Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Zero Click Marketing is a marketing strategy podcast about content marketing, audience research, and how brands grow when clicks matter less. Hosted by Amanda Natividad, Chief Evangelist at SparkToro and Co-Author of the book, "Zero Click Marketing," the show explores how marketers reach audiences, build influence, and earn attention in a zero-click internet. New to the show? Start with Episode 2: What Zero Click Marketing Actually Is.
[00:00:00] Chris Savage: The hardest ideas to green-light today are the most valuable ones, Everyone wants numbers. They have, uh, you know, OKRs they need to hit. Then you take the budget and you
[00:00:09] Chris Savage: You're gonna try to put it into things that are most likely to get the return. everyone's putting it into those same things, which makes it like you're signing up for a world that is, it's just expensive, it's hard, versus saying like, "Oh, the stuff that no one can track is probably where most of the opportunity is because it's the hardest thing to put budget into."
[00:00:28] Amanda Natividad: I'm Amanda Natividad and welcome to Zero Click Marketing.
[00:00:34] Amanda Natividad: All right, Chris. Welcome. It's great to finally have you on the show.
[00:00:39] Chris Savage: Thank you for having me
[00:00:40] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. So, um, I'm really excited to talk today because I really, obviously, value your perspective, but also just as a truly experienced and successful CEO, I think it's really important to hear from you on how you're seeing marketing today, and also just how marketers like me, meaning like marketers who work at other companies, like how should...
[00:01:05] Chris Savage: to be like really, really good marketers
[00:01:08] Amanda Natividad: No, no, no. People like me who are, might be teams of one or, um, just in that kind of leadership position, like how should we look at marketing today? How should we look at new content initiatives? And I'm also excited to talk to you because you have a podcast, so even that alone tells me, okay, you're not afraid of trying new marketing things
[00:01:31] Amanda Natividad: let's start with the podcast maybe. Like, so for Talking Too Loud, how did you get that started, and how did you think about success for that?
[00:01:42] Chris Savage: Yeah, so Talking Too Loud is the interview show that I do, really talking about what it takes to make like really great brands, great products, great c- great companies. And that's the stuff I care about. When I had done a show before Talking Too Loud called Brandwagon, and it was like a very high production show about build-- doing brand marketing. And it was awesome, and it was really fun, but it was so high production, it was like incredibly hard for us to like keep it going. Like we, we bit off way more than we should have. Like we were shooting a 30-minute episode every week. There was like real like audience, there was animal handlers, there was all this stuff. And while it w- it really worked and got people's attention, it was totally not sustainable. So we thought, all right, look, there's clearly a trend of, and I mean, we started Talking Too Loud in 2020, and this trend started then. It's still true now. Like there's a trend of trusting individuals over trusting a brand. Saw that happening. We're like, hey, we need to have a way of like having an individual that can be a representative of the brand that you can go to, you can learn from, you can feel affinity towards. Okay, it probably should be me or my co-founder or someone who's like a longstanding person is what we thought.
[00:02:48] Chris Savage: At this point, I'd also done Worcester for like 14 years and felt pretty media trained. So I was like, I think I could be the person. I was going to other people's podcasts, stuff like that, so I was like, let's just do it. And so we sp- we started it with the most minimal production possible. We said let's audio only, make it easy for the guests, make it easy for me, and let's just see where it goes, and we'll just keep checking in and see how it evolves.
[00:03:11] Chris Savage: And like what basically happened was over time, we started to figure out like which topics are better than others. We started to figure out like where I was most comfortable. We switched from just being audio to being video. We started making clips. The clips became really important for my LinkedIn, um, and getting people engaging there.
[00:03:29] Chris Savage: The clips became really important on TikTok, on YouTube. we just kind of like evolved all with the premise of we don't just wanna connect with a brand. Like we do, but like you're-- if you're really gonna connect with somebody, if you really wanna build trust, you have to do it with an individual.
[00:03:42] Chris Savage: That's really why we started. And so we look at, we look at it as like part of the engine. So evaluate it based on the number of engagements, the number of impressions across everything, not just the, the downloads. We look, of course, at the downloads and the streams and all that kind of stuff. Um, and it's done super well.
[00:04:00] Chris Savage: And I think it's done super well because it's been part of this whole thing. I'm not sure if it was just by itself, if we would've kept doing it, but because it's a part of the whole content engine, it's, it's been really great.
[00:04:10] Amanda Natividad: How do you know if you're building trust with people?
[00:04:14] Chris Savage: You know, it's-- I, I feel like it-- the way it always shows up at first is it shows up, organically with people saying something. And I was on a call this morning with somebody and they're external to Wistia. Uh, it was kind of like an introductory call, like friend of a friend, and the first thing they said to me is, "You know, I just watched you on a boat." Because the recent episode we did was, like, we recorded talking about "The Odyssey," and we did it on a boat. And we're talking about "The Odyssey" and why there's so much attention on it and how it's, like, very much not CGI, you know, everything in it's real and how that plays into when you can make anything with AI and AI slop.
