Live Q&A from December 2021

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Hey, what's up? This is Dave Gerhart and you're listening to DGMG Radio. Okay, obviously I'm not George. George helps me out and he set up this webinar. I'm Dave, but people are here. So if you're listening at home on DGMG Radio, which is my new podcast, which I just got a new logo for and I'll share that. I'm going to upload that later. But, um, I wanted to start a new podcast that was like, I love talking to people, but I also sometimes get burnt out on Zoom. Anybody in chat that hosts a podcast feel that it's just like to do a zoom call with somebody and call up and you gotta go through that whole motion. Sometimes I just like to talk about things one off things by myself. And so I've been recording a lot of those like rants and this type of stuff is usually fun. So I want to get into your. Any question, this could be. You want, you want feedback on something, you're stuck on a problem, you have a question, just obviously know that this will be recorded and other people will hear it. So I wouldn't talk so much shit about your boss on this call. But, but, but let's kick it off. If you can raise your hand and I will, I'll pass the mic around because it's always better if I can, if I can actually hear, like talk to you, who's going to be the first? Who's going to set us off? All right, Samantha, I'm going to tag you in. Let's go.

Hello?

Hey, what's up? How are you? You're live. Samantha, you're live on DGMG radio. How you Good. How you doing?

I'm good, I'm happy. It's Friday, it's Christmas, so we're good.

All right. What's up? What's on your mind?

So I'm struggling with a problem I've seen in DGMG all the time. I think we all struggle with it, but it has to do with attribution and how much to worry about attribution. I mean, I see your posts all the time about not everything has to be tracked. Not everything. You don't always have to collect an email for a piece of content. But I struggle with, then how do I measure impact? Right. And I know you've talked about while you feel it, right, your sales team feels it. If there's an increase in leads and there's things you've been doing, it's likely as a result of some of that and some of marketing is holistic and, you know, such big picture things. But how do you balance that? How do you balance the ability to measure your impact with not wanting to go crazy with attribution?

Nice. What stage, like, what stage company are you at? If you could just give some context of your company. That's a good question, because I think my answer is different. If you're like, oh, we're $100 million company, then like, of course attribution matters. But if, let's say if you're in the earlier stages, I would give you a different answer. So just give me a sense of where the company's at.

Yeah, so we are, we've been in business for over 30 years, but we're a small company. We're a small business. We're in like the HR outsourcing space. To give you an idea and so we don't have a large marketing budget. We really rely heavily on referrals and always have and have been very successful there. But we really tried to push the envelope in the last, I guess, year on of the more traditional marketing strategies, I guess. And we've kind of gone back and forth with attribution and with worrying about the impact that some things are having and other things, just knowing that, hey, marketing is happening and it's benefiting the company. So that's kind of where we're at.

So it sounds like. Because there's different reasons for attribution. Right. So like, one reason for wanting attribution on your marketing is to know what's working so you can go do more of that. Like, I got a budget. My job is to generate revenue. I don't know where to spend it because, like, some of marketing is just like betting or gambling or portfolio investing. Right. It seems like in your case, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're asking because you're trying to articulate the value of marketing to the business.

Well, some of it has to do with. Yeah. So the idea is kind of similar to what you were saying though too. In order to get more budget, I need to prove what's working. Right. And where we should put more money. We've always run, you know, super lean and have been successful thus far. But if we're going to invest, where should we invest? And I have a hard time kind of faking a claim anywhere when we don't have a ton of historical data behind what works.

Got it. I mean, look, I think this is ultimately a data question because. And if you don't have that data historically, then you need that data to make your point. Right? You're going to need that. And so if you don't have historical data, you don't have 30 years worth of data, then what's stopping you from starting now or going into Q1 saying, you know what, in Q1, my biggest focus, yeah, I got all this, other things I got to do. But in Q1, my biggest focus is going to be to start to create a story around attribution and revenue and what's working and what's not.

How long do you think that if we're in a situation like this where we just kind of started to dip our toe in that data because we have probably the last six to eight months. I mean, how long do we need before we start to feel, I guess, some sort of confidence around the data?

You'll have to be able to Answer that. Because I would say that like the ultimately the question is like, what are we doing that's driving customers? That's what you're trying to answer, right?

Yeah.

And so you might not have perfect data on that, but maybe after a month you can, you know, lick your finger, present something rough. Like, rough. Like this is all like, you have to kind of like, it's hard and I know what you're going through, but you have to, you have to start to like, feel your way into it before you get into the very nitty little nitty details. And so like, you know, step one could be like, we think this channel is working. And so you kind of create a hypothesis and you're going to spend a week or so and you're going to go look at, you know, customers that have clothes and, and use what data you have and start to articulate some hypothesis hypotheses. And I think you have to communicate that as like a big part of what you're focusing on. Like, it's not a behind the scenes job. It's like a very important job. If we want to grow more effectively, more efficiently, we have to understand what are we putting into this marketing machine. And you have to be able to say like, look, marketing, we want marketing to be a revenue driver at this business, period. And so in order for us to effectively drive revenue, we have to know what's working and what's not. Right?

