From Marketing Spend to Business Strategy with Ondar Tarlow

Hi, I'm Michael Hartman.

I'm Naomi Liu. And I'm Mike Rizzo. And this is OpsCast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MoPros, the number one community for marketing operations professionals. Tune into each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you and your marketing operations career.

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by marketingops.com and powered by all the MoPros out there. I'm your host, Michael Hartman. Today I'm joined by Andar Tarlow, who's a marketing consultant and former chief marketing officer. He has an interesting background because he didn't come up through the traditional marketing path. He moved into marketing from the business side, which gives him a very different perspective on how marketing should operate inside a company. In our conversation, we will get into what it actually means to connect marketing strategy to business outcomes, not just campaign performance, but actual revenue growth, retention, budget allocation and executive credibility. We'll also spend time talking about AI, of course, and where it is genuinely changing the game for marketers and operators, not just automation, but research, learning, increasing strategic capability, et cetera, and at a much lower cost. So this will hopefully end up being a really practical conversation for our audience out there around how marketing leaders and marketing ops leaders can think more commercially, work more effectively with their finance partners and executive teams, and build organizations that are actually positioned to help with So let's dive into it. Andar, welcome to the show.

Hey, Michael, nice to be here.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Well, let's maybe hit this part first, right? I mentioned that you came up with through a sort of non-traditional, in quotes, right, path into marketing coming from the business side. Maybe walk us through a little bit of like, what did that look like? And then maybe talk a little bit about how that has shaped the way you think about marketing that maybe is different from what you see from people who've gone through more traditional career path to get to marketing leadership?

Yeah, absolutely. It's an interesting question because from my side, I was in financial services marketing, acting as a chief marketing officer for a long time. But originally in the financial services side, I came from the business side, had a background in marketing from college, and then routed that into a career. And what I found most interesting is evolving in the marketing side of the business, Is that you have sometimes a lot of marketers who are extremely skilled on the marketing side, whether it's communication, design, brand, and more. Oftentimes, though, they could be lacking in terms of understanding exactly what the business model is. What are the revenue drivers of the company? And that's really a critical item because marketing plays such a key role in supporting that, depending upon if it's looked at as a cost center or a profit center. In either case, it's important that the business unit leaders, as well as the entire team on the marketing side, really understand the business. What is the business? What are the drivers as far as revenue is concerned? And how can marketing look at the strategy overall for the company and then figure out exactly how they can support it?

Gotcha. So, just a little bit. So, when you say you came from the business background, You said you had marketing background in college. Did you go into marketing directly or was there something in between the marketing education to what you could before you went into marketing as a practice?

Sure. So on the finance side, really was a mortgage bank to start off with. And on that side of things, I kind of evolved through the quality control process very early, actually during my career in college. I also worked full-time. And then from there kind of evolved. And when there was an opportunity on the marketing side, I said, okay, perfect. You know, now I can take what I've learned from an education perspective. Also psychology is in my background.

Yeah.

And then really support that through my career.

Yeah. Okay. Got it. Yeah. And it's highly regulated industries too. So you had that added, you know, fun on top of it all.

Regulated industries are quite interesting for sure.

Yeah, we've had a couple other people who've been in financial services, and the discussions we have about, I think a lot of people in ops would resonate with them just in general, right? The level of effort it takes to get something reviewed and approved to get it out the door is already hard enough. You layer in, you have to have legal review or compliance review to make sure we're not saying something out of line. It's like, I just, it makes me quake actually.

You know, it's interesting as well because each organization approaches it a little bit differently. Obviously, in financial services, they're heavily regulated by various regulators, so they have that as a commonality. But in terms of how they run compliance and legal, how they work with marketing changes from organization to organization. And so, from a marketing standpoint, it's always important to really work with your partners on the legal and compliance side. They're so necessary. They have a lot of expertise from a risk perspective. And so really kind of joining forces is one of those aspects in terms of my career that I look back fondly on, as well as a team that I supported, because that's how we approached it, was really more of a partnership as opposed to, oh, you know, we've got to then now work with legal or compliance.

Eyes are looking in, right?

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, of course there are always those times when you're challenged, but, you know, you work through them with your partners. And making sure that when you are approaching new things from a marketing perspective, at least it may be new for the organization, let's say back in my career years ago, it might've been social media, it might've been content creation, whatever it is, is that you're approaching it early and really with eyes wide open with your partners on the legal and compliance side so that there is as little surprises as possible.

Yeah. I mean, I like, The framing you have is in, I would echo what you say, like building a really good partnership relationship with them. But the term about like risk management, I think a lot of people go into thinking, oh, these are the people who are going to tell us we can't do something. But what I found with the best legal partners I've had is they're willing to talk about like the trade-offs about like, if we go this far, like, are we like, what's the risk? And then are we willing to go with it, go that far and take on that risk? Or is it something they're absolutely like, actually, we absolutely can't do it, right? And I think having those conversations is, was always helpful to go through it. So I'm with you.

