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What else can I be doing to drive revenue? How do I optimize our go-to-market strategies to ensure effectiveness and ROI? If questions like these keep you up at night and occupy your thoughts by day, have we got a podcast for you.
Welcome to Market Mastery presented by The Bridge Group, the podcast where sales professionals learn to advance their careers. Join host and revenue expert Kyle Smith as he talks to elite B2B sales and revenue experts about the strategies they're using to win in the market.
From cultivating a killer company culture to navigating compensation questions, we'll provide you with the insights, education, and strategies you need to thrive.
For more from The Bridge Group, visit www.bridgegroupinc.com.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:00:00]:
I think there's just this general awareness that information is being searched for differently, not necessarily quite as quantifiably. So I see that one camp of we feel like we're losing control, so we're trying to double down on measuring, controlling everything, which is burning people out and frustrating people because those inputs weren't designed necessarily to make the decisions.
Kyle Smith [00:00:20]:
Welcome to Market Mastery, the podcast dedicated to uncovering revenue driving strategies for sales leaders in B2B tech.
Kyle Smith [00:00:28]:
Hey everyone. In this episode, I'm talking to Rebecca Shaddix, who's responsible for all things product, customer and lifecycle marketing at Garner Health. Rebecca's job? Making sure Garner stands out in the crowded healthcare space. By turning customer stories into powerful tools that drive results. We get into everything from balancing brand and performance marketing to figuring out what's working and what's not in your sales messaging. Plus, Rebecca shares her thoughts on AI in sales and how keeping sales and marketing in sync can make a big impact. If you're into marketing, sales or just trying to nail your strategy, this one's worth a listen. Let's jump in.
Kyle Smith [00:01:06]:
All right, so I'm joined by the person who's all things marketing for Garner Health, Rebecca Shaddix, thank you for coming on.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:01:13]:
Thanks for having me.
Kyle Smith [00:01:15]:
And so before we start talking through some of what's challenging organizations today and some of what you're doing to help from a marketing perspective, could you give us a little bit of background and perspective on what is it that you do as a product, customer and lifecycle marketing expert for Garner?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:01:31]:
Absolutely. So at Garner, like you mentioned, I lead product, customer and lifecycle marketing. Really? With the goal of amplifying what makes Garner different, largely through content and the voice of our customers. So that's why those departments are grouped. Here at Garner, we have four marketing departments that ladder up to our fantastic CMO, Demand Gen, who I internally will summarize is responsible for distribution, product marketing, which is my team, product, customer and lifecycle marketing. Internally, I'll summarize that with a P and say production. We're responsible for the production of messaging, go-to-market strategy, collaterals and assets, but also top of funnel content like blog content. There's a member B2C, engagement side and Biz Dev.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:02:13]:
Also ladders up to marketing here at Garner. And so essentially my job is to capture the voice and the story of our customers and use that both to inform our product lines as a product marketer, but also then to show how we're different in the market. There are a lot of healthcare Solutions that will claim that they can improve outcomes for patients while lowering costs. And most of them do fall short. But Garner has taken such a different approach that it's my job to show why that's the case. And we do that largely through our customer stories.
Kyle Smith [00:02:44]:
Okay, and so you said Biz Dev rolls up to marketing.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:02:47]:
That's right.
Kyle Smith [00:02:48]:
And so for you.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:02:49]:
Our CMO.
Kyle Smith [00:02:50]:
Okay. And you call that like, are they SDRs, BDRs? What do you call them?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:02:54]:
We call them BDRs and they do a lot of the outreach. And so my team will supply them with things like case studies and messaging to do their outbound sequencing and then fail. Feedback was resonating.
Kyle Smith [00:03:04]:
Okay. And so when you do you build like, do you call anything a playbook, like a prospecting playbook, which is inclusive of some of the actual messaging that would be included in a sequencer cadence?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:03:16]:
Yep. We call them packets internally, the packets of messaging and assets that you'd use at different stages.
Kyle Smith [00:03:20]:
But yes, playbooks, who builds like the foundational. The way that I think about playbook design is the execution piece would probably be that packet. So here's the target audience that this message is appropriate for. Here's the actual copy that we want you to actual deliver to that market. But before you get to any of that, there's this foundational knowledge piece, which is like, what's the market that we actually sell into? Who are the actual buyers that you're going to be engaging with on a regular basis? Who are some of the other competitors in the space that make up the landscape of the category that we're in? And so do you have that foundational knowledge piece or component? And is it your team who's responsible for building it?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:04:01]:
Yes to both. So we have mapped our packets to these lifecycle phases, which, to your point, are built on deep understanding of this audience. They're segmented by Persona, by the pain points they'd have at different phases. So then they're designed to deliver that value. To answer that next education question of what do people need to hear at these different stages and phases? What are the signals that would trigger that they're in this life cycle phase? And then we align the packets to that. So internally, the teams know if I'm dealing with this Persona or this audience with this outreach, they've received this before. This is the right next follow up. And of course they have the latitude to tell us if it isn't working to adapt what seems right for them.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:04:39]:
But yes, aligning to those campaign segments of Those life cycle phases is my team in collaboration with our demand gen team. We have a pretty tight knit group of feeding back those insights and there's a lot of really great subject matter experts on the sales team here. So we work very closely with refining what they need.
