#65: Mistakes & Learnings as a Marketing Leader (Loretta Jones, VP Growth, Acceldata, Shauntle Barley, Director of Marketing, Demandwell, Anthony Kennada, CEO, AudiencePlus)

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Exit hey, just quick context before we jump into this episode. This is a recording from a session we did with myself, Anthony Kanata, who is CEO and founder of Audience plus, former CMO at Gainsight and other Places, and Loretta Jones, she's VP of Growth at Excel Data. We did a session with Shantal at Demandwell which was I loved and I was like, hey, can I take this? And can we have this as a podcast episode? Because we shared a bunch of lessons and things that I would love to talk about in the podcast but don't come up enough. And the topic is in the arena mistakes and moments that Shaped Marketers. And we talked about a bunch of the mistakes that we have made over the course of our careers, from managing to hiring to decision making. And there's a little bit of a different conversation that I thought would be really relevant to you if you work in B2B marketing in any capacity. This isn't about channels and tactics. It's a little bit higher level and more about leadership and strategy and just some insight into making mistakes and why you need to make them, but also how to live through them, how to manage up, and a bunch of great stuff. So I know you're going to enjoy this episode. Thank you to Shantal and the team at Demand. Well check them out demandwell.com for letting us have this. And here is a conversation between Shantal, myself, Loretta and Anthony.

Hey everybody, Anthony Canada. I am, I guess, as of Saturday will be one year as a founder, but majority of my career has been as an operator leading marketing teams. So I was the founding CMO at Gainsight, spent about seven years there kind of building that that business. I went on to a company called Front and then hop in most recently before kind of taking the entrepreneurial leap and starting Audience plus. So we're big believers that Owned media is really this next chapter of marketing and figuring out how you can build an audience that you own, sort of the distribution into use content and media to engage them and then to kind of measure the impact of engagement on revenue and other outcomes. So excited. Thanks so much for having me be part of this.

Awesome. Dave, over to you.

Hey, I'm Dave Gerhardt. I was a marketing exec at Drift and privy to B2B SaaS companies and now speaking of owned marketing, I spend my time running a community and media company called Exit 5. Basically focus it on B2B marketing. So we have a community with 3300 members, we have a podcast, newsletter, website, kind of all things content focused on B2B marketing and that's where I spend all of my time now. And DemandWell is a sponsor of that which has been great and I've met a lot of good marketers and excited to be here and chat about my wounds.

Fantastic. Loretta.

Loretta Jones, VP of Growth at Acceldata I feel like I've spent my life in startups. Some people actually joke that I'm kind of like a startup junkie now I'm working at Excel Data. We are in the data observability space before this. Probably a lot of your folks on the call know Jason Lemkin from Saster. I worked with Jason at EchoSign for four years and also worked with him during the transition to Adobe. And so I've worked a variety of startups that go from product led growth to targeting SMBs to enterprise where it's a long sales cycle. You know, your ACV is half a million dollars et cetera. So yeah, for sure have made my share of of mistakes along the way and have kind of the scars to prove it. So love it.

I I'm so happy to have the three of you in the same room talking about this topic because I think of all of you as people who have like really honed your craft over the years and have really landed on the thing that feels like it really works for you. And so the question that comes to mind for me is like okay, what are all the things that didn't work and that You've learned from. Because we talk so much about our thing that we like to do that drives results for us. And I feel like we don't talk enough about how we got there. So I think we can just dive right into our stories. Everyone has kind of prepared a bit of a story today. And, you know, everyone feel free to jump in. If people have questions, feel free to drop them in the chat and yeah, let's take it away. Loretta, do you want to start?

