Is There Really a Summer Slump in B2B Marketing?, Managing Multiple Offers, How We Build a Brand

Yeah, we see a slump during the next few months. Summer is typically slow for us in marketing.

Which is good to talk about because you said, is there really a summer slump in B2B marketing? Because I actually talked to my team about this too. So what's your take on it? And then I'll give you my thoughts.

We usually don't see a slowdown too much in traffic or leads or self-service revenue. We do usually see a slowdown in enterprise contracts during the summer consistently every year.

How about when you go back to your software days with, let's say, Was Kissmetrics mature enough for you to have good data there on, was it a summer slowdown or not?

Yes, there was not a summer slowdown, but the price points were much lower and we usually, non-enterprise, so self-service, non-enterprise, we typically saw, or yeah, self-service, non-enterprise, we typically didn't see much of an impact during the summer months, but for enterprise, we typically do see more of a slowdown because a lot of people are taking vacations with kids.

Yeah, my guess, so I think we can both agree that agency side, there's almost always a slowdown when it comes to summertime. I think software side, we're actually seeing a pickup right now. We're just going into summer, but I think software side, we'll, we'll, we'll see it be more consistent, which is good. That allows us to maybe focus more on building out the software side during this summer slowdown with agencies.

Yeah, but I also think you see the software picking up for a different reason. It's new. You're not at scale yet. You're growing. It's a solution that people need. There's not a ton of good alternatives. And When you look at your base, you've grown really well, but it's, you're still starting from a smaller base. So you shouldn't see any slump or slowdown for a while.

Well, when I say that, the reason is in the last week for Carrot, which is our LinkedIn account-based marketing product, I think we closed 3 or 4 in the last week, right? Which wasn't like that before. Like all these people are coming out of nowhere. It's like, hey, we're ready, we're ready, right? And they're just like paying the thing, right? We're just, we're ready to go. On the ClickFlow side, which is our SEO software, There's a lot of good mid-market enterprises in there. So, and I wouldn't say that's a novel solution. I would say there's some more mature solutions out there, but I would say it's consistent. The lead flow is consistent on those sides. And it doesn't feel like, if anything, it feels like it's picking up there. Whereas on the agency side, you see the summer slump coming.

What's the price points?

So on the Carrot side of things, if for a pilot, it's 3 grand, 4 grand for 45 days, okay? And then it's basically 2 or 3 grand a month. And then, or 5% of ad spend, whichever is higher. That's the first one. Okay. And then on the ClickFlow side, we're just rolling that into services. So it's like, we'll give you 25,000 words for free. And then we just try to roll them into services, which is agency services.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is a good idea. During the Kissmetrics days, we usually didn't see a slowdown for things like sub $10,000, $20,000. We typically saw a slowdown in buying cycles when it was things like Under $100 grand, $200 grand, no annual, annual.

Yeah. So yeah, yeah. This is like, we're talking—

When they needed more of a sign-off.

Yeah. Yeah. $30,000, $40,000, $50,000. So you don't, you still need a little something sometimes depending on the company size, but not always.

I don't, yeah, I don't have too much data on the, for software, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 because at Kiss we were, we had contracts that were even 6 figures, but majority of them were sub-$20,000. Yeah. And I would say majority were actually sub $10,000. So I just didn't have good data points on price points like $50,000, $60,000. But I do know from $100,000 plus, because with KISS, we had a lot of lower and then some crazy high, like $100,000 plus.

Yeah. Who sold those?

We had a sales team. There was a guy named Ben Sardella who ran all the sales for us. And what we always found was summer slowdown with the higher price points, not because we weren't getting leads or traffic. It was, it just required more of a sign-off. And a lot of those people that we're trying to get sign-offs for were taking summer vacation.

Yep. Yep. By the way, I mean, because we're kind of talking about this, let's talk about how we're managing multiple offers right now, because I mentioned earlier, the ClickFlow, the offer is we'll give you 25,000 words for free production-grade content. Um, Carrot is basically, okay, we'll help you create personalized LinkedIn ABM ads and you have different offers too. And so how are we managing different offers right now? That is the prompt.