Kyle Smith [00:04:56]:
What are you looking for? So for that closed loop feedback, hey, here's the content that we think is most likely to resonate with the target audience. Then it actually goes out and gets tested in the wild. What are some of the key things that you're looking for in that feedback loop?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:05:08]:
I want to know what's resonating and what isn't. So we have the data to see how are people engaging with things quantitatively. But I want the qualitative. What isn't landing, what feels stale? What are you struggling to communicate about Garner that either isn't in the deck or we don't have assets to currently. What isn't landing that you're hearing? If you hear this, it's a sign that a deal is either going really well or really poorly. What are those triggers? What kind of objections are you running into that would actually stall a deal? Those are the kinds of signals and feedback that I want. And really, what are people really confused about about Garner? Like I said, there's nothing exactly like this in the market. And so the way that we tell that story has to be really nuanced to who we're talking to.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:05:48]:
I want to know what isn't landing especially and of course double clicking on things that are landing so we don't change the core things that resonate.
Kyle Smith [00:05:57]:
Do you take a trust but verify approach on that what isn't landing response where you could hear, I don't know, whatever the response is from the reps, rather than just taking their word for it, saying like, well, nobody knows who we are and because we're not a known brand, they don't want to take a meeting or they're hesitant to move forward. Do you do any type of verification to really make sure that what the reps are telling you is what's actually happening?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:06:24]:
Definitely. So market research independently, essentially, I combined these different inputs to make sure we have a holistic picture of what's going on. So prospect interviews, customer interviews, partner interviews, that's all really a big part of the customer marketing arm that my team runs to make sure we have that line of sight to testing these messaging directly with them. I think of our internal teams as being a pretty great aggregator anecdotally of what they're seeing across the board. So if we're looking at, for example, lower than expected conversion rates at a certain stage or close rates in general at a certain opportunity or certain segment, I want their feedback on why that is to then trust but test of okay, great. We have this team that is interfacing with a larger volume of folks than we ever could between the events they go to the number of calls that they have. I see them as a great consolidator of really good customer feedback and really good market insights that will then layer with some direct research and then also some analyst conversations. So holistically those inputs should come together to give us a clearer picture of what's going on.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:07:30]:
Ultimately we can tell too if we're hearing that things aren't resonating at a certain stage, but we see pretty good conversion rates at that stage. It would make me double click into why they're saying certain things, why it feels that way and if they can give me examples because our calls are recorded, I often just will have them point me to a call where that came up and say this objection handling didn't land. Why Great. Can you point me to a call where that really went well or poorly? Why do you think that's representative of what else we're running into? And then just extrapolating that. I see it as my job really to look at the segment too and communicate very clearly setting a lot of those expectations internally about where we're putting resources and why. So if we hear a pain point being completely transparent about where we're putting resources, we have what we call a production calendar that they can look at and know at any given time what are we prioritizing and why with clear owners internally of who's asked for it and why so that they know exactly what we're looking to optimize for. And then there's just no confusion of why do we put resources in a certain place Feedback in certain places. I'll just consolidate and then have very open conversations.
Kyle Smith [00:08:33]:
Makes sense when you mentioned the use analysts. And so that's something that I'm not as familiar with. How do you leverage analysts?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:08:41]:
It's a great question. So there is a lot of in different industries in health care, there's just a lot of data of what can people expect? What are averages in what we call medical trend? So the rise of expenses of the average spend that employers will spend on health care. We want to understand how things are trending. So then if we can look at the data of the decreases that we're getting our clients for Example we have something very objective to tie it to. This is the average that this pain point in the market is being felt. How are our clients differences in results comparing to that. And then also getting their direct feedback on our impact and our product opportunity to leverage the collective research that they have and the collective insight they have of all of these different types of companies and employers and how they're approaching healthcare. So ultimately, just to give us a more holistic picture of what people are facing in the market so we understand more directly where our value is and why it's differentiated.
Kyle Smith [00:09:34]:
Yeah. And then do you turn that around? Because to me that could tell you not only where to prioritize your efforts, top of funnel based off of what you're hearing from the market analysts, your team, so on, but then also is awesome middle funnel content that the sales reps can use for people who are actively engaged in a sales process.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:09:55]:
Absolutely. Very tactically today I used one of those third party reports to decide which metrics to use in a case study. So when we're talking about the impact that we deliver, knowing the metrics that are in bigger pain point that these analysts have point out, let us decide of all of the impact and results we could talk about. These are the four we want to double down on and then equipping our sales team to talk about them.
Kyle Smith [00:10:15]:
So you have your production calendar, your team knows what is going to be produced and the way you communicated shows the entire team. Here's who asked for why we're investing in it. But what are some of the things that you get asked about most or asked for rather most consistently from the sales team? In particular, what do they want from you and your team?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:10:34]:
Interesting question. They want largely, often more case studies, more specific case studies that speak to a specific segment, specific industry. You're laughing. Do you run into that a lot too?
Kyle Smith [00:10:45]:
No, I just, I know, I know prospects and customers and it's, it's not an. They're just regurgitating an ask that came from a customer because the cut or our prospect will say, well, tell me what you've done for a company who is 23 million in revenue, who has six sales reps, who just recently took on funding and sells to cybersecurity companies. Like, that's very, very, very specific. And so I'm just envisioning the sales team getting similar requests that I get all the time and turning around and asking you to produce that thing.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:11:17]:
It's true. Absolutely. And so hearing the ask behind the ask, if we don't have data don't have the resources to put in behind those specific segments is largely where we'll then prioritize. It's not perfect, but we have an aligned revenue leadership marketing team, Slack channel to surface issues with things, biweekly meetings as well to raise what they're running into and then pipeline reviews to see how things are going to ultimately surface where those gaps are. But you're right, there will never be enough of that story. And so making sure we do have really compelling assets that tell the story as differentiatedly as possible, even if we can't meet the nuance of that segment, which is exactly right, that we want this type of industry, this type of buyer, etc. Just doing what we can with the stories that we have. It's absolutely written too.