[00:04:49] Chris Savage: And so that was the point of the episode, but this guy saw it and he ended up on the call and he mentioned it to me, and I was like, "I think it's working." And you just start seeing stuff like that, and I, I've just learned to listen to that
[00:04:59] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Oh, I love that. But I'm also struck on what you said earlier. So Wistia doing an audio only show, at least at first,
[00:05:08] Amanda Natividad: did... Was that your idea or someone else's? And if it was your idea, did the oth- did the t- was the team like, "What are you thinking?
[00:05:17] Amanda Natividad: Like, we're Wistia."
[00:05:18] Chris Savage: Yeah. Well, because I think a lot of stuff is-- A lot of marketing takes time, right? Like, it's, it's hard. And so if you can't figure out a way to do it where you could keep doing it sustainably, it often doesn't add up. And so that was kind of like the most basic thing we said when we started. I was like: Look, let's do at least 100 episodes, and let's just make it so easy that then we have no excuse. so the easiest way then was gonna be audio. And I also obviously, Wistia video business, I've been doing videos forever. video the solution to everything? No. it the solution to a bunch of things? Sure. Like of course it is. I, I actually look at all of this as like audience gets to choose. It's the audience choice. That what's really happened in the last like 20 years is like you went from only having text versions of everything yeah, you could always have text, and if you want, you can listen, and if you want, you can watch. And now if you want, you can also ask AI questions. And like just the audience gets to choose, and so let's give them the choice.
[00:06:22] Chris Savage: Um, and let's see what it's like to not just start with video. It turns out that the show done tremendously better since it's been on video, is great. That's awesome. that's what I thought was probably gonna be the case, but if we hadn't made it sustainable, then I don't think it would be-- we'd still be doing it.
[00:06:38] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. And you know, I mean, letting the audience choose, that is inherently a zero-click marketing mindset, right? L- meeting them where they are in the format, medium, option of their choice. Do you have a sense of h- like what medium or what format is working best for your show? Or like what channel, what platform, what format, blah, blah, blah?
[00:07:01] Chris Savage: so, you know, um, yes. I mean, I look at it from, like, on LinkedIn, clips from LinkedIn-- clips from the show on LinkedIn where I can bring another expert on and share some of their expertise in a way where you could read it and get some value out of it, or you can watch and get some value out of it.
[00:07:22] Chris Savage: Those do really well. We've been somehow able to build up a real audience on TikTok. I don't get it. don't know why, like, our clips do super well. So we're getting hundreds of thousands of views, usually a week, if not more, on clips on-- just from the show on TikTok. so I think objectively the clips are doing well there.
[00:07:40] Chris Savage: And then in the last, like, six months, we've put more focus into how the show does on YouTube and have been s- getting some breakthroughs there as well in terms of, watch time, engagement, organic views. Like, they are also, like, ticking up. So, I mean, it's doing well in all these different places, but I think you have to decide.
[00:07:57] Chris Savage: The hard part is actually the focus part, which is we didn't try to do all of this at once. Like, really just focused on the audio version itself and then the video, and then really mostly just on LinkedIn. And then when that started to work, we're like, "Okay, let's try a- and adding th- some of these same clips onto TikTok."
[00:08:13] Chris Savage: And the interesting thing would be, like, the, the same clips don't work, so you need a lot of clips. And then when that started to go, we're like, "Okay, now we're looking at that. We're looking at the data on performance." What we find is that if people get into the interview, they stay, so the engagement's really high.
[00:08:27] Chris Savage: That's amazing. We have to hook them. And that was the same moment we started thinking, "Okay, let's take this to YouTube." But we started scripting the beginning of the show way more so that if someone is, uh, clicking play, they've never seen me before, they've never seen the show. We're trying to get it so it's like, "Hey, we're gonna tell you what you might learn and engage with in the show very directly."
[00:08:47] Chris Savage: And that has helped. And so it's just putting all those pieces together. But the, the hard part is trying to optimize it all at once. I think you have to go, you know, phase by phase.
[00:08:55] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, that makes sense. I like what you're saying though about having all these different, you know, ways of producing or publishing the show, but also that you didn't start all at once, right? Because I think the big thing too is to figure out how to create leverage in this process, whether the leverage is it gets easier over time or it scales as you go, ideally both.
[00:09:19] Amanda Natividad: And that was sort of how, like, kind of tracing steps backward, that's kind of like how this show is in that when I first launched this podcast, for the first like four months, I was really focused on marketing this to my newsletter. And I still do, right? I still send my newsletter, but before I was very buttoned up about like newsletter has to hit every Tuesday morning.