So the way we manage different offers is we have different teams for different offers, and then we have people placed within each of those teams. that work cross-organizationally. I'm probably using the wrong term, but where they work in all divisions, and their goal is to integrate and make sure people are cross-selling and doing what's best for the company and not just doing what's best for a division. We also have incentives aligned for the different divisions to focus on what's best for the organization, not what's best for their own individual unit. I'll give you a great example of this. We have Answer the Public. We collect leads from Answer the Public, right? We have it in there where if Answer the Public helps collect more leads, but it hurts their revenue, you can do cross-company charges and give them some of the marketing budget or budgets from some of the other organizations where it helps them to offset some of the hurt that Answer the Public is taking by helping some of the other organizations. And then on our end, we just look at the math formula on what is best for the overall organization. And then we do that.

Yeah, I have nothing to add there.

That's basically—

you guys do that at a higher level than we do. So we do, we do a couple of things there. But the main thing is just make— I think the main thing I want to cover from that one is just we have alignment. We don't want silos where it's like, oh, I'm just on this one, I'm just on this. Doesn't work out. No, we need you guys to understand everything across the board because that's how we're all going to do better. Because you build in more lock-in, you build in more retention.

And we've had people who are supposed to operate on a thing company-wide, even when the incentives are aligned that way, but they only care about their department. Yeah. And when we had that, those people don't last long.

Yep. Yeah. It's about how do we help the team, not how do I make more money individually or for my department? Yeah.

Because if the person does really well for the organization, the organization will figure out a way to compensate them. Yep.

All right. So I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or global organization. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more, and we'll see you on the other side. So you have one here on what are we doing to build brand or how valuable are in-person events for enterprise marketing?

Yeah, so let's talk about what are we doing to build brand. I just went to an in-person event and there was a lot of publicly traded organizations and they're all talking about if we don't get the clicks to our website as much, because things are changing. If you're doing shopping, A lot of it's coming to social commerce and in-app purchasing, TikTok Shops, Shopify, you can buy in-app now. I mean, not Shopify, Instagram, right? I don't know about Shopify, I don't know if they even have an app, but Instagram, TikTok, you know, you can just buy natively within their own applications. You have AI overviews, Google AI mode, ChatGPT. Yes, you can get clicks, but you're not getting as many clicks. And there was an interesting thing that we saw in the room. So most of the organizations that were there, Almost actually all of them. I'm pretty sure all of them. They're publicly traded or owned by a publicly traded organization, or partly owned by a publicly traded organization, and almost all of them had data and analytics divisions. And most people saw interesting consensus. Conversion rates from what, and you're talking about maybe 20, 30 companies in the room, multiple people from each company, Most organizations saw actually a higher conversion rate from ChatGPT than most sources. They're like, we don't get that much traffic, but we're getting really high conversions from the traffic we can track. And what was interesting here is, is you're probably not getting as high conversion as you think from ChatGPT. You're only able to assign the conversion to the clicks that you're getting, but how many other people are seeing the brand and learning about it? and not clicking over versus Google or some of the other platforms that are clicking over to learn. So I believe the conversion rate is actually really lower, but the total number of people that learn about the brand is much higher than they're able to track. And if you look at what you and I are doing, we are still focusing on building content heavily and unique content that is on new topics that most people aren't talking about because It increases our chances that the AI platforms are going to continually mention us. And as they mention us, we look at that as a huge way to build a brand and a way to stay relevant and drive revenue.

Yeah. And as you're saying that, by the way, so us doing this podcast, we do try to stay— we do talk a lot about marketing news. But I think about my YouTube channel, the videos I've been making recently are a lot tied to latest trends around business marketing or AI. And guess who's going to pick that up in AI mode? Well, Google owns YouTube.

Yeah.