Sure, yeah, I'll start. So it's interesting when Shantal said, hey, can you talk about the mistakes? I had this long list. But then what I did was I actually focused on a bunch of different mistakes that I made at one company. And this is a company that was back in the day, in the first dot com bust. I know I'm dating myself, but essentially it was a marketplace. This is when marketplaces were going to disrupt brick and mortar, if you will. So now when I think about it, it was like, wow, that was a hot mess. But a couple things, I think the reason why I chose this is because I think that the lessons learned are kind of evergreen. I learned them years ago and still can apply today. You can still kind of, I think as a marketer, if you're not really paying attention, you can kind of just fall into these traps. So the main trap I think that we had was that we didn't really know our icp. Like, we knew our ICP in terms of titles and that kind of thing and Personas. But what we didn't know is we didn't kind of really know what their process was to do their job and how we were going to kind of get them over the bridge to use something digital. So, for example, so the company was basically a company that sold dental supplies to dentists. So we're, you know, we're selling to very, very small businesses. It's a very transactional sale. So I think that's the first thing we didn't realize. We didn't realize how transactional it was. We knew that the buyer was essentially the dental assistant in those small offices. What we didn't realize is that what that buyer actually did to buy things in the old fashioned way versus the new way. So what one things that we missed, for example, is we didn't provide online training. Right. For us, it seems so easy to be in a marketplace. Just click, click, click, you're done, you're good. But again, that's kind of looking inside out for us. It was easy because we're all comfortable with tech. But, you know, if you're a dental assistant, you're not that familiar with tech, right? So whether whoever your buyer is or your user, like, just make sure you know what they need to do to actually make the leap to come to your platform or your application. I think that's one of the things that we missed. Another thing that we missed is it's not if you build it, they will come. It's if you brand it, they will come. Right? We did a lot of branding back in the day. So we did a lot of expensive print branding, kind of like typical Silicon Valley oe dental store coming in, you know, six days, five days, that type of thing, that type of countdown, right? And the audience is like, yeah, so who cares, right? I mean, so again, we thought it was really cool, but, you know, at the end of the day, they didn't know who we were, so. And we didn't do a good job. You know, when I look back on it, you know, kind of explaining how we would give value to them, we just thought, again, we're taking these people that. That are have such a drudgery in doing stuff physically, and now we're moving it online and making their lives a lot easier. So again, it's just kind of not knowing. Again, you can know that, you know the icp, you can know the Persona, but you kind of need to go even one level more and find, like, what are these people actually doing? Like, where are their pain points? How can you help them? So I think those two things were good. The third thing I think, before I stop blathering and let other people talk, is that make sure that when you something actually starts to work, that it's not really a red herring. And when I say that, I'll give you the example of. So when we went to a lot of these trade shows, dental trade shows, right. One thing that we discovered was that they literally transact business at the shows. Like nothing that I've seen. So they literally will come up to you, they'll be like, where's your catalog? I want to buy X things. And that's great. So what we decided to do, which we thought was really smart and in some ways it was, was since they transacted business there, we would go there and we would promote it, saying, for every hundred dollars you spend, we'll literally give you $20 back. We were actually, when we went to these shows, it was almost like we were taking drug money that would go to the show. We would split literally 20, you know, $10,000 and $20 bills, package them up and take them and put them in our bag so that if something happened, like, we wouldn't, we wouldn't have lost that much money. So anyway, we go there, it's super, like, literally we had lines out the door. It's super popular and we thought, this is great. Right now, things are actually working. But what we didn't realize, and this is why it's the red herring, is that yes, people were buying in the physical world, but it didn't really help them get to the online world. Right. Which is really ultimately the goal that we wanted. Right. So it was, it was kind of a red herring. So that's what I say when something is working, make sure that it's working for kind of the overall goal of the business, to move the business forward, not kind of as a stopgap. So I'll stop there and let other people kind of, you know, open up their wounds and share their wounds.

