[00:00:00] Ashley: what assets do we need to put into all of these nurture campaigns? What assets do we need to put into content syndication? What is the connection between your paid ads, your landing pages with your forms, and then the nurture onboarding emails, right? Like. All of that is highly interconnected. So that's, that's one aspect that I think lifecycle and content have to be very closely tied. [00:00:25] Even though content marketing tends to focus more on assets versus lifecycle marketing tends to focus more on channels. [00:00:33] ​Intro music [00:00:59] Phil: What's up folks? Welcome to episode 1 65 of the Humans of Martech podcast. Today we're joined by Ashley Faus, head of Lifecycle Marketing at Atlassian. [00:01:09] In This Episode --- [00:01:09] Phil: In this episode, we cover the overlap between lifecycle content and product marketing. Why MTA is still useful to measure content effectiveness, why Ashley's playground theory destroys your marketing funnel. [00:01:21] How to build content that matches actual human thinking, and most importantly, why baking cakes makes you a better. Marketer, all that, and a bunch more stuff after a super quick word from two of our awesome partners. [00:03:47] Phil: Ashley, I'm super excited to chat with you today. Thanks to what for your time. [00:03:50] Ashley: Yeah, I'm excited to be here. I, uh, I was looking through the kind of prep doc that you sent over, and I'm like, Ooh, this is gonna be a spicy one. [00:03:59] Phil: Yeah, [00:04:00] hopefully you didn't find questions too spicy. I love like digging in and like figuring out what folks were thinking about when they wrote something. And I feel like a podcast is a great form of just like getting a deeper understanding behind some of the thoughts and, and the writing. So the guests that make most interesting conversations are the, the ones that just like have cool brain dumps on LinkedIn. [00:04:22] You have a ton of followers and a ton of interesting, um. Posts on LinkedIn. So there's, there was no shortage of topics for us to chat about today. So the first one that I wanted to ask you about was like, I didn't cover it in the intro, but like, [00:04:36] Why You Should Look for a New Job Every 18 Months --- [00:04:36] Phil: you spent seven plus years at Atlassian now, super rare in tech to be at a company for that long. [00:04:43] Um, but you've had a variety of roles at Atlassian, so I'm curious to get your take on that like journey. Has it all felt like you're in the same company the whole time, or because you kinda changed roles around, it was a little bit different, like, uh, here and there. Like you went from corporate [00:05:00] comms to integrated media to product marketing and last year, I think, uh, for a year and a half now you've been in this like lifecycle role. [00:05:07] I'm curious to ask you about that, that journey. [00:05:10] Ashley: It is definitely not the same company that it was when I started, and that's not just because I've changed, it's because the company's changed. So we actually have grown like. I think it's five x or six x, both from a employee standpoint, and I think also from like a revenue standpoint as well. Like we've had explosive growth over the last seven years. [00:05:30] And then on top of that, obviously I have changed roles. So it's kind of funny, I put out a LinkedIn post at one point that said, I look for a new job every 18 [00:05:39] Phil: Yeah. Yeah, [00:05:40] Ashley: And people were like, but you've been at Atlassian for seven years. How does that work? And I'm like, if you look at my trajectory, I have changed roles either through teams roles or gotten promoted roughly every two years. [00:05:54] And again, you'll notice there's a difference between 18 months and 24 months. I [00:06:00] look for a job every 18 months so that I am prepared. To make a move and solve for any gaps at that, roughly two to two and a half year mark, which is more aligned with the tenure in tech of somewhere between two to three years before folks move on. [00:06:15] So that's the first thing I'll say is that regardless of how happy you are in your current role or your current company, take the time to look for your next role. And that could just be for you from a skills perspective. It could be for your org or your team. I think about this for my team members as as well, asking them like, who do you wanna be when you grow up? [00:06:37] When do you think you're growing up? Are you growing up in the next year? You growing up in the next five years, right? Like that breakdown of how to get to where you want to be in 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. That starts with the next 12 months or the next 24 months. So it has definitely changed. One funny thing about getting hired into the corporate comms [00:07:00] role. [00:07:00] At Atlassian initially, that like PR side of things is actually one of the weakest areas in my skillset. I'd done it some, but the person who was hiring actually wanted somebody with more of a kind of well-rounded content strategy background. They needed somebody who could do email. They needed somebody who could do social media. [00:07:19] At the time, our