[00:09:44] Amanda Natividad: That's just how it is. But over the past couple weeks, I think it's been part laziness and part wanting to see what happens. Like, will I lose a bunch of listenership or views if I don't get the newsletter out in time? And an interesting thing is that no, I think over the past several months I had been able to build a sort of habit with people so that people who actually listen to the podcast or consume it, we'll say, are doing it regardless.
[00:10:12] Amanda Natividad: Um, which is to say, don't worry, I will send this out to my newsletter when this goes out.
[00:10:17] Chris Savage: Okay, phew. That was close
[00:10:19] Amanda Natividad: I know, you were, you were really sweating there. I do wanna t- let's talk about marketing generally. So, you know, we are increasingly living in this clickless world, right? Attribution, flawed at the outset, is getting harder and harder, more inaccurate over time.
[00:10:39] Amanda Natividad: my question could just be like, what the heck? Now what? Maybe that is the question.
[00:10:43] Amanda Natividad: How have you, how have you been seeing all of this change over the past couple years?
[00:10:51] Chris Savage: I mean, first of all, completely agree with what you're saying. So, like, attrition is way harder. It is clickless. Um, going back to pre-internet stuff, but it's on the internet basically. So I, I try to think about a lot of those very long-term trends as, as like, all right, how did, how did, how did Coke do it?
[00:11:10] Chris Savage: Now we're not all Coke, but like, how did they do it? It's like they figured out that like they needed to build a brand that represented something would cause people to act just a little bit differently in their basic behaviors. Like, and if they could get a little bit d- of difference across like a very large group of people, for them, that turned out to be a tremendous amount of growth, and then they just continued to do that.
[00:11:32] Chris Savage: But like the brand represents something. only way you're ultimately gonna track it is, you know, you could do brand surveys and stuff like that, but you're gonna see it in the numbers. You're just like quarter over quarter, how much are we doing on this? Oh, we spent the same as last time, but it's doing a lot better.
[00:11:44] Chris Savage: That probably means the messaging's better. Or we spent like a lot more than last time and it's up that same amount, probably means the whole thing's working. Like very, very basic stuff. So I think we need a return to fundamentals. I think that the piece of really trying to focus on the individual over the brand is become more important if you are trying to get organic reach. think the only brands I'm seeing today that are getting organic reach are ones that are really comfortable being very opinionated, funny, irreverent, entertaining. Like, think it lends itself much more traditionally to B2C than B2B. I don't know if you agree with that.
[00:12:22] Amanda Natividad: I do. I mean, like, I think sometimes when B2B tries to borrow those things from B2C, when it's not done well, it's when teams are like, "Oh, let's just be a little snarky." When it's like, mm, it's not about...
[00:12:38] Chris Savage: really cringey.
[00:12:39] Chris Savage: Like versus--
[00:12:39] Amanda Natividad: Yeah,
[00:12:40] Chris Savage: it can be done well. I mean,
[00:12:41] Amanda Natividad: It could be
[00:12:42] Chris Savage: like Ramp is a good example. I don't know if you're seeing their stuff, but like um, brought like Brian from "The Office" and was in a bunch of ads and then like had him sitting in like a cubicle in Times Square or something, and you could see actual the actor who played Brian like doing stuff about their thing. And it was a huge stunt, and it was n-- I mean, it's a B2B finance company, but it got a ton of attention and it got people going and like I'm sure that that moved the needle for that business. it was funny and it was like playing into exactly probably what their buyer grew up on "The Office" and like loved seeing him back and all of these things.
[00:13:16] Chris Savage: So I think it can be done. It just is the, the bar for making it great. you can make it great, actually the impact is probably easier than almost anything else, but it's harder to make it great, uh, in B2B.
[00:13:28] Amanda Natividad: That's a great point. That was a good example. I sort of forgot about it until you mentioned, until you, you mentioned that. Because yeah, it works because it is a little, you know, it's unexpected. Um, it taps into some nostalgia for people. But I think what's also interesting about it is that it's kind of irreverent or cheeky without putting anyone down or actually being snarky.
[00:13:53] Amanda Natividad: It's just sort of... And it's not kooky either, because it's not weird.
[00:13:58] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, it's just fun.
[00:14:00] Chris Savage: And, like, we got someone from the officer. Isn't this
[00:14:01] Amanda Natividad: Yeah.
[00:14:02] Chris Savage: like, "That's awesome." Like, you know? And that's all you really need. But I think that Those are the hard ideas for most people to green-light. And I-- That's what I will say in general, the, the biggest shift that I'm seeing is, like, the hardest ideas to green-light today are the most valuable ones, right?