Kyle Smith [00:12:02]:
Who's responsible for educating the reps as to why? Also that might not be what the prospect actually should be looking at.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:12:10]:
It's a good question. We have a really fantastic team of sales leaders with tremendous subject matter expertise that does we call certification of the messaging. So before reps will go out making sure they're certified in the core messaging and then that sales leadership works really tightly with our marketing team and my team to make sure that they have the assets and the talk tracks that they need. So we'll have these ongoing enablement conversations when new assets launch, when new products launch, those recurring touch points to make sure they're aware of where things are. But the beauty of the way we've set up packets is that they're largely self serve. They're really easily documented internally in this central repository that everyone knows how to find. So it's pretty easy for them to then go navigate to. Where's the collateral hub? It's this shared Google Drive that has lots of documentation around how to use it.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:12:57]:
So the long answer to that is the sales leadership drives. Most of that. I do some supplemental enablement as well and even our CMO is hands on enough that he does some of the supplemental sales deck enablement as well.
Kyle Smith [00:13:09]:
Oh, nice. Okay, and what made you. Sorry, I keep gravitating to different aspects of things that you said, but Google Drive. So why'd you pick Google Drive as your content hub?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:13:21]:
Great question, because it's what was already in place when I got here. I wanted to minimize change management to be as minimally disruptive as possible. We are migrating to outreach and I've used really great sales enablement tools in the past. My thinking coming in was if I was going to ask them to adopt a new process to Have a utilized assets as opposed to the free for all. Really adhering to the packet driven approach. I wanted to minimize the change management by using the tools they were already using. So that meant that we could slowly integrate this new way of working together, then ask for a platform shift before being too disruptive. I don't know if it was the right approach, but I thought it would make adoption easier.
Kyle Smith [00:14:03]:
Yeah, I mean it's not a popular opinion, but I find that if you can get adoption, then that's the win. You could show me the technical architecture of a CMS and tell me that it is better and I wouldn't disagree with you, but the second that you show me the actual stats behind the scene where reps aren't actually going there and you've architected this beautiful CMS. But then there's still 30 Slack messages, Slack messages a day that say where do I find this? Or there's these, all these side folders that reps just use based off of their historical knowledge of what access they have. What was the point in investing all of the dollars and energy and effort to developing this beautiful thing? I like simplicity and adoption, so I lean that way when I have a team who's already pretty good at something like Google Drive. But I was just curious to see why you did it.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:14:56]:
Totally agree with you. I think you're hitting on the most important point. You got to figure out what the goal is with this entire system and then what's the single most important variable to optimize for. For different teams, it'll be different things for this. If it's change management and we're already changing a bunch about how they engage, how are we going to drive that greater adoption and then bring that process together. I think you got to be realistic about where you are, what people are dealing with, empathetic with the workflows they're already in. They're dealing with a ton coming at them. Especially if you're trying to roll something out during a busy season, if you have any seasonality in your buying cycle.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:15:30]:
I think just being relentlessly realistic about what you're optimizing for and where you are. And really what is a miss that you're willing to take, which is it could be you're willing to take the miss of tracking certain link clicks differently. I think that's all just a conversation to be had about how you're going to design the right system, which could evolve.
Kyle Smith [00:15:50]:
Definitely. And sometimes I think we just forget about the fact that there's a ton of humans involved in this process, which is exactly what you just outlined. And we prioritize perfect technical or tech stack architecture over realistic adoption and usage, which can be very frustrating for reps because you just have people who are just getting frustrated. They don't have access to what they need when they need access to it.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:16:14]:
Right. And they're on the road, they're busy. They have to have things quickly when they need it. There's a ton coming at them. I think about that with sales enablement and also just with our go-to-market, making sure that we're leveraging a consistent story that each release ladders into, as opposed to expecting reps to remember details of an entirely disparate value proposition. Let's just to your point, be empathetic about where they are, what they need to do and then how can we actually move the needle as quickly and effectively as possible?
Kyle Smith [00:16:41]:
Yeah. What are they actually on the road like physically doing field visits with.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:16:46]:
Yeah, they're traveling quite a bit going. Yep, quite a bit.
Kyle Smith [00:16:49]:
Okay, interesting. Is that when did that come end of. You've been there for. You've been with the organization a year, correct?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:16:57]:
Just under, Yeah, and.
Kyle Smith [00:16:59]:
Has it been that way for the past year?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:17:01]:
And that build org predates a marketing org? I would say that a high touch in person sales process just predates me. There is lots that happen, lots of initial conversations that happen on Zoom, but there's a lot of implementation that happens in person on the ground with our account management team going in person with our sales team traveling to different clients or prospects or events to get the word out. So yes, I'd say that an in person heavy sales motion has just been the motion of this industry.
Kyle Smith [00:17:35]:
Okay. Do you use physical assets to pair like do they walk in with things they do.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:17:42]:
They'll often walk in with some one pagers, folders, things that look nice, nice swag.