Okay.

And we probably don't have enough time to get too deep into the business. But like, you know, so much as like, it's usually the 80, 20 rule where it's like, if you go figure out where like your last 20 customers came from, that's going to tell you 80% of the information that you need.

Right.

It's very rarely like somebody goes and they're like, well, one Customer came from AdWords, one customer, and I'm being dramatic, but one customer came from Facebook, one customer came from AdWords, one came from content, one came from this. And we don't know, it's usually you're starting to pattern match. And it's like I did this early days of drift, I would go through and I would look at our last 50 customers in Salesforce and literally go line by line and see the full record. So forget what like HubSpot or the CRM or what whatever says about what source they came in, I'm actually going through and I did that exercise to create a presentation that just, hey, this is not perfect data, but here's a rough map of Our buyer's journey, how people find us, how they buy, and what I think we should go do more of. And I'm using that as, like, the permission and then go do more of it. And then, like, each month, each quarter, you're presenting, hopefully, a clearer picture as you keep going down that path.

Perfect.

Sounds like we're on the right track.

That's.

We're starting to map that buyer's journey a lot more clearly than we have because we have the tools and data in place now to do it. So it sounds like we're on the right track. We just need to keep kind of pushing.

You need to keep pushing and also don't do what a lot of people do, which is like, wait until the data is perfect to present. Like, you're never gonna. It's never gonna be perfect. Right. The biggest, most successful companies in the world do not have perfect attribution.

Right.

And so at some point, you're just gonna have to. I would be articulating right now, like, hey, show people, like the last 10 customers that close and show them where they came from.

Right. That makes sense. Perfect. That's so simple when you say it that way.

It's a gift and a curse.

Thank you so much.

All right. Yeah, good to talk to you. Okay, Nick, I'm going to tag you in next. What's up, Nick? Hey, Dave, can you hear me? Yes, sir.

Hey, longtime listener, first time caller.

Oh, thanks for. You know, this is a. This is a big deal. And if you're listening at home right now, pick up your phone, 1-800-DGMG radio. Call us. Okay.

My question comes down to listen to what you said. So I'm the only marketer at a pre series A startup. I have a CEO that believes in marketing, so I'm lucky from that perspective. But can you give some tips? And maybe this is just more emotional discussion of, like you said. Right. So if you lead with marketing, it's.

Not an immediate response.

You have to trust the rough data. But there are days where you feel like everything's really clicking, and then there are days and times where you feel like, what are we even doing here? Right. Can you recommend anything to kind of get through the lows, like, any way to steady and stay, like, whether it be the marketing strategies you're doing or not feeling like you have time to do even things that are not of the utmost importance and prioritizing that, how do you stay steady when you know it's a bit of a roller coaster at that scale?

Great question. I've been there. Yeah, 100%. I have had CEOs send me day by day, like website traffic reports and be like, why is traffic not growing? And there's. If anybody knows anything about marketing, there's very few things you can do in one day that will just shoot up website traffic 20% month over month. It's a grind. I think part one is accepting that this is a hard job. It's a grind. I mean, it's not hard relative to being like a nurse or something, but it's stressful. You get pressure put on you. There's a company raises money and they got to show investors that they're going to grow triple, triple, double, double every year. And hey, guess what, marketing friend, you're going to go do that. So one thing that I did, this is more personal. I'll give you some personal advice and then I'll talk more about the company. But I think one thing that I did for my own sanity was I've always kept either a Google Doc or Evernote or something where I keep screenshots of good things that happened and things that I'm proud of. And this seems really corny, but it makes a big impact because what ends up happening is. It was so cool. Like, after four years of drift, I literally started at Evernote file, my first, my first day there. And like we got an article in like the Boston Globe and I. So I put that link in my Evernote file and that was like, October 2015 win. And it was a bullet. And it was that. And like over the course of months I get to look back and it could be like a screenshot that the VP of sales said it could be one customer that responded to an email, like to capture those. Because it's a lot of times the data doesn't tell the whole story. To make sure you have something like that for yourself where you can like, look back on that. Um, I would say the other thing is, and this is, I don't want this to be a cop out answer, but clear goals, because a lot of times when you're feeling like you're not making progress towards it, like, it's okay, it's okay to feel like you're not making progress as long as you know where you're going. Okay. And so my, my question back to you is like, do you. Is it because you don't have clear goals, or do you have clear goals and you're just not making progress on them as fast as you want?

I think that's a good question. I believe that we have clear high level goals in terms of revenue acquisition channels. And then when we get to the mid and lower levels, there's a lot of way to execute on them. That's where it gets like, like you.

Make a decision of here's how we're.

Going to do this. Whether it be in creation or distribution, wherever that is. And then whether I'm, you know, whatever, I'm spending time creating content and I'm like, I need to be spending more time distributing content. And then I'm distributing content like no.

Right. So it's like whatever you do, you're.

Always, you're always like looking to be.

Like, no, no, no, we got to.

Be doing more a B testing.

