digital PR.

• ‎Marketing B2B Technology on Apple Podcasts
• Marketing B2B Technology on Spotify
• Marketing B2B Technology on napierb2b.com

About BuzzStream

BuzzStream is an email outreach tool for PRs and link builders designed to help build and manage relationships with personalized outreach at scale.

About Vince Nero

Vince is the Director of Content Marketing at Buzzstream. He thinks content marketers should solve for users, not just Google. He also loves finding creative content online. His previous work includes content marketing agency Siege Media for six years, Homebuyer.com, and The Grit Group. Outside of work, you can catch Vince running, playing with his two kids, enjoying some video games, or watching Phillies baseball.

Time Stamps

00:00:18 - Guest Introduction: Vince Nero from BuzzStream
00:03:09 - Understanding BuzzStream's Value for Marketers
00:10:09 - Impact of Google Updates on Marketing Strategies
00:14:23 - Marketing to Two Distinct Audiences: SEO vs. PR
00:19:11 - The Future of Content Marketing and Technology
00:24:00 - Creating New Information: Strategies for Success
00:27:04 - Quality Over Quantity: A Key Marketing Principle
00:27:23 - Best Marketing Advice: Permission Marketing
00:28:20 - Advice for Aspiring Marketers: Seek Internships
00:29:58 - How to Connect with Vince and BuzzStream

Quotes

"There's kind of this thought process in the digital PR space and link building space that is kind of at odds with one another.” Vince Nero, Director of Content Marketing at BuzzStream.

“The recipe for success going forward is pushing as much of your own new information into these large language models.” Vince Nero, Director of Content Marketing at BuzzStream.

“I think we're just finding more and more that people are needing this personalized approach.” Vince Nero, Director of Content Marketing at BuzzStream.

Follow Vince:

Vince Nero on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinnero/

BuzzStream website: https://www.buzzstream.com/

BuzzStream on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/buzzstream/

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Transcript: Interview with Vince Nero at BuzzStream

Speakers: Mike Maynard, Vince Nero

Mike:
Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today. Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. Today, I'm joined by Vince Nero. Vince is the Director of Content Marketing at BuzzStream. Welcome to the podcast, Vince.

Vince: Hey, Mike. Thanks so much for having me.

Mike: Great to have you on. What we like to do with all guests is get you to tell us a little bit about your career and ultimately why you've chosen BuzzStream as your current company. So tell us all about yourself.

Vince: Yeah, I don't want to go back too far, but I actually started when I was in music school. I played the saxophone, tried to make a living as a jazz musician in New York City and found it pretty tough. So I needed to get an actual job and I kind of fell backwards into marketing. Started working with some like the tech in the tech startup space in New York City Gained a lot of connections there and was I kind of able to leverage that into a job with a small consulting firm That actually paid for a course for me called SEO that works. It was a Brian Dean backlink Oh course this was back in like 2014 or something in 2013 and And so I took that course and kind of used that and the stuff I learned there to get a job with Siege Media. And I moved out to San Diego to kind of join up with them. And that's kind of where I cut my teeth, really. And what I do now, I think, is where I learned SEO. I had a great mentor, Ross Hudgens, there, and some other folks at Siege who are great, Alex Hines, Carolyn Gilbert. And so, you know, while I was at Siege, it was content marketing agency focused on SEO. They did digital PR, that sort of thing. And I used BuzzStream the whole time I was there. Eventually, my wife and I had a kid during the pandemic. I was kind of just not feeling the agency life. I wanted a little bit of a change. And I ended up moving out of agency in-house at a company called Homebuyer, then was laid off from there, started another agency, and then ultimately BuzzStream reached out to me and it seemed like a perfect fit given my interests and what they do and my affinity for the The product itself, you know, I really liked it and I had actually, funnily enough, reached out to them when I was leaving Siege Media saying like, hey, this seems like it would be the perfect fit. Are you interested in me at all? And they weren't ready to hire a marketer yet, but eventually they were and I jumped at the chance.

Mike: And you're now based in Connecticut, is that right?

Vince: Yes. Yeah. So I've kind of jumped coasts back and forth.

Mike: You couldn't stand the fantastic winters in San Diego.

Vince: Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty rough. I needed, I needed the cold again.

Mike: Well, that's awesome. I mean, it's great that you, you know, come from a background of using a product and then wanting to actually work for the company. You're probably ideally placed then to explain, you know, the problems that Buzzstream solves for marketers.

Vince: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I, it was a really kind of another reason I felt like a perfect fit for this because I was, I am the ideal customer, you know, like the problems that Buzzstream solves are kind of twofold. It acts as kind of like a CRM for, um, digital PRs, essentially. So it lets you personalize emails, but then send them at scale to, you know, actually move the needle. But I think the main focus is on being able to kind of build relationships with journalists and publications. So that seems to be kind of the bigger issue that a lot of people have and there's kind of this thought process in the digital PR space and link building space that is kind of at odds with one another where it's like they call it like the spray and pray technique versus the, you know, personalized sniper tag, you know, if you want to keep using that weird terminology. So, you know, it's like, do I personalize emails or do I just send to a mass list, basically? And so the challenge is doing that at scale. And, you know, I think the agency life, any agency, especially that's doing link building, wants to scale everything, right? Like you're very conscious of the time spent on different tasks. Everything has to be built to a client. It kind of behooves you to work as quickly as possible, but you do that and sometimes it's sacrifice the quality of the emails, you sacrifice building relationships. So there's some agencies that don't like to personalize emails and get into it and build relationships and would rather kind of send out you know, 5,000, 10,000 emails, something like that, just get a list of relevant journalists. But I think we're just finding more and more that people are needing this personalized approach. And there's a couple things that have happened in the past year that have really made me kind of strengthen that argument, I think, and I can get into that. But that's it in a nutshell, I think.

Mike: Well, I mean, let's get into that. Let's find out about those things that have really made you buy into BuzzStream.

Vince: Yeah, I mean, our customer base is kind of split, right? So we have people who are into link building and using it for link building, doing kind of more traditional link building outreach, your maybe resource page building or broken link building, niche edits, link insertions, guest posting outreach. The other half are digital PRs. So it's like that is the two customer segments. I think we're kind of 50-50 when you talk about UK versus the US. And that's interesting there because like the US itself is kind of a few years behind, I think, the UK market in terms of how they think about digital PR. It's kind of tied more into link building and thought of more as a scalable approach, whereas I think a lot of the UK agencies do put more focus on personalization and building relationships more in the vein of like a traditional PR. So, with kind of that in mind, it is kind of like this interesting segmentation of our market, but throw Google into the mix now. In the past year, they've done a handful of very interesting things, and I think, to me, it's really pushing everything towards this almost like more traditional and like brand building focus that marketers should have. So one of them was in February, they put out these new email requirements to kind of cut down on spam emails. So these unpersonalized emails that you get from people and you know, it's like people that send out more than 5,000 emails in a 24-hour period to personal email addresses have to adhere to these stricter guidelines. Like, you know, you need to have that auto-subscribe button in the subject line there. There's certain details that you need and technical things. At its core, what it's doing is pushing people to send more personal emails, right? So, like, that's number one tick towards the personalized and relationship building. The other is there was this massive Google leak, and in it we found a lot of signals that the brand itself, I think, seems to be something that Google looks at more so than people thought, I think. So mentions of a brand, authors affiliated with a brand. The other side of that is there were signals in there that talked about how sites that were updated frequently and had sections that were highly clicked. those links from those sections are potentially more valuable to Google. And those types of sites are inherently just like news sites, the sites that you would get from doing PR work, right? The last thing I'll mention is the helpful content update, I think. And kind of in that is the link spam update. I'll kind of roll those two together. But What we saw from that was a lot of sites basically just dropped off traffic like completely or, you know, were completely decimated, maybe not entirely dropped all their traffic. But the sites that I saw that were most impacted by this were the sites that were basically just spinning out content just to spin out content. They had no real identity. They had no real focus. It were really just these mean like guest posting sites where people would go on and post an article about whatever you'd see. They're kind of like veiled news sites, but not really news sites. They just cover every topic under the sun. But I think those links used to work, and I don't think they are anymore because we're seeing the traffic really going down in those sites. So with those kind of three, well I didn't mention the link spam update, that's kind of tied into that like helpful content thing because what our analysis showed, my analysis showed recently of a lot of those sites that got hit were again like those were sites that didn't really have any core focus or had no like real brand identity and were basically the sites that you would see that were constantly in link exchanges and on these guest posting sites and accepting guest posts or you'd see them on these guest posting databases. So what all that kind of amounts to is this kind of push away from those more traditional link building methods the guest posting, link exchanges, link insertions. Not to say that they don't work, but not at the scale that people used to do it. And on the other side, there's this real focus from Google on like, brand, being an authentic brand, mentioning the brand, seeing mentions of a brand. And kind of to do that, you need to really focus on high-end authoritative news sites and getting coverage there. So that becomes more of the digital PR route. I mean, you can conceivably buy links from those sites, those news sites, but I don't think they're necessarily worth as much as if you were to reach out to a journalist and really cultivate a nice relationship that you can get links for your client or multiple clients if you have an agency. That kind of stuff gets me excited, obviously. I can talk a whole podcast about this and where things are moving. I didn't even mention the impact of AI on this stuff, but I've changed my whole marketing plan because of the tumultuous year that we've had, I think, in Google updates and all these things, those four or five things I just mentioned, that have really caused me to change our focus and lean more heavily into digital PR topics versus covering those more traditional link building type of topics.

Mike: So, I mean, that's interesting. And I think it kind of says to me that, you know, some of the perhaps, I guess, more straightforward SEO tactics are moving into the, you know, more quality orientated digital PR. So do you want to talk a little bit about how BuzzStream helps you get covered in those, you know, higher value publications? Because obviously that's not an easy thing to do.

Vince: Yeah, and you know, I think we do. You still need to be a great PR to get the most out of BuzzStream. I mean, what BuzzStream does is enable you to send and kind of cultivate these relationships. Like I said, you know, when I worked at Siege Media, we use BuzzStream, and kind of the biggest thing was you create a piece of content, you want to build links to it, get coverage for it. So you're reaching out to journalists, finding journalists. BuzzStream does help you find journalists and find contact information for journalists, but it's not necessarily a media database. So you do have to kind of do your own digging and do your own validating to make sure that these journalists are relevant. And that's why I say you do kind of have to be a good PR to to pull that in. But what you get into with BuzzStream is then, okay, now I have my list of people and I can easily kind of personalize each of the emails much more quickly. And then the other end of it is also being able to lean on those repeat journalists and build relationships. So you have the contact history, you can see, oh, this person covered me on a campaign I did two months ago. I'm going to reach back out to them, and you already have a foot in the door because they covered you. Or maybe they rejected you, but they said, you know, contact me again. And it's like, oh, yeah, I have this. relationship with a journalist. I think what a lot of people do these days in PR is they have their kind of top priority list of journalists that they'll reach out to for every single campaign. And, you know, being able to identify those priority journalists for different industries, especially when you're at an agency and you're working in different industries all the time, different clients, or you might even have different people working on different clients at different times. You have that full visibility, and that's where I think the extreme value is, and just being able to kind of have that visibility and then being able to personalize based off of that.

Mike: I love it. I mean, you've alluded to the fact you've really got two sorts of customers a couple of times here. You've got the SEO side of your business, and you've got the digital PR pros. I mean, how do you approach marketing when you've got two different audiences like that?

Vince: Yeah, it's tough. I mean, you know, I was thinking about our newsletter, like I started a newsletter. That was one of the things we did. And I have a great, you know, our editor, our CMO, Stephen Panico, is great at kind of pushing me to focus all my pieces. What's the value here? What's the, you know, the UVP and everything. And one of the things we were struggling with was like, what's the value of this newsletter? What makes it different than, than all the other newsletters? So what I ended up coming down to was like, we kind of bridged that gap between PR and SEO because that is kind of my background, the SEO background with, you know, that's more digital PR. But I think That's kind of how I have to go about doing it is like tell both sides of the story. Right. But like I said, I am making a concerted effort nowadays to go more for the topics and keywords that have to do with. more traditional PR. Just, you know, we're working on a product that's right now a new feature that's kind of more in the traditional space, traditional PR space anyway. So kind of trying to set us up for that. But, you know, it's not to say that like SEO and the link building side is completely forgotten. I mean, I think it's still important to address how those still work, you know, like in their limited capacity, and then also how they can play into the broader kind of brand, the idea of a brand. So I think it's kind of pushing that messaging and kind of doing what I can to tie those two together wherever possible.

Mike: That's interesting, because as a B2B marketer, you seem very focused on building the BuzzStream brand itself. And obviously, you're doing some SEO whilst you do that. But how do you balance the requirement of getting that strong brand, but at the same time, driving some of those bottom of the funnel leads?

Vince: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, tactically, one of the first things I did, and I used to do all the time when I was at the agency, is we'd create these keyword lists. and balance them out based off of like where they appear in the funnel. So I think it's always important to have that mindset of like, you know, this is bottom funnel, this is middle funnel, this is top funnel. And What we would do is like we would use a metric from Ahrefs called traffic value. And so you look at the top ranking posts and see what kind of estimated traffic value they had. The traffic value came from like a PPC calculation. So based on that thought process of like using PPC to guide the value, Typically, the higher value keywords were also kind of more bottom funnel, right? Because those are the keywords that are getting clicked on. They're valuable for people for other sites. So we would use this and do the traffic value divided by the keyword difficulty. So if it's a really difficult keyword, But it's got a lot of traffic value, you know, like maybe we go after that. So it becomes kind of just this this math equation. And I have this whole sheet and I'm actually working on a case study right now for like my last year of where I walk through my exact keyword research process. And I can share that with with you, Mike. But I think it is kind of having that balance, right? Like, for me, if I'm working in a SaaS company, realistically, it's like you want to start with the bottom funnel. And that was what I did. Digital PR tools, email outreach tools, content marketing tools, like these types of posts that people are going to look at before wanting to purchase, right? I wanted to make sure I at least had those shored up before moving up the funnel. Then it became like, you know, you kind of said this earlier, but like, I think there's ways to achieve that brand awareness along with other goals. It's not just like, I'm going to raise my brand awareness. It's like, how am I going to do that? Can I create a post that is going to generate backlinks is going to generate a lot of social shares is going to generate. So I always kind of have that in mind of like, if I'm doing this, is there a way that I can leverage this post in a couple different ways for, you know, not only leads, but also the brand. Can I interview someone to get some quotes behind this? And then that becomes something I can use in social posts or something. So I think it's about kind of having that mindset of like, how can I get multi uses out of all the content that you do?

