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Called To Action is a podcast where the latest trends and research in B2B marketing are investigated and discussed. At the end of each episode, you’ll get ideas for tactics to use in your company’s marketing. What action will you take next?
This podcast, produced by Aimtal, a digital marketing agency, features the company’s CEO and Co-founder, Janet Mesh, and Growth Marketing Lead, Tucker Delaney-Winn, as the hosts, along with special guest speakers and industry thought leaders.
I think really case studies have to be both the impetus and the vehicle for integrated full funnel marketing campaigns.
Speaker 2:Instead of just creating the case study and then not, you know, using it in different ways and kind of repackaging or repurposing. Right. That's the point of it all. Right?
Speaker 3:This is is called to action by Aimtal, a podcast where the latest trends and research in b to b marketing are investigated and discussed. At the end of each episode, you'll get ideas for tactics to use in your company's marketing. What action will you take next? Here are your co hosts Janet Mesh and Tucker Delaney Nguyen of Aimtal.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone. Hello friends, whoever's watching, listening. Janet Mesh here of Aimtal. I'm here with Tucker Delaney Wynn, our growth marketing lead at Aimtal and we are excited to just see what this becomes honestly. Right, Tucker?
Speaker 2:We're just we are I would say we are Aimtal's resident verbal processors of all things marketing. And I feel like our team was just, you know what? We're kind of annoyed listening to you guys just talk marketing all the time in the all hands, say a lot of great stuff, Just get it on camera, start sharing it with the world. So one of my mantras for 2024 is be courageous. So I'm leaning into that this year, putting my face out there, sharing the wealth of knowledge that we have and share with our clients for hopefully a future marketing community.
Speaker 2:So we're excited. Anything you want to kind of set us some expectations Tucker or I can kind of just keep rolling. Jump in, jump in.
Speaker 1:We're processing. We're gonna we're gonna do verbal processing marketing trends. Hopefully, folks will be processing right there with you. And hopefully, this will be fun for you and me, Janet, and take take the burden off others, you know, on our team having to verbally process with us.
Speaker 2:So Truly talking shop. We're excited. Yeah, so I guess we could set some expectations. We are going to talk shop, deep dive some industry updates, trends, research reports. But in particular, we'll share what's top of mind for some CMOs in 2024 according to a Gartner report that we downloaded and we'll share a couple slides from that, which is exciting.
Speaker 2:Part of that is I think a big theme that we're seeing that I'm excited to talk about is just the importance of collaboration, not just within a marketing team, but also cross functional collaboration and how you can bring your team together and tools and systems and processes to really achieve that level of collaboration that's needed for success. In addition to that, we have some interesting reports and industry insights we can share. For 2024, what the types of content and tactics are the most effective? And I think that people will be surprised. I was pretty surprised on a couple of reports that we found.
Speaker 2:And really it dives into buyer intent, into interest and conversion. So we are going to jump into all that shortly. To keep the intro going a little bit longer, Tucker, how about you start? Do you want to introduce yourself to the audience? Share kind of who you are, what you do at Intel and maybe a little bit of yeah, let's start there actually.
Speaker 1:Let's do it. Thank you, Janet. Happy to be here. I'm Tucker Delaney Wynne, Intel's growth marketing lead, Also a resident verbal processor for the team. Sometimes honored to be called Ads dad by the team, as I am a new dad as well.
Speaker 1:But yeah, on the growth marketing team at Aimtel, I've been here for three plus years. And really, what our focus is driving demand, leads, and revenue. What I love is that that looks different every single time. That always makes it fun and unique and interesting. But I think kind of the core things that that are always there, the questions that we're always asking is, how can we infuse strategy and processes into your marketing to drive repeatable and scalable growth?
Speaker 1:So those are always the things that I'm trying to think about. How can we get you know, what's the strategy and process to to get things going and scaling? Personally, you know, marketing story got started in New York City, Big Apple, doing marketing for Broadway shows, as you know. So really learned to make marketing theatrical. And now, then back in Boston in the b to b tech scene.
Speaker 1:Yeah, haven't looked back since. But I think similar to you, Janet, started as a writer. Found my way into demand gen. And now, all things growth. So yeah, excited, excited to talk about that.
Speaker 1:But what about you, Janet? Very I'm an old bald man. Would love hear about your story.
Speaker 2:That's much HTC life definitely does that to either go bald or gray. So here we are. We're both rocking it. Well, actually, before I talk about myself, your Tucker's too humble, which is great. I think staying humble is important.
Speaker 2:However, got to give a little shout out to Tucker of his career story. If you were obsessed with Hamilton at any point in your life, you can thank Tucker for writing the ad copy that convinced you to show up to the theater. So him and his team that worked on the Hamilton musical. Impressive stuff. Mean, they were everywhere.
Speaker 2:So amazing work. I can jump in, share my story, little bit of my background. I'm Janet, CEO, co founder of Aimtel. I started the business agency with my co founder David in 2018. So we're going on six years as of today, this recording.