Right. Looking back, I was actually thinking about this this week. Cause I was going to like try to write something about like what, what I learned, like two time marketing leader and like all the mistakes that I made. Cause it's easy. Like on LinkedIn you only write about like cool things that you did. But I would say one of them would be. And I always hated this. I always hated when like the CEO or other people would try to like over process or over goal me. But now I see why you're never gonna do, you're never going to be able to do everything. You can make the case right now. Series A, you're like, you should be doing podcasts, you should be doing videos, you should be doing ads, you should be doing webinars. Dec. There's an infinite list. There's an infinite list. It's never going to end. But when you have two, I would say probably three to four max, very clear objectives for marketing with a timeframe on it, it makes it much easier to prioritize what really matters. And so if you're like, look. And I think at series A, you can break this down quarterly. There's no reason you need a year annual. You need an annual plan for the CFO and for hiring and forecasting. But like from a marketing like day to day blocking and tackling, like what are the three big rocks? What are the three big things that you need to focus on in marketing this quarter? And as a result, what are you saying no to? And you need to just. You don't have to have a list of all the things you're saying no to, but you have to be ruthless about. Nope. One of my teams at Drift, for example, they got one person in particular got really good at managing back against me because as a marketing leader I'd be like, let's set goals here. Are the three clear things we're focusing on this quarter. And then I'm always the crazy one that's asking for more. Hey, let's do this, let's do this. And they would start managing me, they'd be like, hey, does this fit into one of these three buckets that we've defined that we're working on? And I'd be like, nope, okay, great, let's say no to it. I think you need to give yourself some type of framework to help prioritize what you should be working on. I think that starts with goal setting and then it starts with having like a plan for what is marketing doing this month, this quarter, and also accepting the fact that you're going to have to say no to a lot of things that you're going to be doing. And it's hard because people inside the company like, hey, are we ab testing this page? And you're like, we're not. And they're like, well, we should be. And you're like, okay, hey, are we presenting at this conference? Like, there's never, there's an infinite list of things people are going to ask you and you have to be like, no, that's a great idea. I'm sure it might be valuable. But we're actually. Here are the three priorities that we're focused on. And you have to like, constantly, even in marketing, internal team meetings or executive level meetings, I would always be reminding people, okay, it's Q1, 2020. As a reminder, here are our three goals for this quarter and here's how we're making progress towards the goals. And you're using that as a way to guide the things that you're going to go and spend time on.

That's really helpful, especially the idea of things you're consciously saying no to. And I mean, you pointed out the thing that I have a hard time saying no to of not like literally testing is going to take the time to do anything and multiply it out. And so whatever that is, I think that's where you're at.

You're at the early stages right now. You are not going to optimize and, and growth hack and tiny little test your way to where you need to go. It's usually because of like two or three bigger swings that make an impact. It's not some like, you know, like some tiny little percentage change in a funnel. And I think you, you have to be thinking like big bets and it's easy to get lost in the weeds of optimization. Awesome. Thank you.

Hey, thanks for the answer?

Yeah. And come for this therapy anytime. Okay, let's go to Rami. All right, Nick, we'll see you. Hey. Hey, Rami. What's up?

Thanks for doing this and congrats on moving full time. We're all very excited.

Oh, thank you. That's kind of you.

That's kind of. So I run a small boutique software firm. We're proloc led. Basically we sell an AI add in to PowerPoint. So it's basically the big MBB consulting firms and small boutiques. So we have an average size waiting list. We haven't raised any money. We're profitable next month. We're all engineers. It's like a recommendation system for slides, but we also convert like a handwritten sketch to a PowerPoint presentation, fully formatted. So we sell to the big folks, like the big consulting firms. And these usually take like a year to close. But also at the same time, these firms have like smaller teams and smaller individuals who would also like to use the product. The problem there is that they have to go through these IT cycles and make sure they can download and it's okay. And I feel that that might kind of, you know, decrease the excitement levels for someone to install such a thing on their machine because it's on premise. So I was wondering if through messaging that could be solvable. Can you make someone feel safe through messaging by downloading something off the Internet, installing on their corporate machine?

100%. I think you can. I think it starts with. I think you can. Yes, but I think it starts with, in order to do that, you have to have a deep understanding of that person and what the objections might be in blocking and what are the blockers for them from doing that. And this could be done like there's multiple ways that you could execute on the messaging of this. Right. It could be email landing page, whatever it is. But I think like step one would be like get on a whiteboard or open up a Google Doc and literally list out all of the objections.

Okay. Because, you know, it takes like five steps for them to install it if it's not through id, basically.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, here's the harder part of this. Can you solve it with messaging? Yes. The way that I would do it would be answer all the objections and put them out front. I know what you're thinking. This, this boom. And obviously you can't just list them out. You have to then answer them and back them up. And so you might need more proof or more security certificate or whatever. How do you get over those objections. That's one separate thing. But a lot of times it is.

A product piece too.

Right. If the strategy is we're going to get this thing on a bunch of people's work computers, but they won't get it on their work computer, then that's actually the problem that you have to go solve. And that can't always be solved through messaging. That's like a product delivery, like packaging issue.

Yeah. Because some people, you know, just do it. Others are very concerned. So yeah, there's no clear answer there, I guess.