Yeah, I agree with that because, you know, there are guidelines and then sometimes there are strict rules. And so when you're working with partners, both on the legal and compliance side, you have to understand exactly what that means, right? So being skilled on the marketing side in terms of understanding the regulations is important. And then also showcasing and working with your partners on the legal and compliance and that you're approaching it from a business standpoint, because you will have those situations where as a leader in marketing, you're going to need to make a business decision. And whether you're making that with a team or you're making that with a group on the C-suite side, there are those times when that's very necessary. And sometimes you're going to be in full agreement with your partners on the legal and compliance side, and sometimes you're not going to be in full agreement. But at the same time, if you're focusing it from a business perspective and have looked at it from a risk perspective, gotten their feedback, worked with your other partners on the business side, you need to be able to make a decision.

Yeah. I mean, there was a part of me when I was working at a company when the CASL, the Canadian Privacy Law, came into effect. I actually was like, in my head, I don't know that I ever pushed for it because I didn't think it would go through really. It was like, really, like, what's the risk if we don't fully comply? Right? Yeah. What's the downside? And I think in my own head, I got to the point pretty quickly, like, oh, it's actually, there's reputation risk, there's actual financial risk and all that. And I didn't push for it, but I think I wouldn't have been afraid to have the conversation with the legal and compliance team about something Kind of pushing the edge there. And if they had said, no, we absolutely can't do it, or we said, you know, we disagree, to your point, like we didn't always agree and it went to the CEO or whatever and they said, no, we're gonna, like, we don't want to take on that risk. Fine. But I think people, you know, I think some people don't, aren't willing to have that conversation. But I think this gets back to what you talked about, right? Understanding the way the company makes money, you know, where, what happens with costs, how do they affect margins and profitability? You know, and I think you have to understand that to be able to have those conversations. So like, I see a lot of marketing teams where like a lot of them like will complain maybe about say sales, right? And like I've having sat in a sales role for a short period of time in my career, like they're actually very necessary, right? None of us have this job if we don't have revenue.

Right, true.

So how do you like, How do you help, how have you like helped shape or guided marketers in starting to understand the way that the, you know, the importance of it and then how to think about learning if they don't know where to start?

Sure. And let me preface this by saying that it's never perfect, right? And there's always, depending upon the business model, there always can be a little bit of friction between, let's say, sales and marketing, even if it's under, you know, one roof, so to speak, that's not necessarily a bad thing because that also challenges both sides to kind of look at things from kind of each other's viewpoint.

Totally agree.

To really understand exactly what's going to actually, what's going to actually move the needle. Are you doing testing in order to support that? So one of those things is really teaming up is always what I focused on. So people on the team being able to team up, whether it's sales, whether it's product, whether it's ops, et cetera, to learn more about that side of things. Because oftentimes marketing can be of help to those specific areas. And then obviously likewise as well. So really understanding those sides of the business is always going to empower marketers to be able to do more. And going back to the side we were talking about before with respect to risk, I mean, the good marketers understand that there's risk that they have to also take a look at as well. So it's not just about pushing the envelope and, you know, marketing is going to be able to, you know, figure it out with their partners. It's also things that they have to take a look at, like reputational risk that you mentioned. You know, reputational risk from a financial services perspective is actually the highest risk there is. Oftentimes people are thinking of credit risk, interest rate risk, but reputational risk is usually the number one, if not always the number one key as far as risk is concerned. And then you have brand risk. There is so much, especially today with the advent of AI and even before AI, as far as brand risk is concerned. So marketers, good marketers understand risk and they're comfortable with it. And what we as teams on the marketing side need to do is to constantly reach out to our partners, whether it's on the business side, risk side, compliance, to be able to make it better.

Yeah. I mean, I think about my first sort of real memory of dealing with that was I was running kind of web operations for a big company and product marketer came to me and said, hey, we want to put a form on the site to get feedback from customers on. And I was like, okay, we can add a form, but like, what are you going to do? Because like, if we do that and we don't do anything with it or communicate what we've done with it to them, right? I think there's actually a risk to the reputation right there. So it doesn't have to be a big, huge, like, oh my God, we said something on social media we shouldn't have said.

Right. Yeah. I mean, it's basically what's the plan? I mean, it's something that could be as simple as you're talking about in terms of adding a web form to collect information, but what's the point of it? And then how are you going to use that information? And then how is it going to actually support the business side? And the business side encompassing all areas, including marketing.