Mike: Yeah, I love that. I mean, you know, a lot of people talk about content reuse, but I love that concept of being able to use that same blog post to achieve two goals. I think that's a really interesting idea. I just want to switch gears a bit and talk, you know, maybe about things, you know, at a higher level now, more generally in terms of marketing. There's been a lot of change in technology. How do you see that impacting content marketing? And what should content marketers be doing to remain effective and successful over the next five years?

Vince: Well, if things change as rapidly as they did in the last year, for the next five years, it's going to be a very different landscape. But it's interesting. I just read something last week or earlier on. I'm trying to remember where I read this. Basically I said this idea that like chat GPT and AI, like obviously they're the biggest things when you ask that question, Mike, like that's the first thing that popped out is like, you know, AI and how that is going to impact everything. That's where my mind goes. I mean, the other things are probably what like the department of justice is going to do to Google here in the, in the States and how that's going to impact SEO and But for now, let's talk AI, because I think what the thing that I read was basically that like AI is getting to a point where it's like it's getting harder and harder for them to kind of iterate and get better. And I think one of the reasons they said in this article was because they're running out of new information to train on. Right. So there's only so much information out there and that makes up this kind of corpus of information and this large language model that they're pulling from. So I think. What's going to happen in the next few years is just, you know, it's going to almost become like SEO, but for AI, right? Like SEO, AI, whatever you want to call it, AI optimization, where the game is going to be how do you show up in these large language models and The thing that a lot of people talk about is information gain and all of your content. And I think this, this is what I do now and what people should be doing is thinking about how I can always be inserting something new, never just saying something that is already out there and reiterating. So like if you're looking at it from a keywords perspective, like there's going to be keywords out there that AI is going to be able to answer easily. That's going to drive people to do their research on AI. And then when they come to your site, they're going to be more primed to buy. They're going to have all that kind of top level information they're going to need. So with information gain, you want to constantly be feeding new information where that kind of plays into relating it back to like digital PR. And it is this idea of like, data-driven content, whatever you can do to put fresh proprietary data. It doesn't necessarily have to be data. I guess it could also be like expert opinions and quotes from people who are experts. And this is why Google is pushing so much on people might have heard of like the EEAT, experience, authority, expertise, and trust. Google wants that from the content. They don't want you to just regurgitate stuff that already exists out there. So I think the recipe for success going forward is pushing as much of your own new information into these large language models and trying to associate your brand with those as well. So if I'm saying, you know, BuzzStream email outreach tool found whatever XYZ statistic, like that, as many times as I can associate my name with those things, I want people to find BuzzStream, you know, like a email outreach tool, digital PR tool, whatever. that's going to just potentially make me show up more in the large language model. So it's a long way of saying I think the future is going to be optimizing for those. And I think the way to do it is to provide new information that doesn't exist and only you have, only your brand has.

Mike: I love that. I mean, that's quite intimidating as a challenge to keep finding new information, but I think it's something where we can all be optimistic that we can keep adding value and keep winning against AI, which I think for particularly brands and not the market leaders, it sometimes feels quite hard to break through, doesn't it, in an AI model.

Vince: I kind of disagree. Well, let's just say I disagree. Like, I don't think it should be intimidating. And here's why. Because I think there's a couple easy things that any brand can do. And when I talk to journalists, one of the things I always ask them is, if I'm a brand new brand, right? Do you even care about hearing from me? Do you look for the bigger brands when you're sourcing a story? And at the end of the day, the story is what drives any journalist to talk about something. So it doesn't really seem to matter. There are definitely certain industries that might be tough to find compelling stories for, but you just kind of have to shift your mindset. Even with us in digital PR right now, like for BuzzStream, there are so many key players right now in this space. It's like, I can't put out a survey that appeals to like a general audience. I need to put out a survey or data study. I need to put something out that relates to our specific audience. So what I'm doing is this like state of digital PR big study where it's like, you know, I'm creating this data myself by just surveying other expert individuals in the space. So I think really any industry can do that type of survey. It just becomes kind of, you know, you're maybe not to your first question or earlier question of like it, maybe it's not going to be a lead generator for you, but it's going to become like a thought. leadership play, more of a brand play, which isn't always bad. Like I said, it's always important to have that balance of those two things. And sorry, I kind of buried the lead there. The way to actually create this new information, surveys are an easy way that anybody can do it, I think. Getting proprietary data is another one. I think the other one is just gathering expert opinions from thought leaders at your company. that to me is proprietary information. It's maybe not data, but that's proprietary information that doesn't exist anywhere else. So you might be an expert on something very specific, even if you work in whatever construction or something that's like a really, you know, I remember working on like surety bonds here in the States when I was agency and that was really tough. But like there's going to come a time when a journalist needs to know about that. It's just you might have to change your expectations a little bit. It's like you're not going to go out and build a hundred links, get coverage, you know, a hundred different places. But in some of these smaller industries, like think about it from this vantage point, there's probably not a lot of players in these niche industries. So you don't need as much to stand out as well. You know, and think about from the large language model perspective, it's like, again, if you're in a niche industry, there's not going to be probably a ton of information about that. So I think it's doable for pretty much anybody. It's just, yeah, maybe the expectations of those like quality over quantity, I think, is the conversation you have to have then.

Mike: That seems to be a message of the podcast is quality over quantity is what really matters today. Yeah. Vincent has been really interesting. We'd like to finish with a couple of quick fire questions. So first thing I want to ask you is what's the best bit of marketing advice you've ever been given? And I'm not going to let you say quality over quantity.

Vince: You know, I think back to one of the first books I ever read in marketing, it was Seth Godin, Permission Marketing. And just this idea of like, you know, a person's inbox is so important to them, they need to give you permission to interrupt them, right? So like, what value are you going to give them? so that they will give you the permission to interrupt their inbox, their flow, their whatever. I mean, it was written years ago, but I think it really still applies today, and especially in the space that I'm in. But like, you know, I think about all the newsletters. I feel like email newsletters are such a big brand play these days, big marketing play, that it's still 1,000% relevant.

Mike: I love it. That's great. I remember reading that book when it came out as well. The second question we want to ask you is, what advice would you give to somebody who's starting marketing as their career?

Vince: I think as much as I like that course I took, there are so many courses out there to give you bare bones of something, but I wouldn't rely on that 100%. I would try to either build something yourself, which is not always realistic because it takes a lot of time and money and I've been in those places. I think the better play is to try to get a paid internship at an agency because you're going to get exposed to so much stuff and try to find somebody there, a mentor that you can pick their brain and even if it's an unpaid internship and you're in school or something, you're going to get out of it what you bring into it. So like ask as many questions as possible. It's like, you know, they're not going to fire you if you're an unpaid internship, right? So like you should be trying to get invited to meetings, client meetings, ideation meetings. Even if your job is getting coffee, it's like try to insert yourself in as much as possible. Just be a sponge. That's what's really going to make all the difference, I think.

Mike: That's great advice. I mean, at Napier, we're very keen on getting people in. We always pay our interns. And also, in the UK, we have this apprenticeship scheme, which is amazing for marketing. So if anybody is starting their career, please do contact me, and we'd be more than happy to take you on in the UK. Vince, this has been, you know, fascinating. I'm sure people would, you know, probably love some more information, you know, maybe about you, maybe about, you know, finding out more about BuzzStream. So how can people get some more information if they want to contact you and find out more?

Vince: Yeah, I'm very active on LinkedIn. I just got on Blue Sky. So check me out there on either of those. I would say subscribe to our email newsletter. It's something I spend a lot of time, too. We also have a podcast. But yeah, LinkedIn. And like Mike said, if you're new and thinking of internship or just thinking of getting into the industry, my chats are always open. Feel free to reach out. I'm happy to, like, schedule a call and chat through that kind of stuff too. So very open to helping.

Mike: That's very kind. I really appreciate it. I know people who are starting would appreciate that as well. Vince, it's been fascinating. And thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast.

Vince: Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Mike. And I really appreciate the time and the chat.

Mike: Thanks so much for listening to Marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or on your favorite podcast application. If you'd like to know more, please visit our website at napierb2b.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.

by Natasha Websdale

Lead Generation: The Power of Quiz Marketing - Maxwell Nee - ScoreApp

Maxwell Nee, Chief Revenue Officer at ScoreApp, joins Mike to discuss quiz marketing and how businesses can engage potential customers through interactive quizzes that not only entertain but also provide valuable insights into their needs.

Maxwell shares his thoughts on the evolving marketing landscape and emphasizes the importance of personal connections, as audiences increasingly seek authenticity and transparency from the brands they engage with.

• ‎Marketing B2B Technology on Apple Podcasts
• Marketing B2B Technology on Spotify
• Marketing B2B Technology on napierb2b.com

About ScoreApp

ScoreApp is a lead generation and customer engagement platform that helps businesses create interactive scorecards to capture valuable data, qualify leads, and personalize user experiences. By using tailored assessments, businesses can gather insights about their audience, streamline onboarding processes, and enhance marketing strategies. This data-driven approach empowers businesses to convert leads into loyal customers effectively. ScoreApp is widely used across various industries, including coaching, finance, and fitness, to boost engagement and drive results

About Maxwell Nee

Maxwell Nee is the Chief Revenue Officer of Scoreapp, a Quiz Marketing Platform with 6,800 paying clients. He's also a multi-award winning entrepreneur, bodybuilder & dancer. He’s been featured in TV, Radio, Forbes, Singapore’s The Business Times & The Australian Business Review.

Time Stamps

00:00:42 - Maxwell Nee's Career Journey
00:01:43 - What is ScoreApp?
00:02:23 - Quiz Marketing Explained
00:06:17 - Setting Up a Campaign with ScoreApp
00:09:41 - Balancing Brand and Lead Generation
00:12:04 - Future of Marketing Tools
00:12:57 - The Importance of Personal Connections
00:17:06 - Actionable Advice for Quiz Marketing
00:18:42 - Key Marketing Advice
00:20:46 - Advice for Young Marketers
00:21:55 - Contact Information and Book Reminder

Quotes

"I totally burnt out, realized I hated it, couldn't be an employee anymore, and jumped into the self-employed world." Maxwell Nee, Chief Revenue Officer at ScoreApp

"It uses quiz marketing. So uses the engagement of filling out like a quiz or like a personal assessment." Maxwell Nee, Chief Revenue Officer at ScoreApp

"Our internal mantra is that we're here to force our customers to be successful." Maxwell Nee, Chief Revenue Officer at ScoreApp

Follow Maxwell:

Maxwell Nee on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxwellnee/

ScoreApp website: https://www.scoreapp.com/

ScoreApp on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/scoreapp/

Follow Mike:

Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/

Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/

Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing B2B Tech and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We'd also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform.

Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast - The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547

Transcript: Interview with Maxwell Nee at ScoreApp

Speakers: Mike Maynard, Maxwell Nee

Mike: Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today.

Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. I'm Mike Maynard, and today I'm joined by Maxwell Nee, who's the Chief Revenue Officer at ScoreApp. Welcome to the podcast, Maxwell.

Max: Hey, Mike. Thank you so much for having me.

Mike: Well, it's great to have you on. I mean, the first thing we'd like to do is let you tell us a bit about your career and how you've got into the role that you're currently holding.

Max: Yeah, good question. So I started off my career in corporate banking for Australia's largest bank, and then totally burnt out, realized I hated it, couldn't be an employee anymore, and jumped into the self-employed world. Started off by launching a digital marketing agency that then evolved into an online education business where we were selling online courses. And, you know, Score app was actually one of the tools that we used to use to help generate leads and sales for our business. So one thing led to another. I invested in the company, you know, was a bit like of a strategic advisor, you know, making introductions to the company. And then most recently came on to the team to help us scale. I live in Singapore, but to help us scale around this area, Asia Pacific.

Mike: Interesting. So, I mean, I think the first question I really need to ask is, you know, what does ScoreApp do? Can you explain what the product offers people?

Max: Yeah, great. So it helps small, big, any size type of business collect data and generate highly qualified leads. So it's a lead generation tool that you can use to generate leads for a personal trainer, for a big enterprise company, for an accounting firm, financial services, all that type of stuff.

Mike: I mean, I've had a play with it. I love the way it works. You know, basically, it does it by doing these rate my activity, whatever it is. So, you know, whether it's looking at energy efficiency for potential enterprise customers or fitness for a personal trainer, I mean, it really is a simple quiz with a ranking at the end. Is that a good summary?

Max: Yeah, so it's a, it uses quiz marketing. So uses the engagement of filling out like a quiz or like a personal assessment. So like a very, very common one is like, find out which Hollywood movie star, your personality is most like, right? Which ones most you that pulls people in because there's a lot of curiosity, there's a lot of intrigue, there's a little bit of vanity. So you know, if you're that person, who am I, right? So there's like a self identification process. And so we offer all of your clients that engaging process for them to become a highly qualified lead for you.

Mike: But as I understand, it doesn't have to be pure fun, you can actually help people assess where they are with, you know, for example, particular processes, Napier could assess, you know, how well potential clients are doing marketing, and then use that to not only drive leads, but also, you know, initiate that discussion. Is that right?

Max: Yeah, 100%. So there's a few different use cases. One use case is using it for lead generation and sales. We have one client testimonial who is a personal branding expert. And branding is, as you would know, a very intangible thing. You can't just walk around saying, oh, your brand is crap because it's a very subjective thing. But she's found a way to help people measure the effectiveness of their personal brand so that she could then go help them. And that's her lead generation and sales tool. And then you've got people that use it as a customer progress thing. So if you work with your customers or your clients, say over a 12-month period, you might give them an assessment at the beginning, middle, and end to track their progress as they move through their work with you.

Mike: That sounds great. I mean, I love that idea of quiz marketing. I've not heard that term before. And I think it's interesting. I think a lot of people, and particularly our clients in the enterprise space, it's harder and harder to do the classic content marketing, offering a white paper behind the registration wall. It sounds like this is a, you know, not necessarily a new approach, but certainly a different approach that could be quite intriguing and also quite fresh from the point of view of prospects.

Max: Yeah, it's, you know, we had one person that was doing something very similar in the States, and we've recently acquired them. So as a result of that, and even before that, there's not many people doing quiz marketing and offering it as a service so other people can use it as well. So it is refreshing, it is unique, and it is, you know, quite special.

Mike: So in terms of actually using the product, I mean, is it a complicated thing or do you literally, you know, just come up with a set of questions and score them? I mean, how does it work?

Max: Yeah, so it used to be quite complicated. You know, the average time it would take someone about a day and a half. That's a bit like setting up a new website, playing around with all the buttons, tools, moving things around, colors, fonts, and all that type of stuff. But now we have plugged in an AI wizard that you just answer a quiz and the AI wizard takes your answers, then comes back and writes six or seven hours of copywriting and writes a whole marketing campaign for you. Now, that's like having your first draft of your assignment, you know, university assignment written for you, then you should go back in there and polish it up.