social media person sat on the email team because the mindset was that this is a broadcast channel. And again, I mean at this point, this is like more than seven years ago, right? Like, oh yeah, we have email and we have social, those are owned channels where we will, you know, put our message to distribute our content. [00:07:39] And obviously your face, you're like, no, you can't do that. And obviously my face, I was like, no, you can't do that. Right? So during the interview process. I actually got very few questions about pr. It was kinda like, cool. Cool. So you've like, dealt with agencies, you've dealt with press, like you, you know about the journalist thing. [00:07:56] Love that. Talk to me about how social media [00:08:00] gets, you know, incorporated into the marketing mix. Right. Um, so I, I actually, that, that is the first indication that I, I was hired for one thing and because I was nosy and stuck my nose in other people's business, they were like, should you come sit with us? [00:08:17] Yeah, let's have a chat. I'll come sit with you. So that ultimately kind of led to that the integrated media role was, uh, basically acknowledging that intersection of press owned channels, like email, social media, et cetera, thought leadership, and then kind of the brand marketing piece of like, how does that connect with our overall. [00:08:41] Brand platform, brand messaging and brand campaigns versus having each of those as more of, you know, siloed teams or siloed channels. [00:08:49] Phil: It's super cool. I, I feel like one thing that enterprise teams have a bad rep for is like, oh, things are slow. And like you only wear one hat and you're only doing the one thing for like [00:09:00] super long. But one of the things I love the most about my stint in enterprise is that you get to move from team to team. [00:09:07] Like there's so much lateral opportunity from just joining one team that's focused on this side of the product, or if you have multiple portfolio of products or even multiple brands with under the same umbrella, like an enterprise team is almost like a hub of a bunch of different teams that you can just jump in and out of. [00:09:25] So I, I love the, the experience there, but [00:09:27] The Overlap Between Lifecycle, Content and Product Marketing --- [00:09:27] Phil: the thing I found the most interesting was that like eventually you went into this integrated product marketing role, right? And yeah, a lot of your background is like content strategy, product marketing before you got to Atlassian, and then eventually you kind of landed into this lifecycle role and, and you're leading a lifecycle team now. [00:09:46] And I wanted to ask you about this overlap between product, marketing, content and lifecycle. Like personally, I've kind of held some of these different roles throughout my career, and I think there's a ton of overlap, even [00:10:00] like with marketing ops roles that are often supporting all three of these functions in smaller companies, even like you're, you're wearing one hat and you're doing all of those things, right? [00:10:09] Like it, it all fits under one person. But in bigger companies like Atlassian, there's often a big distinction between what is product marketing, what is content strategy, what is lifecycle like, areas of opportunities with clear distinctions. I'm curious to get your take on that. Like do you, what is the distinction between like product marketing, content strategy, and lifecycle that, that you're in now? [00:10:31] Ashley: So I agree with you with a slight caveat. Even in larger companies, if they're, and again, my background is in SaaS from like a tech perspective, so it might be different in other areas, but, um, even in larger companies, if they're coming from more of a product led growth mindset versus a sales led motion or a high touch motion, you know, enterprise sales motion, however, they, they frame it. [00:10:57] I actually think that there's a lot more blurring [00:11:00] of the lines from a PLG perspective because there's a lot more reliance on things like SEO, um, that flywheel in terms of demo free trials that signup, that upgrade experience that happens in product. A lot of that tends to sit more in the product marketing organization in a PLG company, even if that company would traditionally be considered an enterprise. [00:11:24] So I think there's even some more nuance in it of like, what motion, what's your core GTM motion and how does that affect each of these roles? So I'll, I'll give that distinction. Um, I totally agree with you about smaller companies. So when I was at Duarte, I, um, my, I had a VP of marketing, but she was also managing a lot of the sales side and trying to build up. [00:11:45] Uh, the academy offerings and the course offerings for Duarte, and that was a new motion. And so she was focused a lot there. So I ended up, you know, owning a lot of the strategy and execution for all things marketing. And again, at the time, this was like 10 years [00:12:00] ago, Marketo, HubSpot, like marketing automation platforms were just starting to be table stakes for any size company. [00:12:09] And so I actually had to go through and like, do the