Speaker 2:So this year will be our sixth year in business, which is incredible. But my background, similar to you Tucker, it sounds like. I went to school for marketing and communication and was looking up to start my career in marketing. I was your classic marketing team of one at an IT staffing and consulting firm. Worked really close with their sales team, built out pretty much their whole digital marketing.
Speaker 2:They didn't have any digital marketing. From there, when they got acquired actually, and similar I think was a marketing team of one, but I really liked was content writing, copywriting. I'm definitely a writer. That's where my roots are. And then going into digital marketing and kind of hit that inflection point when this company was acquired.
Speaker 2:I wanted to get a range of skills. But I really liked the tech industry and wanted to kind of go deeper there. And this is all the time of kind of like the cloud revolution. That former company, they literally helped implement large legacy systems, ERP systems, like SAP, PeopleSoft. So it was a really exciting time to be in the industry as we know.
Speaker 2:And social media and just online marketing was actually becoming taking as a real important part of the whole strategy. But I realized two things that I wanted to get a range of skills. So I started working with a couple of different agencies over the years from there. But also, if you can believe it, you couldn't work remotely. It just wasn't a thing.
Speaker 2:And I'm really passionate about traveling and wanted to just have that level of flexibility. My personality type is just cannot sit in a chair. I mean, I still do, to be honest, but at least it's the comforts of my home. I just really couldn't believe that I got to this point in my life where I felt like I was kind of back at school. I go sit down at 08:30 in the morning and ready to go until like 6PM.
Speaker 2:And you know, when you're younger, can obviously you're still hustling and you hustle. But I just didn't really understand why if I was doing like online work, why I couldn't work fully remotely. And in that process of trying to find a company of that, I couldn't find it honestly. And my co founder David and I, we always wanted to start a business together, especially a fully remote one. And so we couldn't find the company we wanted to work for.
Speaker 2:So we decided to create it Honestly, that's really kind of where it came from. A lot of my clients, when I was doing kind of as I was advancing my career, I also was doing a lot of consulting on my own and I just really loved working with like a range of companies, not just kind of working with one. So that's really the direction I went in and kind of my first freelance clients became our first agency clients. So yeah, today we're, I'm still marketing lead consulting across our clients, working with the team. Yeah, it's really exciting.
Speaker 2:We've done a lot with some really large enterprise organizations to help them build their strategies and execute upon it. Yeah, and just for context, Tucker and I work a lot together on building those strategies, doing this research, working with our team and then overseeing the execution. So talking about this stuff all day, every day to the point where people hopefully are not even already tuning us out because we're excited to share some of our insights. Indulge me. Before we go into all the marketing, I'm curious, Tucker, like based on our career, what's one I'm curious, what's a random or surprising job you've had in your lifetime that you think people would be like, oh wow.
Speaker 2:What's your almost one of your fun facts, I guess.
Speaker 1:I think people are always thrown off by this. But prior to my marketing career, I had a quick stint in children's television. Worked at WGBH in Boston.
Speaker 2:Oh, classic. Boston. Yes. Okay.
Speaker 1:So worked on the show Arthur, Curious George, and then also Martha Speaks about a dog who eats alphabet soup and can talk. Been trying to feed my dog Puck alphabet soup ever since. He hasn't spoken, but I'm thinking maybe one day soon.
Speaker 2:Wow. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There you go.
Speaker 2:That's a cool little hybrid of your childhood development, education and marketing and fascinating. Very cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, what about you, Nick?
Speaker 2:Actually, I think one of the most surprising ones is it wasn't like a full time job. Wasn't jobs in college or university. Can't say I was an official librarian because you have to actually get a degree in that. But I did work in the library. I really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:So I like to say I was could have been a librarian. I think that kind of ties in nicely with I do really like to do a lot of research and deep dive stuff. So yeah, almost a librarian, kind of a librarian. We can start to dive into some of that research. I think where I would like to start is I think everyone always wants to get inside the brain of the chief marketing officer, the CMO.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like that coveted person that can get as a client or as your customer or as your user. But as always, a position of that level, I think they have a lot that they're responsible for. And I think this Gartner report that you found, Tucker, I think that this is really interesting because I would assume I feel like when you think of a Chief Marketing Officer, they're thinking of the actual marketing and the strategy and the execution upon that at a global scale. Of course, that's a priority. However, what I was interested to see, and we start to dive into this first, is the actually what was kind of the priority for them in this report and what they were saying is around collaboration and they're seeing a lot of inefficiencies in this.
Speaker 2:So we can pull up this screenshot here. Let's see. So there's a lot on this. There's a lot on this.
Speaker 1:It's a
Speaker 2:lot here. But let's hear, I guess from your perspective, you want to kick it off. What were your top takeaways from, like, seeing this data and information tucker?