[00:14:19] Chris Savage: Because when it's hard to track every... Everyone wants numbers. They have, uh, you know, OKRs they need to hit. they're stressed, "Oh, can I commit to this 8% thing here? Can I commit to this 20% thing here?" It's like, "Oh, I'm gonna try it. I don't know." Then you take the budget and you go, "Where can I put it?"
[00:14:32] Chris Savage: You're gonna try to put it into things that are most likely to get the return. everyone's putting it into those same things, which makes it like you're signing up for a world that is, you know, it's just expensive, it's hard, versus saying like, "Oh, the stuff that no one can track is probably where most of the opportunity is because it's the hardest thing to put budget into." So if I can find a way that I can do that, and I can find a way to do it that's like, I think it's pretty likely to succeed for some reason, then that is probably one of the best payoffs you can-
[00:15:01] Amanda Natividad: Oh, that's great. That is so well said. I mean, I think what's interesting about that too is you don't really get those wins unless you just take the chance. And it's obviously, yes, measure success along the way, see what you can track, of course, but you won't be able to execute that kind of thing if you're stuck in, "Oh, but, like, how are we gonna track ROAS?
[00:15:25] Amanda Natividad: Like, how are we gonna know exactly, like, who saw it and what they did and..." And, you know, there's, there's a fine line here, right? Because I'm not suggesting that we don't care about those things. I'm,
[00:15:35] Amanda Natividad: uh, we don't.
[00:15:36] Amanda Natividad: Yeah
[00:15:37] Chris Savage: I-- What I'm saying is that, like, those things really matter. You
[00:15:40] Amanda Natividad: Yeah
[00:15:41] Chris Savage: And actually, with, like, agentified work, easier to do that for everyone. Like, yeah, the-- You're gonna have an agent sitting right next to you telling you what to do. It's giving you feedback.
[00:15:50] Chris Savage: It's, like, evaluating all these data sources. It's like, you know, you're gonna find opportunities more quickly, but it also means we're gonna optimize the channels more rapidly. So, getting anything that's working in, like, a-- You'll get lots of things that work in a normal way. Getting things that work in, like, an outstanding way will be much harder there. It's just, it's just that-- And that's probably where most of your budget should go or most of your time. But there's this other part where if you don't have a budget, it, it should all go to this. and if you do have a budget, I think you have to quarter it off and say, "We're gonna treat this stuff completely differently.
[00:16:20] Chris Savage: We're gonna hold it to a completely different bar. It's gonna be like a taste bar. It's gonna be a creativity bar. It's gonna be, like, what literally makes us laugh." You know? And if you can do that, then that's where-- That's what I mean is, like, that's, that, that's, like, the, the magic, the, the magic dust you can put on top of everything
[00:16:36] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Wait, let's stay with this ex- this example a little bit longer. Let's say someone on your team wants to pitch something similar. L- let's say it's, you know, the Ramp ad but for Wistia. How should someone on your team broach that topic with you?
[00:16:51] Chris Savage: They should say, "Savage, listen. we don't have enough budget that's for crazy ideas. A lot of our best ideas are the craziest." And they would show examples of things we've done, like One Tap 100 is a good example. We did a feature-length documentary. What's the return gonna be on this? Like, why are we gonna... You know, all these different, uh, you know. Then they'd be like, "I have three ideas right here that I think are really good. I don't need that much budget. You and I both know that these channels all are like, uh, really saturated, and we need to stand out." And like, it might fail, but also it might be the best return thing we have.
[00:17:21] Chris Savage: And I would say, "Go do it."
[00:17:22] Amanda Natividad: I love that
[00:17:23] Chris Savage: of this, though. I'm such a believer. Like, the-- I think the hard thing is like, who's the person who isn't the believer, and w- how do you pitch them? I would probably be like, I would try to... You know how like, uh, one of the things I've s- one of the things I've really seen motivate folks is like, competition is doing something and you're not, you're not paying attention.
[00:17:43] Chris Savage: I would try to pick some other companies that are already doing this and try to frame them in a way as competition to your leadership
[00:17:51] Amanda Natividad: Ooh, that's smart. Yeah
[00:17:54] Chris Savage: be like, "Look, we're not in the finance space. Let's pick a... What-- I don't know what we are. What, what's our company?"
[00:18:00] Amanda Natividad: Um, I don't know. Let's go- we gotta make it up. We can't, we- it's not Wistia, right? We gotta
[00:18:06] Chris Savage: No, make, make something up. It has to be a so- boring, a bor- traditionally boring business,
[00:18:12] Amanda Natividad: Okay. S- some kind of compliance, um, what do you call it? Yeah, some kind of compliance SaaS whatever
[00:18:20] Chris Savage: Compliance SaaS for EU regulations.