Yeah. And I think I had to, like, what I had to do there was try to put myself in the headspace of someone who might encounter that, like a customer, right? Prospect. Like, if I, like, to me, like, whenever you put a gate in front of somebody, it's like, what's the value they're gonna get back for sharing this information?

Yeah, that's the whole CX side, right? The customer experience. Anything that you're putting forth, whether it's web, whether it's in an individual store, whether it's on the social side, Whatever it is, what that experience is the brand, right? That is how the public is going to experience the brand, and that's their first touchpoint, right? It could be a website, right? It could be a social profile. It could be walking inside a store. So all of those pieces really, you need to really team up as much as you can with those groups that are responsible. So whether it's on financial services with the branch teams. branch teams and marketing also working together on the customer experience end as well. So they really get a sense of exactly what is going to be that experience for the customer, however they're coming to us or prospect.

Yeah, that's, yeah, that's, that's really interesting because I think we had somebody on not too long ago in the dental world and like one of the things that she pointed out was like literally going and sitting in a waiting room and seeing how people were greeted. And like, it's like, I think it's easy to be disconnected from what that experience is actually like because we get excited about these really fun, cool ideas and then it's like, okay, what's the practical solution? So on the, like, understanding the business and how it makes money and stuff, are there any tips you would give our audience on if they don't feel like they have a good grasp on that in their organization, for them to go try to help elevate their understanding of that?

Sure. I mean, it always depends on the size of the organization and especially what industry or vertical they're a part of. But I mean, starting off with research online in terms of understanding just the business side, what is the simple way that you can really understand how is the revenue being generated? And then working with various teams, whether it is on the financial side, sales side, ops side, to really get an understanding of that. Now, teams are always busy, but if you really want to get a sense of the business, which is going to help you from a personal career standpoint and obviously help the company that you're working for, you need to carve out some time and you need to create some relationships with key people across the organization that you can learn from and then obviously that you can share with as well, right? So that's really a two-way street and ongoing dialogue. Having those relationships is really key, not only in terms of you learning, but then also sharing what it is you do with other parts of the company, as well as what your marketing team does, also helps for future elevation as far as your own career.

Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I know I've worked at some places where they actually went beyond encouraging people to spend time with people in other parts of the organization. They actually expected, like, it was part of your goals and objectives. And I remember when it first happened, I was like, the first time I experienced it was, oh, someone else was going to spend the day with me. And I was like, ah, what a pain in the ass, right? And then I started seeing like, actually, they were actually curious, wanted to understand. And I was like, oh, this is actually a really good thing. And then I was able to go do that. And I think it helped everybody better understand how everything kind of came together for Ultimately for customers, right?

Yeah, it's true. One of the companies that I've worked for in the past, we actually did this 3 years, the 3 years that I was there, and we actually set up almost like a passport experience. And so we carved out time in a particular day, typically on a Friday, right, a little bit later in the day, to actually walk around when most people within one area, which obviously you can do this virtually as well, and get to know different people, right? And then be able to have these kind of micro presentations from the different departments about what they do. how it supports the business. And there were things that were very well laid out. And so, you really created that dialogue and that in-person dialogue, which was great as well.

Yeah.

Following up on that later on, we did a version of that virtually as well, and it worked very well. That type of dialogue, that type of interchange is really helpful so that you understand it's not just the ops department, it's what is within the ops department? What do they do? How are they supporting the business?

Sure.

What are the areas of expertise? And what we found was across many different departments, this really was an eye-opener and something that they used on a regular basis going forward.

Yeah. What I love about that is that it lowers the— I was trying to think of a better word than risk, but the risk, the feeling of, oh, I'm not— I have to go present to a large group, right? And there's going to be questions. And how do I answer that if I'm not comfortable? Like, if it's a smaller group, right? It makes it easier to have, you know, get that dialogue. And I think a side effect is if you're trying to explain to somebody else what you're doing, right, you're learning better how to communicate, which is kind of what we're ultimately gonna be talking about. Like, how do you communicate what the value is of what you do?

Exactly.

Yeah. Love that. So, okay. So when you think about the marketing teams that you've either worked with or consulted with, What are the key differentiators between those that you see are truly driving growth from those that are, I was going to say still, but that maybe are still focused on just sort of execution and efficiency and measuring activity?