And kind of also feel like if you're not making any mistakes, like, I mean, not. It is cliche for most people, but like, if you're not making any mistakes and you're not pushing the boundaries of what's going to work, and I think you have to be able to work in an environment where you have a boss or a manager or a team that is supportive of being able to make mistakes. I learned early from a guy named Mike Volpe, who was a CMO at HubSpot at the time. And he was very bullish and open about, like, I want us to fail, I want us to make mistakes, because that's the only way we're going to find the new ideas. And so I think it is a delicate balance. And I know one thing is in interviewing marketers in the past, when you ask, like, hey, what's a mistake that you've made? And when somebody can't really articulate that, that's always a little bit of a concern, like, well, because we've all done it. I mean, we've been on this session for 10 minutes and we've heard 20 mistakes already. Right. For me, mine was like a little less tactical. And I kind of pulled out a lesson that was a little bit more all encompassing for me as a marketing leader, which is when I was at Drift, the company was growing really fast at the time. The first two years that I was there, we went from like 0 to 30 million. We went from no revenue to like $30 million in revenue pretty much in two years. And the company had tremendous brand, tremendous buzz, and it was. The marketing was very easy in that a lot of people were just showing up because they heard about us. And they heard about us because of events that we spoke at or podcasts that we went on. And the biggest thing that was driving the company's growth was truly the founder's vision and position in the market. It wasn't some like, you know, secret marketing hack or tactic that we found. It was just the perfect story at a given time in the market. And we pitched a story of disruption and creating a new category. And this was at a time when not everybody was talking about that. And so we had a lot of attention and we had a product that people wanted. The mistake that I made was just reveling in that inbound and not strategically thinking, like, this is great, but in two years we're going to have to double and triple and the growth goals just keep going. And the mistake that I made was not really planning for, like, while things are going great, while everything is in. Is while all your metrics are in green is when you need to be planting the seeds for channel number two and channel number three and channel number four. And I wish I had the wisdom that I have now. It's kind of like anything with age. Like, you get wiser as you get older because now you been through it. But I wish I had known to like, have 30% of my budget and people and programs like investing in new channels. So then next year when the plan goes up, you know, we got to hit a new revenue goal that's 50% higher when you get into that new year and you're like, oh my gosh, the goals grew 50%. You can't just like, do more. It's very rare. You can just go do more of something or magically get 50% out of that. You need to be finding new channels and new strategies. And so that's something that I didn't have a good enough handle on handling the short term and the long term. And now that's a lesson that I think I will always remember moving forward. And I think you got to be able to do both. And so if you're out there and you're hitting your number right now, be thinking about what's coming in the next six to 12 months, year to two years. And the more you can build those foundations now, the more they're going to pay off later.

That rings true to what Loretta was saying too, about the success of the trade show. Doesn't mean the long term success, like there's a short term Long term kind of thing going on.

Yeah, yeah. And just, you know, I think there were a lot of changes that we made at the company over time as a company grows. And it's, it's not as easy as this. Like, oh, we need to grow to X goal. Okay, cool, let's go try LinkedIn paid now and go scale that up. Like it doesn't work like that. You got to have a little bit of data and early signals on channels. And I think that's one of the pieces of wisdom is be thinking about the long term.

Yeah, a couple of things there that kind of, I think bridge into my story. First of all, it's interesting, Dave, when you were talking about marketers making bets and pushing the boundaries and taking risks and some of those might result in mistakes, it's funny, I took the prompt to be more of like systemic mistakes that we've inherited or created in some cases as marketers. But this short term, long term thing I think rings true to me. So I joined a company that was growing extremely fast at the beginning of the pandemic. So much so that nearly all leads effectively were coming through the contact sales form, which was, we don't often see, right. It was more like deal order takers type of a thing than like actually doing marketing. And so we weren't demand constraint, we were like sales constrained, effectively fulfilling that demand. And it felt very unsustainable and crazy. And it turns out because it is unsustainable and wild. And so we were very focused in those days on building the team, building the infrastructure. And that was sort of our kind of charter. That what we didn't do really in those early days was start to take those channel bets and start actually figuring out how we can diversify where leads come from. Because on the, the day that the contact sales form stopped and it did, we would be ready with more kind of long tail search kind of value and the outbound motion. And so I think we started to do that stuff, but I think we did it a little bit too late and kind of the, you know, in our, with our business, at least the market corrected, you know, things changed and it kind of really, you know, kind of shifted the dynamics around the company. But the other piece that I think is really like at the root level is marketing's and this is a systemic one with marketing's impact on product. Because we're so often trained to say marketing and sales, sales, marketing alignment and then in a progressive sense, marketing and customer success and how we can help support renewals and These types of things. And that's all true, but we're also kind of as marketers, the tip of the spear on what's going on in the market. Like, what does competitive landscape look like? What are, what are we learning from some of the content we're putting out there? And so in our specific case, we were a single product company selling that product like hotcakes, but we had no kind of product strategy that was helping us sort of evolve beyond kind of that kind of moment that we were really living in. Hadn't been more proactive as a marketing team. Had we kind of either inserted ourselves or found a path into the product conversations to kind of raise the alarm, right? Ring the bell and say, hey, something, something's going on here. We're seeing some early indicators that might lead to a conversation around either innovating and creating a new product, maybe acquiring a business or something. We could have probably had a better role to play to help kind of de risk, I would say the go to market kind of overall. So systemically, I would say our marketing's misalignment with product could be really dangerous over time if we don't kind of insert ourselves into those, those conversations. So many mistakes to talk about in that experience. Those are really some of the ones that jump out to me.