RFP, do we choose Marketo or Pardot or Silverpop was still in the mix for like some of the OG people. Like, like I, I met with sales reps from Silverpop. Like I, I struggled to come up with that name and then I was like, dude, Silverpop. So, um, so I actually brought in Marketo and HubSpot. [00:12:33] And so again, when you start talking about lifecycle marketing, which tends to incorporate. Email in product messages, looking at cross-sell, upsell, um, you know, expansion metrics within a multi-product portfolio. How do I, how do I find the customers? How do I nurture them? All of that is so very closely tied from a strategy standpoint on the lifecycle side, and then kind of the [00:13:00] enablement or the fuel from a content marketing side, what assets do we need to put into all of these nurture campaigns? [00:13:07] What assets do we need to put into content syndication? What is the connection between your paid ads, your landing pages with your forms, and then the nurture onboarding emails, right? Like. All of that is highly interconnected. So that's, that's one aspect that I think lifecycle and content have to be very closely tied. [00:13:29] Even though content marketing tends to focus more on assets versus lifecycle marketing tends to focus more on channels. And I know there's probably some content marketers listening like, no, no, we do the channels too. And I'm like, I agree with you, but also, are you actually the one hitting publish? Are you actually the one building out the emails? [00:13:46] And to your point, in a company you know the size of Atlassian or bigger, you might actually have an email team that handles the emails. So you might have somebody writing the email copy, somebody else making the [00:14:00] email headers or visuals have somebody else handling the scoring and the lead routing off of those things, have somebody else doing the audience segmentation, and then having somebody literally building the emails, running the AB tests on the subject lines, et cetera. [00:14:15] So it, it kind of does have that, that flavor from a product marketing perspective. The way that I think about this product marketing basically acts as the bridge between the market and the company. And so they go out and they say, what does the market want? What are the gaps in the market? What does the audience need? [00:14:33] How are they articulating that? What is the competition doing? How is our solution differentiated from the competition? And so they're defining that audience and then they're bringing in that gap insight to then inform messaging, positioning, and persona information. All of that then feeds into great. What key stories do we need to tell? How do we need to tell them? Which is a lot of what pro uh, content [00:15:00] marketers look at. And then where do we need to tell them? Where is that audience spending time is a lot of what lifecycle marketing looks at in relation to product marketing. Then once we gather all of those narratives, we put them into the correct format and we put that format being for the audience, for the narrative and for the channel, right? [00:15:20] That whole thing. We put it out there, we see does the audience consume it, do they engage with it, et cetera. All of those insights then go back to product marketing to say, this is actually resonating. We're starting to see some adoption in the market, right? So it's this nice cycle of each person bringing in their expertise. [00:15:40] But also having that virtuous cycle, this idea that like product marketing is gonna throw their persona docs over the wall, content marketing is gonna randomly write a blog post and then lifecycle marketing is going to email that link out. I'm like, cool, we've done it. No. Right? So you'll see that push and pull, and I think that's [00:16:00] something that for me, having held roles across each of those specialties and also coming from smaller companies where I was that person, it is very hard for me to differentiate who's most important, right? [00:16:14] Or like which one is best. I don't understand how you're gonna write content with no insights from the market, the competition, and the audience. I don't understand how you're gonna distribute content with no understanding of the channel mix and the quirks of the different channel. Like I don't understand how you're gonna build channels with no content. [00:16:34] I don't understand how you're gonna convince the audience. A value with no content. Like, like your content can't just sit in a drawer. You have to work with somebody on the channel side. Right? So it's, it's funny to me when we get into these nitpicky things, 'cause I'm like, I don't, these are all like tightly correlated to me and I get it. [00:16:54] We have to have roles and responsibilities so that we don't step on each other's toes, but [00:17:00] this silo and differentiation and like, oh, is it demand gen versus brand? I, I cannot, I cannot. [00:17:08] Phil: Yeah, I feel like the semantics discussion in marketing, like there's some merit to it because like we're supposed to be really good as, as marketers at messaging and like positioning, but we really suck at like keeping things simple and