Yeah. What I see is a few different things. One is that you have many people that are coming through the marketing channel who perhaps have very much more of a communications background as opposed to a business background, or they have a design background. And so there in itself, there's a little bit of a gap in terms of really kind of understanding the economic side, right? So kind of more of the financial end of the business. But you have more and more marketers that are coming out from They're from universities where they really have much more of a program where you really need to understand all sides of the business in order to be able to move it forward. I think where you kind of have hiccups is oftentimes later in, in later in people's careers, oftentimes they get a little bit stuck. And so being able to be able to kind of widen that opportunity and be able to look and say, okay, you know, I was potentially, let's say, on the creative side, specifically on the creative side. Whether it was from a communication standpoint, design, or other. And now I really need to take a look at the revenue side of marketing, right? What are we doing in terms of kind of more of a go-to marketing strategy and what are the results going to be? How can I look at things from a performance side that are a little bit more on the analytics end where somebody might think, oh, that's, that's maybe something in the, under the CIO. When really a lot of it is about marketing today. The analytics side is so critical to being able to understand exactly what's performing, how is your budget performing, what you could double down on, what you need to pull back on. So having that aspect as far as reaching out depending upon where you are in your career and getting that additional knowledge for testing, yeah, is very important.

So I just— to me, this begs a little bit of a question, or maybe it's This is one that I've been thinking about a lot lately is like, it feels like there'd be a lot of value in what you described for, I'll use the term generalist, right? A generalist marketer. But it feels like the world or the, in the job market these days tends to focus on specialists. So like, I'm, what I struggle with is like, I kind of agree with you, like understanding the full breadth is really valuable, I feel like I am, and I mean, we've had the term T-shaped marketer before, right? With so deep expertise in one or sort of a shallow one. There was something that somebody posted on LinkedIn a couple weeks ago that actually resonated with me, which was sort of an in-between of the two or a combination, which was like really deep in one, pretty deep in a few other areas, and then at least as competent on those. Like, how do you think about that?

Like the importance of specialization versus generalization in marketing, maybe in Yeah, oftentimes, you know, marketers are coming in with a specific specialization, which is critical, you know, whether it's analytics, whether it's design, whether it's communication, whether it's brand, whether it's search, whether it's AI. And then as they rise in their career, it's important that they're starting to obviously take a look and get a knowledge of other areas across marketing. And always making sure that the performance side of marketing and the analytics is a piece of that. So my viewpoint is that as marketers rise, not only in terms of the years that they've been aboard a specific company, but also in terms of their general marketing knowledge, they start to become a little bit more of a generalist just by the very nature. So if they have teams that are starting to report to them, so they started off as being kind of a sole contributor, and then they started to have a team around them. That's a critical piece because if you're still specializing in one area, it's going to be difficult to lend the support and be as value as much as possible to your team so they can learn from you. And then obviously through the rest of the organization. So I think the specialization is critical, but you also need to start to then span out across other areas. And really determine, you know, what are those areas that you have of interest? And then what are those areas of interest that are going to help drive the business?

So it's interesting to me. So I'm on the same page with you. It now makes me think, so one of the things I've experienced is, I think I'm, this is going to sound boastful, but like, I think I'm pretty good at building and managing a budget and And have always felt like the finance team looked to me more than maybe my peers who had other portions of the budget and if it was split out. But like some of this just gets down to the ability to recognize the financial component of it, right? So I think, so reinforcing the need, like it feels like if you're getting to the point where you're dealing with budgets, It's probably even more important to have that broader understanding.

Agreed.

Yeah. And I've even gotten to the point where I like, oh, I got a certain amount of budget and I was like, I think my peer needs it more because he has the need for his team is greater than the one I have. Right. And I don't think if I—

I'm sure they were very happy about that.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I talked to him about it and then I was like, hey, like, this is what I'm seeing. Do you like, before I gave it like, went ahead and gave it away, right? It was, I had a conversation just to confirm and then we went to the case, basically the equivalent of CMO, head of marketing. But like, how do you approach budgeting investment and how you allocate that? You talked about it a little bit at one point, right? So how would you guide You know, our audience tends to lean a little more to ops, so they'll be probably more familiar with subscriptions and licensing of technology and maybe headcount and contractors and things like that. Maybe less so about all the ins and outs of say events, right? Where I know there's a zillion line items that are all small comparatively, but still important. Right.

Yeah. I mean, the, so to your point, Being able to be able to be able to manage a budget is critical to the success of a marketing team, and then you as an individual contributor, regardless of what level you're on. You know, oftentimes there's marketers at different levels that are asked to contribute to the budget, and that's really important. Other times you have really the budget that's just set by the CMO and perhaps their directors of marketing, and no one else in the marketing team. understands it, has seen it, knows what goes into it, knows how it's developed. Really, to my point earlier, that eyes wide open piece with respect to a budget is critical. And when you're able to develop a budget and really understand the mechanics of it, not only from the marketing side, but from the entire organization, then the financial team shows a lot of respect and they're coming to you with questions that they have. With respect to how dollars are put forth on the marketing side and then what's the outcome of them. So the approach of really starting from kind of a baseline of what percentage of the overall budget is dedicated to marketing, and then what percentage of the overall budget is dedicated to specific aspects of marketing. And when I say the overall budget, I mean the entire budget as far as the company is concerned for that year or for that quarter. Teaming up with the CFO or components within the financial side of the company is critical to not only understanding that, but then also being able to put forth and say, you know, we're a little bit light here. Here's where we believe that we need to spend a little bit more. This is what we've seen as far as an outcome of the past in terms of the spend is concerned. Here's an area that we need to allocate as far as test marketing is concerned. Oftentimes marketing teams don't leave enough for that test budget, or they're not able to articulate to the financial side why they need it. And testing new forms of marketing is incredibly important because you can find opportunities when you're testing. And then when you're testing, you can also figure out how to hone other areas of the marketing spend as well.