[00:18:23] Amanda Natividad: Yes
[00:18:23] Chris Savage: what it is. You go to the leader, you're like, "Look, we're trying all these channels. We're trying to make stuff work, but Ramp is eating our lunch." And they're like, "What do you mean? Ramp's this finance thing. They have a credit card."
[00:18:34] Chris Savage: I was like, "No, but look at all the different products they're doing. They're eating our lunch, and the reason is that people actually care about it." And you'd show-- be like, "This is coming. This is big. Like, we got to get on this early because there's not enough talent that knows how to do this. We have to learn how to do this. And actually, it's a really small investment. Like, look, it's-- I want to take 10% of what we got. 10%, it might fail, but the other stuff isn't working so great because it's all saturated. So can we do this? Like, can you-- we take a risk?" And think if you, if you can frame the competition up properly, people will be like, "Okay, sounds good."
[00:19:05] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. I think that's such a good point. But also what you said even at first about s- about saturation of these channels, it's also saying like, it's also the, the FOMO aspect, right?
[00:19:16] Amanda Natividad: Like, "Hey, there, there's... Attention is saturated anyway. If we don't try this, we would lose anyway, so we might as well try it."
[00:19:26] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. The other thing I would try to add on to this, if I were pitching this, I think, is I think I would try to add on some kind of like internal company culture aspect to it, like employee engagement. Something along the lines of, if it's true, right? Like, "Hey, morale is kind of down. I think, like, the team would be really excited about this thing if we could all work together.
[00:19:50] Amanda Natividad: We don't have to cast real talent."
[00:19:51] Chris Savage: To do this
[00:19:53] Amanda Natividad: " Morale's down and we need to be in a commercial for the LOLs."
[00:19:57] Chris Savage: Well, it's funny. We did, um, We, like, made a song that was like saying goodbye to like the Canon 5D when it was like no longer like the leading, camera for like video producers at work. there's like 30 people just like singing. And it's the most ridiculous... like a "We Are the People" type thing. And it was the most ridiculous video. Makes no sense, and it just did so well and it also like the team was like after like, "That was so fun to like sing at work." Like that was so... And, and it was just like, I do think you're right that there is a part of the culture that when you give yourself permission for this type of work, like it really does lift everybody.
[00:20:39] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, it's fun.
[00:20:41] Chris Savage: Ja
[00:20:42] Amanda Natividad: okay, my next question here is, let's say you are starting something from scratch tomorrow.
[00:20:51] Amanda Natividad: you don't have a lot of marketing levers to pull because you haven't made one yet. Where do you think some of the... we'll just say in B2B just to give a little bit more structure.
[00:21:01] Amanda Natividad: Where do you think some of the under-invested opportunities lie?
[00:21:05] Chris Savage: I would try to do hand-to-hand combat to start. I mean, I would be...
[00:21:09] Amanda Natividad: uh-huh.
[00:21:10] Chris Savage: I would probably just try to pick people who I think should be customers and be like, "Hey, I'm working on this new thing. I'd love to tell you about it and get your feedback, and can I take you to coffee?" And I would, I would try to sit face-to-face with people that I think are the right customer, and then I would try to sit face-to-face with if we have any customers at all, and really try to understand and empathize with, like, how we can get this thing to them in a way that, it will be meaningful. And I would just do that a ton.
[00:21:42] Amanda Natividad: Yeah
[00:21:42] Chris Savage: once I felt like there was a story that was consistent, or if I felt like there was a pain that we could really help with, I would start going from there, and I think I would probably Yeah, I mean, it kind of depends on what I would learn, but I would probably trying to figure out, like, how much of or which parts of that journey should I share and, like, is that a, is that a strategy that makes sense? Um, or depending on the scale of how quickly we're trying to go, I would also look for, like, who's already, who was already in the space talking about these topics. Like, who are the authorities? And I would go try to talk to them
[00:22:20] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, that makes sense. It's kind of like a mix of account-based marketing and customer research and audience research.
[00:22:28] Chris Savage: Yeah, I would
[00:22:29] Chris Savage: say it's a mix of that. I think that I, uh, I would just want to, like, get to know them directly, and I have a funny feeling that if I got to know them directly, I probably can sell them on it.
[00:22:38] Amanda Natividad: Yeah
[00:22:39] Chris Savage: if I know why I'm selling them, then I would try to scale it. But I think in terms of attention, you know, how do you get the attention at scale quickly? It's so hard to get organic attention yourself if you've never done it, right? Like, you have to get comfortable with so many different things, like figure out what your opinion is, putting it out there, being willing to fail, um, being willing to have zeros all across, like, your content. you don't have a lot of ad budget, like, like all, all those things are so hard.
[00:23:09] Chris Savage: And so If it's a space that already has who are essentially the influencers of the space, I would try to get to them as quickly as possible. Because if they, if they actually have a way of getting attention, know the problems of the customer already or the audience, I would try to learn from them and engage with them, and that would probably be my first stop.