And I'm. But like, but the nice part about marketing and messaging is that you can basically test all this before you have to make a wholesale change on the product or the delivery. Right.

How would you test that?

Yeah, how would I test it? Okay, what's the drop off point?

So I don't have a clear answer today for that, but I would say it's probably you download, you press run anyway, and then another step, you know, pops up and you stop there basically.

At that step. You have to then like get inside of. You have to go tell them everything that you tell them everything. Lay all that out.

Okay.

In advance. Have you ever seen the movie eight Mile?

No. Eight Mile or eight.

Eight.

No, it's okay.

I'm not going to explain it.

Oh, it's the Eminem movie, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And anybody who's listening at home and has seen it will, will giggle. But it's, it's. I'll tell you, Eminem' battling this guy Papa Doc. And he knows that Papa Doc is just going to say all these like horrific things about him and just destroy him in this rap battle. And so what does Eminem do? He says all those things first and then Papa Doc has nothing to say. And Dan Kennedy had a line like this is about. It's called like draining the objections. And so you want to. What I would do is on that page, I would have all the objections. Well, but first, before you even put them on the page, I'm going in, I'm finding the four or five objections and I'm writing them out and I'm going to come up with just bulletproof answers to each one of them. And you have to think about like, what makes a bulletproof answer. Right. It's not enough for you to just say that you do X, Y and Z. You're going to need proof. Yeah.

Like 10,000 people downloaded this without asking and they didn't get fired.

10,000 people name like logos, you know, all the social Proof then you met. But you mentioned there are people who have done this. Right? Could you get quotes or testimonials from them? Can you profile the successful people who have done it and have seen the other side and, or could you reach out to customers or whoever that have done it and they're like, oh yeah, it's totally secure, whatever. Right. Can you, can you use them, can you use people who made it to the other side to tell them that it's not so bad? And I would first take a stab at trying to handle all those things up front and like make the marketing about like acknowledging that that's where most people get, you know, get left off.

I see.

And you know, there's many ways to execute on that, but I would say you can't do it without the copy and without that messaging. And so first would be draining all those objections. And I've done something similar to this in the past where we asked all of the. We found the biggest reasons for Churn and we actually published content that was like, here are the top five reasons why people cancel their Drift account. Because we publish that publicly, we start to get into some of the conversations that are in that person's head before they have a chance. And then you can address all those things because maybe you can address all those things upfront and then they're going to reach out and ask a specific question before they decide to not install it and they're going to ask you.

And that probably also increases your retention rate because you drop people who would cancel anyway before they even sign up.

Right? And so, so, right. So another, another.

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Could be on the front end, which is, could be the intent. You know, the people that are dropping off, obviously they're the, the intent isn't as high. It doesn't mean you're not going to be able to capture them. But like there's going to be some people. Some of that could be based on the qualification and the, whatever the criteria is on the, on the way. People are coming in. By the way, is your, is the number really 10,000 or are you making that up?

No, it's a bit less than that.

But is it thousands?

It's probably a thousand, yeah.

Okay, so you got something to work with. Like it's not like join six other people who have installed this app. Like I would focus on building up a compelling story and the one line answer as we wrap this part up is just like answer the objections up front and go and interview the heck out of those a Thousand people that did and talk about how they got over that objection or why it was worth it or you know, how secure it is or whatever you can do. You got a thousand. If you have a thousand people that have already installed it, why can't you get. As long as the market is big enough, right. You gotta have. There's gotta be another 5,000 that can go do it.

Yeah, yeah, got it.

Answered the objections up front.

Sounds good. Thanks.

Hi, Rami. See you. Go watch 8 Mile this weekend. Actually, there's better movies you could watch.

Actually, I've watched it actually.

Go to YouTube. You can spend three minutes on it.

Okay, thanks.

Yeah. What's up? Leslie?

Hey, how are you?

I'm doing good. Good.

Thanks for doing this. And congratulations on going full time with dgmg. That's awesome. Very excited for you.

Thank you.

So I am a team of one marketing director at a technology consulting company. So we do B2B Rev Ops consulting with mainly B2B SaaS customers. And I'm lucky in that my CEO does very much get and support marketing. But it's a very competitive market out there right now for talent. And a big pain point I think for a lot of businesses is retention of employees. And I'm interested to know from your perspective, what are the most important things that a marketer can do on that internal marketing front or even on the recruitment front to help build and retain a successful team across all areas of the business?

Good question. Like, so what can the marketing team do to retain their best people?

Yeah, like what kind of messaging we're doing, the employee newsletters and standard kind of internal marketing. 101, I guess. But are there any tactics or anything that you have found helpful in your previous positions that really help the employees to feel valued and that they're part of the team? And what are the efforts that marketing can make to help with that?