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting you bring that up because there's a marketer, a marketing leader in particular I know of, who I think he, I don't know how he has solved for this, but it seems like every place he's been, he has really tied the work that he does as a marketing team to revenue, really works well with the sales team, works well with finance. It's done that, but he's always managed to carve out that a portion of the budget, 20, 30%, that is intended for, I'll use my own words here, unmeasurable marketing activities, right? So experimentation, you know, brand stuff, right? Things that seem crazy, but maybe have, will have a long-term effect, right? And so I think it, but it requires, to me what it seems like is that wouldn't have been possible had he not done the work to align on the stuff that we would agree on that we're going to measure. Yeah.

You had to earn, you have to earn that, right?

Yeah.

It's not just, it's not just saying we need it because We're marketing, right? You have to earn it and you have to be able to share in the understanding of what the mechanics of the budget are overall and ask the right questions to the CFO or area within the financial side of the business that's responsible for it. And that's an incredibly important piece because there are always things on the marketing side that are not trackable, right? There are Sometimes campaigns on the brand end that are going to be a little bit difficult to track. You might be able to track brand lift or other aspects depending upon what the medium is that you're that you're doing, but you also need to be able to look at it and say, okay, based on this research, based on brand studies, there's a certain percentage that we need to lead as far as awareness is concerned so that we can actually move down the funnel consideration and so forth. And so a certain amount of spend that's allocated to these areas that may be considered a little bit softer from the financial side is really important to be able to build out an entirely successful marketing budget and marketing plan.

Yeah. And I think if I take it down another level, this was a lesson I had to learn in the ops space is I think the same thing applies, right? I think there'll be a lot of people listening who go, who have experienced like, I didn't, like I proposed this technology or this thing and it got declined and it was so obvious to me that we needed to do it. And I was like, well, that's either you didn't actually make a good enough case for it, right? A financial one or a story, right? I think either one can work, but that's like typically what I found most of the time is because they didn't do that. And then the second part of that would be, and this is what I do with coaching, is like if you're going in to make a request for budget on something, You should already know what the answer is before you go, right? It's just like pre-selling.

Absolutely. Asking questions to those that you already know the answer to is really critical. And it also comes back to the importance of that early communication as early as possible and creating those relationships where you can have, you know, more open conversations about areas like, for instance, budget that is needed because how you're interpreting it from the marketer side Could be entirely different than, and usually is, how it is looked at from the financial side. They're looking at it as, okay, this is an expense. Why do we need this expense, right? Especially in more challenging times that we've all faced across a lot of industries. And so it's not, you can't be approaching that just merely from the fact that we need to do marketing and here's the reasons why. You have to approach it from the standpoint of, okay, This is our business, right? And this is how we see utilizing this allocation of budget to supporting the business and being able to have the dialogue and being able to feel comfortable being challenged by the CFO with those questions. And then being able to also challenge back sometimes and being able to understand exactly what they're looking at, how they're looking at it so that you can make the right case.

I think that being comfortable being challenged is so good. Like I've had, again, with coaching clients, I've gotten into conversations where like they're frustrated, like, oh, they're not listening to me. And I said, and when they describe what it is, like the questions they're asking you feel like they're attacking you, but they're reasonable questions.

Exactly. And you can't, you gotta plan as early as possible for these things. It's not, Always perfect, but creating these relationships internally early is going to help you in the long run. If you're looking at it and saying, okay, hey, we need to make a decision on this next week, so I need to go to the finance side and be able to get allocation of budget, you know, that isn't always going to work out really well because oftentimes that first question is, you know, why was this decided so late? Right? And that's a fair question.

Yes.

And there could be sometimes a reasonable answer to that. But if you don't ever connect with the finance side of the business except when you need something, that can create a little bit more of a challenge, right? Whereas opposed to you creating a dialogue, you're creating a relationship, they have more of a comfort level that you are approaching things from a business perspective, not just an allocation and an expense perspective.