Mike: And you said there's a broad range. So, you know, I mean, a lot of the people listening to this enterprise marketers in the B2B tech space, you know, presumably, you can offer functionality that large enterprises can't build easily on their website.

Max: Yeah, well, we can, you know, and we're very nimble, nimble, fast, and it's so cheap for what it does. You know, there's there's a free version. There's £29 a month, £59. I think it goes up to about £99 by the end of it. Right. So there's there's really an option for everyone. You could step your way into it as well.

Mike: And can you just walk me through, I mean, what someone might do? I mean, let's say they're trying to build a campaign. What would be the process and how straightforward is it using ScoreApp?

Max: It's just like setting up a Facebook profile, you know, Facebook profile, LinkedIn profile, a website for the first time. You create an account, you jump in, you could use AI wizard or you could set it up yourself. Either way, if you get stuck, our head of customer success in the UK, she does a session every Tuesday, where she sits on Zoom, helps people five to one, 10 to one, sometimes one to one, and helps you to get set up. So, you know, our internal mantra is that we're here to force our customers to be successful. So we're really leaving nothing off the table.

Mike: I love that. That's a great approach. I think there's a lot of customers that love to be forced to be successful.

Max: Yeah, exactly. Right. And especially, I think it's also quite refreshing in the enterprise, you know, software world, right? Because it's very rare, you might get to talk to someone on a zoom call, it's very rare, you get to see the face of someone, you know, on a chat on a webinar or whatever. But we're doing webinars for new existing clients every other week. And plus, we have the setup and score webinar every week.

Mike: One thing I'm interested in is the promotion of these tools. I mean, we see, you know, these kind of quizzes a lot on social. Is social the most effective way or do you see clients or customers of yours, you know, promoting through email or other channels?

Max: I get, you know, this question is more about, you know, what's your business model? You know, is your business model trying to appeal to the masses? Then yeah, you know, the masses aren't social. But if your business model is a little bit more laser focus, you know, one to one type of thing, then that's also very, very, you know, powerful as well. So I'll give you an example. Really high-end personal trainers use their own quiz funnel where, for example, they'll take you in. You say, hey, look, here are my fitness goals. They'll take you in into a body scanning thing, which is basically a quiz funnel, right? And then that body scan will give you a result, and then they'll sit there and work out a really tailored plan for you. And that's very, very one-to-one and high-touch, right? They don't give out the free scans to everyone. Where you promote it comes back to where's your audience? You know, where's your clients? Where's your target audience?

Mike: That makes a lot of sense. And I think, you know, let's switch gears and talk about how you're promoting a score out now. So I guess quiz marketing is one of the ways you're doing this, but can you talk about what your marketing strategy is for score out?

Max: Yeah, so we have a few, right? So we're very effective on YouTube. You know, we've got a lot of YouTube videos that the views on all of them, like the minutes that people are watching them and getting value out of them is compounding, you know, every month, growing by, you know, say 2 to 5% every single month. And then, you know, we've obviously got written articles, because this product is very educational. And we have this book The founder's written a book called Scorecard Marketing and it breaks down why this works, how it works, the psychology of it. So if you're into marketing psychology, it's a great read. And then it gets into the tangibles of what you need to do to make this thing go.

Mike: Awesome. That's really interesting. It sounds like you're actually striking quite a big balance. You're a product that fundamentally is a lead gen product. But it sounds like a lot of what you're doing is around building the brand. So you're getting that balance between brand and lead gen. Is that your goal? Is that what you're trying to achieve?

Max: Yeah, so let me share with you our brand guidelines, you know, like our values and that type of thing. So it's three words. The first word is elegant. The next word is powerful. And the third word is fun. So we want everything we do to be elegant, powerful and fun, you know, so elegant in the terms of Yeah, we want an ecosystem of our brand and our service and everything else. We want to be on YouTube. We want to be on podcasts. We want to be on LinkedIn. We want to be face to face. I'm going to be bringing the brand to the world's largest affiliate marketing conference in Bangkok next weekend. So we want to be at physical events as well. We want to be doing our own events. So, because our product has so many clients, more than 6,500 clients, I picture it as like a waterfall. And then you have the water dripping down into the correct places, right?

Mike: And that's interesting. I mean, you talk about clients and the way you're dripping them down as a waterfall. But I think one of the interesting things is, fundamentally, you're a B2B product. You're selling to other businesses. But your pricing is certainly not at the level that a lot of enterprise products are. So do you think, you know, your approach is somewhat B2C in the way you approach people? Are you seeing people, you know, bringing in ScoreApp into an enterprise almost without permission?

Max: Yeah, you could say that, you know, the vast majority, I'd say at least 90% of our clients make less than half a million dollars a year. Right. So that's, you know, just how the numbers have landed the threshold. You know, it is a very dynamic and malleable tool. It's a bit like, you know, MailChimp or like an email database tool. You know, who can use that? A mom and dad can use that. If you're selling cookies, you could use that, you know, HubSpot can use that, right, or Salesforce. Our tool is a little bit like that. It's up and down the ladder.

Mike: And I think it's interesting as well. I mean, not only is there a trend to kind of treat this B2B sales process a little bit more like B2C, but also I think in B2B customers are spending less time, you know, talking to salespeople, more time doing their own research. And that seems to be driving a big uptake in SaaS tools like ScoreApp. I mean, do you think, you know, your sales process really is taking advantage of the fact that people quite like self-serve today?

Max: I think that people want a choice, to be honest. We have a lot of clients that come in and they say, who could I pay to just set this up for me and I'll pay the money to be able to pick up the phone and talk to someone. So I think that people always have their personal preferences. Me personally, I'm a bit more of a who can I pay type of guy. As long as the price isn't unreasonable, I'm always happy to pay more but just take the problem away because I want to move on to the next thing. Right. So I think that you want to be able to cater to you want to have a service offering that's like, you know, low, medium and high range. Right.

Mike: And do you see those low, medium, high range, do you see them almost stretching across the customers? So any size customer could pick any one of those three options, or are you thinking more like small business, medium business, and enterprise?

Max: No, no, 100%. I think even a small business might just say, I'd rather just pay someone to take this off my hands type of thing. And a big business might say, we'd rather just do it ourselves, right? So it really just comes down to personal preference.

Mike: That makes a lot of sense. One interesting thing, I mean, obviously, you know, you're part of this technical change we're seeing in marketing. I mean, the rise of MarTech has been phenomenal. What do you see happening over the next five years in terms of marketing tools? And how is that going to change the role of people that are, you know, actually leading marketing organizations?

Max: I think that we all know where it's going. It's going to this almost dystopian, ultra-digital, ultra-personalized… What's the most effective? The most effective is when I log into Amazon.com, and you log into Amazon.com, we both see completely different websites because it's got 10 years of your buying history, 10 years of my buying history, and our buying histories are different. So it's ultra personalized and that's the most effective because they want to get as many sales out of me as possible and so they should. So they want to personalize my experience. So that's one element. Ultra personalization, AI doing a lot of the administrative heavy lifting, we all already know that's coming. It's actually been here for a while. What I do think that people don't really have an eye on is Donald Trump just won the election, right? And he won it by less than 5 million votes. A few days before voting, like the week before voting week, he was on a few key podcasts, including the Joe Rogan podcast, which got 50 million views within 72 hours, just unheard of. And not a lot of those were from America, but you could say and you could infer that the marketing of the presidential election was swayed. was swayed by one podcast, which is a free piece of media, not controlled by a news corporation, but controlled by just some entrepreneur. How crazy is that? And then if you go deeper into how that works and why it works so well, I think that a lot of people like, yeah, you can watch Donald Trump go at it with Kamala Harris at the debates. Or you could sit there and watch Joe Rogan connect with him as a human being and get to know who the guy actually really is out of the hot spotlights and out of the rehearsed question and answering. I think that's totally underrated.

Mike: I mean, that's fascinating. That again is, you know, to some extent looking at the, if you like the consumerization of B2B marketing, you know, it's becoming, I think if you extend the analogy to B2B, it's important that you get to know the personalities in your supplier and building those relationships, even their parasocial relationships. I think what you're saying is going to be more and more important. Is that right?

Max: Yes, I think that the numbers, those numbers I just shared about Donald Trump winning the election, prove that if the world's making a big purchasing decision, like the decision of who's going to be president, they want to know who that person is, what are they like, outside of all the rehearsed questions and answers. And wouldn't you? Wouldn't I? I do. So that's one example of a purchasing decision. I think that filters down to all purchasing decisions. If someone is buying an enterprise SaaS thing, they want to know, okay, what type of company is this? Is this a company that doesn't care about their carbon footprint? Is it making an effort? Is it a company that's leading that space? It's not. Is it a company that has equal employment rights? It's not. Who's the CEO? Is there a company that represents that they care a lot about this stuff, but the CEO actually doesn't? I think people want to know that stuff and there's not enough urgency on that stuff really matters. It's not nice to have, it matters now and people care about it now and Donald Trump demonstrated that.

Mike: And again, I think that applies to a lot of B2B companies that think it's purely the specs of their product that matter, where actually there's a lot more behind that. I mean, Max, this has been really interesting. One of the things we'd like to do is give listeners something, you know, actionable they can take away. So I'd like to ask you, you know, a couple of questions to get your advice. I mean, the first question I've got to ask is if you're thinking about doing a quiz marketing program, I mean, what would be your advice to create a really effective quiz marketing program?

Max: Well, I can give you something. So this book, Scorecard Marketing, if you go to scoreapp.com forward slash book, we'll get you out a physical copy whilst we can. If you live in the UK, we can. We definitely can. If not, you get a PDF. So that book is a real deeper dive. And some people like to get very technical, really like to understand what's underneath the surface. So that helps you to get what's underneath the surface as to why it works, how it works, and how you can execute it the best way possible. And then, yeah, you know, jump on one of our weekly, bi-weekly webinars so that you can start to see, you know, why we've got, you know, more than 6,500 clients that are winning with this thing. And we know that because they're high paying and long term clients.

Mike: Awesome. No, I think that's good advice. And certainly, you know, getting the book seems like a great start. If we look more generally, though, and let's move away just from quiz marketing, to marketing in general, I'm interested, what's the best bit of marketing advice you've ever been given?

Max: Oh, good question. So I think that a lot of businesses, you know, overcomplicate things, or they overestimate things. And what I mean by that is, you know, typically all the answers to how to market your business, what to do and that type of thing, they're already out there. right? And sometimes I think we can get a little bit caught up with trying to find the answer on our own or trying to reinvent the wheel a little bit. When if you just look at some of the big businesses and if you look at them really closely, they found out what works and they do the same thing over and over and over again. I'll give you an example. Apple releases the same products every year. They look a little bit different, there's different colors, but it's the same thing. And everyone knows it's coming, it's no surprise. So there's no need to be constantly painting a new Mona Lisa every year or whatever. It's just repeat what works. And often, you're not special, I'm not special. Our businesses have been invented before, maybe in a different shape. But just take the shape of what worked before and repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. Another example is Tesla. Whenever Elon launches a new product, he does the same thing. He launches a wait list, gets some expression of interest, and I'm sure he takes that expression of interest wait list, then goes to the bank, then gets it funded, then builds it. He doesn't build a million road suits, which none of us have one yet. You know what I mean? And that was launched five years ago. He gets the interest, He gets the waiting list, he gets the deposits, and then he works it out after. And he keeps doing that because it keeps working and it's the smartest way to do it. You know, so there's a, there's a smart way that someone's already figured out how to market your business. So I would just take that and run with it.

Mike: Awesome. I think that's great advice. And then the other question we like to ask for, you know, people who are listening, if they're just starting in their careers is what would be your advice to a young person right at the start of their marketing career?

Max: Oh yeah. I left my corporate life in my mid-twenties and chased the entrepreneurial thing. And I've got all these friends that are multi-millionaires, large numbers in front of me. And they all started five years earlier, six years earlier. And so I wish that I jumped into what I really wanted, which is to be an entrepreneur earlier. And yeah, you know, it's hard to do that if you don't have a mentor, like a lot of them had their dads are entrepreneurs. So that was easier. Mine, mine sort of wasn't right. But I wish I had the foresight to just find one, you know, find a mentor to just stick to, which is a challenger within itself. But at least that that makes the action is clear in that case, right?

Mike: Absolutely. I think that's that's great advice. I mean, go for it, I think is the summary there. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Max, I really appreciate your time. I know you're busy. I'm sure people will have questions here, either about marketing using Score app or more general marketing questions. What's the best way for people to contact you if they'd like more information? And maybe you can also throw in a reminder of how to get the book as well.

Max: Yeah, so we'd love to get your copy of the book. You know, you can do physical or digital. It's SCOREAPP.com forward slash book. And then if you want to get a hold of me, I'm addicted to LinkedIn. So Maxwell Knee on LinkedIn. You'll get me there.

Mike: Max, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. I really appreciate it. It's been fascinating.

Max: Perfect. My pleasure. Thanks, Mike.

Mike: Thanks so much for listening to Marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or on your favorite podcast application. If you'd like to know more, please visit our website at napierb2b.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.

by Natasha Websdale

Build Trust - The Secret to Closing Sales Effectively - ABB

In this episode of the Marketing B2B Technology podcast, Mike is joined by Sophie Neate, Global Head of Digital Marketing and Content at ABB Electrification. Sophie dives into her career journey and offers a glimpse into the strategies that set ABB apart. She discusses how ABB leverages its strengths across industries to deliver value to a broad audience and how it strategically communicates to different customer segments.

A key focus of the conversation is the buyer’s journey, an important framework Sophie uses to guide potential customers from awareness to decision-making. She discusses her approach to integrating the buyer’s journey into campaign planning, striking a balance between long-term brand building and the immediate priorities of lead generation and sales support.

• Marketing B2B Technology on Apple Podcasts
• Marketing B2B Technology on Spotify
• Marketing B2B Technology on napierb2b.com

About ABB

Building on over 140 years of excellence, our more than 105,000 employees worldwide are committed to delivering on our purpose with innovations that create success for ABB and all our stakeholders. Our solutions connect engineering know-how and software to optimize how things are manufactured, moved, powered and operated. In collaboration with our customers, partners and suppliers, we address the world’s energy challenges, transform industries and embed sustainability in everything we do.

About Sophie Neate

Sophie is a senior marketing leader with over 16 years of experience across the entire marketing cycle. Her background includes working for blue-chip companies on an international scale, where she has held global management roles, currently holding the position of Global Head of Digital Marketing and Content for ABB’s Electrification Service division. She has been responsible for establishing marketing teams and key functions, driving initiatives that have consistently delivered successful outcomes.