Got it. Okay. Yeah. I mean there's probably like a couple different answers. I think beyond like any internal marketing initiatives, people need to feel like they're part of something like bigger than themselves and they have to have some type of like some purpose or why for being there. And that could be. There's a lot of, you know, it's a high growth company and there's a lot of equity and you could get rich one day or it could be, you know, there's some, you know, deep emotional cause that the company is part of. And I think the hard part is like marketing can't do that alone. I do think that marketing today plays A role in the overall brand of the company. And a big piece of the brand of the company is the employment brand. Like, who is the company to potential candidates? I think that comes from a company story that is crafted well. It can't just be a story. It has to be baked into the DNA of the company. Like, the company needs some values beyond separate the company's product. But what are the company principles and company values and how do those things actually map to why people want to work there?

Yeah, I think the challenge is that a lot of companies are going to say the same thing. They value time, freedom and flexibility. And especially with remote working, you lose a lot of your talent base because now they can go work anywhere. And we're in Canada, so we have people coming with Silicon Valley offers, and that is tempting to our employee base.

I know. This is the hard part though, right? This is the hard part. Everybody does say the same thing. The hard part is actually coming up with something different. That's the rub. The rub is not like, do better marketing messaging. It's like, I would like, like pause and like, let's revisit, like, who are we? What is our story?

Yeah, okay.

Or, you know, like, it has to be done at like the DNA level.

Yeah.

And it's like, look, this story's not working anymore. Here's why. Markets got more competitive, blah, blah, blah. This, salaries. So, so, so who are we? And you know, you might not get there overnight, but like, you have to do the exercise of articulating who you are and what you want to do, and then like, building those things into the DNA of your company. It's like just like a business, you know, a key part of growing. You need people in order to run a business. And so it's like a hook, finding the hook in marketing. Like, what's the hook going to be to people? You can only dress it up so much, especially today where, like, salaries are higher, there's more remote work than ever, you know, employees have the more, more flexibility. There's all these tech companies that can offer, you know, these insane salaries that you can't compete with. And so how can you use those ingredients to craft your story?

Yeah. And would you say, like, as a team of one. Sorry if I'm taking up too much time that, like, I'm responsible for all of the marketing efforts? So is there like a percentage of time or something you recommend to be dedicated to that, like, recrafting of that story? Or do you think that's like the number one thing before anything else?

I mean, it's tough to say because I can't answer that without knowing, like, what the goals of marketing are. And so it's like, if marketing goals are to hit some type of lead gen or pipeline goal and that's what the CEO expects of marketing, then it would be weird if all of a sudden you were going spending 50% of your time. But within the company, it's been implied that marketing owns this. Then it's like, yeah, can you be proactive and present a plan? Actually, before I talk over it, which one of those are you in?

I am responsible for a number for pipeline generation. But now with the. With the way that our company is growing, we certainly want to be hiring more. We have a lot of job ads out there in the market, so this also is a major focus.

Got it.

And I'm the most logical person.

Yeah, yeah. And it's impacting, like, you're feeling this directly, right? It's impacting you and your ability to build a team.

Team, for sure. Yeah.

Okay. Who do you report to?

The CEO.

I think it's going to be one of those things where, like, it's like, surprise, you called this problem out, now you own it. Which is great because it sounds like you want to do that, right? But I think if it were me, I would present it as, hey, boss, in our next one on one. Like, as, you know, like, I'm trying to build a team. We're trying to grow because we got these goals. In order to hit those goals, we need to build a team. I'm having no luck in hiring, and here's why. Boom, boom, boom. But most people would just say, I suck at hiring. I got. Or I'm, I'm getting unlucky with hiring. What should I do? You already know. You're like, we need to build a better brand, a better employment brand. And so I think you presented as, here's this problem, here's how it's impacting us, here's some ideas, and idea number one could be like a half day off site with you, the CEO, and maybe one or two of the other execs to try to like, mold this story and make it a conversation, you know, or the CEO says, oh, whatever, get back to your job, Leslie. And that's like a. Holy shit. That's a different conversation, right?

Yeah.

All right, awesome. Thank you so much. Appreciate your insight on that.

All right, cool. See? All right, I'm gonna go to Rami, and then I'm gonna go to Jody, and then we'll go to Sheena, Go ahead, Rami.

Okay, so me again.

Yeah, come on. You got lucky. You had to go again. Then everybody came.

So is this is going to be posted online somewhere or is it just within the group?

No, no, it's gonna be. This is gonna be on my podcast.

Okay. Okay. Just to know how to ask the.

Question, don't put your Social Security number out.

So we have a big wait list of users who signed up for a specific product. And this product is still in development and being tested. But what we've done is we built another product that is being used every single day by 90% of people who actually download it, basically. So we're going to start with that first. So the next quarter is going to be changing expectations for the wait list to start using the second product first. And I was wondering if there's any good way of doing that or efficient way of kind of transitioning. It's not that we're taking the first one away. It's just going to take more time to put it out there.

Sorry. So people signed up for a wait list for one thing, and now that thing is changing.

This thing has been actually surpassed by another that is going to be deployed quicker. So let's take a Drift example. So Drift builds chatbots, Right. Let's say that Drift came up with a new tool that optimizes social media marketing in some other way. And this tool got a lot of traction. So we decided, okay, we're going to deploy this first. First. But the chatbot is still going.