Yeah. And I think I tell people all the time, like, you don't have to be a finance expert or accounting expert But you should know enough to be able to have a good conversation so that you, when they push back or they ask questions, you understand where they're coming from. Because it's, I mean, at the end of the day, most of us work in enterprises that are built to make a profit for their shareholders. I mean, good, bad, or indifferent, right? Like you could argue about whether that, whether those are the right things to be focused on, but that's probably the reality. So let's live in real, the real world. But I think about it at the time, like I had really good relationships with finance. Like I worked at a big company where the budgeting process was essentially, I was given, okay, here's a bucket of money. Here's things that we already have anticipated for you to spend on because we had previous, like we had existing contracts or whatever, or past things. What was weird to me is they did sort of a twice a year review as opposed to like, I was used to monthly. So I always budgeted monthly and they told me like, and I was like, is it okay if I do that? Like, I'm going to do it monthly because it's just how my brain works and I want to have better predictability and be able to understand like if I'm going off the rails, I want to know sooner rather than later. And I don't think that it was like the response I got was odd because they didn't seem to care. Now it was a really large company, so probably my budget was a rounding error kind of thing.

Mm-hmm.

But at the same time, late one year, we were getting, you know, typical end of the year, we're like, hey, we need to estimate what your expenses are going to be and accrue for them. And I was like, we were in a situation where I was like, I can either bring us in, pick the number, $20,000 under budget for this year and push stuff to next year. Or I can go 40 grand over this year. Which do you prefer? Like, I can make either one work. You tell me which one would be better. And then they gave me the direction and we did it, right? And I think that is the kind of thing where it builds credibility because I think people who aren't familiar with the way that finance works, it's not that like, yes, they want it to be as close as possible to what you predicted, but they're also like, again, it's like the risk tolerance, right? They're willing to have that conversation about what the trade-offs are. And if you're not making those connections like you talked about, you can't have that conversation at the last minute.

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, the point obviously of the departments internally working together is just that, is that it's towards the common goal. First, you've got to start off with everyone is understanding what the strategy is overall for the company. And then how do the individual strategies and tactics within specific departments work to support that? And how do they support each other? The enterprises that I have worked at, which business has gone well, is when everyone is reading from the same playbook. It's cliché, but it really is true because they're looking at it from a top-down perspective as far as the strategy is concerned. in that there's a strategy set for the company, and then how does that work across the different business units in order to be able to actually support that strategy? As opposed to other areas where you may, other companies where you may have situations where people are building these in silos, which is very real and sometimes can happen in smaller companies than most people think.

Yes.

You have to be able to look at it really from across the board, across the enterprise and say, okay, yes, we understand what the strategy is. We understand the purpose of it and this is how we're going about it. And then obviously things like budget come into play as well, because if you're looking to have a certain strategy and marketing has a specific budget and you're looking to grow by X number, there can be situations where there's a disconnect. And if you see a disconnect like that, you've gotta be able to connect with your peers on that to be able to figure it out.

Yeah. I mean, like everything we are talking about keeps coming back to relationships and understanding how, you know, the rest of the business works. So, I mean, if like, it feels like this is a little bit of something I've heard multiple times before, like why, like what's, so why do you think it's so tough for so many marketers out there to kind of get buy-in from their, you know, finance, C-suite, whatever, Like, what are you seeing as the biggest challenges from that?

Oftentimes it's really about communication. What, depending upon how the organization is set up, let's say that you're working with, you know, CFO and their team as far as budget is concerned, coming in and only approaching it with vernacular that is specific to marketing sometimes really delay things and also cause a bit of confusion or misunderstanding. So being able to articulate in terms of the finance side, you know, why you're looking for X, why you're looking for Y in their terms can really be helpful. And leaving out a little bit that we all are, you know, subjected to on the marketing side, a little bit of the leaving out some of the jargon, right? Looking at really more key areas, right? In terms of, okay, we're spending this, we're looking to allocate and spend this amount of money. on this type of campaign for the purpose of X to support the strategy. And here are the metrics or performance aspects that we're looking at in order to determine if it's a success and making sure that those metrics are understood. Some might be a little bit more marketing in nature and some might be a little bit more business in nature, but making sure that you're all coming from that common playbook, that you're understanding what each other is talking about. And sometimes that takes a little bit of time. Which is why both of us have been talking about that need for early communication, because that's where teams can get a little bit turned off as far as marketing is concerned, because they just kind of hear a lot of noise and jargon and stats that's very marketing-based, which isn't necessarily their specialty. You know, it's like you have to walk in each other's shoes and really understand what's actually— what's going to help with their understanding. And that's what is going to be successful for you in terms of what you're looking to do and build.

Yeah. I mean, the irony for me is that this should be, like, should be, this is what marketers should be good at is, you know, providing that— Marketing is terrible. Yeah. But I find it's not the case in many places. It's funny, I was smiling for those people who are listening and not watching, but the phrase I have used many times is like, we're talking about something that only marketers care about, right? You know, it's like the jargon bit can get overwhelming pretty quickly. And it's not to say there's not jargon in other functional areas, there is. But to your point, like part of this is translating that like you would with a customer.