Gabe or Loretta, have you seen or have you been a part of marketing really making an impact on product strategy?

Yeah, a hundred percent. I've seen both sides of it and I, I was just gonna jump in and echo like, I think so often on LinkedIn or in marketing content and other forums, we obsess over the things that are not working in marketing is we obsess over them as like at the channel and tactic level, when I actually think it almost always comes down to like the most basic lesson, which is it's almost always the product and it's almost always like the offer. And in SaaS, the offer is like, what are you selling? And so like, yeah, in the case of Hoppin, that's like such a good story because it's like peak pandemic. All event spend overnight goes from in person to virtual. Now all of a sudden, this company's perfectly primed to capture all that demand. But all of a sudden, 18 months later, when, like two years later, when events start happening again, that same platform doesn't apply. And so like, you have to be. Marketing is so much easier when the whole exec team is aligned at the company level and like the marketing leader is responsible for the business unit that is marketing. And each lever, like sales, plays a different. It's like all pieces of a puzzle, right? And marketing is a piece, sales is a piece, customer success is a piece, product is a piece. Right? They all have to be taking the context about what's happening today and working together. And then in that room, I don't mean physically a room, but like, whoever those leaders are, then you can go figure out what the marketing strategy needs to be, what the sales strategy needs to be. I just. It's such an important point that if you really want to get a seat at the leadership table as a marketer, it's not about the tactic, the channel and tactic level. It's about being able to push the company and drive strategically. Now, it's not as easy as it sounds on a webinar like this because it often comes down to some internal politics. And the CEO is really close with the product person, and the product person doesn't want to talk to marketing, and they're really walled off. And so it's not that easy as, like, sending a slack message. It's like, hey, can we catch up? But that's also something to, like, observe about the company that you're at, like, or maybe a job that you're interviewing for. All of those ingredients matter.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's key, the connection between marketing and product. One thing, to your point, it's not as easy as it sounds, right. I mean, often when I work in a lot of startups, right. A lot of the engineering folks in startups are the CEOs, right. And the CTOs, and it's their baby, right? So how do you tell someone, hey, your baby's ugly. Right? It's not that easy. So even though it has to be done, I think that is one of the things that as a marketer, depending on the environment that you work in, you have to figure out a way to be diplomatic, yet get your point across. Otherwise it's just going to end up in issues, fights, people not paying attention to you, people think you're whiny, et cetera. So I think that's something.

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Things to think about when you get your seat at the table because inevitably that's what you are going to have to say is your baby is ugly. But in a way that actually ends up being productive and doesn't basically just take the entire executive team, as Dave was saying, and kind of put it in a tizzy because the team does have to be in lockstep, otherwise the company just won't succeed.

Yeah, it's for sure, like difficult given that you have humans that all have our own egos, our own pressures, our own deliverables that we need to hit. And this is really hard to do. But this talk is called in the arena, like it's worth the fight, it's worth the battle. Because without a shared vision, that's where things fall apart. If products off building something that sales can't sell or marketing can't position or whatever, like these things all have to be in one place. That's what makes startups so difficult. I think it's one of the primary kind of issues is that we're all people and are trying to do the best with what we've got, but definitely worth leaning into that tension. And I think that helps also just from a career development perspective, like Dave's talking about like the seat at the table and the voice, and I think that that gets earned for marketers that are reaching across to their peers and product and sales and others to really go in and build those relationships.