Kyle Smith [00:17:48]:
Do you use that same content so knowing that you have to build it for them because they want to walk in with something and not just walk in, plug a laptop in and basically burn tne on what is exactly the same as what you would do via Zoom. And so if you already are producing these assets that look nice in physical form and you already have relationships with companies to print, do you run direct mail as part of your content marketing strategy?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:18:15]:
We do direct mail to. We have both a B2B and a B2C motion.
Kyle Smith [00:18:19]:
Okay.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:18:20]:
We do more direct mail to the B2C motion. So to the patients, we call them members. So these employees and their families who use Garner have more of a direct mail motion. We do a little bit of direct mail B2B but more of a invite to a specific event. Here's a packet, here's a welcome packet kind of direct mail.
Kyle Smith [00:18:39]:
Okay.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:18:40]:
It's not a wide top of funnel approach. It's more targeted middle and bottom of funnel for direct mail.
Kyle Smith [00:18:46]:
Why not on the B2B side?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:18:47]:
Good question. The way people like to consume content, there's a lot coming at. We do a lot of our business through what you could think of as a channel partner motion. They're called healthcare brokers. There are a finite number of them in the country. They have a lot of vendors, a lot of solutions coming at them. They are in different offices around the country and they just tend to prefer to consume content in certain ways. That's just how we tend to adapt to it.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:19:13]:
That said, there is nothing stopping us from ramping up a more specific targeted direct mail campaign to B2B. It just hasn't been a priority yet.
Kyle Smith [00:19:22]:
Yeah, there's always a hundred things that we all could do but it's just a matter of what are we actually going to have the time, energy, effort or money to actually execute on. I'm just curious. I find it direct mail has always been interesting to me but it becomes increasingly more interesting as email in particular gets more and more competitive. Like if you get 8 years ago 250 emails a day for a standard executive in office employee and now who knows 3 5th I have to get updated stats now that's a really competitive place to try to play and get attention voicemail inbox maybe 8 to 10 a day and so in a direct mail usually it was one and so is that less competitive place to capture someone's attention worth the increased cost with actually producing a physical asset, getting it shipped and getting eyeballs on it just thinking through it.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:20:17]:
Quantifiable, right? It probably depends on the company and the org for some. If you really want more of that leading indicator data what is our open rate? What was our click through rate and can we track that conversion to a specific landing page? I can see that being compelling to in addition to the cost but you're right. I mean tracking the way that you get responses to direct mail is a pretty interesting way of seeing how it's standing out relatively cost effectively for certain industries and testing it. Yeah, I mean you're pushing me Kyle. Maybe I want to revisit this direct mail B2B budget at least be like.
Kyle Smith [00:20:51]:
Let'S take five grand. What if we just did a controlled test on $5,000. What could we actually get running little experiments like that? I find it always to be interesting, but I also like tinkering.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:21:02]:
You're so right. Yeah. We've thought of direct mail as being much more targeted so far, but there is nothing stopping us from doing a test like that. A little broader top of funnel. I like the way you think.
Kyle Smith [00:21:13]:
All right. Are you leveraging any fully-automated AI, AI SDRs essentially at this point? And are you thinking about it going into next year?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:21:24]:
It's a great question. My knowledge of BDRs is limited. I will say. I know that we don't have any AI BDRs. I think that our BDR team is using AI to refine and craft some of these sequences. I know they are. And thinking about the content, we, to my knowledge, have not considered any fully AI BDRs just yet. There's a lot of appreciation within Garner within the industry for really specialized knowledge to answer pretty specialized questions.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:21:55]:
And I feel like every day I watch a chorus call, I think of a question that is going to trump the sales team and somehow they know the answer to it. So because that specialized knowledge is so important and that relationship and that trust is so important, if people are trusting us with their data and with their members health care, I don't think we've considered any fully AI BDRs. I know we've considered lots of AI powered outreach tools, but I don't think we've considered fully AI BDRs just yet. Although I haven't asked that question and I'll go ask our head of Biz Dev after we hop off.
Kyle Smith [00:22:27]:
Yeah, I mean, it's coming. People are using it. But the early reports and feedback that I've received from people who have tested it is maybe we're not quite there yet and that instead using AI powered technologies, like built into stuff you already use, whether it's whatever, Zoom Info, outreach, salesoft, whatever, name your existing sales engagement platform with AI functionality attached to it, then that seems to be more common in the fully autonomous AI STRs. It's not really been universally adopted at this point, so I don't know, I'm just curious to see when people do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you're thinking about. So you mentioned on the digital side, you get this incredible feedback loop where you could see open rates, click through rates, conversion rates on forms.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:23:19]:
To get engagement. Yep.