[00:23:28] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, that makes sense. Um, does Wistia do like account-ba- account-based marketing?
[00:23:35] Chris Savage: Um, we do some. We do like a mix of lots of different things. But yeah, we do some account-based marketing, but not like come get a coffee with me tomorrow
[00:23:43] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, yeah. That makes-- Yeah, I get it. I feel like we should do more of that. Yeah. Okay.
[00:23:48] Amanda Natividad: What are some of the things about the business that excite you now?
[00:23:54] Amanda Natividad: Whether it's in marketing or more sales, what's exciting to you right now?
[00:23:59] Chris Savage: I mean, I think the thing that's the most exciting today is speed we can go from idea to action. And so I'm just so used to having done this so long, like, "Hey, this is a cool idea." "Yeah, that's amazing." "All right, when should we do it?" "Okay, that's gonna take this amount of time for the project and this thing to get built."
[00:24:19] Chris Savage: And it would-- We're always like three months ahead, six months ahead. And now it, to me, it feels like if you have a great idea on Monday, it could get out the door on Friday. If not Tuesday, if not sometimes Monday. It's hard to beat those dopamine hits of like putting stuff directly in front of customers and seeing what they say. And so, yeah, I think that is like really exciting and it feels like really fun. I think it feels very... I mean, Wistia has been around for 20 years, it feels like, but it feels as early stage today as it did when we started, except we have way more resources, so like makes it even more fun. Um, yeah, I think it's just I love the pace and I love the creativity, so it just forces both of those things over the place.
[00:24:58] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. I do, I do love that too, how, how fast things can be now. That's fun. Like, I never liked working at a larger company where feeling like everything... Like, it took three weeks just to get your creative brief read.
[00:25:15] Amanda Natividad: Um, don't miss that.
[00:25:17] Chris Savage: Or it's like, "Hey, but I have this idea." "Cool. Let's talk about when." "Oh, I'll book time." "We book time. When is the time?" "It's two weeks from now." "Okay." Two weeks later, 30-minute meeting on the books. The idea is like a five-minute idea. We spend all 30 minutes talking about it anyway.
[00:25:33] Amanda Natividad: Yeah
[00:25:34] Chris Savage: the output?
[00:25:34] Chris Savage: "Oh, we need these c- couple pieces of data to make a decision." "Oh, well, I'm gonna go convince the data person." And then it's like doom, bing, bang. There's like all of these things like pinging and ponging slowly, and there's a million of them. And now I feel like it's like instead someone comes in with an idea that's fleshed out, that's built, that could go live on the site, and like it's like a finished thing.
[00:25:56] Chris Savage: And they're like, "What do you think of this?" Like, "This is awesome, but what if we did XYZ?" And I type it in, and then it does the XYZ. And we go back and forth and back and forth, and there's no even a meeting. Uh, it's just like night and-- it's a night and day way to work
[00:26:07] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, it's true. I mean, what you're describing too is you lose so much momentum and even purpose in that process. Like, let's book a time two weeks from now, and then two weeks from then it's like, "Oh, um, I was watching The Office again and I was thinking we could get Kevin."
[00:26:24] Chris Savage: Exactly. Then
[00:26:25] Amanda Natividad: And then you'd be like, "What are we talking about?"
[00:26:27] Chris Savage: Like a thing, even that delay, like, you know, it causes people to have less conviction in some of their ideas
[00:26:34] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Yeah
[00:26:37] Chris Savage: it like, w- the truth is like, if you get people excited about something you wanna do, much more likely to happen.
[00:26:43] Amanda Natividad: Yeah.
[00:26:44] Chris Savage: It's that simple. Like, if you're
[00:26:45] Amanda Natividad: Yeah
[00:26:45] Chris Savage: " Hey, let's do this cool, fun little campaign or idea," and they're like, "That sounds awesome.
[00:26:49] Chris Savage: When can we do it?" You're like, "I can do it right now." Like, "Well, that's amazing." Versus like, if you're like, "Okay, a week from now I'm gonna pitch you an idea. Oh, we're gonna do this in six months." "Well, what else do we have going on then?" It's just, it's just, it's so much harder.
[00:27:01] Amanda Natividad: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:01] Chris Savage: Um, which by the way, I think this just is not, this is not even that related, but I, I think it's, uh, in my mind for some reason it is, is I also notice this funny thing that happens now where people get ideas from AI and then they don't trust them because the AI gave it to them.
[00:27:18] Chris Savage: When like if a human gave it to them, they would take it really seriously. And so I feel like where there's all this funny stuff happening where it's like we're awash in ideas, we just throw out most of them. And I think that's why like conviction really matters, like seeing something through, being excited about it, like
[00:27:35] Chris Savage: believing in it
[00:27:36] Chris Savage: really matters with all Of this stuff.