Speaker 1:So I thought this was so interesting because I think as you were just saying, Janet, CMOS, there's a lot they're responsible for. And I think, you know, let's let's travel back to the past. Let's go back through history. And we think of, like, CMOs of the past kind of being in charge of that creative vision. You know, we think of we think of the Don Drapers of the world who had the big splashy creative ideas, and everybody in the boardroom is going, wow.
Speaker 1:Then I think about today, and you think about CMOs today. I think there's an assumption that that person has to be really focused on strategy and data. And how do we find signals from data and and use data to kind of really drive our strategy and vision forward? I don't think either of those two things have gone away. I think they're still critical.
Speaker 1:But what I I thought is so funny here is that we're seeing, okay, actually, there's real issues with collaboration and processes. And so that CMOs, in addition to strategy and creative vision, they really need to be process leaders. And that was something that I just don't, I hadn't thought about that much. I know we do a lot of that work at AimTel, but, you know, process is not necessarily the most thrilling concept. It's not as engaging as a cool piece of creative.
Speaker 1:It's not as analytical, perhaps as unique data strategies, but it's critical. I know we both know that. And so I think where it kind of left me is that those CMOs, I think rather than they being the ones who have to always have incredible creative and strategy, what the report is kind of telling us is that they need to be the ones who can get the teams their teams to function more efficiently and effectively so that their teams can do that work, that creative strategic work that really drives value. To me, that's really a mindset shift around CMOs needing to set the vision for processes just as much as they do for customer acquisition strategies. Strategies.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, kinda blew my mind a little bit. You know, it it seems like there's real problems around collaboration, efficiency, just getting team alignment. But the the great thing is that there's an opportunity for CMOs and marketing teams in general to step in and own those own those processes. So yeah.
Speaker 2:That's that was kind of helpful. Felt like those cross functional like, think this is also saying like the cross functional collaboration is necessary, not just like within a marketing department within an organization, but like, how are they collaborating and working with the sales team? If you even are, how are collaborating, communicating if you're a product based company with the product team, engineering, leadership. So I think, agreed. It is really interesting to hear, but I think this is that really foundational work that I think a lot of people take for granted honestly.
Speaker 2:And like you said, Tucker, we do a lot of this for our clients where we're coming in, auditing, understanding like, Hey, what is kind of like your makeup of your marketing? What do you have? What do you don't have? And what type of process do we need to build or system? We build a lot of processes and that ties into the communication tools, the collaboration tools.
Speaker 2:I think also I've seen an experience in working with enterprise organizations or even small companies, whatever your size, I find that what we usually see is it's almost like treating it organically. It's like, Well, we're human. We know how to communicate and collaborate. It's like, No, actually not. We all come from different have different communication styles and different backgrounds, different cultures, different languages.
Speaker 2:So creating that kind of shared way of working together is really important. I don't think that until we saw this, it's interesting how they're really attaching this to this has harms revenue and profit outcomes. That's pretty intense, honestly. It's a lot of pressure, but if you put in that context, can we streamline, make things more efficient? Everyone has that shared understanding of how to work together.
Speaker 2:There was another report from a company called Kanto and the State of Digital Content of 2024 edition. I thought this was in it. It kind of reinforced what Gartner was saying with CMOs. And the question was, what are the top challenges that your organization faces in creating, managing and distributing content? One of them, look at the third one, forty two percent are saying, aligning teams for effective collaboration and or efficient workflows.
Speaker 2:This is a digital content report and the only two things on here about content.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's not even about content. Yeah. It's about getting
Speaker 2:It's all about the technology, the assets, the resourcing, the collaboration, efficient workflows. And I think that's actually a pretty exciting opportunity. Not that that's like a bad thing necessarily, but I think it's a very exciting opportunity for someone in, not even just the CMOs, anyone in the organization to be like, okay, if we focus on solving these problems first, then it's just going to become that much more easy for us to create the content that our audience and customers need. Our philosophy at Aimsall is taking an integrated approach. It's like how do you make sure that you're hitting across the channels where your audience are showing up, different types of formats, but not doing it where everyone's focusing on a different approach, I guess.
Speaker 2:They're not only just doing their type of content and that's it and it's in a silo. It's very much thinking of it as a collaborative effort. What are we creating? What are the campaigns? Thinking of it holistically and then everyone aligned to that.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Well, and I think you hit on so many great things, Janet. And one of the things I want to go back to that you said is like, it's not just creating processes for marketing teams, but marketers and the CMO has an opportunity to create processes for other teams too. You know, for sales, for events, for operations. So I think a huge part of this report is, hey.
Speaker 1:Guess what, CMOs? Guess what marketing team? You can actually deliver value outside your own teams by helping drive business alignment across the entire organization in getting teams organized. And the other piece, I think we were talking about ROI too. And I think on the one hand, marketing teams often seen as a cost center within an organization.