Exactly.

So I think we touched on this a little bit. Anyway, I think you and I talked about this before, like, One of the things I do with teams, I always like, I try to give teams a lot of freedom and a trust to do the right thing. I just ask not to be surprised, right? Or at least minimize, like, let's not—

Right.

Try not to give me, put me in a position where I'm surprised and having to defend something where I don't know how, like, you kind of touched on this, like there's a last-minute thing, you go to finance asking for money and like, how do you try to minimize the chance that there's surprises and Is that one of the other factors that might play into the reputation for marketing too?

I mean, it can. One way to minimize it is going back to communication. So communication with your teams, depending upon the size of the team, you have to figure out a cadence that's going to work and what you're actually looking at. And so if you've got a fairly sizable team and you're the chief marketing officer or the head of marketing, You've got to make sure that you're empowering your teams to be able to do the research, to be able to make decisions. And then to a certain point, right, there are kind of those guardrails, right? And you have to make sure that the team understands where that is so they know where to include you, right? Because you may not be included in every single discussion, and nor should you.

Right.

Yeah, exactly. So you have to make sure that you're not only empowering the team, But that at the same time you're holding yourself accountable as well as a team, and that you're all responsible. One, from a budget standpoint, you're responsible to deliver a quality product, whatever that is that you're doing within marketing, and you're responsible for outcomes. It's not someone else's job. It's the marketing team's role in order to support the marketing side of the business. And so each team member really needs to feel that internally, understand it, And then be given the empowerment to do their position properly and then also know where they need to communicate.

Yeah. So it comes down to somewhat a leadership thing, right? Make sure people are clear, like it's clear that you're giving them, for those who are ready for it, right? I mean, there are some people, even the ones who say, I don't want to be micromanaged, that actually perform best when they're micromanaged. So the trick as a leader is like, how do you Do that without making it feel like it. So, which I've had to do. So I'm sure. All right. Well, we can't have an episode these days without talking about AI. So clearly it's changing the way that we're doing work. Where do you, where are you seeing AI already having an impact, creating advantage for marketers or operators?

Yeah, I mean, it definitely is the speed research and the really content acceleration, I would say, for the most part. I mean, first it starts, and people have been doing this now for a few years, but really starting and taking a look at what your entire workflow is in the marketing department or departments and understanding where you can fit in AI to the existing workflow to help create more efficiencies. Now it's gotten to the point where it's obviously creating additional workflows or you're cutting out other aspects of your workflow. And you're placing AI into that. So if it is for design as an example, it's incredibly helpful because it can speed up the process tremendously. So I've used it in the past. Let's say that we're doing storyboarding for a particular, let's say, a commercial or something along those lines. The ability to quickly utilizing AI, be able to create even from a CMO standpoint, if you don't necessarily have design capabilities, just to start to create some ideas and at least see what they look like visually from a test standpoint is incredibly powerful. It's not to say that you're going to be the end designer completing everything, and it's not to say that it's going to replace a designer, but it can actually definitely speed up the creation of content, the creation of marketing campaigns, because you can actually start to see them or see how they would work potentially much earlier on, right? It's not as though, as an example, on the storyboard side, Okay, I need to be able to hand this off to a designer and then I might not see it for a few days or a week if it comes back. You know, nowadays it's really a matter of minutes sometimes, or iteration levels maybe, you know, within an hour or 2 just to start to get a sense of what you're looking for, which also helps speed up the communication within the team as well, right? So depending upon who's in charge, if it's a channel marketer, if it is a product marketer, To be able to utilize that, to be able to actually like expand the ability to create. So if you're not necessarily a designer, but you have an idea, now you can utilize AI to be able to synthesize that idea, at least to see where it can go, which is very powerful and just did not exist before.

Yeah, I was exposed literally this just earlier this week to, in fact, I think it was yesterday, 2 platforms. One that was, I guess I would call it sort of vibe coding one, which could, you could, through prompts, like generate a interact— I'll call it interactive prototype, right? I wouldn't call it a fully functioning app, but it was good, good enough. And another one that could take existing UI of something or a description and generate a wireframe that could then be modified fairly easily. And I was like, A, the speed at which it happened was huge. That was great. But what I was walking away from was like, also, it probably helps with clarity of communication. You know, one of the challenges with all these things is, you know, they're visual or they're interactive. It's really hard to describe that in a narrative way, right? Almost like the experience of going through it makes it easier to communicate. And to me, I was like, that's the real value. Yes, the speed is helpful. For sure. But the compounding effect of having clear communication to the people who are then going to have to take it and do something with it was even greater.