[00:27:38] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. And then it also, it takes, it takes energy to become excited about something if you're, if it doesn't immediately spark some joy. So in that like, "Oh, we'll meet next week about it," you lose the excitement. And then by then you're just sitting with this idea that you're like, "Was this a good idea?"
[00:27:58] Amanda Natividad: And like maybe, and sure, like some ideas you gotta sleep on it, fine. But you know, there's a difference between checking yourself to make sure something's rational and then just losing all steam and conviction in an idea just because time passed and you're like, "I don't know. This doesn't feel alive anymore."
[00:28:19] Chris Savage: Yep.
[00:28:19] Amanda Natividad: Okay. Um, I think a last question here is, hmm, is there a, is there any kind of marketing metric that you kind of especially care about? Even, even if you know, okay, this isn't the be-all, end-all, because obviously the metric finally is like, you know, sales, deal won, peop- getting new customers. We all want that.
[00:28:42] Amanda Natividad: But is there maybe some kind of leading indicator that you especially like to look at?
[00:28:49] Chris Savage: Yeah, I think brand search
[00:28:51] Chris Savage: is like probably one of the most critical thing and brand impressions like, um, organic brand impressions. Like you actually g- are you doing enough that in you are getting yourself onto people's minds such that they think, "I should go look that up. I should go check that out"?
[00:29:07] Chris Savage: if that number is going up, usually you're in a pretty healthy spot unlike so many other things. Um, and it's, you can't track exactly what it's attached to,
[00:29:18] Chris Savage: which is The hard part. Like what are the inputs that get you that output? I do think that it is one that I l- I like to look at and see, okay, just are we, are we moving the needle with the stuff that we're doing on this or not?
[00:29:30] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. I, I, I always like looking at these things. You know, you look at the past quarter. I mean, at SparkToro, that is what excites me too. When I look back, like what happened last quarter? And seeing the little spikes and going, "Oh, wait, that was the week that, you know, Rand and I did office hours, and we got pretty good registration."
[00:29:51] Amanda Natividad: And it's like, oh yeah, that is a really good program that we do. We got to do more of those. And you know, it's, it's not, it's not to say that we don't, we, it's not that, to say that we don't know what we're doing all throughout, right? But it's more of like ongoing, you know, we do things because we think it's a good use of time, because we think, okay, this is the messaging we want to say.
[00:30:10] Amanda Natividad: These are ways that we think we are helping our customers, right? You do these things because you believe the work matters, right? And then it's sort of like connecting dots going backward that you go, oh, that actually was great. Like, I thought that one thing was gonna be just okay for the business, but it turns out it got a lot of people really excited about us.
[00:30:29] Amanda Natividad: That's great. Or even just when you have moments of those kinds of like PR blitzes where you happen to have a lot of public facing opportunities, and you look back and go, oh, that wasn't quite as much as I thought, or didn't generate quite as many organic, um, organic searches as I thought. But you know what?
[00:30:46] Amanda Natividad: I'm still glad we did it because we got the word out, and I refined my messaging, and I got some good practice, or, you know, other kinds of markers of success
[00:30:55] Chris Savage: Totally. Yeah, I mean, look, all those other markers really matter because if you're not paying attention to that stuff, it's really hard to keep doing it
[00:31:02] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Okay, oh, r- real last question.
[00:31:05] Amanda Natividad: Question for managing up. what is something that more like marketing managers should know in terms of managing up expectations?
[00:31:14] Amanda Natividad: I would say, I think in terms of what, what marketing managers should know about managing up, don't be afraid to come with more information on a more frequent basis. I think like a lot of the insights that come out of marketing really do impact everything, right? Like they impact positioning and sales, they impact product and what you should build, right?
[00:31:39] Chris Savage: Like if you find that there's some story that's really working or some channel we're trying that's really working or some influencer that's really working, the details of what that is actually matter. Like, and it, it may matter because maybe they're u- they're using your product a slightly different way than you most-- you thought most people would use it.
[00:31:56] Chris Savage: Maybe it's showing up in sales in some way that's like really impactful. And I, I think what people miss is like just how much can be changed if we're given the information. What I don't like is when we-- there isn't actually enough managing up. And so the meetings are less frequent. There's like all about drilling into the details to understand what did really happen versus not.
[00:32:20] Chris Savage: Like you're not-- I think it's like harder to make changes in those where like the truth with most things is if you're giving more constant updates, if you're giving more constant feedback, there's gonna be more constant change. And, and I don't know, I feel like this is kind of true across the business.
[00:32:38] Chris Savage: Like, you know, we'll see that some new part of our platform is selling way better. Why? Get into the details, understand that it's like a combination of like some positioning thing, it's a combination of some feature we built. And then we ask about the other parts of the product. Well, why aren't we doing that there?