So like, we're going to show up, right? And so it's— we're playing the long— I think if I were to answer this question directly, what are we doing to build brand? There's a lot of video that comes into play and we're really building for the long term and we're trying to compound for the long term with the understanding that the game is much different than it was 15 years ago where we could just crank out blog posts. You actually have to spend time— Noah setting this up, you coming downstairs, me driving here, right? 5 minutes away to do this, but sit in person and actually have to bring our A-game and actually have to experiment because that's authentic.

Yes.

And so it's easier to build a brand if you're being authentic. Yeah.

And I think if— and what really opened the eyes for me is when we were at the YPO Marketing Summit that you threw in Miami, we gave a talk. Noah was there. Noah tends to record all our podcasts, but at that time he couldn't record our podcast because he was recording the talks at the YPO Marketing Summit.

Yeah.

So we were in our room or your room and you pulled up some sort of camera on a stick. I don't know what it was called.

Yeah. So what, it's a DJI Osmo. And so Noah gave me his extra one and I had what?

I thought we only had one running.

No, we had 2 running.

Oh, we had 2 running?

Yeah, we had 2. Yeah.

And then I think we just had DJI mics or something like that, right?

Yeah.

And it wasn't as good quality as this 'cause we didn't have Noah doing the lighting and all that kind of stuff. We know you couldn't be at 2 places at once. So we understand. And that episode or that string of episodes, because we recorded straight for like an hour and 20 or 30 minutes.

Yeah.

We had no scripts. You and I just free flowed for literally almost an hour and a half.

Yeah.

And we had some of our best feedback and view counts on those episodes.

Yep.

And it was purely because we were just being authentic and transparent.

Yep.

And I think after that, you and I started being like, oh, let's just be more open and transparent.

Yeah.

It's not like we were trying to hide anything. It was just more so, let's just be off the cuff and real. Yeah.

Because the reality is, by the way, if you're doing interesting things, you should just talk about those things. It's easier to just talk about stories about things that you're doing already.

Yeah.

Versus trying to react to the news cycle. Yes, we talked about Elon today, but that's a bigger topic. But it's— and that's what makes you authentic too, because you're out there, you're trying things. And so that's what— and that podcast, by the way, the comments we got were, it feels like 2 friends having a conversation. And then another comment was, this is the type of content we follow you guys for. And we're like, oh, okay, fine, we should do more of that. And by the way, sometimes it's not like we need a lot of views or whatever. You just read like 1 or 2 comments and it's like, The qualitative feedback sometimes matters more than the quantitative feedback. Yeah. Yeah. So, but there's one thing I sent you and I ran a test here. This is kind of, maybe you call me crude for running this test after my mom passing, but I basically shared this poem with a lot of people. Okay. I shared it with you. Yeah.

It's not crude. It was sweet. I thought it was a beautiful poem.

So, I shared this poem with a lot of people. I shared it with like my mom's best friend the other day when I saw her and she started crying. Right. And a lot of people were crying. I cried a lot when I read this poem, right? Now, the crazy thing about this poem is that it's a note that my mom wrote to me, right? Now, here's the crazy thing. I had my mom, she wrote me this note in Chinese. It was a 3-page note. I can't read that stuff. So I went to ChatGPT, I translated it. It did a good translation in English. It was pretty good. And then it asked me a question at the end. It was like, do you wanna make this poetic? And I was like, sure. So I made it poetic. And it was levels above the original, the English translation. It was not even close. Because then I had my mom's best friend the other day, she was reading it. I was like, I need you to read the original. So I showed her the original, right? She's like, yeah, the poem crushes the original. Not to say my mom wrote anything bad.

It just took the emotional aspects and emphasized them. It was taking the true meaning from what your mom was trying to write and write it in a way of someone who's Yeah, it made it a really talented writer.

Now, my mom, what she wrote, like the essence is still there, I think to your point, right? But I'm just like, wow, this is the first time where I've seen something AI-generated make multiple humans, like a lot of humans cry. Obviously, I'm going to cry from it, but I'm just like, yeah, you know, and this is the worst it'll ever be. It's just going to get better over time. So the poem was so good that I'm having a version framed for in front of my—

That's cool.