Yep, got it. And. But are you asking about just like, changing the company's. How to change the company's narrative to do that, or you're saying, like, there's people on the wait list? I thought you said wait list.

Yeah, yeah, there are people on the waitlist who are waiting specifically for your chatbot.

Got it. Oh, isn't this a great job? And this is like, similar to the answer I gave you before was like, I would just be up front because you're not going to not do it. Right. You're not going to. You're doing it. The company's doing it. It's happening.

Yeah.

And so let me ask you another question. Are you still doing the like, will you Chatbot? Because. So you're still building that.

Yes. Yes.

Okay. And is there a connection that you can make between the two? There is.

We can combine them into one product.

Down the line, I would just send an update to that email list and it's like, hey, like, as you know, we've been Building a lot at xyz. And, you know, we're in the startup phase and things are changing all the time. So I just wanted to give you an update on something you originally got on this list because of X, which is amazing. And we're still doing that, and here's when it's coming, or here's some update about it that we can tell you, or if we can't tell you, we'll tell you more shortly. In the meantime, we also, from our early customers, we actually learned that this thing's really valuable. And so I also want to tell you about this, which is available now. So go and check it out and nobody's going to be upset.

Okay.

Because you're not taking the thing away. They're still on the waiting list for that chatbot thing. It's just not ready yet. And you're giving them something better. I think it only doesn't work if, like, you are not giving them access to anything and you're taking away completely. But you're not. You're just saying you got to wait. We just kind of changed the order up. And it's not like you're selling two completely different product. They're still going to be related to this, this buyer. If you think that the buyer will still find value in it and you've also have this early validation, then I think you just got to message it like that.

Sounds good.

You can listen to this recording and just write out your script based on that. That's like the exact email that I would send, honestly.

Okay, thanks.

All right, Rami, see you. Okay, Jodi, go ahead. And then we'll go to Sheena.

Hello. And thank you. And I've loved listening to all your podcasts and your DGMG group, so thank you. And I'm excited about you going off on your own. That's really exciting.

That's really kind of you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Oh, thanks.

So I have some more of a question for you. So I've been in a director of marketing in a company now for about, I guess, nine months, close to a year. And we have a small team. I mean, we're about 130 people. It is a SaaS B2B be very niche group. One of the things that I've noticed that I feel like I'm always trying to play catch up. And part of that is we do not have any structure for meeting as a leadership team, which would include sales, product, probably customer success, and marketing. I'm just curious how you've approached that and the Communication. I feel like marketing is always like, like our sales and product is like, hey, Jodi, we need this, or hey, can you do this? But it's always a catch up thing. And I'm just curious on how you've approached that previously in your previous jobs.

They don't do that. They're like, yeah, we love you so much. Yeah, no, of course. I've always driven that meeting. Like, I've been in that scenario with you before and I think if you feel like you need to have that meeting, I think you have, you should, you should, you can step up and try to set it up. Okay.

And that's where I was curious if marketing should. And I'm totally comfortable doing that. And again, I have a CEO who's very comfortable with marketing and likes marketing. So curious how you would look.

I don't think you, I don't think you have to come in and say, we run this meeting. You just happen to be the one who saw the opportunity and you're facilitating it. Right. Like, the only way that meeting is going to actually work is if it's a cross functional meeting. And so I think like, you can be the one to set it up and talk about why you think it's important, but I think you need to, like, everyone should have an equal. That meeting is only going to be successful if everyone is committed and they bring their own things. And so the format is like, I've done one where like every, every. It depends on how often you think you need to meet. But like, I had a meeting early on where it was like the marketing, sales, customer success and product. We met every other week and it wasn't a marketing update. It was everyone's coming and everyone's going to do a five minute update on the state of their world and like what they're doing or whatever. Because so quickly in that meeting, when it's not a whole company meeting, it's just kind of the four people who are running those departments, you realize how quickly you're in line or not in line and you realize like, oh, they could be helping us in that area or we should not do that because they're not. Like, I think it's one of the most important meetings you can have. That cross functional team leader meeting.

Yeah, definitely. I just, I found, I'm realizing lately that I had a conversation with our head of product and then I ended up having the same conversation with our sales. Our VP of sales.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Every time. That's how it happened. I hate meetings. Trust Me. But the only reason I set that up is because it's like I just basically had four one on ones to talk about about the four different things where if we were all just in the same room together, like, okay, well, we. Because it's so often. The marketing is so often alone in these things. It's like you need sales, you need product, you need customer success, or vice versa. Like. And so what prompted this was we did this specifically about, I think it was like at the time at Drift, we were doing one product, one new product launch a month. And so we used that as like the product launch. Then sales has to be trained. Customer success has to be trained. Marketing and product have to have a story and packaging together. And so it was like that type of thing that forced us to get on the same page. Page. And then we just tried to keep the rhythm going where like everybody shares their updates. And ideally then it makes things easier when you start to do annual planning and quarterly planning together because you've all been working together on the same priorities. I think it's one of the most important things you can do.

Thank you.

So good idea. Go make it happen.

I definitely will. I appreciate you. Thank you.

All right. Yeah. Good luck. Good luck. All right, let's go to Sheena.