Speaker 1:Marketers are already trying to get out of that, you know, hole. But then I think when we think about ROI, it's like, okay. How can I create a campaign that that generates revenue, and then I can show that that's higher than the marketing cost, and therefore, I'm driving ROI? But there's a flip side to that, and that's how can I save hours? How can I return hours back to business so that we're Like reduced duplicative efforts?
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's something that I don't think a lot of marketers think about as a value that they can add. But when you have processes, that's a huge way to generate ROI. Look at all the cost savings we had. Right.
Speaker 1:And so that's just another area where I think a lot of the work we do to help organizations tighten up their processes, be much more unified and streamlined, really helps save, you know, save hours and become much more efficient.
Speaker 2:I haven't answered this question. I'm curious, like, just to give a little bit of specifics on what we're talking about. Like, what are what would you say, like, some actual, like, processes or solutions that marketing teams can use to to achieve this level of collaboration?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. It does sound simple on the surface, but you'd be surprised. You go into organizations and they're using multiple tools. They're looking at their work on different platforms. And then suddenly, you realize, oh, we're trying to collaborate on larger marketing goals, but we're working in different places.
Speaker 1:So I mean, some of these things are are pretty simple. Let's align the team on a shared calendar. Maybe that's a shared Trello board where we can easily, you know, focus on the top priorities or top tasks. And then a knowledge hub too is is huge. Where are we putting our knowledge that we've all agreed upon?
Speaker 1:Where are we documenting our processes? And is that all in the same platform so that we're all using single sources of truth? And I think I've always felt like it's kind of a there's two sides to this. There's one. There's doing the process, but then there's educating and training the team on the process and ensuring that they actually follow it.
Speaker 1:And I think I don't know about you, but I'd say we always kind of take that one two punch approach of helping set up the processes, but then also helping train.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I think if you're also, if you're gonna be, you know, introducing or consolidating onto, like, one shared, like, technology or app or system, it's really important that I think folks need to learn themselves, but also to yes, you need to train people, maybe show Hey, these are similar features that you were using. Sometimes it's just a matter of you just got to make those pretty strong decisions.
Speaker 2:This is what we're doing. This is how everyone needs to adopt the new process and tools so that we can achieve that level of collaboration. But it's also even then assessing, are other teams using different tools and processes and maybe that education piece and be like, Hey, look what we're doing. Let's try to get that buy in internally. If you're working at such a large organization that everyone's kind of it ties into that shadow IT movement where people have budgets and they have the authority to kind of purchase apps and platforms, which is great, but not always thinking of how does that integrate with other teams and how can we collaborate.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I find it's really helpful to look at these things, not just necessarily on a tool perspective, but also doing an audit of the people on the team is helpful. So for example, can do I feel like some resources you can tap into is a DiSC assessment. The DiSC one is interesting. It scores and gives you like a report on each person's communication style and it kind of like plots it out and explains like, don't be surprised everyone. Tucker and I are the same one and ID, right?
Speaker 2:Like we're very similar. But then, you know, there's other folks on our team that are kind of a different maybe they're a C, an S. It's really fascinating, I think, to take that time to understand your people as well and how everyone works. It's not like a perfect science or a perfect mathematical equation. But I think having that empathy of like how everyone kind of communicates and their collaboration preferences is an important thing to keep in mind of building out those processes.
Speaker 2:But I think at the core is like bringing everyone to that one source of truth. Don't overlook a calendar, people.
Speaker 1:Don't overlook a calendar.
Speaker 2:So simple.
Speaker 1:Suddenly suddenly, we're all looking at one calendar together, and we're putting Yeah. All the things that different teams and departments are doing on one calendar, and there's these kind of moments at large organizations.
Speaker 2:Shout out to social media managers of the world because you're like, hey, guys. We have all this on our calendar. Look at how many posts we're sharing every Like, let's let's break it down back to the priorities. And I think that visibility, like, that kind of visual angle of it is really important. There were some other things we wanted to kind of you're talking about CMOs need to be drivers of change, Tucker.
Speaker 2:And I think we're talking about the process side and sharing some ideas around that. But I'd to kind of talk through now, pivot a little bit to what type of content should these teams once they're collaborating, they're communicating, they got it, what do they need to create? I'd love to jump there next if you want to share a little bit of what we saw on the there's a 2024 B2B content consumption and demand report that we want to share some insights from next.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. We've got our processes in place. People are collaborating perfectly. Okay. What kind of content are we creating that's actually going to move the needle on the b to b buyer journey?
Speaker 1:Yeah, glad you mentioned the the the b to b content consumption and demand report. Obviously, CMOs, marketers, they need to be drivers of change. And I think a lot of that what we're seeing is that they need to be shaping larger organizational narratives. A lot of that's around ROI. But I think even outside of just ROI, it's customer value.
Speaker 1:What are the narratives? What are the stories that you're telling about how your product, how your organization is driving customer value? No surprise for you and me, Jenna, but one of the best ways to do this from this report is through case studies. That is great news to us. I think it's really exciting, and it confirms a lot of what we've seen in our own performance data.