like having clear delineation between what is one thing versus another thing. [00:17:29] But to your point, I feel like there is so much overlap and like we have goals and we often share goals between teams and so yeah, maybe the lifecycle team is the one implementing the stuff in the channel, deciding, you know, the journey of. Combining a push play here with like a text message here, and the rest are all on email and like, maybe they're the ones deciding that, but like they need to collaborate with the content strategy team on figuring out what is the right piece of [00:18:00] content to push to people here. [00:18:01] And if we're just doing something that's like out of product, what is the right way to get people to come back into the product? Like it's not just on one team, but I feel like Lifecycle is an interesting team. Um, 'cause like I, I've, I've worn this hat many times in my career and we often share metrics with. [00:18:21] Product specifically, but also product marketing when it comes to like activation numbers, like onboarding rates, retention rates, like that whole, like flywheel of, you know, getting people back into the product and it's tied to revenue, whatever. Messaging and content plays a big role there, obviously in those metrics. [00:18:39] But, um, like I, I've done fantastic push notification campaigns and like email digest that have a huge impact on engagement, but sometimes there's only so much messaging can do outside of the product. Um, [00:18:52] When Lifecycle Marketing Gets Blamed For Product Problems --- [00:18:52] Phil: do you think that there's like an unfair amount of problems that we ask lifecycle marketing to solve? [00:18:57] Curious like what metrics or [00:19:00] KPIs that like your lifecycle team is responsible for at Atlassian? [00:19:04] Ashley: 100%, uh, content or more channels activated, or, you know, just more will not solve a fundamental issue in the product. Um, and it's interesting because I've had scenarios throughout my career where I've asked a question of like, Hey, I can't figure out how to do this thing. And someone replies with like a 30 page document, and I'm like, you've lost me right there. [00:19:34] Like, if, if you genuinely think that this document is what is helpful, I, I can't help you. Like, I'm not, what, what is so fundamentally wrong in the UX of the product or the, on the, you know, the in product notifications or the way that you've named the tabs? I. If, if you [00:20:00] genuinely think that the right answer is, oh, here's our products guide, you just didn't know that it was there and it's, it's gonna take me three hours to just understand the thing. Product is fundamentally broken. I talk about this a lot too, right? The right tool for the right job. And I think this is a problem, particularly as a lot of companies, and I've, I've seen this in other enterprise companies, the idea that we can expand the use of this tool for other audiences. And that might be true, but again, if it requires a 10 plus page onboarding document for that audience, that new segment to understand, you might be asking them to use the wrong tool. [00:20:39] We don't ask developers to write code in Word documents. We don't ask graphic designers to design things in Microsoft Paint. So maybe it's not that. Designers are incapable or coders are incapable. [00:21:00] Maybe it's that we should give them proper coding environments or, you know, Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop tools, right? [00:21:07] So, um, that's, that's the first thing. From an overall mindset standpoint, there are certain problems that actually belong with different disciplines, and I think that ui, ux, um, you know, content design in terms of the popups and the notifications and the naming within the product makes a huge difference. [00:21:27] That's the first thing from a mindset standpoint. That obviously then leads to metrics. Um, I see this a lot where churn metrics tend to be a core metric for product marketers. We need to reduce churn, and so they then go to their lifecycle counterparts and say, can we add more emails to the onboarding flow? We can, but if people are not opening the first email in the onboarding flow, adding a 10th email in the onboarding flow is [00:22:00] not the problem. That is not the thing that's gonna solve churn, right? So again, understanding that entire lifecycle, again, the word, it's got the self-reference real definition here, right? [00:22:11] But, um, the other big thing that I think product marketing and product can help from a lifecycle standpoint is if there are certain actions that, you know, make a customer more sticky, right? So for example, in Jira, we know that if you create a pro, a project or your first ticket right, you're a lot more likely to come back into the product to see how that ticket is going. [00:22:38] If you never create a project or you never file a ticket. It is gonna be really hard for us to get you back in. Right? So from an onboarding standpoint, let's look at how do we increase the number of people who create a project? We also know if you invite other people to collaborate on that project, um, on that project, people are