Hey, Dave, Congratulations on your new venture and thank you for doing this. One day I'll get there, but I love my new company. So I am two weeks into a growth role. Two and a half weeks. To give you some context, the company is about 100 people raise their series B. The marketing team has probably grown, I'd say 70% since July. So we have product marketer, we have content marketer. We have a head of demand gen who actually started the same day. I and I come from a company with three marketers. But they were like a marketing machine. So like it was. It's a pretty high bar. My question is if you were new to a company or you know, new to a position, I guess is a better way to say it. How do you decide where you can make the most impact quickly? And let's just say like looking at analytics, let's say social needs work, website views need work. Just not sure that that's the case. But throwing out there that you can look at the analytics and see that some things are low, how do you decide which to approach first and remind.

Me of your role? Like, are you, are you in charge of all of marketing or a piece of it?

No. So just growth marketing. So I am one of eight on the team. We Have a head of demand gen, we have somebody in field marketing, we have someone in product content and we are hiring partnerships. So it's probably the most undefined role on the team as well.

Well, but you're going to touch everything. But like what's a rough, like do you have a rough sense of like a goal? Like a North star? Like what should you be or growth be doing?

I'd say my north star is I fall into the demand gen team. So I'd say like SQLs, MQLs like getting the, getting the revenue in pipeline and helping sales get the clients that are good clients.

Got it. Okay, that makes sense. That's good content context. One thing that I've done in the past that I really liked and I think this is really meaningful is every person creates a one. Basically most companies do 30, 60, 90 day plans for new hires. Like hey, here's what you're going to do but that's impossible. How can you know what you're going to do in 60 days from today? You just started two weeks and it's crazy, especially at a startup. And so early days at Drift we switched it to a 1-7-30 day plan because. And that seems crazy like first week week. But I've just seen that so often when new hires come in, they spend the first month and this is not bad advice. It is important. But they're like, everybody's like oh, what are you going to do in your first month? I got to talk to customers and I got to listen a lot and go to lots of meetings. And I agree with that. That is important. You have to listen, you have to get inside of the company. But ultimately it's a momentum game and they should feel like they hired Sheena and Sheena came in and like oh my gosh, in the first week she already made an impact. And so I would stack rank. I would make that list of all the things that you see and just kind of stack rank them based on what can you realistically do? How many other people do you need? And I would have a bias for can you get a win under your belt in the first one or two weeks. Low hanging fruit. It could be like you notice a small optimization on the website that you want to make and so you're looking for your first two weeks is about can you try to put some points on the board in some way that obviously can't be a huge thing. You're not going to overhaul the website and get 15 teams involved. But there's probably some things that you've seen, right? Like, Sheena, like, have you seen, even in your first two weeks, have you seen things that could be improved?

Yes. And I actually got my first win today. We got a demo lead in from a, from a campaign that I set up. I'm with you. Now that that's done and I feel like we have. I have made some sort of impact. It's just kind of next step. It's what, Like, I'm all over the place with ideas and, you know, looking at analytics and like you said, my first thought was to talk to customers and listen to sales calls. But how to keep that momentum going and which direction to take?

I think you need to come up with a plan. That's what you need. I think you need a plan to help organize all these things because it's okay to be like ideating and like searching for ideas, but it needs, like, why are you doing that? And so like, I think you need to come up with like the. What, you know, you need two or three kind of like measurable goals that you're trying to make an impact on. Let's say in like in Q1.

Okay.

Right now you're just like, you can do anything. Anything.

Yes. Which is great and horrible at the same time.

Right. Versus like, if you know that like, hey, marketing's number one priority. Like, I'll just work all the way backwards. Like, marketing's number one priority is to hit X in pipeline goal this quarter or revenue or sale, whatever, in this quarter. Okay, great. How does marketing impact that directly? Well, these are the three channels and you'll know that from the team. Okay, great. Well then what's a piece of that in growth that I can impact impact and work on now? And then from there you can rank your list of initiatives. Right. Because some of them are going to take more work. Have you ever used an idea scoring framework like ice? Ice? I'm not good at this, but there's a way you can basically list out all your ideas. Google Sean Ellis S E A N Ellis ice like Ice Cube framework. It's a great way of looking at ideas because they're not all equal one of them. An idea that could have the biggest impact might also require three months of work and you need two developers and that's great. But you can't do that right now versus there's an email nurturing change that you could make in the next week easily and that could have an impact.

Okay, that's extremely helpful. Thank you.

Does the marketing team have kind of clear goals that you can break Some that give you an umbrella to organize your activities.

Yes. So they're working on them for Q1 now. They're not done. I can kind of base it on the Q4 one, so it gives me an idea of. I'm assuming it's not going to drastically change in one quarter. So it kind of gives me an idea at least of what the demand gen team needs to focus on as well as content. And I feel like content is going to play a big part in what I am able to do. So being able to see how much that team has on their plate as well will be helpful in knowing how quickly I can get something done. But yes, there are. We call them OMGs to be more fun.

OMGs?

Yeah. Objectives and measurable.

I like that.

Okay.