Kyle Smith [00:23:20]:
And so do you see any shift away from traditional performance marketing measurements to say here's the actual impact marketing is having on the business to more brand marketing, which is tougher to quantify.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:23:35]:
The question is, are we leaning toward emphasizing brand marketing as much or more than performance marketing and is that different than historically? Yeah, absolutely. It's a good question. So brand awareness within Garner is really important. So awareness of what we do within the industry builds a lot of credibility before our sellers get there. I'm super fortunate to come into a company that values even hard to quantify brand impact because the sellers are so tuned into the awareness of the people they're talking to, they, they are clamoring for expanding brand awareness even if we can't quantify some of the impact. So I wouldn't necessarily say it's a shift of historic investment in performance marketing of a brand. Garner's taken a largely sales dread, sales driven motion in the past and so there wasn't a ton of performance marketing to scale down. I'd say we're looking to scale up both of those motions within Garner, which is a relatively new startup as well, but with a value on things like brand how even just the aesthetic look and feel there's value for internally, which I feel super fortunate about.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:24:44]:
And I guess the only lesson externally is there really is no substitute. If the CEO values the way things look and feel for the quality of it alone, that gives us as marketers a tremendous platform to say we need to update these design, aesthetics, et cetera. Even if we can't immediately before the project quantify ROI, he can get that there's value behind building credibility from a cohesive design aesthetic, for example. And so that's a long way to say, yes, there is a ton of value at Garner for brand awareness and expanding brand marketing. Even if we can't directly quantify the ROI of all of it, we then will come up with internal proxy metrics to measure how things look and feel. Even if that's just a quality score of how a small group of our customers and our advisory board would rank something. So if we don't have external metrics that we can look at, we look at layering some kind of even just a specific Garner proxy metric to how did that feel? Did that improve something? Is it a good representation of our brand? And there's a ton of value placed on that.
Kyle Smith [00:25:46]:
And it makes sense given that like you said startup evangelizing a market, a ton of what you're needing to do, even on the sales side is educate your buyers and customers on what it is that you do and what the value of that is. But beyond Garner, you have a massive network You've been in product and marketing and marketing more generally for a while. Do you see that happening across other companies who maybe aren't trying to do as much education, they're selling into a commoditized market. Are you still hearing about or talking to people in your network about shifts away from performance and towards brand marketing?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:26:19]:
Yeah, it's a good question. I definitely was hearing a lot of never in my career before the last two years did we see a decline in organic traffic, be something that marketers didn't think they could directly control. If you saw decline in organic traffic, something was wrong, you would fix it, you would change it, et cetera. Now I think there's just this general awareness that information is being searched for differently, not necessarily quite as quantifiably. I'm feeling in my network a little bit of a shift from I guess, two camps, some that are clamoring to measure everything at all costs, even if that means that they're not necessarily optimizing for the right things. And so they're over indexing on as many dashboards, as many metrics, measuring as much as possible for that feeling of control. And lots of that is really complex bi tools that are layering on top of platforms that weren't designed to necessarily give the insights that they're looking for. So I see that one camp of we feel like we're losing control, so we're trying to double down on measuring, controlling everything, which is burning people out and frustrating people because those inputs weren't designed necessarily to make the decisions that some people are turning to them for.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:27:29]:
And also to your point, some of this we know we can't measure some of the ways people communicate. We know we can't necessarily predict the way things like influencer marketing or just sheer luck or competitive landscape will shift. And so valuing things that are harder to measure, that brand marketing, to your point, just having some kind of aesthetic differentiation too that people feel internally good about. I see sort of those two camps going of some people trying to clamber to measure more and more and justify more and more for budget in advance, and some people swinging pretty hard the opposite way.
Kyle Smith [00:28:05]:
What do you think about influencer marketing in B2B?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:28:07]:
That's a great question. I think in certain industries, especially if there are consistent thought leaders that people trust kind of across the board, they can be tremendously powerful. Especially if you think of them as a voice back into your product of refining some of your messaging, not just paying them to advocate for you, but actually looking at their insight of ways that you can stand out. I think for certain industries, certain influencers can be tremendously powerful. They are not going to be the builder alone of the brand though, right? They have to have their own expertise in their platform that isn't tied just to your brand. Just like you need to build up without relying on a single influencer or a couple of influencers as the end all be all. So I think for certain industries that can be tremendously powerful if there aren't universally trusted influencers.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:28:55]:
If you don't know the reputation of influencers, it can be risky, more risky than it's worth to align with influencers before you know their impact on their market. So I would say know your audience, ask what they think, ask who they're reading, create a short list and then vet some of that content first. For certain industries, it can make a lot of sense. For others, I don't know if it's worth it. What do you think?
Kyle Smith [00:29:16]:
I. I don't know. I think LinkedIn advertising, our audience is all on LinkedIn. Like we work with exclusively B2B tech companies and sales and marketing leaders within them. So like that's if there's any social platform to at least capture their attention, that's going to be the spot that's that makes the most sense.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:29:36]:
Nice.
Kyle Smith [00:29:37]:
LinkedIn advertising is insanely expensive. If you want to be hyper targeted. Like you'd be talking about 40, 50 bucks a click, which to me is expensive. I don't know, I'm not a marketing expert, but it's expensive and you need.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:29:51]:
At least a big enough audience size to make the segmentation worthwhile or possible.
Kyle Smith [00:29:56]:
Exactly. And so it's interesting to me when you can look at somebody who has, let's say, not even on the Outer limits, let's say 40, 50,000 followers and they have a ton of post engagement. What I haven't gone far enough into is understanding what does it cost and what's included in a package?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:30:18]:
And the execution of that, I think to your point is so important because getting an influencer who's garnered that organic engagement to just do some promoted posts that feel self-serving, you're going to potentially conclude that the entire channel didn't work. Rather than, hey, let them align with your value, see how they feel about it, how they want to share it and then deliver a compelling CTA or compelling experience or post, at least that feels organic to them. I think that's a tremendously different experience than just taking somebody with a big following and paying them to post something you've written. I don't think that paying them just to copy your voice in something self serving is the right way to conclude if it'll work. I think that testing how you can co create something organically is.