a lot more likely to [00:23:00] come back, right? [00:23:00] If I'm like, oh, me and Phil are working on this, and Phil wants to know the status, cool, he's gonna come back in because that's where the status is, right? So looking at those two key actions, we can then go back and say, okay, from an onboarding email standpoint, let's say we also have access to in product messages. [00:23:18] So we know we can say, okay, I say, Ashley, create your first project. And then when I go in and do that, I know the next action that I should pop up from an in-product messaging standpoint is, Ashley, invite your teammates. And if we're really smart, which we are. We have some information about who I tend to collaborate with, right? [00:23:40] And so then I could say, suggested people. Do you wanna invite Phil? Right? So let's say I've created my first project, you and I have collaborated in the past. Now when I go to create my next one, it'll pop up very easily for me to say, oh, do you wanna invite Phil? And also we saw Phil was collaborating with this other person. [00:23:58] Maybe, do you need to invite them too? [00:24:00] Actually, you know what? Yeah, that would be smart. I'm gonna go ahead and invite that other person. Right? So when you look at all of that, that can lead to metrics around open rates for the onboarding, click-through rates for the onboarding, click through rates for the IPM, or you know, actions in the IPM to say like, did they actually do this? it's really hard to then correlate that to, well, the lifetime value of Ashley's account has now increased by $20, right? Like. But I'm stickier, you know, that it contributes to reduced churn, you know, so we also have, um, user limits. So that's basically some teams have feature gates, others have basically user limits as the trigger for upgrading to the next tier of the product. [00:24:47] So for us, it's free for up to 10 users. So I know, again, as both a lifecycle marketer and a product marketer, if I can get that 11th user, it triggers that update for them to have to upgrade to a [00:25:00] standard edition of the product they start paying me. So is it the 11th user that actually, like if I, if I can get you to click that IPM, that makes you invite, uh, the 11th user, is that the moment where I as a lifecycle marketer have like increased the lifetime value of the account? [00:25:20] Or is that when I as a product marketer have like. Done my pricing and packaging work correctly and haha, we found out that 10 is the magic number right? Versus 15 or 20. And then from a content perspective, let's say at the 10th user, I now say, Hey, it seems like this team is getting kind of big. Do you maybe wanna do a free trial or test out or see some experiences for bigger teams? [00:25:48] How do you manage that many people? And then that actually comes in, in another something newsletter or blog post about, you know, uh, Dunbar's [00:26:00] number, let's say, right? Like this, this is a concept that systems and processes start to kind of break at these key group sizes. And so I know as a content marketer, like Dunbar's number things start to break at that 10 person mark. [00:26:14] I think it's 5, 10, 25, 50, a hundred, and then up from there, right? And like you, you know, this intuitively it's a lot easier to coordinate with just you and your spouse. But if you have kids, now you've got a family of five, like. Things get real complicated, right? So now as a marketer, I see, aha, this person now has their 11th user. [00:26:33] I'm starting to see they're adding more users. So I'm gonna send them a blog post, basically talking about Dunbar's number and how things start to break. And oh, by the way, actually, maybe Jira premium would be the right thing, because now you can start to manage teams of teams. You can have cross-functional planning pages, right? [00:26:49] So is that when I, as a content marketer, increase the lifetime value of the, of the customer account, right? So you can see here, we can attach metrics to all of these things in terms of views, open [00:27:00] rates, click-through rates, et cetera. But the idea that one of us really was the one that influenced the revenue, really, I, I wanna push back on that idea. [00:27:14] Phil: Yeah, it, it, it's always been a tricky part too. Like, I wanted to ask you about Multitouch attribution and maybe we'll jump to that because like, I feel like there's, there's a segue in there, like your, your book encourages teams to move on from last touch attribution. Uh, we, we had, uh, Casey Jenkins on the show, um, she has like a hilarious take on last touch attribution, compares it to like the things like getting married. [00:27:37] Like was it like that last date that you had that was like the reason for why you got married? Um, like I think folks that listen, hopefully don't rely on like last touch attribution too much, but your advice is to kind of move on to. Multi Dutch attribution, and I've gone down the rabbit hole on, on MTA on the show with, uh, a bunch of different guests across different areas of [00:28:00] expertise and got various takes on it. [00:28:02] Um, a lot of them pretty negative for, for MTA. A lot of folks like