[00:32:52] Chris Savage: And it's like, oh, we haven't built that stuff. Well, oh, maybe it actually influenced like the roadmap. And so suddenly, you know, you had some insight in sales or had some insight in marketing that totally impacted everything else and made your future life much easier. But we can only make those changes if we know about them.
[00:33:07] Chris Savage: And so, um, yeah, I think about that a lot and I think about it with risk-taking. Like when should you be taking a risk? And if you're not sure, you should just be managing up and saying, "Hey, we have this content we're trying. We think it's too risky. What do you think?" And you'd be surprised how quickly you'll get an answer on a lot of stuff and how much like more risk-taking will be allowed or not.
[00:33:28] Chris Savage: But like in places that want to take it, I would not be surprised a lot of people would just, would trust their team to try many more things
[00:33:34] Amanda Natividad: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:35] Chris Savage: Even were asked.
[00:33:36] Amanda Natividad: I, I love that answer. I think it's also really good for me to remember. Like, I think when you're, and anybody, and anybody doing their job, you know, you kind of get stuck in your day-to-day. Sometimes you think like, "Ah, they don't wanna hear from me," or like, "Oh," like, uh, you know, it's not like anyone's trying to hoard information, right?
[00:33:54] Amanda Natividad: But sometimes you just kind of forget that people wanna hear from you, like they wanna see...
[00:34:00] Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Like, they don't have your perspective. That's why you work together.
[00:34:03] Chris Savage: Yeah, no, I mean, like, like I've seen stuff that we've done and I see it working. I'm like, "What's going on with this? How'd we do this? Give me the details." And they give me this like, "Wait a second. you're trying this approach? Huh. Well, where else could we try?" They're like, "Well, we wanna try in these places."
[00:34:17] Chris Savage: I'm like, "Well, why don't we try it now?" They're like, "Oh, we were gonna bring this up at the next like quarterly thing." And we're like, "Well, why don't we just, just do it now?" And like there's-- And if it had been brought up directly, it would've just happened. And I, I just think that's like... That's probably, I mean, I don't know how much worse it is in remote, but like is one of the things I really think about a lot is like that's what people are talking about with like the run-ins. You know, when you're having the random run-in, it's some random insight that you weren't sure if you should say, that you happened to say that actually had a big impact, Like that's what a run-in is. That's like a positive business outcome run-in is like you didn't know if you should say it 'cause you would've sold-- you would've said it already. But that's what everybody thinks is the most valuable thing that's lost from in-person work. So you should take that as permission to say, "Hey, these little things, like yeah, you can, you should share them." And you can literally ask like, "If I'm being annoying and saying too much, like just tell me. I'll just keep giving you my insights."
[00:35:10] Chris Savage: Well, fantastic. That's unbelievably helpful
[00:35:13] Amanda Natividad: Yeah, totally. And I think if, if anyone's self-conscious about doing this too much, then fine, cap it to, like, once a week or twice a week, right?
[00:35:22] Amanda Natividad: Because, like, this doesn't happen often. To that point, though, I mean, that, that's what I miss about working in person at times. But I do try to make it a point to, like, chat or email Rand and Casey to be like, "Hey, this funny thing happened," or like, "Oh, did you see this?
[00:35:38] Amanda Natividad: Um, I wonder why people are coming to our site so often." And like, we, we do, w-
[00:35:44] Amanda Natividad: yeah. Or,
[00:35:46] Amanda Natividad: well, sometimes it'll be like, this thing happened on TikTok, and we're like, "Oh, no." And then we see all the accounts being created, and all the passwords are, like, F-U SparkToro, and we're like, "Oh, cool."
[00:35:56] Chris Savage: Oh, wow. Nice
[00:35:57] Amanda Natividad: That happens. Um, cool.
[00:36:00] Amanda Natividad: Well, this has been super fun. Thank you for joining, Chris.
[00:36:04] Amanda Natividad: I feel like, I feel like, I have not earned the right to call you Savage, so I'm gonna call you Chris. What do I call you?
[00:36:09] Chris Savage: Me Savage if you want. You've earned it after this.
[00:36:11] Amanda Natividad: Okay. Okay, 'cause I think that's, I think that's the coolest last name ever. Um, cool. Well, this will air in a couple weeks, and yeah, I'll keep you posted on, on that stuff.
[00:36:22] Amanda Natividad: But we got some really good clips, too, so I'm pumped. this'll
[00:36:25] Amanda Natividad: be, this'll be good. Yeah. All right.
[00:36:28] Chris Savage: Well, thank you so much
[00:36:29] Amanda Natividad: Thank you for listening or watching Zero Click Marketing. We'll see you next week.