So, yeah, I also think, not that everybody can do this, but like, I think it's important that you pick a marketing job or go to a company where you can actually understand the market and the product. Maybe this is just personally for me, but like, I think to do what like Loretta made a great point about and talking about likes is like to actually influence that stuff. It's going to be very hard if you don't actually know the product and the industry. And it doesn't mean you have to have a background in there. But like, I think that marketing, to be successful in marketing, you can't just be like, well, I'm, I'm not the product person. I don't know anything about product strategy. Like, no, you should have an opinion, you should have an opinion on the roadmap and you should have opinion on the product. Because to be a marketer, you have to know the audience you're trying to sell something to inside and out. And so whether you're the CMO at a sneaker company or a software company, you should like have deep opinions and perspective about that industry. It's going to be tough to be successful in a marketing job if you don't know that industry. There's a good question in the Q and A. Sorry to play MC Shantal, but it's just like in my DNA at this point. Chris wants to follow up on Loretta's point, so maybe we can kick this back over to Loretta. I'm actually in the situation. Loretta just talked About. Can you elaborate on that point and share best practices for managing up in a startup?

Oh, sure, yeah. Just going back to that. So a couple things I would suggest. One is I always like to, if I'm in a position where I, you know, want to talk about something that's slightly controversial, right. I want to, if possible, get as much data as I can. Going back to Dave's statement right now about knowing the market, right? Because when you kind of say, when you add data to it, it takes it a little bit out of the emotional, personal level, right? You're like, look, this is some data that I've collected. Maybe it's not comprehensive, but I think it's enough for us to maybe get a working group to determine if this is something that we should pursue. So that would maybe be a way. A way to approach that. Right. Again, as opposed to not making someone mad at you or.

Sorry, anyway, like you're stepping on their territory. Like, if you come in and you blow that up, even though I've been in that situation, and even if you have the data, they're gonna be like, where'd you get that data?

Yeah, right. That's true. That's true. Yeah. But make sure you cite it appropriately. And the other thing I was going to say is try to get data. Actually, that's a good point. Try to get data from a bunch of different sources. Like try to get data from analysts, try to get data from customers. Like, try to just. Because when someone says, where did you get that data? Right? If you have a collection of data from different sources that is credible, but all kind of says the same thing, that kind of diffuses that. That issue, right? What is that? The other thing is to also potentially go to, you know, folks that work with it that are on front lines with the customer, like customer success, and try to use them as an ally and an ally in. Hey, this is the data that I'm seeing. Are you actually seeing this when you talk to customers, when you do QBRs, right. And then use that again? So I think those are kind of two tactics that I've used with pretty good success. And I don't know if you, you know, Dave or Anthony, if you have other suggestions to answer that question.

Yes, especially at the startup stage. I think that actually. No, at all stages. Well, I've never worked at a really big company, but I play one on. I play an actor on LinkedIn. I think you have to, like, find a way to. I would hope that, first of all, you work with a team where you can have productive discussions about what might need to happen in the business. And so for me in the past it's been like in a one on one with the CEO or a catch up with the VP of sales or catch up with the head of product. It's like, hey, you know, one thing that I, I kind of feel like is off is this. Like, have you ever thought about that? And like you kind of start like triangulating in one to one conversations about what you're trying to get at. And then I think honestly there's so many things going on that like what the CEO or whoever, what they want you to do is to be proactive. And so it's one thing to say, hey, we have a problem, this thing is broken. Okay, Nobody wants that person. We want the, hey, we have a problem, this thing is broken. Here's a couple of ways that we might be able to approach it. And so like I like taking the approach of like, I'm not coming into this meeting to blow this thing up, but I've observed something. I've clearly gone and done research. This is not just me like you know, throwing stuff, throwing bombs in a zoom meeting or in person meeting, but like we have this issue. I've done a bunch of research. Here's three scenarios. Like, I would love if we could spend and I think the more you can be proactive about this, like, could we spend 20 minutes of next week's senior leadership team meeting talking about this topic? Right. We're having a hard time winning deals in this segment. It's a slowdown that we're all seeing right now. I have a couple ideas. They're just my ideas. Like I want everybody else's collaboration, but could I get 20 minutes to just like start the conversation? Because I think you also, like, you work at a company with hopefully other smart people. Hopefully, like in my case, people are much smarter than me. I want to bring them in. So I don't want to be like defensive, I don't want to create enemies. I want to be like, look, I want products help on this, I want sales help on this. But especially as a marketer where I can use my skills as a presenter and a communicator of ideas, like, could I be the one to help rally the company and like, let's start to make this change. And so I've, I've influenced changes from engineering to sales to product to CS through this system of being like, hey, I observe this thing, I talk to these people. Here's like some options. Like, does Anybody agree with this? And we might take it into that meeting and it might blow up or it might be the first step into something more productive.