With extensive knowledge, capability, and a strategic mindset in marketing, Sophie delivers strong commercial results. Sophie holds a Bachelor of Business Studies (BBS) with a major in Marketing.

 Time Stamps

[00:43:2] – Sophie provides an overview of her career background.

[03:14.6] – Sophie shares insights into what makes ABB unique.

[05:58:7] – Sophie discusses the importance of the buyer’s journey in creating effective marketing campaigns.

[14:26:9] – Sophie explains the marketing tactics that work best in different scenarios.

[18:20:0] – Sophie talks about balancing the immediate demands of lead generation with the long-term goal of building a strong brand reputation.

[21:18:7] – Sophie discusses AI and how she sees her role evolving alongside advancements in AI.

[22:17:2] – Sophie shares the best piece of marketing advice she’s ever received.

[23:17:2] – Sophie offers advice for those just starting their marketing careers.

Quotes

"My passion lies in providing the best customer experience through innovative solutions and working for a company like ABB who pride themselves on this vision." - Sophie Neate, Global Head of Digital Marketing and Content at ABB.

"The buyer's journey for me is crucial in marketing because it maps out the path that a potential customer takes from becoming aware of the problem to making a purchasing decision." - Sophie Neate, Global Head of Digital Marketing and Content at ABB.

"Segmentation and targeting is key... we're able to build trust and credibility, which enables repeat purchasing and ongoing loyalty." - Sophie Neate, Global Head of Digital Marketing and Content at ABB.

Follow Sophie:

Sophie Neate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophie-neate-2ba37849/

ABB website: https://global.abb/group/en

ABB on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/abb/posts/?feedView=all

Follow Mike:

Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/

Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/

Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing B2B Tech and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We'd also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform.

Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast - The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547

Transcript: Interview with Sophie Neate at ABB

Speakers: Mike Maynard, Sophie Neate

Mike: Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today. Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. Today I'm joined by Sophie Neate, who's the Global Head of Digital Marketing and Content at ABB.  Welcome to the podcast, Sophie.

Sophie: Thank you, Mike. Nice to be here.

Mike: It's great to have you on. I mean, one of the first things we like to do is just get a bit of background about your career. So, can you tell us about, how you've got to the point where you're now working at ABB?

Sophie: Yeah, no problem. So, I am a senior marketing leader with over 16 years of experience across the entire marketing cycle.  My professional background includes roles with blue chip companies on an international scale where I have held global management positions.  My passion lies in providing the best customer experience through innovative solutions and working for a company like ABB who pride themselves on this vision. So, to answer your question, Mike, I chose to work for ABB for a multitude of reasons, but the main ones being that ABB embodies innovation. Sustainability in a customer focused mindset all while providing opportunities for professional growth.

Mike: And your role is Global Head of Digital Marketing and Content at ABB. You know, ABB, which is a pretty big company, that sounds like a huge role. So, can you tell me a little bit more about what you're doing in your current position?

Sophie: Yeah, no problem. So, as you mentioned, I'm the Global Head of Digital Marketing and Content for ABB Electrification Service. So, one of our divisions which sit in the business area of electrification. So, what my role encompasses is focusing on digital activity, whether that be, I'd say SEO, SEM activities, obviously managing and covering the management of our websites, but then also from a content perspective, making sure that we develop compelling content that's going to resonate for our customers. Now with ABB being in over 100 countries and having over 105 talented employees, it definitely is a big global role, but what we tend to focus on is we produce global content, but then we localize it to reflect on the existing market trends for the relevant regions and countries that we cover.

Mike: And that's interesting. So, you're focused on the, the service part of the electrification business. What are the sort of customers that you're addressing, for that part of ABB?

Sophie: Yeah, so our customers can range from, you know, the maintenance or production manager, plant and facility manager. The procurement manager through to your C suite, so like your CEOs, CFOs, for example, but again, it depends on what marketing activity we are doing and what our overall objective is, I would say.

Mike: Yeah. So presumably that's quite a wide range of, people in the audience. So you're producing quite a lot of different types of content, you know, some for more technical, some for, you know, board level people. Is that right?

Sophie: Correct, correct.

Mike: I mean, obviously we work with ABB, I understand it, but probably some of the listeners are maybe less familiar. So, in terms of the electrification business that you're supporting, what is it that ABB does that's really uniquely brilliant?

Sophie: Yeah, this, this is an easy question to answer here. So, you know, I mentioned before we, um, excel in a vast number of disciplines, but the ones that come to my mind are First and foremost, innovation and automation and electrification. So what this is, is around, you know, we're a global leader in industrial automation and electrification offering solutions, enhanced productivity, efficiency and sustainability for industries like manufacturing, Energy and transportation, you know, expertise in robotics, control systems and digital technology, such as AI IOT helps businesses automate processes and optimize operations. Secondly, sustainability and energy efficiency. So we're known for our commitment to sustainability, providing energy efficient solutions and green technologies, especially in areas like, renewable energy, EVs or electric vehicle infrastructure and smart grids. So our technologies help reduce energy consumptions and emissions, supporting industries and cities and their transitions to become more sustainable operations. a thing I mentioned before, you know, we have a global reach with local expertise. So we operate in over a hundred countries, combining our global scale with deep local expertise. So we have a strong focus on research and development with a significant investment in R& D.  We continue to push the boundaries of technology, as I mentioned before. And finally, or furthermore, we have a comprehensive digital solution offering, which is called ABB Ability, which integrates cloud based technologies and data analytics to help companies monitor and improve their performance. So, these solutions support predictive maintenance, such as, you know, the division I'm in, electrification service, making us a key player in Industry.

Mike: That's, I mean, that's a lot of areas that we're dealing with, so, yeah, it's complicated. I mean, I'm interested, you know, kind of at a high level, what's your strategy to communicate, all these different areas where ABB have something that's really valuable to what is, as we said earlier, quite a broad audience?

Sophie: Yeah, another great question, Mike. So without giving too much away, um, and at a high level, our strategy really focuses on capitalizing on our strengths in technology, like I just mentioned, innovation and sustainability, whilst aligning with market trends and customer needs, all while ensuring we continue to deliver strong commercial results for the business. So that's kind of it in a nutshell.

Mike: Well, I'm going to dig a bit deeper. So, one of the things I do know is that you're a big fan of the buyer's journey as a way to build marketing strategies. So, can you just explain why you think, building and understanding the buyer's journey is so important to generate great marketing campaigns?

Sophie: Yeah, so the buyer's journey for me is crucial in marketing because it maps out the path that a potential customer takes from becoming aware of the problem to making a purchasing decision. So, understanding this journey allows us marketers to Deliver the right message at the right time. And this is where I'd say segmentation and targeting is key here. You know, we're able to build trust and credibility. So that enables repeat purchasing and ongoing loyalty, which is, of course, important, you know, enhancing the customer experience. So creating that customer centricity or delivering that customer centricity, optimizing resources and efforts so you can evolve to market trends over time, because we all know with market trends, they do evolve. And then, of course, increasing conversion rates of your marketing activities so you can deliver ROI. So, if you can't report an ROI, what you're doing is not necessarily the best way to utilize your resources. Um, and then, of course, which is one which I'm constantly, um, I'd say, communicating and emphasizing is the alignment between sales and marketing. So, which is an initiative, as I mentioned, that is part of. We're placing a really big importance on here at ABB. So ultimately for me, the buyer's journey is important because it allows marketers to be more strategic, targeted, and empathetic in the approach, leading to better business outcomes and more satisfied customers, which is our end goal for any business, to be honest.

Mike: I think you've covered a lot there. I mean, there's a lot of, individual points. Do you have like a, an overall strategy or process to actually make use of that buyer's journey when planning campaigns?

Sophie: That's a big question. So, when planning our campaigns, integrating the buyer's journey helps ensure that each stage of the customer decision making process is addressed effectively. So how we do this at ABB, so first we separate our campaigns into awareness and lead generation. So, our communications teams focus on campaigns in the awareness stage, so all around brand and thought leadership. Whereas Lead generation is covered by the marketing team, which focuses around that commercialization. So, you know, for example, an activity, if you were doing awareness, you would, you know, for example, utilize Google display as part of your strategy. Whereas when it comes down to lead generation, we tend to focus more on Google search because we understand that, you know, customers love to do their research before they reach out to us. And in fact, it's proven that, you know, 65. 70 percent of customers, by the time they come to our websites or interact with us, they've already made up their decision by that amount. So, it's really important we, you know, deliver that content that's going to resonate with them and be at the forefront. So secondly, we identify the value proposition and commercial landscape beach campaigns to ensure that we are segmenting our activities effectively. Thus, identifying our target audience and understanding the maturity of our buyers’ market. Because as I mentioned at the start, dependent on our objective of our activity, we need to understand what the target audience is going to be and obviously the maturity of that market. So, a key thing that we also do is before we launch externally, we also launch internally. So, we must get our customer facing teams, such as sales operations, et cetera, to be on board to ensure that we are all aligned and understand.  Because we understand that when we do campaigns, it's a multi touch approach, so they may not, you know, engage with our digital platforms. They may ring up our customer contact center. So, we need to make sure that our customer contact center teams are briefed as well. And so I mentioned with our sales and operation teams. The other thing we do is we implement a multi-channel approach. We also go from, as I mentioned, producing global content, but making sure it's got a local approach. So, we go global, as we like to say. So, we do this to ensure our assets and key messaging, resonates with our audience, which, of course, nurtures leads from marketing, qualified leads to sales, qualified leads, utilizing marketing technologies like we do at ABB. We use Power BI to continuously monitor our performance and adapt where necessary, whether it be on a monthly cadence or quarterly cadence. So, one thing I do also want to state here is that, you know, we at ABB are starting to move away from gating content so we can provide our customers as much information as possible to help them in their decision making phase. So, as I mentioned before, research has shown that by the time customers reach out to us, they've 70 percent made the decision. So, it is our job I believe to give them all the information they need up front, and we do this by putting our value rich content at the forefront instead of a hard sell approach, for example. So, we need to build trust before we close any deals, so to speak. So I believe there is still a place for gated content. However, it just depends on which stage of the marketing fun you're at. So, for example, awareness, the consideration phase, we tend to ungate our content, whereas it gets down to the conversion phase, we tend to gate content, but only, um, under special circumstances, for example. So again, just something to consider when you were, I'd say, Producing content and campaigns dependent on the buyer's journey. The final thing, I do feel that by aligning campaigns with buyer's journey, you ensure that each interaction feels relevant and timely, which not only improves the customer experience, but also increases the likelihood of conversion, which is our objective when we're doing campaigns.

Mike: I thought it was a great answer. You covered so many things there. So, I think I'm going to try and dig in and unpack some of those. at the start you were talking a little bit about some of the platforms you use. and I think, you know, what a lot of marketers, you know, maybe are concerned about now is their Martech stack. It's a very expensive thing to build. do you use that buyer's journey to actually define what tools you have in the Martech stack?

Sophie: Yeah, absolutely. So, the buyers journey is not only central to campaign planning, as I mentioned, but also plays a critical role in shaping our Martech stack. So, the set of marketing technologies that we use to effectively engage, nurture and convert prospects at each stage of the journey. So aligning our Martech stack with the buyers journey, We can optimize each touch point and ensure that our marketing activities are data driven and customer centric. So, for example, at the awareness stage, we use SEO tools, to help drive quality content to our customers at the consideration stage. For example, we use marketing automation platforms and webinar tools to help educate and drive value to our customers. And then finally, at the conversion stage, we use tools that help sales teams convert qualified leads.  And then for the post sales stage, for example, we use anything from survey tools, email marketing and retention tools to help retain upsell and nurture our customers

Mike: I love the way you think so clearly about the Martek stack and the tools you need. I mean, what do you think people do wrong when they build Martek stacks that are either ineffective, difficult to use or expensive? What are the mistakes they make?

Sophie: Yeah, I love, I love getting asked this question because I do get asked this question quite a bit. So, this is an easy answer for me. So, you know, I feel that doing and implementing. Everything and anything just because it's a trend as opposed to focusing on the business models and needs of the business is probably the biggest mistake that I see some companies make. So, my advice here is to carefully sleep the technology that's going to compliment your strategy and add value for your customers. So, we need to make sure that customers are always king. put them at the forefront of every decision we make and that includes when we go to select Technology. So, we need to use it wisely and respectfully, because as we know, technology these days is super powerful and if used in the wrong nature, it can be catastrophic. Right? So, in everything we do, we must, like I mentioned, put our customers at the forefront and adopt the mantra of customer is king. And we need to do that while we, I'll say, select the marketing technology that's going to deliver the best outcome for the business, but more importantly, our customers.

Mike: I think that's a great answer. And I love the idea of not following fashion in Martek, but actually looking at what it brings you. So, so that's. In a way kind of obvious, but actually I think something a lot of people forget.

Sophie: I agree.

Mike: You've talked a little bit earlier about the link between marketing tactics and different stages in the customer journey, do you want to delve a little bit deeper into that and talk about which marketing tactics work best for you in different situations?

Sophie: Yeah. So based on my experience, and I have over 16 years of that, account based marketing or ABM. So, for me, why it works is. For high value B2B clients, such as the customers we have at ABB, ABM or account based marketing focuses on personalized campaigns tailored to specific accounts. So, you know, if we are focusing on data center clients or F& B clients, food and beverage clients, for example, we can tailor Content that's going to resonate for them as opposed to doing a stock standard, uh, content base. It's going to resonate across the board. We want to be super specific because that's what's going to get the highest engagement. So, as I mentioned, by crafting highly relevant content and messaging for key decision makers, such as I mentioned before, the C suite, you know, our maintenance manager, facility manager, for example, it drives stronger engagement and higher conversion rates. Secondly, data driven marketing analytics. So, with me, every decision I make is data driven, so to speak. So why it works for me is, um, data driven marketing allows you to track the performance of campaigns and make informed decisions. So, by analyzing customer behavior and campaign metrics, You can continuously refine your approach for better results, which is going to be better for the business as well, right? Thirdly, uh, digital advertising and retargeting. So this is where my main responsibilities lie within the role So why it works, digital ads, such as Google, LinkedIn display ads, allow you to reach targeted audience efficiently, retargeting ads, keep your brand top of mind. For prospects who have already interacted with your website and content. So, the goal is to keep them coming back and wanting more. You want to whet their appetite, right? And how you do that is by utilizing digital, advertising, like I mentioned, to keep driving them back to our web pages or to a particular platform and making sure that each time they visit our website, we position to them a different sort of experience, that's more targeted as they go down the funnel. Fourthly, SEO and inbound marketing. So, SEO, search engine optimization. So why it works is that it ensures that our website ranks for key terms relevant to our audience. So, a solid inbound marketing strategy attracts high quality organic traffic and nurtures leads with valuable content. So, I just want to give an example here, Mike. So, we recently did a customer research survey and found that our customers use our website as one of the top channels to obtain information. So this is along with direct interaction with our sales reps, of course. But the thing that really stood out for me, which, you know, websites, not no longer business cards, for example, they are turning into lead generation machines and this research, outcome proves that, customers are going to our website and doing the research before they interact with us. So, it's a real top channel that we're going to utilize moving forward to, I'll say, drive further content and messaging to our customers. So, this is why we invest quite a lot in our website SEO strategy. So, with our recent ongoing campaign, as I mentioned, what we're doing is driving traffic to our website using both SEO and SEM initiatives. We also found after one year of implementing our SEO strategy, and we all know that SEO strategies, it's a marathon, not a sprint, right? But after one year, we saw a 58 percent in growth year on year. So, as I mentioned, it's a marathon, not a sprint, but it's really good to see that, you know, we can see these positive results and we have also some exciting activities happening next year, which relate to our website. So, uh, stay tuned, right?