Kyle Smith [00:31:02]:
Yeah, I like that idea. That makes much more sense to me. But co creating and then, yeah, it's their channel, they own it, they're the one who built it, so they should be able to monetize it. I love the idea of that. But at the same time what do I get back from that? Which is what I struggle with, which is if I'm going to go spend 5,000 on LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn is very good at telling me exactly what that 5,000 was spent for. Here's exactly how many clicks that you got, here's how many impressions you got. And if I do that through an influencer, what, what am I paying for a post? But what do I get for impressions and what does that actually lead to for clicks or site traffic or whatever the goal of that that post is is my big question.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:31:46]:
Yeah. And I think that the answer is what does that actually lead to is really going to depend on letting it feel like something that your brand is really well aligned to that influencer. So they've chosen to promote you because they actually believe in whatever has built their platform up. That's what I think will resonate. If somebody is known in B2B, for example, for really effective management and leadership practices and you have a tool that makes that more effective, great. Let them understand it and then share that with their audience in a way that actually feels like they believe in you. Otherwise it's not the right partnership.
Kyle Smith [00:32:19]:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:32:20]:
And then you're not going to get the versions you want. I'm curious what you thought. You asked about performance and brand. What are you seeing of investments in performance marketing and brand marketing?
Kyle Smith [00:32:29]:
I don't see any shift towards brand. I just hear a lot of talk about the shift towards brand marketing. I still see the spend going to performance marketing, drive more leads, convert and focus on inbound lead conversion and revenue. Like the same thing it's been for the 15 years I've been in this space. So I haven't actually seen this. I just heard about it.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:32:52]:
Yeah, I think you're hitting on when things feel really big and uncertain. There's a lot of different organizational responses to that, but the easiest one is to try to control what you already know. You're good at measuring and doubling down on controlling. And so if your finance team feels really good about doubling down on the KPIs that they already know that feels like you can control it more with more dashboards, more measurement, et cetera. If you want to see if something like brand marketing, which is a bigger risk and a bigger shift is going to be more effective with everything that's changing, the organization has to have the appetite to let a marketer test something that may not work otherwise you'll never really get true experimentation or true iteration. If something can't fail big without the marketer taking a ton of personal accountability, they're never really going to try and push it. It's a lot safer to say these are the things that I've done in the past that have worked. I know I'm getting diminishing returns so let me do those better than let me try something brand new that we haven't done before.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:33:49]:
I don't know how to measure it, I don't know what's going to happen, but it could fail. There's a ton of risk that goes in that and not every organization has the appetite for that risk.
Kyle Smith [00:33:58]:
Yeah, and.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:33:58]:
And the kick of the upside then.
Kyle Smith [00:33:59]:
Either and the person to your point because especially in a tougher hiring environment where if you feel like if I lose my job, all I hear about is especially within tech, which is the only world I really know. But if there's more layoffs and you, you talk to people and they're like, yeah, you know, I've been out there. It's, it's tough to find a new job. Every LinkedIn job post has 100 plus applications within two days. Then you logically are going to be more risk averse because even if the company is saying hey, you can try new things, it's a lot harder to walk out onto that ledge knowing that if this fails it might be your head on the chopping block when there's not a next, that next job might not come so easily. So yeah. Your earlier comment about over investing in BI tools and data and tracking to basically cover yourself to be like no, no, no. See this is why I made all those decisions and logic your way around the fact that you still didn't perform to the level of expectations to just try to protect the job.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:35:07]:
Right.
Kyle Smith [00:35:08]:
I understand where everyone's coming from, but I still think it's an interesting opportunity that I want to see companies explore. We are personally but we just can't do it at the same scale. A large high growth tech company can. But that's what I'm interested in figuring out.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:35:25]:
Yeah, I know what you mean. I See that a lot too. And I think that's why how marketing leaders set their goals is as important, if not more important, than the goals they actually set. Because if there's confidence in why you chose the metrics you did and belief in the way you'll test things, then if you don't hit them, there may still be more confidence in why you took those bets that you did. You could have the most perfectly siloed thought out metrics that were the right ones for the business and dominate them. But if people don't have trust in how they were set, you could be asked, did you sandbag that? Was that actually the right goal? And so how you think about communicating your vision and the metrics that you're responsible for to the organization, I think is an outsized impact on how effective you're seen as being. Even sort of sometimes, regardless of if those were the right choices and the impact on the business. That's why that's just so important to make sure that your expertise in marketing is communicated of why you chose the metrics you did.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:36:24]:
Because otherwise dominating them, people may wonder, well, should you have set them more ambitiously, did that actually tie to the top level business metrics that you claim they did? If you've told that story up front of why you're optimizing for what you are and why you should be accountable for certain things, it's way easier to then kind of control your own destiny of where you're going with it.