Speaker 1:Case studies are rich, in-depth ways to prove customer value, to legitimize the work you're doing in the eyes of your consumers. And frankly, from this report, they're just a super successful way. And what we've what the report has found is that, folks who who are more associate more likely to be associated with a buying decision are ones who've requested case studies. Just to get specific, believe it's users who request a case study were 78.5% more likely to make a purchase decision within twelve months. We talked to sales teams
Speaker 2:78.5% more likely. Interesting. Down to the decimal. And I think
Speaker 1:sales teams are always trying to think about, okay. How do I increase lead velocity? How do I, you know, speed up that pipeline? Here's a concrete asset that has been proven to really do that. And so I think there's really this clear connection here between a user's choice and format.
Speaker 1:And right here, we're talking about case studies and their readiness to buy. So we'd love to flip it back to you, Janet, as to why we think that is. Why are case studies so successful in helping move that needle?
Speaker 2:Yeah, think first and foremost, it's what you were talking about. It's telling that story. It's not just a case study, but a customer story. It's like, this is how we help our customers achieve these goals that they had. Humans need stories.
Speaker 2:I think that's exactly how we resonate and really put things into context of our own goals and needs and experiences. It goes back to social proof. Was connected back to I love to go to restaurants, try new food. It's like, what's the first thing I do? First thing I do is like, okay, I'll look at the menu because I obviously want to enjoy the food but look at the photos.
Speaker 2:Then the next thing I always do is read the reviews. So I think a big part of that is you want that it's the need for social proof and validation. It's like, okay, if this company had success with this product or platform or service, then it sounds like they can do that for me. So that validation and social proof goes a long way. Associating people to other people maybe they know or something similar to themselves.
Speaker 2:If anything also too, it kind of verifies and validates the success or the outcomes that your company, product or platform could help your customer achieve. So I kind of like to think of it as this empathetic way to tell a story and put that person in the shoes of your customer. But also, I think it's a cool way to help almost market your customers too, giving them a platform. I think that's sometimes overlooked, but I really like that part of it too, where it's kind of that co marketing and amplifying the message is really important. And that was interesting because that report they were saying how really people are seeking tangible ways to be able to do these things.
Speaker 2:They want to I think we all like to talk theoretically. We're even talking pretty theoretically, but once you give those specific examples, it's like, Oh, that's what you're talking that's what you can do for me. That's how you do it. And I think that's a really helpful way to of for those case studies. The other part I'll say is I think there's ways to use case studies in different parts of the journey.
Speaker 2:So I'm curious from you, Tucker, like what are some ways you recommend that companies are using case studies? I guess to get into those examples, especially like the kind of I mean, it's saying there, like this is helping with let's bring it back up real quick. More likely associated with a buying decision. So that is fascinating. I'm curious to hear kind of your perspective on that and how to do that effectively to get that person got to lead to that point.
Speaker 1:Exactly. What you just showed. So more the case study, people who requested, people who engage, interact, more likely to be associated with a buy in activity. And by the way, Angel has seen this time and time again with the clients we work with. When customers are engaging with case studies, we then see the deal velocity increase, and we just see a lot more of our marketing influence deals, you know, have engagement with case studies.
Speaker 1:To your larger question, Janet, I think people vastly underestimate the power of case studies as part of your marketing engine. We know how important it is, and yet we often, you know, oh, write up a case study. We'll put website. And it's basically on some dusty shelf on a resource page in the back office of your I
Speaker 2:see my shelf. Not totally dusty, but yeah.
Speaker 1:No. No. Your shelf would be very clean. But yeah. It's not.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Don't just create it just to create it. No. And I think that's
Speaker 1:what happens. I think maybe it comes out of the product side. They're like, oh, get this case study, but we don't think of it as a
Speaker 2:Or sales. I think it's yeah. Right.
Speaker 1:Or sales as well. Yeah. And that's that's another place where I think it is used. At the bottom of funnel, sales enablement, at the end of a a sales meeting, oh, we've got this case study as a follow-up. Great.
Speaker 1:Guess what? You should be using that on all stages of the funnel. I think the reality is that a case study is a a super powerful asset that you can use not only at the bottom of the funnel, but also to attract, nurture and convert leads. I think really case studies have to be both the impetus and the vehicle for integrated full funnel marketing campaigns. And that's not
Speaker 2:something You're throwing out the big words today, Tucker.
Speaker 1:I get passionate about this.
Speaker 2:Let's keep going. Impetus and the vehicle for integrated campaigns, full funnel integrated campaigns. Wow.
Speaker 1:That what I said? That's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I think that's absolutely spot on. Think, you know, it's what you're saying is Yeah. Instead of just creating the case study and then not kind of seeing, you know, using it in different ways and kind of repackaging or repurposing. Right.