Mike: That sounds really exciting. I mean, Again, we've covered quite a lot there. But one of the themes I think was run through this is that you seem to have a very clear differentiation between, building the awareness, building the brand and educating customers to actually generating leads. So can you just dig a little bit deeper about how you balance that long term goal of building brand, and really helping people at the start of their journey, versus driving leads and presumably making your sales team a little happier.

Sophie: Yeah, absolutely. So, balancing the immediate demands of lead generation with longer term goal of building a strong brand reputation requires a strategic approach that integrates both short term and long term marketing objectives. So this is how, this is the approach I take to, you know, have that balance. So, it's all around integrated strategy, right? So, I ensure that both lead generation and brand building activities are aligned. Within an overarching marketing strategy. So, while lead generation campaigns are typically more direct and focused on driving conversions, as I mentioned earlier, they are designed to reflect the brand values, messaging and promise. Like I mentioned around the commercialization, of any strategy that you should set. So, this creates consistency between immediate results. And as I mentioned before, long term brand equity, which is really important.  Secondly, developing content that serves both goals. So, for example, a white paper or webinar can establish industry expertise, so brand building, while collecting contact information or driving prospects further down the funnel, which relates to lead generation. So, it's really important that, you know, when you develop content, because content is king, we need to make sure that serving both goals around lead gen is also brand building. reputation as well. So, I keep hopping on, but it's all around data driven optimization as well. So, as I mentioned before, I rely on data analytics to measure and optimize both lead generation and brain building efforts. So, this involves, for example, setting KPIs for each and regularly reviewing performance, whether, as I mentioned before, that be on a monthly basis or quarterly basis. So, by analyzing customer behavior, I can identify opportunities where short term campaigns can support long term brain perception and vice versa, of course. Finally, what I feel is all around getting the equal balance is a customer centric approach. As I keep mentioning, customer is king, right? So a strong focus on understanding the customer journey allows for tailoring marketing efforts that support immediate engagement without losing sight of the brand's long term reputation, for example. So, this means ensuring that even lead focused initiatives deliver value to the customer. Reinforcing the brand promise of quality and expertise is also equally important.  So those are the, the four, uh, the four things that I really focus on to get that, uh, balance.

Mike: I think that's great. And I love the way that you link very closely the benefits of brand building and also the lead gen and the fact they work together. They're not two independent things.  to move on and talk a little bit, maybe more about looking at the industry in general. and one of the things you've talked a lot about is being driven by data, which really is a relatively new thing, you know, maybe coming over the last decade. so, you know, that's been one change. Obviously, AI is a more recent change. how do you see the role of senior marketers, CMOs, VPs of marketing, changing, perhaps over the next five to 10 years? with technology. I mean, what's going to happen and what's going to change?

Sophie: Yeah, so, I mean, I personally see my role evolving to be a more central driver of business growth and innovation. So, with the rise of AI, as you mentioned, you know, data analytics and other emerging technologies that we touched on, the role will increasingly demand a combination of both strategic leadership, acumen and customer and a customer centric approach. So, with that, obviously, technology is going to support that. But I definitely believe that, you know, instead of it being a more traditional.  It will go more into, you know, being a role that's going to be, a center driver of business growth and innovation. So, there's going to be a lot of evolution happening. which is a good thing. So, we need to evolve with the industry and the trends as well.

Mike: Sounds like that's quite a challenge for senior marketers to, take a more business focused role.  Um, this has been fascinating. I mean, we've covered, I think, an awful lot of ground in this conversation. there are a couple of questions we'd like to ask people, before we finish off.

So, if I just fire them out at you. The first question is really simple. What's the best piece of marketing advice you've ever been given?

Sophie: I've had a lot of mentors and a lot of advice given to me over the years that I've been in the marketing field. But one of the best pieces that I can recall, is focus on solving customer problems, not just selling a product. So, it emphasizes the need I feel to truly understand your audience, their pain points and how your solution can make their lives easier because, you know, it's all about making everyone's lives easier. And if you can find a solution to do that, marketing activities will be easy, so to speak. So, when marketing is centered on the value it brings, rather than just the features of the product or service, it fosters a deeper connection with our customers. So, you know, it builds trust and ultimately, will drive loyalty, retention, and ongoing sales and opportunities.

Mike: Perfect. I mean, that's great advice that everyone can take advantage of. the other question we like to ask is if you're talking to a young person who's starting out in their career, considering moving into marketing, perhaps a graduate, what would be your advice to them to help build a great career in marketing?

Sophie: Yes, so marketing to me as much as much about psychology is it is about creating and strategizing, so to speak, right? So focus on, you know, understanding what drives people's decisions and emotions, learn about human behavior. Not just about the latest marketing train. So you understand what resonates or what makes a person tick on. And then once you've got that value proposition, as I mentioned in my previous answer,  the marketing activities that you employ or implement will will come easy or or fly. So don't just focus on the latest marketing trains. As I mentioned before, don't just focus on the latest marketing technology and apply it. Make sure that you understand and have that deeper connection with your customers and build that trust and loyalty.

Mike: And I think that's a fantastic way to end. We've come back to really understand the customer journey as being the key.

Sophie: Absolutely.

Mike: Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge and insight. if people would like to get hold of you, what would be the best way for them to contact you to get more information?

Sophie: Yeah. So if you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, if you just Google Sophie Neat, ABB and, uh, I will appear and yeah, please connect. I'm happy to have an offline conversation with, uh, any up and coming marketeer or, uh, marketeer that has been in the business for a while.

Mike: Amazing. That's very generous. Thank you so much for your time, Sophie. I really appreciate you being a guest on the podcast.

Sophie: Great. Thank you, Mike. Lovely to be here. Thank you for having me.

by Natasha Websdale

Go-To-Market Strategy and Social Media for B2B: Insights from Andy Lambert - Adobe

Andy Lambert, Senior Product Marketing Manager, at Adobe and founder of ContentCal, a social media marketing tool acquired by Adobe in 2021, shares his insights into the intricacies of navigating acquisitions and shares his thoughts on effective go-to-market strategies. He offers some great ideas on how to leverage social media in the B2B space, along with tactical advice on successful campaigns and practical tips to support your own marketing efforts.

• Marketing B2B Technology on Apple Podcasts
• Marketing B2B Technology on Spotify
• Marketing B2B Technology on napierb2b.com

About Adobe

Adobe is a global leader in digital media and digital marketing solutions with a range of creative apps and services for photography, design, video and more.

About Andy Lambert

Andy is a marketing leader who has spent the last 12 years setting up, scaling and selling multiple software businesses.

In 2016, Andy joined two others as part of the founding team of ContentCal, a social media marketing tool. Over five years, the team raised over $10 million, expanded to serve thousands of customers across more than 100 countries, won numerous awards, and, in late 2021, was acquired by Adobe Inc.

Time Stamps

[00:42.2] – Andy discusses his career from founding ContentCal to joining Adobe.

[03:52.2] – Andy talks about the importance of defining a target audience.

[10:59:1] – Andy explains his take on go-to-market strategies.

[15:39.5] – How can B2B businesses leverage social media?

[20:22.3] – Andy talks about some examples of successful marketing campaigns.

[24:48.7] – Andy discusses how the role of the CMO may change in coming years.

[27:31.3] – Andy shares the best piece of marketing advice he’s heard.

[28:16.9] – Andy offers advice for those just starting their marketing careers.

Quotes

"It's easy to get over enamoured with how quickly you can get stuff done with AI.  AI tools are an amazing opportunity to increase your utility and increase your leverage, but it's very important that we balance that… balance it with a deep understanding at an emotional level of what truly drives an audience.”- Andy Lambert, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Adobe.

“I just need to post more on LinkedIn, right? No. 80 percent of the content that happens about our brand on social should not be from us, it should be from other people. So, it's our job to try and find a way to unlock that.” - Andy Lambert, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Adobe.

Follow Andy:

Andy Lambert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyrlambert/

Adobe website: https://www.adobe.com/

Adobe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/adobe/

Follow Mike:

Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/

Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/

Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing B2B Tech and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We'd also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform.

Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast - The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547

Transcript: Interview with Andy Lambert at Adobe

Speakers: Mike Maynard, Andy Lambert

Mike: Andy, thanks for listening to marketing B to B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today, welcome to marketing B to B technology, the podcast from Napier today, I'm joined by Andy Lambert, who's a Senior Manager product at Adobe. Welcome to the podcast, Andy,

Andy: Hey Mike, good to be here.

Mike: So Andy, I know that you've had an interesting career and actually ended up at Adobe through an acquisition. So can you just walk us through you know what you've done and what took you ultimately to join Adobe, yeah,

Andy: I’ll keep it short. So my career started in sales, which I fell into by chance also fell into by chance that it was a B to B tech company. And in doing that, found that had a affinity for it, got really into B to B startups and SaaS and all that good stuff. And I thought, like any arrogant salesperson, would you like? How hard could it be to do it for myself? So here I am winning business for another business, fancy doing it for myself. So didn't have either the guts or the financial backing to do it back then. So I found someone who had an idea. Fortunately, we were introduced, and this idea was for the company that would become content Cal, which, as the name suggests, it is a content calendar product, so essentially allows people to organize their content and publish it. So we met in 2016 won the first customer towards the end of that year, and built it over the course of the following five or so years where we got it to maybe about 100 countries, three and a half 1000 customers, something like that. And in December 21 we sold to Adobe, which frankly, made us all fall off our chairs, if we're honest, from like a little company, from reading and London selling to one of the biggest companies on the planet, it's pretty cool. And the vision for for Adobe was that they were really pushing, or they are really pushing, on this product called Adobe Express, which to empower creativity for all. So Adobe obviously known for the Pro Tools in design, Premier Pro Photoshop, yada yada. So Adobe Express is a tool that allows anyone to be creative, even numbers like myself. And the idea here was to connect the design tools that exist in Adobe Express, typically, it's used for social media content creation, and connect that with a distribution platform, naturally would take a bit longer to for them to have built it themselves. So decided to to buy in the expertise, which is why I've now ended up as a senior manager of product Adobe.

Mike: That's fascinating. I mean, it's great to hear about that acquisition. I'm just interested. Was that something you were looking for to sell the business, or was it something where Adobe came to you and asked about purchasing?

Andy: Yes. So given our backing, we had been funded since day one. So raise some angel rounds and raise series A so probably raised about ten million all told. And when you've gone on that journey, you've pretty much you've only got one outcome, which is you're going to have to exit it at some point. So yeah, hands are kind of tied on that one. And of course, those investors all want their money back and then some so, so on that basis, you're really going for a large exit. Now, did we think we would sell as soon as we did? Because we just raised Series A, and we were on the on the path to hit those gross numbers, go to Series B and just just continue. So that happened earlier than we expected, and we were approached, and after a careful review of it, it seemed like the right strategic move for the business stakeholders, etc. So that's what happened.

Mike: That sounds exciting. I mean, presumably, you know, with your work, you've been focused on really selling to people who do marketing with their professional marketers, or people who've got it as a side job, particularly around getting content for social I mean, how do you look at that audience? You know, what do you think these people need? Is it one audience, or is it quite diverse?

Andy: I think initially, we made the very typical mistake of thinking our product was applicable for everyone, and certainly in the early days of building a business, I'm sure many people who've built marketing strategies would think the same or feel the same anyway, where you think, Okay, we've got broad applicability. Let's just go out to everyone. Make the messages fairly generic, so we could appeal to the solopreneur or the, you know, the enterprise, naturally, if you're trying to appeal to everyone, typically appeal to no one. So that was about six months of waste of trying to figure out who we were trying to sell to. So the way we thought about it was through a process that I still live by today. It's called the customer discovery process. Process from my favorite book on startups, called the startup owners manual. It's a very weighty tome, and this customer discovery process kind of flips the early sales process on its head, where you just spend more time sitting with lots of different customer segments and just trying to understand from it's more like a research project rather than like a sales mission, if you will. And that helped us understand that actually, you know, the audience that got us first was those, those smaller agencies and those freelancers that have a bunch of different clients, because they they felt the most pain in terms of content planning, collaborating with clients backwards and forwards on approvals. And that's where we had that initial traction. So we called that our minimum viable audience. This wasn't what we're going to build the whole, you know, multi million dollar vision on, but it was the thing that gave us that sustainable growth to start with. And because you've targeted such a focused audience, it means word of mouth spreads much quicker. So that gave us that nice foundation of growth, and as time went on, we started to add different segments, like going more into like B to B marketers. Does that make any sense?

Mike: No, that sounds really sensible. You know, I love that concept of minimum viable audience. I think that that's a great thing for companies that are growing or just starting out to think about you don't have to hit everybody. Hit the people who are going to be you know the best audience. You talked about this customer discovery process. Could you just explain a little bit more about exactly what you did there to work out what was your ideal audience or your minimum viable audience?

Andy: Yeah, of course. So the first step was, and it's fairly simple, to be honest, it spent a lot of LinkedIn outreach whereby I would approach a certain subset of individuals like we've just spoken about, and said, I'd love to take you out for coffee, because you're very experienced in your space. We're trying to work on something that I think can make an impact to you, but I would love your take on it. And at that point, I've not mentioned a product and not mentioned I'd like to sell to like to sell to you. It's just to find some time, particularly in person as well. Probably makes it sound a bit old school, but like they're nothing beats being in person for those early conversations. So then, when I sat with someone, buy my coffee, have a couple of slides of like. Our thesis of like, this is what we think is the challenge in the space, the challenge that you're facing, does that resonate with you? So it's kind of like validating our marketing proposition at the same time, and then, you know, talk me through what your challenges are, what you wish you could be able to do or achieve, to help you scale or hit your ambitions the other so those very open questions yielded such incredibly rich qualitative data that we could then go, okay, these people started to really resonate when we said these things. And they all connected about like, the pain of sending a spreadsheet or doing WhatsApp approvals, you know, backwards and forwards on content, people started to nod along. It was then, when we're like, all of those insights, then just inform all of our go to market strategy, all of our messaging, because essentially all we're doing is repeating back what people have told us. So it's just, it's a research mission, and yeah, it's always my, my thing is that marketers don't spend anywhere near enough time as they should, directly with customers, and that's where all the gold is.