Kyle Smith [00:36:44]:
Yeah, 100%. As you say that, I immediately think about partnering with the other executive leaders. So specifically sales. If you're thinking about what your goals are, they need to be paired with sales and then ultimately back to the board and the rest of the executive leadership team on what are the actual goals of the organization and how are sales and marketing working together to work in service of those goals? And so when you think about partnering with your sales counterparts, how do you create an alignment on vision and making sure that the things that your team is working really hard on actually has the intended impact and sales receives it and does what they're supposed to do on their side?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:37:21]:
Yeah, it's a great question. So I feel so fortunate that Garner has a really strong strategic vision setting. So 2025 vision comes from our leadership team that then cascades through pretty clear pillars. We call them commercial, which includes account management, marketing and sales. And so when we have a clear vision to hit X in revenue to double Y, it's clear how those are in service of the higher level business because they've waterfalled that direction. We start with the strategic company level vision that then goes into each team function. So product will have their contributions to the top level org, the commercial org will have their contributions to the top level vision and then we can go that direction of okay, what do we need to do as a commercial org? What is sales and marketing contributing to that? That can become a cohesive conversation that you then break out. What is the demand gen pipeline contribution Biz Dev? Are we combining them or not? How do those ladder to an expectation of a conversion rate? Where would product marketing come into impacting that conversion rate? The close one rate and then letting that ladder back up that direction.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:38:25]:
I think it's a lot harder to go off in your own silo and say this is what product marketing will do and then retroactively align it to the company. It's a lot easier to come that direction. I have been in org because I didn't have such strong strategic planning and it just meant starting the closest level and going out. So starting as a marketing org and then going to demand gen content marketing, whoever it was, to make sure we were aligned on the resourcing we needed to achieve those goals and then could communicate that vision with sales and ask what they needed from us. That dependency conversation happening before the quarter I think is really important though because if your vision is wildly misaligned, then the resourcing that you need to achieve those goals won't be effective if they're not bought into the enablement sessions you want to have the adoption of new processes that you think are effective, you just can't go that direction. And then if we are not resourcing effectively of we don't have the bandwidth for what they expect to support, then we are just never going to be effective enough for them. So I think it goes in that direction. If you can top down waterfall that direction.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:39:27]:
If you've gone the opposite direction of saying something like how does product marketing support demand gen and still hit our own goals? You're in a harder spot to actually be as effective because you're already splitting resources in a harder way.
Kyle Smith [00:39:41]:
Yeah, it makes so much sense when you lay it out. Yet it doesn't happen as frequently as you would assume based off of how much alignment it creates and how much easier it makes. Not just every quarter, every day, week, month of the year. When you have that shared vision and alignment on goals from the executive leadership team.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:40:06]:
It really changes everything. Yeah, and I empathize that not all your listeners are going to be in a position to influence that, but they are in a position to influence something around them, including how their metric setting is perceived. So even if you don't have that alignment, just building visibility for how you've set the metrics you have. And why is the first step to controlling that.
Kyle Smith [00:40:28]:
Is that something that you looked at or attempted to tease out when you thought about the company that you were going to join 11 months ago or a year ago? Or is it just dumb luck?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:40:37]:
Absolutely.
Kyle Smith [00:40:38]:
Okay.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:40:38]:
Absolutely. I mean, there's one thing for an organization that values marketing. There's another thing for an organization that has enough processes and structure to their own planning in place that it's clear what the goals are. And so it makes a huge difference in the day to day in your growth in the company trajectory, just how effective you can be based on how strong the leadership is. And it changes everything. So I think it's a big determinant. It was a big determinant for me of deciding on the company to join. And I think it's a big determinant of success as a marketer.
Kyle Smith [00:41:08]:
Yeah. How do you tease that out though?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:41:12]:
Yeah, there are a couple of questions that I like to ask. The long and short of it is it'll never be perfect, but a really big difference in an answer to the question, six months from now, how will you know if I've been successful? Or six months from now, how will you know if you made the right hire? You'll hear how strategic a response is. If it's six months from now, we'll have a higher close rate. We will have more capacity to produce X or Y. We'll have a go-to-market strategy in place. It's clear that they've thought about the function of the role and how it fits within the broader org. If it's oh, gee, I don't know, I think I'll just know. Or sales will be really happy with you, then that's a lot less strategic and it's a lot less goal oriented, a lot more subjective.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:41:52]:
So I think that it can be harder to thrive in an organization that doesn't know what success looks like for somebody they're hiring. They may not know if they're making the right hire. I got very different answers to that question when I was interviewing deciding to come to Garner. You'll hear a difference in how people think about your impact. I also like to ask that hiring managers and other people that I'm interviewing with, if you could give yourself one piece of advice on your first day in this role, what would it be? You'll hear what they emphasize. If it's relationship building, if it's owning a certain number, you'll get a sense of what is important to them in the organization. Possibly something they didn't know, possibly something they were weaker in and are overcoming. So those are questions that I really like to ask, asking them too.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:42:39]:
What does the strategic plan for 2025 look like? How is marketing evaluated? What does success look like? Who isn't successful in this company? What tends to define people who are very successful here or who are not successful here? You'll start to hear threads of how they define success and what that looks like. And sometimes it's really well thought out, really well aligned, and sometimes it's not.
Kyle Smith [00:43:01]:
I think you're looking for like product market fit, executive team, who's been on some type of rocket ship before, who can go get funding and who's going to give you a slice of equity. So you can just try to ride that on the way up. That could lead to a lot of frustration down the road, that's for sure.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:43:18]:
It can, yeah. It's hard to tell. The truth is in the hiring process, it can lead to a lot of frustration. You could luck out and those could be proxy metrics that actually work for some of the alignment. But you can ask, just really ask, what does success look like for marketing? How are you evaluated? How do you evaluate product marketing? Just see what they say and if they have no idea, that's a good sign that they haven't really thought about what your success will look like. And it may be harder to prove that.