Speaker 2:If you That's the point of it all, right? Exactly. If you have a
Speaker 1:person from a reputable company and a reputable title talking about a major pain point that other folks are experiencing and then how your product solved it, you should be screaming that from the rooftops. If that doesn't work, should be putting that in as many channels and tactics as possible. So I mean, you know this, Jamie.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What are some specific tactics you would recommend?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what is that integrated full funnel campaign? What what's he actually talking about? What does
Speaker 2:that Yeah. What's that what's that mouthful mean? What's that
Speaker 1:mouthful mean? We've got a pretty good approach here where I think a great place to start is with a customer webinar. You get your customer online. You're targeting. Might even learn things from your customer during that webinar that you didn't even know that your product did for You're really bringing the customer voice in.
Speaker 1:I like that. You're bringing the customer voice in.
Speaker 2:They're speaking live.
Speaker 1:Let's have it. Let's talk about how our product or service helped you solve your largest, biggest pain points. Let's get into it. Sometimes you can even demo the platform so you're seeing it in action. From there, you've then got an a live webinar.
Speaker 1:You convert that into an on demand webinar. And then and this is really key. You can translate that video recording into a downloadable branded designed PDF asset. Now suddenly, we've got two different lead magnets. We've got an on demand webinar, and we've got a downloadable case study that you can use and start sharing all across the funnel.
Speaker 1:Now how do we share that? Up at the top, you you've got lead campaigns, lead gen campaigns. So on LinkedIn, Google, Bing, you can start promoting these case studies as gated assets that then, convert people so we've got them in our scenario.
Speaker 2:I find too, like, it's not just like being like, here's a case study. It's like pull out stats or, like, results and, like, make that the ad. It's not like download here, blah blah blah. It's like very much really big bowl, like, the exact performance or like the story or the pain point even can work
Speaker 1:really well. Yes. What does success with this kind of platform look like? Or how did known quantity company drive success with this platform? Huge, huge ways.
Speaker 1:And then you test and learn too. Okay. What actually what are the best ways to promote this case study to to drive leads? And then, of course, once folks are in your CRM, you know, you've got a base of 70,000 contacts inside your CRM that aren't necessarily all being actively nurtured at the sales stages, fantastic thing to nurture with a case study as kind of that lead nurture asset, sending it to people, breaking up the stats as well. And then, of course, keeping it on your website as well.
Speaker 1:Maybe there's a pop up. Maybe there's banners throughout your website. But really, you know, what we're seeing is that when case studies are used as that vehicle for integrated marketing campaigns, when they're kind of placed in multiple channels. That's when people are engaging more with this high value asset. And that's, you know, really help accelerate pipeline velocity.
Speaker 2:So Well, I think this also comes back to that collaboration point. It's like, if you have your whole marketing team and even sales like aligned to this approach and this integrated campaign across multiple channels, you're bringing all functions of the marketing and sales team to work together to achieve a common goal that this is successful. Yes. You know, then that comes back to it's like rally everyone together and everyone, you know, we're just going to create all these things over here and we'll do the webinars over here and the ads over here and the emails over there. It's like everyone come together under one campaign and commit to that.
Speaker 2:Or if some folks maybe you're running similar campaigns or different campaigns targeted by audience. Right. If you can only just do one, there's obviously ways you can do more. But I think bringing everyone together of those same goals, results, outcomes of creating everything keeps it all very consistent and ensures that collaboration as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I love that. People are always saying like, Oh, how can we get marketing sales alignment? What if you have some projects where they're actually working together? You bring in
Speaker 2:the sales Not just a true handoff. Like, you get that perfect feedback loop.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. That's such a
Speaker 2:cool Well, I guess to that point though, marketing and the buyer journey is very complicated, especially the B2B buyer journey. So I think it's really easy and as humans, we like to think of things in steps and this very linear path that makes it a little bit easier for us to understand. However, I think it's very important for us to go a little bit further in this Tucker that it's not a linear path to conversion. Think we're not saying, do a case study, you're going to get all your customers. That's not it unfortunately.
Speaker 2:Think there's I mean, maybe. I think it will work but also there's a lot more you have to do. And this is another Gartner report. It's actually from 2022 but I think really it's kind of a little difficult maybe to read but I think that's kind of the point. So this is a little overwhelming.
Speaker 2:So you can see they have a really interesting like B2B buyer journey of identifying the problem as you mentioned. They have the pain points, looking into solutions, like how do you find those solutions, customer stories, different tactics. Requirements building is a lot around pretty much gathering, what do we need as a solution? We did all this research, now I got to go present the business case And then going through supplier selection and then analyzing that with different teams kind of comes back to that collaboration with other IT, product, sales, leadership. But this slide here is fascinating because look at all I mean, look at this flowchart.
Speaker 2:It is all over the place. It's like, sure, you may have this linear path of people these are people and they are doing the research. They are bopping around. They're not following this. It's like, I do X, then I'll do Y.