Yeah, I think that building relational capital is a great way to make these less us versus them or combative or whatever the language is. And getting folks the ability to feel heard and get their story told is a little bit of just like the kind of leadership stuff. But like what I found is it's the either asynchronous like one off conversations that happen outside of the room. It's maybe the standing one on one that you might have with other leaders across the team and it's being able to sort of, I guess build some type of, I guess bridge into whatever that conflict is and then come into the room as a united front or attempt to come into the room as a united front at least that just seems to be more effective from my experience. I guess really a lot of that, I mean it happens across the org. But like marketing and sales in particular since we are, I mentioned earlier like we're aligning all over the place. But I found that ultimately our ability to help make sales successful is like the root of our job. And so being able together kind of be on the same page and not combative on in meeting kind of sends a signal to the rest of the company that we're actually kind of one team and it's just overall positive kind of trust builder. So anyway, I found like you can't go wrong on like over investing in managing up and out by building the relationship, having maybe the rhythms and cadence to kind of keep that kind of going. So when this, these inevitabilities come up, you're in a good position to navigate them.

Yeah, I think I totally agree. I mean collaboration is key and I mean I think it's sometimes just as simple as if someone was going to bring me bad or controversial news, how would I want them to approach that right? Would I want them to come at me with a sledgehammer and this sucks or would you want them to kind of be rational maybe not be so emotional and kind of, you know, get your opinion, that kind of stuff. So sometimes it's just kind of trying to put yourself in someone else's shoes and then learning how from that experience how you would then approach the issue.

I feel like we've been talking a lot about go to market issues and product market fit issues and kind of like being collaborative with cross functional team members to solve those. One thing that I struggle with is like a company, there's Always going to be some level of like, oh, this part about the product, customers aren't using it. Or like, oh, this marketing message. Just like, I disagree as like the sales leader or something. And I don't feel like I have the experience to know, like, how do you tell when one of those issues is kind of like a, oh, this is going to be a huge problem versus, like, we'll just work through this and it will be okay.

It's very philosophical, I think to me, a bunch of these things stem back to having a clear scorecard for success as an organization. Because we could spend hours arguing about any message for anything or any. We could have a million product ideas, we could have a million marketing ideas, we could have a million different ways we can sell the product. But like, fundamentally, the company needs a scorecard. What are we doing? We need an operating system. And the best teams that I've been on or been around or observed have a clear set of goals, whether a management team, senior leadership team, or whatever. What is the scorecard? Like, this is why metrics matter so much, because you need some framework. Like there's. We could spend hours arguing or coming up with ideas, like I said about anything. Right. But if I can push back and say, like, you know what, Shantal, that.

Is a great idea.

Here's the thing. We have agreed this year that we're only focusing on these core channels. And so I got to spend that resource here. And so if it's related to one of those, like, key priorities or key metrics, then let's talk about it. I want to always get better, but, like, you have to be able to set guardrails. And the way that you set guardrails for what you're working on is by setting clear goals. OKRs, whatever system you use, the company needs to set goals for sales, marketing, product, all the key functions of the business. And then those need to go and be the guardrails that you create operating plans around. I think every mistake that I've made, it does somehow back to absence of a clear goal.

I agree with that. I mean, I think the one, a very simple goal for marketing is pipeline. And so somebody once told me, pipeline fixes everything. I think Dave's answer is much more nuanced and correct than mine, but basically at the sort of spirit level of saying, hey, we may not have our messaging tuned in exactly how it needs to go, but we're hitting our targets. Sales, accepting call meetings, pipeline coverage is there, things are working. So let's talk about that. Figure out how we want to solve this issue but things are working to me the signals if pipeline just falls off a cliff or something happens and we're like okay, something clearly is not working. Let's, let's go back like war room style, figure out how are we going to turn that metric around. So again that's more of a philosophical answer I guess. Or cheeky. Is that people say cheeky answer.