Mike: I love that process. I think that's something we all could do, not necessarily as a startup, but, you know, wherever we are in our businesses. So I'm interested. You know, you started off you, you know, initially looking at these freelancers, small agencies, as you mentioned, you then grew it. I mean, what was the change that happened when he moved to Adobe? I mean, was that like a massive complete reset, or do you feel you're still doing somewhat the same things,

Andy: Complete reset, if, if we're honest, so which comes with positives and negatives. Essentially, the product, content, Cal is is no more. So as part of the acquisition, it's shut down the business. We're three years post acquisition, so the business shut down, and we focused all of our efforts. A lot of the team, unfortunately had to go. So because snapcha is a lot of duplication of resource, etc, and we've built the functionality from scratch inside of Adobe Express. So it is completely like a complete change that, being said, Adobe, being an amazing acquire, has been very respectful, because there is a lot of upheaval, right? So, you know, whilst it feels like a wonderful achievement to sell a business, I'm still obviously very proud. It's still, there's still some very painful moments and times post sale, as you can imagine, right? You've built a business together, you feel like a family in a startup or so, you know what it's like working in a small business, right? Mike, so you know that that's kind of painful, and it unfortunately, it's just the process it is. It is what it is. So who we're targeting right now is different. So we're targeting much more, smaller businesses that don't necessarily operate. Like agencies, not quite big businesses yet. And essentially we're kind of starting again, if you will, building smaller functionalities that allow like the solopreneurs to do what they need to or individuals. And then we're going to go back on that journey to scale it again, because essentially we've built the product from scratch, and it takes time to develop the product. And what you can't do as a business to say, Oh, well, we haven't got the features yet, or wait till we get the features and then we can grow it. It's like, given our feature set we have now, who can we appeal best to right now? Where's that overlapping? Ben, and that's where kind of the solo printer audience come into it.

Mike: Absolutely. I would just want to move on now to something perhaps less specific about content count and a bit more general. I mean, I'm interested because, you know, if you look at your LinkedIn profile, you talk a lot about go to market. And I have to say I'm a little bit of a cynic. I'm a bit of an old guy. I kind of feel that go to market is sort of marketing, as we used to call it, many years ago. I mean, what's your view? How do you define go to market?

Andy: When you sent this question over, Mike, I chuckled at this one, because I was like, fundamentally, you're right, and us in marketing, where certainly me and others are guilty of giving different names to the same thing. And I think that's often baked in the fact that many people don't understand what marketing actually means. Marketing is kind of a nebulous concept. Many people conflate marketing with promotion. People think, oh, marketing is like doing the tactical bit, and that's why I've typically called it go to market. So when I think about go to market, which you're right, that's, let's just clarify that I'm aligned with you, Mike, it is just marketing, but just for anyone listening when I when I say go to market and contextually, I'm interested to know if, if if you would still call this marketing when I explained it, think about it in three ways. So firstly, this all the market research or the diagnosis, right? All of the analysis, customer discovery, the stuff we've spoken about right at the top, right? So understanding who we're going after. Then the second stage, which is a strategy, and that's understanding, or at least thinking about the story we're going to tell, value proposition, commit, competitive differentiation, reasons to believe all of that go to market strategy, as I would call it. And then the third part is the tactical piece. It's like, how then do we instill that go to market strategy? Do we which does include promotion, clearly, like Google ads, LinkedIn, etc, includes like offline stuff, events or podcasts like this. But also, and this is an important point, and we might talk about this later in the evolving role of a CMO, is that it also factors in the sales decks, right the scripts the sales people use, the battle cards they'll use, also how Customer Success deal with customers, how they work towards upsells and even offboarding process. When people churn, you know, marketing, go to market touched on all of that. If there is any single interaction with a customer, it's in the go to market strategy, or maybe Mike you call it just marketing. How's that sound to you? Does that that resonate?

Mike: I totally agree. And I have to be honest. I mean, I do see a difference in the way people today approach this problem. So back in the day, you know, when I started out marketing, it was about the five Ps, which pretty much cover what you said in go to marketing, you know, price, position, place, people, promotion, isn't it. But the way it was done was you looked at each of those separately. And I think what perhaps go to market has done is it's made it more into a process. People have thought about it, more about a sequence of activities that then impinge on all these things. It impinges on the channels you choose. It impinges on your pricing strategy, your promotion, etc. But I do, I do understand that people today talking about go to market. They're a lot more sophisticated than people talking, you know, maybe 30 years ago about marketing generally. So I do see it as a positive. And I think that's interesting. I mean, do you see it as being, you know, much more of this process you run through, rather than this kind of list of five things you've got to tick off.

Andy: Yeah, it is. It's a continually iterative process. And I think this is, and I can only speak from my limited slice of the world that I've seen in my 38 years, right? So I've only got limited context, but like my strong hypothesis off the back of this is that all of this needs to to tree up to one individual that owns it, Chief Revenue Officer, CMO, whatever role you you want to put in there. Because often we see that kind of bifurcation, where you've got CMO or and a Chief Sales Officer or sales director, where they're kind of little bit at odds, and there's no one true owner of like that narrative messaging and that whole process, because it is an iterative process. You're like, like I said in customer discovery, it's not like we found our Minimal Viable audience. We're gonna have to do the whole darn process again to go for the next segment. So you're absolutely right. This is not a box check exercise. It's not like a like how business plans used to be. You create this. 30 page business plan, which then lives, yeah, in your top draw somewhere, and you never look at it again, right? So it's it needs to have someone looking at it all the time, and an overall owner of it. So yes, it's a short version. And my answer to your question, Mike,

Mike: Brilliant, it's good. We're agreeing. And let's move on to talking a little bit about tactics. And if people you know look at your LinkedIn or Google, they'll find you've got a sub stack all about B to B social media. So I'm really interested to know how you see B to B, or how you see social media fitting into B to B, and what you see the pros and cons of trying to do B to B promotion through social

Andy: I'm with you. So yeah, a couple of caveats on that one to call out the word of like, promotion that you just used like, it's, there's a be a promotional element to it, but like, predominantly, it's, it's not and, and secondly, it's, it's important to know, whilst I'm a huge advocate from my context and experience of social for B to B, it's, it's the only context I know. It doesn't necessarily mean it's applicable to everyone, so just want to caveat that from the outset. But the thing is, I personally and strongly believe it's the way that modern brands certainly B to B's will grow. Because, like we said, in that kind of customer discovery process, it's that when you know who your audiences are, and you know the language that they speak, that means that word of mouth spreads. Word of mouth spreads through online communities. And when I say social media, I don't just mean, oh, we're posting something to our LinkedIn company pages. It's, I mean, I know, you know that, Mike, but just to be just for the purpose of clarity, it's everything that touches social which is the sentiment that's happening on Reddit threads, for example, in Facebook groups, it's all of the communities that are that have your B to B marketers, in which, in our case, or whatever industry that you're in, there will be microcosms of communities online everywhere, and it's our job to have a voice in those or if at least we can't have A voice work with others that can have a voice for us, which then goes into the whole influence of partnerships and partnerships with communities, which was a huge Libra that we pulled on at content Cal, I spent as much time with customers as I did with communities that had access to the types of audiences that we want, and the value exchange there requires a delicacy of touch that's often hard to explain, because it's not just about, oh yeah, here's a couple of grand. Can you post something for us? Most those communities, if they're worth their salt, will say, No. Who are you? You're joking like, if you spend the time to build a relationship with them like you would a customer and go, Okay, so your community is amazing. You've built an incredible thing here. But is there anything that that I can do to help and typically, with those communities like that's interesting. So that, for example, for some communities, I would co create content like, my strong suit is like social media analytics. So I'd create them content to help their audience with how to analyze and define success on social media. I'd also give their community like 90 day free trials on the on the product, so it actually adds value to those communities. And we didn't pay them anything. It's just a value exchange so that they could get something that was good for their community, which in turn makes their community feel better too. So I spent a lot of time doing that. We also had some paid for influencer partnerships. But it's, it's all of those voices that started talking about us is a thing that became successful, and this is, and I'm sorry I'm on the soapbox here, so I'll keep it short, but honestly, that's, the biggest mindset shift and misunderstanding I see in B to B social. Because people are like, Oh, cool. I just need to post more on LinkedIn, right? It's like, no. 80% of the content that happened about our brand on social should not be from us. It should be from other people. So it's our job to try and find a way to unlock that of which is what I wrote my whole book on, to be honest. So yeah, an area I feel very passionate about, as you can probably tell

Mike: Absolutely, and I find it interesting. I mean, I think, like most things with B to B, it feels like social media for B to B is actually quite a bit more complex than social media for consumer I mean, do you agree with that?

Andy: I think it is. It requires a lot more nuance, I would say, yeah, and certainly, as it pertains to the influencer piece, harder to find, harder to work with, because, you know, we're not looking for celebrities to endorse our lipstick, right? We're we're looking for people that are have true domain expertise, that don't have, like, 10s of millions of followers, because there are cyber security experts, so they're not going to but we want to find people that have a deep connection with those CIOs in this example that we really want to reach. So yeah, that's why, yes, in that instance, it takes longer, and you've got to be a lot smarter about how you approach it. Definitely.

Mike: I mean, I do think, you know, sometimes people assume that it's easy. You just contact an influencer and it all works, and it is more complex. I mean, I'm interested. We can steal, perhaps, some of your good ideas here. You know, is there a particular campaign you've run that you think was either innovative or particularly effective, that you know, perhaps has some lessons for some of the people listening to the podcast.

Andy: So I'll do, I'll do two. I'll do one from content Cal days and one from A, B to B, tech company that I have huge respect for. One from content Calc. We not spoken about it so far. One of the most successful things that we did, and we leveraged this all the time, it was the cornerstone of our content strategy, was a simple, humble webinar. The most powerful thing, right? So webinars as a tactic won't be groundbreaking for anyone listening to this, but the thing that we did, that I think, was interesting, is that we paid very close attention to the people who we got on the podcast. So what we didn't do, even though we're appealing, you know, right, right at the outset, we're appealing to those kind of small agencies, etc. Our webinars was all about, how do we have a halo effect for our brand, for who we want to acquire in the future? So that way we invited like the head of social from Monzo or innocent drinks, those kind of brands are hugely respected. No, they weren't customers. But the wonderful thing that happens when you invite great brands in is that people make a mental Association, which are not prompted by us to say, Oh, wow. Like it's content color used by Monzo innocent drinks, Steven Bartlett, wow. They must be good. Weren't used by any of them. But the point is we, we gave a platform for these social media managers to share their strategies, and then we became like the social media strategy people. We just hammered that as a tactic. So on a bad day, our webinars would have 1000 people turn up, and that was our whole funnel based on so that's that one thing that has worked, not groundbreaking, just when we truly understand the audience and who we're trying to serve and where we want to take the business, and just curating appropriately, that's a tactic. And secondly, cognism, one of my favorite B to B Tech brands. They leverage the thought leader ads on LinkedIn, which are a fairly new thing, and basically they they've led into the personality led growth approach we all know like how important that is in B to B and yeah, they're essentially, they're promoting the content of their individual thought leaders, like their CMO or their chief sales officer, etc, and using that as their main content, because they know and you can see the results on their on their page, that's the content that drives the majority of the engagement.

Mike: Yeah, and I guess going back to that first point, we should probably say that Napier isn't the agency for Adobe. We're not working with Adobe. We don't actually work in your sector, but if you want to imagine we're that good, we're very happy that positive conversation. I really appreciate your time. Andy, I mean it, you know, I want to get to some of the questions we ask towards the end, where we try and ask the same questions to people, just to get different points of view on certain topics. And so kind of a bit of a quick fire round. You know, there's been a lot of talk recently, particularly in B to B, about people spending a lot more time researching online, a lot less time engaging with salespeople. You've obviously seen the light and move from sales into marketing, into a more broader product management role. I mean, do you agree that's happening, and what do you think marketers should do to actually take advantage of this and make their roles bigger?

Andy: Yeah, it's a great question. I think there's a lot of data that empirically proves this too. My single suggestion for this, my own personal perspective, is that as marketers, we need to empower the rest of our sales teams to become personalities in their own right online. So again, that personality led growth thing that I lean into quite a lot, and I've seen that just final point on that is that I've seen that play off very well from from me personally. So whenever I went into a sales meeting at content Cal, I'm now still at Adobe, people like, oh, I reckon I follow you, or I read, read your book, or I saw your sub stack, immediately the guard comes down in the conversation, you have suddenly that one to one conversation. So I think that that really will will help educate people earlier on in the funnel, and also when it comes to that decision making process. And if anyone you know sales people are still going to be relevant for some B to B's, and it really helps make those sales conversations work out a lot more positively.

Mike: That's fantastic. And I think we can lead on to the next question now is so you know, obviously you've kind of hinted that the role of marketing is is going to involve really building up the sales team and their brand and their reputation. But what other changes do you think are going to happen? You know, particularly to senior marketing executives. I mean, how's the CMO role going to change? For example?

Andy: Yeah, I think the the modern CMO, yes, like I said earlier, will need to assume responsibility for more than just marketing, right? We've seen the 10 years of. As CMOS, which are at their all time lowest, because typically, I think even CEOs don't understand this, because marketers are brought in as like chief promotion officers quite often, where they're like, oh, look, you didn't move the numbers in a year and a half. Yeah, goodbye. It takes, it takes more time than that. So I think marketers and CMOS, even though they're senior individuals, really need to start staking their claim as to, like, what's the macro impact of marketing and organizational level? What are we trying to do? So, for example, like being able to understand metrics like unaided awareness or share a voice, those elements take it away from especially B to be like lead and opportunities and sales and that kind of stuff, because the most important factor of all of this is that 95% of any given market is not in the market to buy. You'll know this anyway. So marketing needs to elevate the conversation a much more strategic level. That also means that marketers need at the CMO level to be the true experts of a customer. Really represent a customer. Voice know it better than anyone. You should not have a CEO understanding a customer better than you. Everyone should bow down to your knowledge, your deep knowledge of your customer, which will be engendered from those conversations that I spoke about earlier and as well, we've got so many AI driven tools as well to speed up market research, get our sentiment all across Reddit and Facebook groups aggregated into a to a nice dashboard. All of those tools exist, and I think that that modern cmo that's both data informed by all of this sentiment that's happening, and this is even conversations happening at the top of Adobe too, related to this kind of stuff as well. So we know, we know it's incredibly important those that can speak with expertise about the customer and use all of that data, but also bring that, that humanity to the business that we absolutely need. Because we know, fundamentally, despite all of this wonderful data and data driven decision making, fundamentally business is human, and it's a trust based business, so we need to, CMOs still need to be an expert in that kind of humanity and emotional led element of that too. So quite a hard balance to strike. But yeah, that's the future.