Speaker 2:It's like, I'm going do X, then I'm going to go back to A, then I'm going to go to J, then I'm going to go to B. So it's definitely telling a pretty interesting story. And curious to kind of hear what your thoughts on here of, you know, how you kind of think about this and how you're thinking about the campaigns as well as, you know, creating all this content, but it's not gonna necessarily be this, you know, linear process.
Speaker 1:I love this graphic. I'm so glad you brought it up. I think it's honest, and it's messy. And that's true, because that's that's what it's like. As you said at the top, it's not this clean funnel where the lead good becomes qualified, and then it becomes sales opportunity, then bing, bang, boom.
Speaker 1:Let's let's talk about a few things here. So first of all, the buyer journey, I think in the same report, that buying committee is often six to 10 decision makers. So it's not just one person going through this journey. That makes sense. Totally makes sense.
Speaker 1:You think that you have all the different people, IT, finance, compliance. So all these different people are going through this process. They're all doing research, and they're all doing it independently. So you might have different people at different stages of this path. And then as you said, Janet, not only is this not a simple process, it's not linear.
Speaker 1:People go backwards on this journey. They start top of funnel, go down, a lead goes cold, or wait, I need to do find out more things. And then I think the the last kind of takeaway that I see is that the buying committee, the b two b buyers are doing research right up until that final sales close meeting. The notion that marketing is gonna get leads and handed off to sales and the marketing is all done and that Right.
Speaker 2:And then Right. Even from an
Speaker 1:audience perspective that the b to b buyer is at a certain point just gonna strictly get all their information only from a salesperson is just not true. They're gonna be doing research through digital channels. And you can either let that happen organically and hope that they find the right things, or you can choose to exert control and influence over how that prospect is researching your product in the final stages of their sales journey. And I think that's the philosophy that we take Yeah. Is that that marketing sales handoff is dead.
Speaker 1:They need to operate in parallel marketing and sales so that Right. Marketing is helping shape the research and the experience of the product and brand all the way up through that sales journey to close.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that brings me to one of my favorite pieces of research and these charts of data, what you're talking about is like the average B2B buyers, they're spending three to four months of research. Shout out to my fellow researchers. We love to dig in. We want all the information. And I think that's an important point.
Speaker 2:Folks want to educate themselves. They want to learn. They want to be able to show up to these sales calls, know what they're talking about, being very clear and they kind of just want to jump right into it. They don't want to kind of get this fluffy demo when they can just watch a video on YouTube about your They want to be like, Okay, when I show up to the sales call, I want you to tell me how this is going to solve for me and my company. And it goes back to the case studies.
Speaker 2:Prove that you've already done it for these companies. The other thing that's super fascinating which you touched on is the communication channels that makes folks aware, the B2B tech buyer. This is a B2B tech buyer report. Is brand social media. I think that's pretty shocking.
Speaker 2:And I don't think people think of brand social media, social media channels as a place for folks to learn about a product platform. We didn't see it necessarily maybe it's helping to drive that awareness. I would just like to confirm. But it's what you were saying back to the to the Gartner report, it's like they're bopping around the buyer journey. Bopping around.
Speaker 2:It's not linear. It's not like I go to social and then I go keep going down. It's like for example, you go on a sales call, do the whole pitch. What do they might do? They might go back on LinkedIn and look up your CEO and be like, is this legitimate?
Speaker 2:What are they saying? Do they have some philosophy approach to me? Go listen to a podcast. Kind of back to that restaurant analogy I was sharing before. It's like checking the reviews.
Speaker 2:Then you're also like, what is it? I want to go see their Instagram. Maybe I want to check out the vibe here. Is this something I want to buy into? You're spending money at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:So it's like you want to make sure you're making the right decision and not kind of having to leave a poor review afterward.
Speaker 1:Totally agree. I think I feel like folks used to say that your website is the front door of your company. I would almost argue now that social media is the front door. Or maybe you've got
Speaker 2:Website's the house. Let's just put that on record.
Speaker 1:Maybe social first. So to that point, really, a critical sales prospects may be coming to your social media. If you're posting about National Lobster Day or whatever and not thinking about what are the core value propositions, what are the key pain points that our product is solving and making sure that's front and center on your your social media channels, you might be in trouble. People
Speaker 2:have to I gotta argue Tucker. I am from Boston. And if there's on National Lobster Day, if there's a strong argument, yeah, pitch to me, I'm probably gonna show up.
Speaker 1:If you could optimize my so that I could better consume more lobster, I suppose I'd I'd be very game. So fair fair play to you. That's why that's why you're the CEO.
Speaker 2:But like you're saying, you gotta show up in many channels. Like it's not just like using one or different and not to do too much either. I don't think that's the point we're trying to make. It's just comes back to folks want to do research. The buyer wants to educate themselves.
Speaker 2:So make it easy for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Recognize the value of dark social and the fact that folks are gonna be coming to your social channels to do serious sales research and that you wanna be the best put forward there. That's Yeah.