have a negative view of it because it's a misused by a lot of people. A lot of people think that MTA is the key. To answer the question, what is the ROI of marketing? Like what drove revenue last quarter or last year? But MTA is not useful at answering like, what drove revenue. [00:28:25] It's not a causal methodology. And I think you agree because you've said that MTA is useful when being able to see what content was consumed in a customer journey or someone's lifecycle. Not necessarily what content led to revenue or what revenue was incremental because of that content. So maybe talk about like, I. [00:28:46] Like, what bit of information is useful to you in this like MTA model if it doesn't give you causal data? Like the example I like to use, um, like I, I was at a startup and we bought this MTA [00:29:00] tool and we went all in on trying to figure out like what were the best pieces of content that maybe didn't drive revenue, but like drove activation, drove visits, blah, blah, blah. [00:29:09] And it turned out that comparison pages showed up really nicely on all of the MTA models, regardless of like first touch, last touch, w shaped whatever, like comparison pages looked amazing, but it didn't mean that those comparison pages were incremental. To revenue. Like we don't know how much of that pipeline would disappear if we didn't have those comparison pages. [00:29:31] There might have been like amazing tutorial articles that were buried in like a support doc somewhere that doesn't show up very often in the MTA model, but maybe those pieces of content are in fact incremental and was like the tipping point for pipeline. And without them X amount of like deals wouldn't have closed. [00:29:49] So [00:29:49] Why MTA is Still Useful to Measure Content Effectiveness --- [00:29:49] Phil: I'm curious, like you personally, but also maybe talk about like Atlassian, how you tackle MTA and what value you really see in getting like a credit distribution system that shows [00:30:00] you the digital path to conversion, but not necessarily the causality and no clear answer on like what drove revenue [00:30:09] Ashley: Well first, if we're talking about which channel should get the credit. I mean, DocuSign is our highest converting channel, right? [00:30:16] Phil: right last [00:30:17] Ashley: that contract over and 99.9% of the time somebody freaking signs it. So, I mean, we can solve who actually gets credit for the, for the deal. Real easy here, whatever your contract venue is or vendor is, like solved it. [00:30:32] So that's, that's the first thing I'll take issue with is like, who gets credit? I mean, DocuSign, like, not even our sales rep, freaking DocuSign. Um, [00:30:43] ​[00:31:00] [00:32:00] [00:32:44] Ashley: I, I think this idea of driving revenue versus contributing to a journey or a decision is a separate issue. And I, I love that you brought [00:33:00] up support docs because again. [00:33:02] This is particularly true in product-led growth organizations that don't have such a strong sales or customer success team because they rely on a flywheel self-serve documentation. So communities, the documentation itself, it tends to be public, it tends to show up in search results because it's actually very highly correlated to intent, right? [00:33:26] If you ask like, how to make a project in Jira, cool. You, you wanna know how to make a project in Jira, right? Like, and so we can surface to you a product guide or a tutorial video or the support docs that are literally like, make sure this or that is configured correctly, right? So there's a lot of, um, a lot of things where this idea that marketing content or marketing touchpoints Revenue. And again, this idea of incremental [00:34:00] revenue, like, well, the comparison pages, for example, they were gonna buy anyways, obviously, because, you know, they were comparing us to competitors. [00:34:07] Phil: Mm-hmm. [00:34:08] Ashley: That's not necessarily true. [00:34:09] Phil: For [00:34:10] Ashley: They could stick with their status quo, they could stay in their spreadsheets. They could track all of their projects in a GG sheet instead of using Jira. So just because they looked at the Jira comparison page from some of our top competitors, they could choose not to buy. Right? It could even be, maybe they're looking for a job at Atlassian and they're like, who are these people? What do they do? I'm going to, I'm looking at a senior product marketing manager for Jira. [00:34:39] What the heck is Jira even, right? And so they start googling around and they're like, what is Jira? Right? And they land on and they go down the rabbit hole and they look at the comparison page and they figure out that Jira is, you know, a project management software. Cool. Nowhere in there do they ever have any intent to buy. [00:34:57] Right? So I, I think that that's the [00:35:00] other hard part is we, this assumption that only the marketing content drives revenue without the recognition that customer success, support, documentation, et cetera, are key to retaining customers. And this is, again, a very SaaS minded context. I realize this is not necessarily true everywhere else. [00:35:20] Um, but part of