They're called OMGs. And also remember, like it's your to do list, should be doing things. But also some of the deliverables for you at this stage are actually plans. It's not just tackling. So like I need to come up with. Okay. So one of my deliverables is I need to come up with a testing plan for Q1 or something like that. Right. And that can help organize some of your thinking a little bit.

Okay. I'll definitely take a look at this framework. This is super helpful and I hope it was helpful for other people who may be starting somewhere else as well.

It will be. I know it. All right, see you, Sheena. Let's go to Brendan and then I got one in Q and A that I'm going to answer and then we can, we can wrap up. Hey, Dave. Hey, Brendan, what's up?

Hey, just a quick question. So you know, we have a lot of like big like themes that are kind of going around a business today.

Right.

Like supply chain issues, labor shortages, climate change, Covid, all those types of things. How have you felt is the best way for a company to add to the conversation without them just saying we're in unprecedented times?

I mean, I think it has to be like, are you just talking about what are you trying to address? Yeah.

So my previous company and clients that I work with have solutions that can play into climate change and labor charges. So how do they talk about that messaging without it being. Feeling like there's a me too kind of of ambulance? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I think a lot of it is actually in the delivery.

Sure.

Okay.

Like if you're not just like pumping out some like, you know, it's like every company, you know, started updating their, you know, did like the rainbow logos to show Their support for like lgbtq. Right. The last couple of years. But like people know that's just like dressing. But like where that actually comes down is to like the impact. And the way you do that is by actually showing like that has to be real. And so I wouldn't be afraid to use just because people may use the climate change thing as a hook and it's not authentic. If it is authentic to you and you can back it up, then use it.

So bring concrete value to a messaging without just saying climate change is affecting everyone. Just to have your little piece of the pie.

Right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean you have, obviously whatever you're working on has some connection to that and how do you deliver on that?

Right, got it. Okay.

And I think the example that you use is different also. Like, you know, the amount of emails that I got that were like, you know, as a cmo, you know, during these unprecedented times, that's just dressing. That's just like, like that's conversation. That's somebody trying to start a conversation. If you actually have substance, then it's different. Yeah.

So if you don't have substance, probably just don't say anything then.

Right? Yeah. But the problem is most of the people that don't have substance are the ones that are going to use the in these unprecedented times type of stuff.

Totally, totally. Yeah, that was helpful. Thanks, Dave.

Yeah, so don't be afraid to use it because other people have used it in the wrong way. All right. I'm going to go to this question from Anthony in the Q and A. But there's definitely time for one more hand raiser if anybody wants to do it. I'll hit that one. Anthony said this is a question chat. Can you share some of the best ways to get clients and sales team to participate in ugc which is user generated content. Is trying to create UGC the wrong way to go? Does it only work if it's organic? Can I. Should I test different discounts? So Anthony, is a great question. My take on it is step one has to be, I think you always find that more people are willing to give you content than you think. And so step one would be like, I think it's like high pot. Like we need to get more user generated content. That's like a thing that you're working on. Okay, great. What are all the ways that we can do that? So number one would be like, have we even sent an email to our best customers and asked them if they would share a picture of their closet? Or I can't Remember what you're doing right now, but, like, you know, related to that. Right. Would they do it? Because I've always been surprised when I email my list. Like if I emailed the DGMG list right now after this, and I just said, like, hey, if you've gotten any value out of anything I've ever done, would you mind just tweeting something nice on social media? But I'm always surprised at how many people do that. And as I think, I think first step would be ask. If you haven't asked, you gotta ask. Second thing would be ask, ask, and then incentivize. And so that could be, send us this and we'll give you a credit, a discount. We'll, and there's different levels of the discount. We'll, we'll praise you on social media. You know, I'll, like, I'll just personally say, hey, or we'll send you a $50 gift card. There's lots of different levels and tiers of that, but I think it's getting it. Either you have to ask for it and then you can dig into the reason someone may or may not give it to you if you've asked for it. All the, all those different reasons. Well, why should I? Why? If Cotopaxi emailed me right now and was like, take a picture with your Cotopaxi hoodie on, I'd be like, why would I do that? But if they were like, and be entered to win in some contest to do whatever, I'm more likely to do it. I've also found social media is an amazing way to get people to ask that without having to go through like some approval process and pr. Asking people to take pictures and share them online is a very underrated thing. It sounds so dumb even saying it, but I'm always amazed at how many people will take pictures. Like, when I do my book, founder, brand, I'm going to ask people, hey, take a picture with the book and tweet at me. And I'll, I'll say, hey, it can be as simple as that and people will do some of that. Or if they don't, I'll have to be like, and I'll give you a free whatever. You got to come up with some type of incentive. This was great. I would like to do more of this just because it's fun to not have to think about what should I talk about in this podcast, but just actually be able to help people. So shout out to everybody that came a bunch of good questions today and this will be an episode on my new podcast, DGMG Race Radio. Other than that, enjoy the rest of your day, week, weekend, doing whatever you're doing and I'll have all my future stuff will be up@davecarehart.com including this episode of DGMG Radio. See ya. Bye everybody.

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