And I'm having a version framed for my bedroom, but it's like, I think if there's one thing that I want to pass to everyone here is the one thing I have no regret on here. And this is not necessarily an Eric Siu story podcast, but I read on Reddit a long time ago, it's like, what's the biggest regret you have before your parents going? Everyone was like, not recording more content. So that DJ Osmo that we recorded in Miami, I made so much vlog content with her before she passed. And we, I basically interviewed her like a podcast, right? Got her stories and then had her write this in the stories book you can buy from Amazon called Tell Me Your Story, Mom, or Tell Me Your Story, Dad. And then that's where I got all those things, right? And so So all that to say is like a lot of people hit me up afterwards, they're like, we're going to do that. And if your parents are still around, do that too. And maybe you too can have an AI-generated poem that makes humans cry.

Yeah. And before we go, the one thing that I learned from your experience that really changed my life and it was touching is when you're going through this, you started doing things with your parents that you normally wouldn't because I've known you for a long time. You were single-track-minded and work was your priority and work came first for everything. I saw you do things like take your mom to some place in Pacific Palisades or something like that, right?

Rancho Palos Verdes, yeah. Yeah.

And spend time. I saw you do the books. I saw you go over to where they live and spend way more time and not put business first. And, you know, when you told me about the book and you can't get back time and filming, It made me realize, because if I look at my life, yes, I travel more and I don't have a choice because the economy's bad, but I would make decisions like, if you look at me in a home, I've switched homes roughly once every year and a half. And I optimize for what makes me the most money and what's best for my business.

Yeah.

Versus what's best for my family. And when you pointed some of those things out, like going through your experience, you're like, Is it worth making extra, a little bit extra more money? And like for me, not having a yard for my kids to go and run in or something like that. It starts making you think, what is the extra money really worth? Because when you pass away or you're about to pass away, are you going to remember the money you made?

Are you going to remember the house?

You're not going to take it to heaven.

Yeah.

You're not going to take any of it. So it's like, all right, you know, there's a point where it's like, it's just not worth it.

Yeah. So let me, I think there's one thing that sticks out to me here. So it's the line that comes to mind is, there is no greater poverty than being rich in things and poor in relationships. And so one of the things that my mom wrote in that book, the question was, what is the accomplishment that you're most proud of? And it says, my friends and my family. And I'm like, yeah, that's all that matters. And so I think that is one thing that she helped reinforce there. Like, what else are we working so hard for at the end of the day, right?

Yeah.

And then the final point here is like, you know, the time that we get to spend with them, it's like that is worth way more than it's worth its weight in gold. Like, what do you get more of, working for another hour or 2? And I would say that if you watch this or you listen to this podcast, we talk about creating content, we talk about software, we talk about creating business or hiring amazing people. You're looking to build all this leverage, but then like, do you really need to crank that hard? As hard as we, like, we used to crank pretty hard, right?

Yeah.

As we get a little older, maybe not as much anymore.

So. That's right. Like, I was on a plane, I watched a movie. I'm like, you know what?

You usually watch movies.

I usually work while I watch movies.

Yeah, yeah. But I actually watched the That's rare. That's rare. Yeah, yeah, a full movie.

A full movie.

Wow. I haven't done that for a while.

Yeah.

Maybe I'll do that next time.

It's like an hour or 40 minutes or something like that. I was like, oh, I watched the movie without working. It was like something called like Novocaine or something like that. I don't know.

He's nodding. I don't know what it is.

You know, Novocaine is action movie, person who doesn't feel pain and tries to, yeah, rescue a girl. I think it's called Novocaine. Yeah, uh, it was a bank teller, a bank manager or whatever, but like Yeah, I just relaxed for a minute. It was kind of nice.

Yeah, so enjoy your lives, guys. That's what it is. And take it, take it one day at a time. And, you know, it's all about friends and family. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.