Mike: Sounds like the future could be quite challenging, but also quite rewarding. So I think that's super positive. I feel bad, you know, almost asking the next question. You've given us so much advice, so many insights, but is there a piece of market advice, really good piece of market advice we haven't covered, that you'd like to share?

Andy: Yeah, it's probably sounds trite, because I talk about it all the time, but it's the thing that I would have printed on a t shirt if I could, or if I was sad enough, it would be your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. So that is not my quote, or no one said this to me because I'm not friends with Jeff Bezos, but I just I adore it. It speaks to all of the the kind of fluffy, emotional side of of brand. And a brand is just the feelings and the feelings you engender from the promises that you make. And that's it.

Mike: Love it. That's a great quote. And finally, I know you're you know you've been very generous of your time, but if there's a young person listening who's just starting out on their marketing career, what advice would you give them?

Andy: Second question, I would say it's easy to get over enamored with how quickly you can get stuff done with AI. AI tools are an amazing opportunity to increase your utility and increase your leverage, but it's very important, though, that we balance that, and I've said this already, balance it with the humanity and balance it with a deep understanding at an emotional level of what truly drives an audience, and when you combine the kind of the rational and the emotional, that's when you can truly do great work in marketing. So just, just don't get over fixated on all of the shiny tools, because the only thing that matters, nothing else matters other than the person you're trying to serve.

Mike: That's great advice. We nearly got through a whole podcast discussion without mentioning AI, but even managed to come in. Andy, thank you so much. It's been fascinating. It's been, you know, really interesting talking to you. I know there's a lot you do online, but what's the best way if people want to learn a bit more or find out about your views on B to B social, how can I either get hold of you or find out more?

Andy: Yeah, so thanks for the opportunity. Firstly, I'm on LinkedIn. Just search. Andy Lambert, you will also see my book, which is probably behind me somewhere. I don't know if this is going to be on video, but yeah, it's called Social 3.0 and I have a sub stack, which you can join for free. Just search social three dot sub stack.com, and, yeah, all of my ramblings are in those three areas.

Mike: That's awesome. Andy, I've really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much for being a guest on marketing, B to B technology.

Andy: Thank you for having me, Mike. Appreciate it. Bye.

Mike: Thanks so much for listening to marketing, B to B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode, and if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or on your favorite podcast application. If you'd like to know more, please visit our website at napierbe to be.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn. You.

by Natasha Websdale

Simplifying SEO: How to Demystify Search Engine Optimization - Moz

Ethan Hays, General Manager at Moz, and STAT Analytics dives into the world of SEO. He shares his insights on simplifying SEO and the importance of democratising it within organisations, ensuring all stakeholders recognise its value.

Ethan compares the dynamics of startups and large enterprises, as well as the cultural differences between East and West Coast marketing landscapes. He also explores the evolving role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and the need for integrating marketing and sales in today’s business environment.

• Marketing B2B Technology on Apple Podcasts
• Marketing B2B Technology on Spotify
• Marketing B2B Technology on napierb2b.com

About Moz

Moz is a marketing analytics software company that provides tools and resources for search engine optimisation (SEO). The platform offers features like keyword research, link building, and site audits to help businesses improve their online visibility and search rankings. Moz is also known for its educational content, including blogs and guides that simplify SEO for users of all skill levels.

About Ethan

Originally studying sports medicine, Ethan discovered a passion for SEO and has built a successful career over the past two decades. Having held various roles in startups, enterprises and agencies, as well as founding his own agency, he is now the General Manager at Moz and STAT Search Analytics.

Time Stamps

00:04:54 - Ethan's Career Journey: Startups to Agencies
00:08:33 - Cultural Differences: East Coast vs. West Coast
00:13:27 - The Misconceptions of SEO
00:16:30 - Democratizing SEO Within Organizations
00:18:08 - Moz's Approach to Simplifying SEO
00:23:40 - The Impact of Generative AI on SEO
00:32:15 - The Evolving Role of CMOs
00:36:01 - Quick Marketing Advice from Ethan
00:37:27 - Advice for Aspiring Marketers
00:40:16 - Contact Information

Quotes

“It shocks me… talking to executives at very large, sophisticated companies who to this day have not even approached SEO as a category. Like it’s too complex….” Ethan Hays General Manager at Moz and STAT Analytics.

“It [SEO] is the single most scalable source of high margin, high intent traffic.” Ethan Hays General Manager at Moz and STAT Analytics.

Follow Ethan:

Ethan Hays on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanhays/

Moz website: https://moz.com/

Moz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/moz/

STAT Analytics website: https://getstat.com/ 

Follow Mike:

Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/

Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/

Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing B2B Tech and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We'd also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform.

Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast - The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547

Transcript: Interview with Ethan Hays at Moz

Speakers: Mike Maynard, Ethan Hays

Mike: Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today. Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier.

Today, I'm joined by Ethan Hayes. Ethan is the General Manager for Moz and Stats Search Analytics. Welcome to the podcast, Ethan.

Ethan: Very glad to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Mike: So tell me about your career and how someone who studies sports medicine ends up in search.

Ethan: Yeah, you know, you would be shocked at the amount of times that I've heard that exact question. And, you know, it's, it's funny trying to think back and put together all the pieces, you know, I can come up with reasons. I can come up with rationales that the, the honest answer as to how I ended up in SEO is I just fell in love with it. I was working in the Bay Area, in the startup world, sort of just after the first internet bubble burst. And I happened into a job where managing networks of affiliate marketers was my job. the most successful affiliates were really good at organic search. And so I got curious about it. And the more I dug in, the more I found that was fascinating to me. And I just I fell in love and I've been in love ever since that I've been doing it professionally for, you know, 20 plus years. But I I think if I had to go back and say sort of what's the what's the connective tissue or the commonality between my interest in sports medicine and my interest in SEO, I would have to say that it's probably that I have an obsession with complex systems that have a human face. So in the sports medicine world, there's lots of very fundamental laboratory science you can do, right? You can spend your entire day in a white lab coat with a bunch of beakers in the chemistry lab doing various different kinds of chemical reactions. And to me, that was also so abstract that it never really caught my attention. But if you take that same study of chemical reactions and you put it in the context of this is how your body creates energy so you can do a vertical jump or something like that, suddenly it became alive and relatable and interesting to me. And I sort of found a similar thing in the field of SEO, where, of course, the everything behind the search interface, there's so much technical complexity. You know, the original big data was Google trying to, you know, essentially store a copy of the Internet locally. There's so much advance now, you know, with with machine learning and artificial intelligence, all the rest of it. But on its face, It's a very human and understandable pursuit. It's just a regular person like you and me going to the search box, typing in something and hoping to get an answer to their question. And so it was that mix of that complexity with that very sort of relatable human face that really drew me in.

Mike: That's fascinating the way you link those two apparently quite different disciplines together. I mean, clearly your career's in search. You've actually had quite a lot of different experiences. Do you want to talk about that? Do you want to talk about the industries you've worked in? And also I think you've worked both client side as well as working in agencies and even founded agencies. So tell me a little bit about the journey and what ultimately led you to end up at Moz.

Ethan: Yeah. You know, Moz was really a part of my, my SEO journey from the very beginning. I got started in about 2003. Moz sort of popped up in about 2004. And just because of that coincidence of timing, I enjoyed the Moz community. I spent a lot of time there. And so, so Moz was part of my professional journey from the very early days, but. To your question, yes, lots of different industries, lots of different sort of professional environments that I've been in. I spent probably the first 12 years of my career working with technology startups in Silicon Valley. And I absolutely fell in love with the startup space, just the energy of it, getting a small team of people together to solve a hard problem. I love that energy, fell in love with the startup world. But then of course, life happens. I had to move from San Francisco to New York City. And when I moved to New York City, I got my start in the agency world for the first time, worked at a B2B marketing agency called Gyro. They were the largest independent B2B agency in the world at the time. They ended up getting sold to Dentsu later, but got to know the agency world a little bit and just the difference in business culture from the West Coast to the East Coast. It's a very real thing, right? My joke at the time was that hopping on a plane and flying from San Francisco to New York City was like getting in a time machine going back about 10 years. It was just, it was such a different environment because this was, you know, it was about 2012 thereabouts. And I came from Silicon Valley, which is very, it's very technology forward, very data forward. You've got little companies trying to take on big companies. And so if you have a breakout gross channel, like a search engine optimization, you've got the entire organizational line behind it and everybody's pulling in the same direction. And then if you go to the East Coast and we at this B2B marketing agency, we had the very good fortune of being able to work with some very, very large clients, you know, Fortune 100, Fortune 10 in some cases. And the complete step change in the kinds of conversations that I was having was a bit hard to absorb at first, right? It went from, you know, what's the most cutting edge thing that we can do with our technology to increase our SEO performance to sitting down with the chief marketing officer of a fortune 100 company. And their first question to me is, so what is digital? And I'm like, Oh boy, I'm going to have to backtrack a little bit. Right. So it was, it was a very eyeopening experience, but also very necessary because it points to the fact that it is so easy for folks, especially technology folks. we get attracted by puzzles, we get attracted by technology, we tend to go down rabbit holes. And the rest of the world doesn't tend to do that. The rest of the world doesn't have that same sort of obsessive interest. And so the ability to zoom out, to up level, to understand a very different business reality, a very different set of personalities and priorities and calibrate your pitch to meet them where they are. That was a very meaningful step in my career that was facilitated by having to have these conversations with just much larger, much, much more complex companies. And that has served me well to this day. I've continued to work in both sort of a mix of, of startups, but also I've spent quite a bit of time in the past. seven or eight years working in private equity and organizations like that and mergers and acquisitions. And so being able to see so many different aspects of the professional world and start to learn a little bit of their common language and their frameworks for understanding the world has been very beneficial to me. I'm a big advocate for broadening your horizons.

Mike: I love that idea of broadening your horizons. I also really enjoyed the description of the differences between the East and West Coast 10 years ago. You've also worked on agencies and on the client side, as well as for established companies and startups. Do you also see cultural differences there, or is it more geographical? I mean, where are the differences really occurring?

Ethan: I will say that there are, I think, very real differences in sort of basic mindset and posture towards life. You hear people talking about like, oh, the easygoing West coasters and the hard charging East coasters. And to me, there is actually a great deal of signal in that stereotype. I've seen it over and over and over again myself. But to me, that has not been the primary differentiator. The differences seem to be driven mostly by the scale of the company itself. Uh, which is to say in a lot of startup environments, you're primarily working with companies that are, man, let's say at a hundred people, maybe 150 people. And you kind of have that Dunbar's number advantage going for you, where you can generally feel like, you know, most of the people and personalities and the names of folks. And then once you get into the large enterprise world, the scale just blows that out entirely. And you have to, because of the scale of the organization. the views of that organization necessarily become more abstract. So at the last holding company that I was at before, Ziff Davis, I reported directly to the CEO of that company and he had, I forget, 40 something agencies all around the world rolling up to him. His view of those businesses was a spreadsheet. It was your quarterly results. That's what he looked at. That was the data that was presented to him. And the story of that company had to be presentable and understandable in a spreadsheet. That is a very different view of the world than when you're in a small startup and you know everybody on a first name basis.

Mike: I think that's very true. I mean, certainly at Napier, we have the benefit of being small. Everyone knows everyone else. You have those close personal relationships. So as you alluded to, you moved to Moz and then Moz now is part of Ziff Davis. Let's talk about where you are today. And it's interesting because you're actually the first, if you like, repeat guest. So somebody we've had from a company where we've already had another guest. Inga Bubez was a great guest for us talking about SEO. I'm interested, what's your role in Moz and what are you doing to help people with search and search engine optimization?

Ethan: Yeah, you know, it is funny. So this year at Moz, we celebrated our 20th anniversary. So we had MozCon this summer and it was our big 20th anniversary celebration. And that felt wonderful, right? As a longtime member of the community, the fact that Moz has endured for 20 years, Not a lot of companies have a 20 year lifespan, right? So just celebrating that was fantastic. But I am really more focused on the next 20 years, of course. And I still, to this day, see the opportunity for SEO as being in relatively early innings. It shocks me to this day talking to executives at very large sophisticated companies who to this day have not even approached SEO as a category. Like, oh, it's too complex. You've got to find some rock star, some guru, some ninja to help you understand the space. And it's just, it's too much for us. It's too much. And that hurts me deep inside because I know it's not true. I know it's not true. The opportunity for SEO is absolutely massive for any company at scale that approaches it. It is the single most scalable source of high margin, high intent traffic that is broadly available to anyone with a website. That is true today. It was true 20 years ago. That reality has not changed. But unfortunately, The way that our industry has communicated with SEO broadly has continued to contribute to this, this mischaracterization of SEO is this like, you know, this black magic. One of my, one of my very early companies that I, that I worked with in the, in Silicon Valley, I founded the, the SEO and search focused product marketing practice at healthline.com. I was a tiny little company, 30 people when I started. It's now a huge company. It got sold to Red Ventures for $190 million. They do 200 million visits a month. They're a juggernaut. And the fact of the matter with SEO is that it gets sold in as something that is incredibly complex and incredibly technical and therefore regular folks can't do it. You hear these kinds of names in the SEO industry like, oh, I'm an SEO guru or I'm an SEO rockstar. That to me is just absolute poison for the growth of the industry. Back at Healthline, I was trying to introduce SEO to the entire organization. They were a tiny startup. They were taking on WebMD, which was the 800-pound gorilla in the category. Here we are, we're a tiny little team of 30 people, and we need to go out there and get as much traffic as we possibly can as quickly as we can. The CEO brought me in. He's like, okay, I need you to give a presentation to our engineering team about SEO. And the first comment I got from my lead engineer was SEO is witchcraft. That was the start. Right. That was the starting point. And that represented, you know, his experience up to that point in his life. And I realized I was like, oh boy, I've got a lot of work to do. And a lot of that work is actually internal. It's about educating the organization that you are a part of. up leveling that entire team so that they can see, oh, wait, this isn't witchcraft. This is a series of repeatable steps that we could do. And if we do these repeatable steps, the products that we're so excited about building, what should we go out and make more money for the company? And that reflects really positively on my team and my career prospects and my bonus at the end of the year. And it's having those kinds of conversations that are ultimately about democratizing SEO within an organization. For me, overwhelmingly in my career, that is where I see value. That is where I deliver value. That's where I've been able to deliver the biggest step changes in an organization's SEO performance. It's about being that rising tide that lifts all the boats, educating your coworkers, connecting the work that you're asking them to do with things that are materially important to them. Most of the product managers that an SEO team has to, by definition, has to work in partnership with in order to build well-optimized products. That product and engineering team, they are driven by the P&L of that product. That product has financial expectations associated with it. If you can help them understand how this process that you're bringing them along to help you with helps them drive better financial performance, increases their own career prospects, ends up being a gold star on their resume. When you can start drawing those kinds of connections in an organization, all of a sudden SEO becomes not just possible, but something that you have allies everywhere looking to help you. And I know that's possible. I've seen it. I've done it. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the SEO industry pushes pretty hard in the other direction. They push towards this idea of like the lone genius who has all of this magical knowledge and only this person can gift the organization with the precise recipe for success. That's a load of nonsense in my experience.