Right. And then, and teams that you may need to get buy-in from, right? You're able to create things much earlier, at least to start to share ideas and get their feedback earlier, which helps with that buy-in. Which obviously is going to support your needs as you're moving forward with whatever the project is.

So you talked about research. I also am a big fan of the power of it as a research tool. I mean, I've told friends of mine who are in sales, like, if you're not using these tools to do research on your prospects, it's like you're missing a huge opportunity. Like, you don't have to automate it and generate it, but you, like, it's incredible what it can do. Um, what, so how are you using it today?

Yeah, definitely. So from the productivity side, utilizing it for design purposes, also utilizing it for research, uh, whether it is on existing companies or potentially new customers, uh, also from a prospecting list, uh, perspective, being able to generate prospect lists that are actually, you know, that are pretty good, um, being able to then also utilize it from a content creation, content ideation standpoint and also from a sounding board perspective as far as strategies are concerned and see how far that you can take it. I think you mentioned earlier an app. So I've done that as well utilizing the paid version of ChatGPT and actually created kind of a tutorial app for a member of my family on the personal side. That was pretty eye-opening that it could actually do that. And so to create a downloadable web app, don't have to go to the web store, et cetera, but something that was actually pretty much fully functioning and then be able to take something like that and be able to utilize it for more. So your, your point as far as wireframes are concerned and being able to take a look and figure out, okay, exactly what is necessary to do in order to build out a website, utilize that as well. That's incredibly important in taking the data that you can collect and then being able to utilize it for, for customer experience overall.

Yeah. I think I wanna shift gears quite a bit here, sort of direction a little bit, is 'cause we're gonna have to probably wrap up here pretty soon. But yeah, you are, you know, former CMO doing consulting work and I think you're involved with some community building now and this podcast started out of a community. So how is that changing or influencing the way you think about marketing and do you think that traditional marketers should be thinking more about community and how it plays a role in what they're doing?

There's definitely an opportunity there for sure. So, you know, one of the communities that I'm involved in is Fast Lane Drive, which is exotic cars, curated drives, travel, business and social networking, and philanthropy. But it is very much in the physical space, so to speak. So it's definitely having, you know, in-person experiences, a one-way to be able to create that community and be able to create that loyalty is kind of getting out of the virtual world, which you have seen a huge influx of companies that are involved in that. And then a rapid increase since COVID of kind of coming back into that physical world, people liking to have those in-person experiences, and it's continuing to develop. I've talked about before, that the expansion of different sports is one way you look at that. And sports is a great example of communities that are being built. And those are the types of things, you know, whether it's Fastlane Drive and the experiences we do for members or other, those things are not going to be easily replaceable by AI. And so when people are looking at it and saying, oh, you know, the sky is falling in terms of, you know, my specific area of expertise because AI is going to replace it. That's not necessarily always the case. And community building, especially if you're doing something in the physical world, is definitely one way to separate yourself.

Yeah, that's interesting. Are you combining, because I think sometimes community and partnership stuff gets conflated a little bit, or how are you thinking about those two? Are they So the size of a coin, are they distinct in your mind?

Well, in terms of brand partnerships, and it comes along with communities depending upon, you know, what type of business model you have. So as far as Fast Lane Drive is concerned, you know, our members are a specific target demographic, if you will, for a lot of brands to get access to. Ultra high net worth, high net worth individuals who have high discretionary income. They're the type of people who are very adventurous. And so that appeals to a lot of brands as far as brand partnerships are concerned. So that to me is tied together between the community that's being created and then the type of business that you can do in addition to creating that community, which can be in the form of brand partnerships.

Okay. Yeah. And that makes sense. I mean, the marketing ops community is sort of a hybrid of paid memberships and sponsors that kind of defray some of that cost. So that makes sense. Andar, this is a ton of fun. I enjoyed the conversation. If folks want to continue that, learn more about what you're doing or what you're up to, what's the best way for them to do that?

Absolutely, Michael. It's been a lot of fun. It's been great discussion. You can find me online, andartarlo.org. You can also find me on LinkedIn. Lots of information. about my background as far as marketing is concerned, brand partnerships, performance marketing, and more. So happily would like to connect with anyone who's interested in learning more.

Got it. A .org, are you nonprofit then? Is that it? No, that's right. My wife's in the nonprofit space and she actually worked for when they had a .com and she's like, why do they not have a .org? It's like, anyway, Long story there.

You can also get to me.com as well.

Ah, okay. Got it both. Got it covered.

Absolutely.

Awesome. Hey, it's a lot of fun. Again, I wish we had had more time and I appreciate you joining us. Also, thank you to our audience. We appreciate the support. If you have ideas for topics or guests or want to be a guest, you can reach out to Naomi, Mike, or me, and we'd be happy to get the ball rolling. Till next time. Bye everybody.

Thank you.