But I guess we could get a little more specific because at Hoppin your experience was basically that the market completely shifted. You did see some metrics fall and I guess that is what you're describing which is like if something dramatically changes that you are tracking and that you have committed to like that's when you know it's a big problem.

Yeah.

And Hopin is like the cartoon character of like.

Right.

It's like the most extreme.

Yeah. Even at Gatesight, like we would like launch into a new market or like you know, run a campaign for building pipeline within a certain vertical or even our core like business and all of a sudden we change something on the website or do a migration or host a conference and then like something bad happens and we're like oh gosh, like what do we do? And so that we look at mq, why are we creating much of pipeline and marketing's high fiving and the sales team saying there's not enough like things not right there. So let's look into our qualification, let's get in a room, look at qualification criteria. What are we missing today? Why is there this disconnect? So yeah, Hobin is like an existential kind of version of that. But I think in the day to day there's always these mini crises that happen where some metric materially changes and we have to figure out why. But if it's not, to me at least again if it's not existential, then I think we can always fine tune, always take feedback, always look to get better. But we don't have to ring the alarm necessarily.

Yeah, I think I would agree with kind of both of those answers. I think the way I was interpreting Dave's answer was really it was about focus. Like what is the company's focus Right. With the scorecard? And if you know, the suggestions come and they don't really enhance the scorecard or support the scorecard, then it's kind of easy to say okay, we won't do this or this is kind of a priority right now. I mean because I'm sure as everybody in the call knows everyone in the world and in the company is A marketer. Why aren't you doing this? The website sucks. Why don't we change our messaging, right? Everybody knows that you kind of have to have a thick skin to be in marketing, right? So, you know, there's two ways that, practically speaking, that, you know, you could handle that. One is, you know, what Dave was talking about, these are core metrics. If we actually are going to change them, let's have a discussion about it. Or the other thing you can do is, again, on a practical level is just do some a B testing, right? At the worst, you'll find out that that idea did not really change any of your metrics. And at the best, maybe it improved them, right? So there's always, you know, I'm a big fan of experimentation and trying things and doing a lot of A B tests, right? And I was, remember I was working for a CEO and he's like, why do you do all these A b tests? Like 90% of them don't. There's no change statistically. And I'm like, that's great. But you know what it means that I know that with these ideas, I'm actually not hurting the brand or I'm not hur lead gen by this. So to me, it's worth it. And then the 10% that actually give me a lift, that's worth it too. Now, that might not work in every scenario, but again, I think it's just something to think about kind of in your. When you are in the re in the arena and people are bombarding you with things saying, why don't we try this, why don't we try that?

Also think you have to be able to, as the marketing leader or even channel owner or whatever you are, accept what Loretta mentioned about everybody having an opinion about marketing. And you have to have a belief system. You have to have like a here's how I believe we're going to do this. Because if you can be, it's important to have an open mind. But if you're someone who's going to change their mind or be influenced by every little piece of feedback that you get, you're never going to survive and you're never going to be able to get anything done. And so, like, that is a great suggestion from this person about what the website copy should be. I think it's great. But I also have a philosophy on, like, how we're going to do it. And I think this works. And oftentimes at work there are multiple ways to solve a problem. And so, like, could that headline work, work it could. And also could. Six others could also. And is that worth me spending my time trying to, like, fight this battle? Like, you have to just be willing to say, like, thanks, this is great feedback. Like, you're totally right, we could do this. But we're just committed to doing it this way. And if the data tells us otherwise, we're going to be open to making a change. And you have to be willing to tell people that and, like, be affirmative.

That's good.

We have a little question in the chat. If any of you are inspired or in the Q and A. Sorry. Do you have any examples of a marketing conviction that you once had that got proven wrong and changed your mind?