Mike: Yeah, I mean, I think Mars from day one has pretty much been renowned as the organization trying to help ordinary people understand how to do SEO and probably trying to simplify it. I mean, do you have some examples of what you're doing today that's helping ordinary marketers actually contribute to SEO and get their web pages, their content ranking higher?

Ethan: Yeah, so one of the things that is that is very, very interesting to me that came out of the recent Google API leaked documents. Of course, there is a ton of technical depth and arcane stuff. And again, I think the industry at large sort of lionizes people who dive the deepest into all the technical arcana. And that's interesting. I'm glad those folks are out there. I'm glad they're doing what they do. But I think from my perspective, I have the humility in working with complex systems to realize that messing with one little part of a complex system doesn't mean you're just changing that one little part. It has cascading effects, right? I tend to want to zoom out and look for sort of large themes and larger levers that are available to us. And a couple of the things that came out of that where Moz has a long history in the marketplace of creating data products that are helpful to working SEOs, right? One aspect of the SEO world is big data and very big data, right? Moz has one of the best link indexes, you know, on the entire internet. I think we have 45 trillion URLs somewhere in there. Other providers may say, oh, we have 46 trillion URLs. OK, great. The point to me is not the number of URLs in your index. It's are you able to look at that massive set of data and look at the ecosystem that it applies to? and abstract out of that something that is simple and easy to understand and can actually be used by SEOs in their day-to-day work to help guide them in helpful directions. And so one of the examples of that, you know, Moz came out with our metric domain authority a long time ago in 2006. He was in response to a very visible and noticeable fact for anybody who spends any amount of time in a particular industry or a particular keyword space. And you will see over time that there are big, powerful domains in that particular space. And it just seems like the rules are applied to them differently some. They just don't get hit as hard by updates. They seem to have a little bit more latitude in the things that they can do. And so Moz created Domain Authority to point to this invisible thing that we could see in the field. Very promptly, Google, of course, came out and began denouncing it. And in sometimes very, very specific terms, we do not use domain authority. We don't have anything that's like a domain authority signal that we use in ranking in any way, shape or form. And then the Google API documents came out and we can now confirm Google does not use domain authority. Their metric is called site authority. It's like when I look at things like that, to me, that is an example of Moz taking all of this complexity, these trillions of links and abstracting out something that is simple and helpful for working SEOs. Similarly, just about a year ago, we launched a metric called brand authority because now we are seeing another dynamic in the search engine results. And that is that sites with a strong brand seem to be treated very differently than sites that do not have a strong brand. And this is actually something that Google has talked about quite openly for a very long time. One of the quotes that sticks out in my mind, this was back in 2008, Eric Schmidt, who was the CEO of Google at that time, said, brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool. I was like, wow. It's rare that you get really clear, honest communication from a very senior professional in a very large company. And I thought that was just very clear and the honesty of it appealed to me, always stuck in my head. And so now as we're seeing that dynamic coming to life and brands do in fact appear to be being treated differently, we created this brand authority metric And we are now seeing inside the Google API leak documents that Google does in fact care very much how your brand does or doesn't show up as a brand inside search. This is especially seems to be especially related to how they evaluate sites for being impacted or not impacted by big algorithms like Panda. So That is yet another example in that same vein. And of course, as the Moz product continues to evolve, we're looking to use AI to help summarize some of these key features. Again, forget about the absolutely gigantic loads of data that we have to process to get to it. What is actionable for a working SEO when they're looking at a domain in a new field or looking at their client's domain, right? The client just hired them. It's like, hey, do an audit of our website. We're using AI to summarize the primary topics and secondary topics that are most associated with that domain. That is helpful to me as a working SEO professional when I'm looking at a new client's domain, when I'm looking at a competitor's domain. And now we see from the Google API leaks. Google cares very deeply about the topicality of your website to the extent that they have this metric called state radius, where they essentially, this gets very nasty. They create a vector embedding of the primary topic of your site, and then they measure what they call the site radius. So from that central topic that is most associated with your website's content, Every new piece of content that you launch, they literally measure the distance between that core topic and this new thing that you're talking about. So if you have a client, for example, and you know, most of their content is about pet care or whatever it is, and all of a sudden you see them starting to talk about a bunch of cryptocurrency related stuff on their, their editorial calendar, you're now in a position to sit down and say, Hey, let's talk about your content strategy as it relates to your core user base. Here's a very specific reason that you may not want to start wandering off topics so much. And so that is a sort of a summary of the way that we at Monaz are looking at this. It's not about the size of the data itself. It's about simplifying it. It's about extracting the insight and the signal out of it that helps make sense of all the complexity for our customers.

Mike: I love that. And I'm sure customers are going to be very happy. They don't have to understand metrics like site radius, particularly if they're not SEO specialists. I think looking forward, one of the things a lot of people, both SEO specialists, as well as non-specialist marketers like myself, we're all a little worried about generative AI search results and what's happening there. So on the page of search engines, they're trying to give you the answer that really you want to give by routing people to your own page on your website. So how do you see this impacting SEO in the future?

Ethan: Yeah, I mean, that is certainly an extremely hot topic. You know, at the moment, I think that the world is having generative AI shoved down our throats a little bit, because I believe If I look back over the last two years, to me, one of the most important developments in sort of what I've come to call the LLM wars, right, because you have these factions and they're, you know, they're these guys against the other guys and everybody's, everybody's very combative. One of the first shots fired in the LLM wars was back in February of 2003. And that was when Satya Nadella came out in that interview and promised to make Google dance, right? I'm going to make them dance. And that came across to me very weird. It was almost like a, like a schoolyard deer, right? But that sort of set the tone. It let Google know. Bing is going to be all in on this generative AI stuff. They're going to push it as hard as they can. And they're specifically doing it to take share from Google because in Satya's math, every single point of search share they take away from Google is worth a billion dollars to them as a business, right? That was one of the opening shots in the LLM wars. And ever since then, to me, Google has basically been on the back foot. They've had LLM technology for years and years and years. Why didn't they, why didn't they launch it ahead of OpenAI? Well, for perhaps to me, the most understandable reason possible, which is that unleashing large language models in an environment like search creates a heidel wave. of LLM spam that Google is going to have to fight. That is the nature of the technology. Sundar Pichai actually had a quote to that effect. He's like, oh yeah, anytime you have a massive new technology release like AI, it's going to affect the search ecosystem. And this one's a bit different. This one is just very focused on the meat and potatoes of the search industry, which is words on a page. And so to me, everything that has happened in the LLM war since then has basically been Google on their back foot. trying to number one, mitigate the obvious negative effects that LLM driven content would have on the search comments. But then also now that they have been dragged into the war, they must make it look like it was a strategic decision. Right. And so now all Google talks about is AI this, AI that. Oh, it's so wonderful. You know, their last earnings called, you know, Sundar is talking about, Oh, our users love AI overviews and it's better and better and better. That may be true in the aggregate. From my perspective, I don't know. I talked to everyday folks. I'm really curious about their reactions to things like, you know, large language models, every regular person that I've seen that I've shown a large language model to, to kind of like They're like, Oh, so it just makes up a bunch of words. Yeah, pretty much. Like you could do it in clever ways. I can, you know, tell it to make it, you know, uh, you know, made it right as a sonnet or, you know, make it a, you know, whatever. People don't seem very excited about it. Right. I don't think there has been a, you know, a killer app, certainly a consumer facing killer app in the space of LLMs yet. And so Google is going to continue representing that they love generative AI and everybody loves generative AI and they're going to give it to everybody. And I think in the background, you are going to see Google do what they should do as a business, which is focus on the business itself and how this new technology does or doesn't add to that business. So, for example, in, I think it was in May, right after they did sort of the big public release of AI Overviews, one guy was tracking the prevalence of AI Overviews based on the value of the AdWords market associated with that query. And what he found was that after the big AI Overviews public release, The prevalence of AI overviews in keyword markets where the average cost per click was $5 or more went down by 98%. Because of course it did, right? It's going to steal attention. It's going to steal clicks away from the money-making engine of Google. And so they're not going to make, they're not going to make a press release about that. But I think that if you are a careful observer of the search comments, I think you're going to see more and more of that. AI overviews are going to continue to feature, and especially in informational queries, the more you get towards transactional and commercial stuff, I think the less of it you're going to see over time.

Mike: Well, that's probably good news. Hopefully there's less for us to worry about than we all think. Another thing that's changed, I think this is really something that goes back to your description of the East Coast, West Coast differences, is that CMOs and marketing executives have really changed, and particularly the role of the CMOs changed quite dramatically in the last decade. So how do you see it going forward, Ethan?

Ethan: Well, I think the story, especially the chief marketing officer's role over the last 10 years, CMOs have been challenged. And by that, I mean, as of, I think this was maybe five years ago, so this may have changed, but directionally, I believe it's accurate. As of about five years ago, CMOs were the role with the shortest average tenure in the C-suite. Right. They get, they get booted out of the sea sleep for one reason or another, more than other, uh, chief, you know, chief executives do. And, and I believe that the reason for that is very straightforward. It is that marketing leaders are now expected to be revenue leaders back in the day, different rules, right? Different rules, marketing. in some organizations, especially very large organizations was just looked at as a cost center, right? It's like, Oh, we got to go out there. We got to spend the money. And everybody's heard the quote, Oh, we spend, you know, a hundred percent of our marketing budget, 50% of its wasted. Don't know which 50%. Ha ha ha. Well, that leads to the instability that we're seeing in the career path of a lot of CMOs. I have known that the classic tension that I see in large organizations is actually between the CMO and the chief sales officer who start smashing up head to head saying, well, the sales leader will say, hey, you give me that same million dollars you just gave to the CMO. I'm going to buy four Ferraris for our four biggest clients and I'm going to drive another $20 million in sales. What are you going to do? Right. Like they see exaggerated. Right. But you literally have those kinds of conversations in very large organizations. And so there has weirdly been a very, very consistent tension between marketing and sales. And I think that the future is pointing towards much more integration between those roles because in a properly functioning high-performance sales and marketing organization, those two functions fit together like hand in glove. They have to. They have to, right? You have to have good communication across those functions. You have to have, in some cases, service level agreements negotiated between those functions such that when marketing generates their marketing qualified leads, they are sent to a place in the sales, in the sales team where they know to look for them. And there is a specific expectation that those leads will be serviced in somewhere between five minutes and 30 minutes or maybe a day on the outside. But creating those structured partnerships such that that entire machine marketing, which is tasked with generating that sales pipeline, And then sales, which is taking that pipeline and turning it into close one revenue. You need to, you need that entire machine to flow smoothly. And that is the direction that I am seeing more and more organizations go. Marketing leaders are now expected to be revenue leaders.

Mike: You've given us some great insights and been incredibly generous with your time, Ethan. But before we go, we like to ask people a couple of quick questions. So the first one is, what's the best bit of marketing advice you've ever been given?

Ethan: The best bit of marketing advice I've ever been given? It's probably the simplest one. Talk to your customers. Talk to your customers. Like read feedback from your customer service folks, sit down with them, talk with your customer service folks, ask them how real human beings interact, what their problems are, what their pain points are, what their friction is, what they love about the product. But even that is secondhand. Actually set up a customer development process in your company where you are talking with real people on a regular basis. consolidating those insights and pushing them back out into other parts of the organization. There is nothing that is a replacement for literally talking with your customers, understanding how your product does or doesn't deliver value in their lives.

Mike: That's great. I think it's really, really important. The other question we ask our guests is really for the listeners who are embarking on their careers. So what would be your advice if you're talking to someone who maybe just graduated and was thinking of entering marketing as their career?

Ethan: Wow. Well, you know, I say one of the, one of the things that is becoming available now as the, the, you know, the internet, especially in all the tools related to the internet are maturing. Is that it used to be back in the day that in a lot of cases, in order to get valuable professional experience, you had to be part of a company for somebody had to hire you. And she had this weird chicken and the egg thing, right? I certainly had that coming out of college with a sports medicine degree, which is completely illegible to anybody in the corporate world. They couldn't care any less about it. And so trying to get my foot in the door at all, I figured out a way. And that was how I was able to start building those successes and stories that laddered up into my career. That was necessary 25 years ago. Today, You don't need that. You don't need permission. You don't need someone choosing you and saying, yes, we're hiring you for XYZ role to go out there and do marketing. Some of the most interesting and compelling folks are solopreneurs, they're freelancers. They have found a particular part of the world that fascinates them and they develop their marketing skills in order to in essentially in order to service their own natural fascination with a particular thing. That is a wonderful thing that the Internet has made possible that was never possible before. Got a colleague of mine years back who was, he was a talented web developer, but he wanted to, he wanted to do more. He wanted to build his career in marketing. The thing that he really loved doing was he was a music producer. He loved creating beats for hip hop. I was like, what you should do is create a course on how to create beats and then go out there and talk to people in the community and market that course and get your name out there. And that's exactly what he did. And he has a fantastic business today because he learned marketing as a way of connecting with people in an area that he was already passionately interested about. Any person, whether you've gone to college or not gone to college, you have that ability today, thanks to the internet. And that is an absolute game changer for what you can do.

Mike: That's amazing advice, Ethan. Thank you. Thank you again for your time and all your amazing insights. If anyone's listening to this, they'd like to get in contact or find out more about Moz and Stat, what would be the best place for them to go?

Ethan: Oh, sure. Of course. Our websites are the obvious point, Moz.com and GetStat.com. On Twitter, if you would like to connect with me, I'm at Ethan Hayes, that's E-T-H-A-N-H-A-Y-S, and my DMs are open. I'd love to hear from you.

Mike: Thank you, Ethan. That's perfect. And thanks for being a guest on the Marketing B2B Technology Podcast.

Ethan: It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Mike: Thanks so much for listening to Marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or on your favorite podcast application. If you'd like to know more, please visit our website at napierb2b.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.

by Natasha Websdale