Kyle Smith [00:43:44]:
Yeah. And so a few years ago, thinking about, like how to pick what company to go and work for and aligning for the best fit for you and what you were trying to accomplish professionally. A few years ago you had a consulting firm, not dissimilar from the Bridge Group, focused on the marketing side of the house, where we're on the sales side. And so why did you make the decision to move back in house to a role with a technology organization?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:44:10]:
Great question. I get it a lot and I think it's super fair. I don't get it a lot from folks like you who have been in the same position, which I think is great. But I started strategica Partners while I was still in house. So I took on by accident consulting clients of folks that I had just known and found it really energizing and exciting to support a lot of that go-to-market strategy and just see the leverage that certain go-to-market strategy decisions, had on the trajectory of the company and loved it. I absolutely, I thought it was super fun, really awesome to work with all these different companies, work with big brands like Facebook and Spotify and lots of really awesome high impact, high growth startup. The most important thing to me, the defining decision in my career has always just been impact at scale. How can I have the most impact at scale? And for a while it did feel like consulting was the way to do it.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:45:04]:
And I loved building a team, loved supporting different teams. I felt ultimately that the stage of career I was in, I was too early in my career to not be learning really hands on from a leader. So I thought that if I went and worked with really smart, talented CMOs I'd become a better marketer. About three years into running Strategica I sort of evaluated that I had maybe 85 plus percent of the marketing skills at that point as I had had when I started the firm because I was really being hired to do something I was good at over and over. And so I was good at it. But I, and I got good at it and I just decided for my career growth that I really wanted to be accountable for a lot of the implementation and the long term growth and the consequences of the strategies that I implemented. But most importantly to go learn from really smart CMOs that I could grow with.
Kyle Smith [00:45:58]:
Did you have employees?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:46:00]:
Six.
Kyle Smith [00:46:00]:
Oh yeah. Is running a professional services firm with six employees harder than running a team in house? With the myriad of responsibilities that you've already outlined across all the different sectors of marketing.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:46:16]:
I'd say it's differently difficult. The things my energy goes toward are definitely different. The control over certain things is definitely different. It was really kind of a control freak. It was really hard for me to sometimes hand over at the end of an engagement a go-to-market strategy or some kind of campaign strategy or messaging and positioning strategy and not be able to control how it was implemented. So that was tough for me, that lack of control. It's so different. I would say I don't work any harder or less hard in either position is just where my energy went was more, I say definitely more sales work when I was running the firm selling services.
Kyle Smith [00:46:56]:
Yeah.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:46:56]:
Definitely a lot less sales.
Kyle Smith [00:46:57]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I would say I think about it in a similar way. I've never thought about it as like the control because I also love to have control over the situation. But it's just frustrating when you feel like if you've spent let's say like 500 hours on something but you no matter what, you're always a layer removed from it, being practically implemented in the best way possible. But like, if you're good at it, if you're good at consulting, in my opinion, you are treating it as if it is your business. Like your client's business is your business and you care about it passionately and you're like, I just, this has to work and I'm fully in and invested. But you can't, you have no direct ownership over the people. Like, they don't roll up to you.
Kyle Smith [00:47:39]:
And so like, you can try to sell them on the vision as much as humanly possible, but you can actually get the implementation. The leadership team has to be the ones to implement it. And being that layer removed can cause never ending frustration if it doesn't quite work out.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:47:55]:
It's fair, it's true. Yeah, a lot of, oh, this is so great. This is so awesome. We love it. Thanks. And yeah, you can't, to your point, control how it'll be applied or prioritized.
Kyle Smith [00:48:07]:
Yeah. Then it's like, yeah, we're going to start making some of those changes in like, you know, probably four or five months ago. Why? Why?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:48:15]:
Yeah. Or thank you so much. We love this messaging strategy. You said these points and so we did these four synonyms and you're like, no, those are not synonymous to your customers. That doesn't mean the same thing.
Kyle Smith [00:48:28]:
What's top of mind for you for next year? What's like the main thing when you're starting to do your 2025 planning? What are the big things that are sticking out to you that would be a change from what you've done in 2024.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:48:40]:
Ooh, a change. It's a good parameter. There's a lot of scaling and amplifying what we've spent this year refining and improving. I'd say just that scale is a big one. Really ramping up how we're looking at the segmentation more effectively though is change of firmographics have been a big driver of the segmentation at Garner. Looking at the difference even more granularly in the psychographics of different folks within similar firms and how that impacts what they prioritize and being really intentional with that targeting of very specific high value messages. So we are looking at a lot of effort and attention going into expansion and retention of current and existing clients and accounts and opportunities. Like I said, we sell through a lot of partners, brokers, and making sure that we're maximizing the opportunities that come through those is a big one.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:49:36]:
And so doubling down on those good fit partners and good fit clients to make sure we're delivering as much value to them is a big focus. And again, just really focusing on conversion rates and identifying leaks in the funnel.
Kyle Smith [00:49:50]:
Great. If people want to hear more about what you're working on, thoughts and opinions on your marketing efforts and expertise, where can they find you?
Rebecca Shaddix [00:49:59]:
I tend to post those on LinkedIn, a couple of Forbes articles as well, so LinkedIn, Rebecca Shaddix is a good place to connect.
Kyle Smith [00:50:06]:
Great. Well, thank you so much for coming on.
Rebecca Shaddix [00:50:08]:
Thanks for having me and great to talk, Kyle.
Kyle Smith [00:50:12]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of Market Mastery brought to you by The Bridge Group. If you're a revenue leader in the B2B sales space or know someone who is, connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget to subscribe to stay updated on future episodes.
Kyle Smith [00:50:22]:
Don't forget to subscribe to stay updated on future episodes.