I don't have one specific example, but I have, like, a meta lesson for this, which is I actually don't think there can be any conviction because there's so many variables. There's like, the company is a variable, the place in the market, the timing in the market, the channel, what the competition is doing. And so, like, even if you. A thing that I have been a part of in my marketing career, especially at Drift, we were like, we created this whole movement around, like, don't gate your content. Okay, well, like, today I run a private community of 3, 300 marketers, and that is actually gated content. You can't see any of it without with. So, like. Or just like, any example, like, every company should start a podcast. Like, I don't know that. I don't know enough about your company. I don't know enough about who would host it. I don't know about the niche that it's in. I don't know about the competition. So I think, like, you have to be willing to. This is the fun thing about marketing for me is, like, every company, every opportunity is like, you're the chef and you're going to get diff. You're going to have a different budget and a different set of ingredients and different people that are available. Like, shoot, this company has no budget and we have no brand. Well, I'm not going to be able to hire anybody that's going to want to come work with me to do it. So what do I have to do? And to me, that's like, that's the fun challenge. And so I try to have no convictions. Like, the wiser I get now, I would like to have no convictions, but I know how to solve the problem. And I'm going to. I'm going to look at it and I'm going to make a bet and.

We'Re going to go as a build maybe to that. Cause I agree, Dave. What I found is like convictions or maybe said another way, like your playbook as a marketer, it doesn't always translate from job to job. And so I came in there gainsight talk about category creation, all that sort of stuff, feeling real proud of myself coming into front a place that was very much a product driven business that didn't have any brand IP really, but a ton of product ip, product led motions like completely different place. And they're like, welcome, go create that category that you're so passionate about.

This is your thing, do it.

And I'm like, page one, here we go. And that was just fundamentally didn't work. Like it was not a category creation play. Trying to force feed it through like the play bigger kind of excitement at the board level and all that. And it just wasn't the right kind of strategy for that business. And so I think we have to as marketers almost like reinvent ourselves every time. The chef visual is a really good one. Like coming into a new role, what opportunities do, like, what assets do we have at our disposal, what's going to work for this business? And having enough intellectual honesty and humility to say what worked at that previous company may not work at this one. So anyway, take it from me, there are failures to be had when conviction is stuck with versus kind of coming in fresh.

I have a similar example too. Like at, at Drift we grew so much from like employee advocates and like the whole company was the marketing team. And I tried to use a similar approach when I went to Privy and like get up Drift was a very like sales oriented like rah rah, hyper growth culture. And I went to Privy, which is like a completely different culture. And I tried to bring some of that like energy. Like everybody, we're here. And just like, you know, I'd be given an internal presentation, it just would fall flat. And it's like we actually don't like sales that much. And so I was like, great, okay, so I gotta change, like gotta change my approach. Like you get. And that's, that's just one example of like, yeah, different company. There's just so many different variables.

Yeah, yeah. I think when I listen to you both, I agree. But what I think I'm hearing is. And you know, Philip, correct me if you think I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing is basically know your market, right? I mean know who you are marketing to, know what they're looking for. Kind of what I was saying in the beginning with the issues that we had in the marketplace, example, like what do they want, what are they doing, what's important to them? If you're something like front, is it more like a transactional sale? Okay, who's buying it? What do they care about versus if you're an enterprise sale, right. You've got a committee who makes a decision. You've got long sales cycles. So that's, I think, part of the reason why you can't take one playbook to another because your buyer might be different. Right. If you're lucky enough to be a marketer where you've got a lot of similarities with your buyer or your user as you go from market to market or company to company, then I think you probably will have a better chance at using some of the same playbooks, maybe tweaking them. But when you're going from completely different markets or completely different a market that's established. Like, for example, I worked for a CRM company, right. CRM is, I don't know, what, 50 years old now. So it's a different playbook than what I'm doing now at Excel Data, which is data observability, which is a whole new category. Right. So I think that's kind of what I'm kind of thinking from what you guys are saying. But, you know, I don't know if you agree with that or not.

Absolutely. Yeah. And that can paint a career roadmap for you. I mean, you might find that, hey, I just feel really comfortable selling to marketers because I understand that market, or less of a technical kind of sale, more of a value based selling motion, whatever. And so whether that's. That means kind of figuring out your strengths and sticking to em kind of a thing, or being up for something new and a new challenge, but going in eyes wide open, that I have to think about this completely differently.

I'm so sad to say that we're at time. I never want this to end. This has been so helpful for me as an early marketer in my career. And I'm sure everyone else who's joined us today is just taking furious notes. Thank you guys for sharing your wisdom. It's really special.

Thanks for having us. It was fun.

Yeah, Appreciate it.

Thanks. Anthony, good to see you. Loretta, nice to meet you. Chantal, always a pleasure. See ya.

Bye. Bye.

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