Speaker 2:That might be a good topic for the next video potentially because of dark social and all that. SparkToro came out with some research that I feel like we got to dig into soon because that is a whole other area of a whole part of this pie for sure. A couple of final questions. Curious to just kind of round us out on this is just to give in the context of giving those clear examples, like how should marketing and sales teams approach this? I have some ideas.
Speaker 2:But I'm curious like I think a question we get a lot too Tucker is like, okay, how do we shorten the sales cycle for a lead to become a customer? I think that's always the number one question. It's not a very clear answer, but there are some things I think that folks can kind of take away and start to try and do. So curious to hear what your thoughts are there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it kind of goes back to when we were talking about processes. And these things aren't necessarily complex, but they have to happen. So for me, if we're talking marketing and sales, my question back to the folks we work with is like, well, how are your marketing and sales teams meeting right now? What's that cadence? What's that frequency look like?
Speaker 1:And what are you talking about? Are you opening up your CRM and looking at pipeline together every week? Are you talking about the leads that are coming in? So I think we always like to start with how are your marketing and sales teams functioning right now? And then we can come in and help advise like, hey.
Speaker 1:Let's start meeting weekly and starting talking about looking at, you know, deals, leads, customers, and starting understand where the what's working, what's not, and and what we can do differently. I think it's next to impossible for a marketing team to accelerate lead velocity if they're not regularly talking to sales. Mhmm. Not gonna happen because they don't know, you know, what are those sales conversations like with the leads that we brought in. So but as we've done many times at AimTel, having a fifteen minute meeting with sales every week to talk about, hey.
Speaker 1:What are you hearing from the the contacts you're meeting with? How are those, leads that we brought in for you? What's working? What sucks? What can we improve?
Speaker 1:That meeting can be transformational. So I think that's kind of the the first
Speaker 2:I wasn't like getting, like, those, like, messaging snippets, like, live from like, oh yeah, they said blah, blah, blah. And then you could like put that into your next email and like test out the subject line. That's what's cool about like on the marketing side. It's like you get those data points so you can immediately see like, hey, this is starting to resonate. Like let's go a little bit further and seeing if we can like, do more with this message to this audience.
Speaker 2:It's an immediate experiment really. But if it worked on a sales call, it could work back at the top of the funnel.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think people are thinking about signals. What's the signal? Where are we getting signal? How about the signal that's happening in sales meetings?
Speaker 1:And if you listen to what is being told to them, like you said, putting that slapping that across the front of a LinkedIn ad or an email, we've seen that work and be a game changer. Totally.
Speaker 2:Tucker, always a pleasure talking with you, of all things. I think we keep going, honestly. Yeah. I think we're good. Really will just keep going if I don't I don't shut us down soon.
Speaker 2:For everyone who's listened this far, thank you. Thanks so much for hearing us out and would love for you to join the conversation too when you listen to this, view this. Let us know what you're seeing. Think that's all pulling those stories together, pulling that research together, sharing these examples, what's working, what's not. That's how we all become pretty much better at what we do is by sharing that knowledge and not kind of gatekeeping.
Speaker 2:Think that's a little bit of our point here is that we want to share this knowledge a little bit more broadly and wider and things that people can kind of just take away, I think. So I guess the last question I'll ask on that theme, Tucker, is like, what's the call to action? What's one thing you would recommend marketing teams and even CMOs, I guess, focus on in 2024? I think there's obviously a lot of answers to that question. But I think kind of in the research we shared today, what's one thing you would like people to maybe start trying in the next months, quarter, year?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm gonna go I'm inspired based off our conversation. Consider trying a customer marketing campaign using a case study as your primary lead magnet. I think that's Discover what might happen if you do that. Give it a shot.
Speaker 2:Same question,
Speaker 1:Janet. What about you? Back
Speaker 2:to the beginning of what we were talking about as well. Honestly, an audit of your collaboration, your processes. What processes do you have? What don't you have? What tools and systems is everyone in your marketing team using?
Speaker 2:What are other departments using? And I think that's a really strong place to start because you can't kind of achieve that level of growth and scale that organizations are looking for if you don't have that strong foundation. So really taking the time think it's something you always push off, but really taking the time to critically look at is this really working for us in terms of our systems and apps and processes and look for those ways to improve efficiency and collaboration is what I'm going to go with to answer that question. So let us know what you find. Let us what the results are.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, thanks Tucker again for joining and everyone joining us, listening in. Friendly reminder, we're from Aimtal. We're an integrated marketing agency. We create a ton of our own content, but we also have other video content on our YouTube channel, on our website.
Speaker 2:Specifically, have a little mini series that we run called Marketing in Minute. So if you don't want to listen to us for like forty five minutes, you can get these like one minute quick hit tips and ideas of kind of executing some of these ideas in your own organization. So you can sign up for our newsletter on our website, Marketing in a Minute. Check out those videos. And yeah, we're excited to continue the conversation.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Janet. Thanks everyone.