the reason that I talk about MTA, it's less that I'm like, MTA is the winner, and it's more like, can we please not with last touch or first touch, like. [00:35:32] Phil: Yeah. [00:35:33] Ashley: Those are a struggle. And I think that the ability to see which pages or which assets or which channels regularly show up throughout the journey, that gives you the directionality to say, maybe we should lean into more channels like this. [00:35:48] Maybe we can test into an adjacent channel. So we figure out a perfect example. Um, DZ Zone is a place that allows you to, um, basically do content syndication and they have [00:36:00] a core technical and developer audience. And so for us, we have sometimes put some of our developer content onto DZ Zone, and so we can look at impressions, we can look at Clickthroughs, back links, et cetera, and we can see, okay, we're reaching this developer audience and they seem interested in our content. I don't know if somebody from DZ Zone necessarily bought a million dollars worth of Compass, let's say. Um, like that's our, our, um. Internal development platform, uh, like developer experience platform tool, right? I can't one-to-one correlate that publishing on DZ zone drove an incremental $1 million of compass sales, right? [00:36:40] But I can get that directionality that these are more impressions, there's more click throughs as we seed more of those ideas. So let's say we introduce a new term, we introduce, you know, we're, we're playing into a new definition in Cate. Again, everybody loves category creation, right? [00:37:00] Um, but, but even that aligning to the right category versus trying to create something net new might actually get you closer to revenue by shortening the sales cycle. [00:37:12] Because people can glom on, that's why you get, oh, we're the Airbnb of blah. Oh, we're the Uber of blah, right? Because it immediately tells people, oh, okay, I get it. You do basically peer-to-peer something, right? I don't have to educate you on all that. I, I have to, that shortcuts all the education, so it might actually end up accelerating the sales cycle. [00:37:32] So again, looking at that from a journey perspective, when you shift the messaging on the homepage, there's the lagging indicator that you can get from your sales teams. And if you're small, you might have to go directly to the sales person and be like, Hey Phil, since we changed the, the messaging and the ad campaign and the messaging on the homepage to focus more on leaning into this existing category, has it been easier for you to have sales conversations and you come back and say, oh my gosh, a hundred [00:38:00] percent, I immediate, people are immediately like, yep, I get the light bulb, right? [00:38:04] If you're larger and you have a tool like Gong that records all of this, you can go through your gong and see. At what point in the sales conversation does the customer kind of switch or the prospect switch to actually having more of that buy intent conversation versus who are you, what do you do? So who are your competitors? [00:38:25] O okay, so are you like, you're kind of like Airbnb, but like for commercials spaces, am I getting that right? Right. You could see all of that. And so it's, it's hard to say like a hard metric of like this, this number of entrances to the blog or this number of shares of this social media post, or this increase in the open rate for this onboarding flow led to this incremental dollar of revenue. [00:38:54] But you can start to get some of that directionality to say, these channels tend to show up in our [00:39:00] biggest deals. Oh, wow. When we switched the messaging, huh? Over the last 12 months, our sales cycle shortened from six months to three months. What drove that? Well, we switched the messaging here and then we changed it on the homepage. [00:39:14] And in our ad campaigns, we completely overhauled all of our onboarding flows. And we also, you know, implemented this new in product messaging strategy that was a whole channel we didn't have. Right? What happens if we turn off in product messaging? Well, I don't know. Okay, are you willing to turn it off? [00:39:34] Let's look at the number of clicks in the in product messaging to maybe decide whether it's worth testing, turning off IPMs, and see what happens from a, you know, retention and key actions and sales standpoint, right? So you have to have that balance of leading indicators and lagging indicators. And I think too often those are completely disconnected and all you look at is like, is revenue growing? [00:39:58] Are we hitting pipeline? [00:40:00] And you don't look at upstream or you don't have a good understanding of how long your sales cycle is, and so you. Test things for 30 days when your sales cycle is six months, and then you're constantly switching and you're like, well, I don't understand why the leads are bad. You didn't give anything. [00:40:16] Time to work the sale. Like if something's broken. Now, some what happened two quarters ago that messed it up, right? Like it's not something you can change in the next two weeks. So I, I know that's not really an answer to the question of like, what are the three key metrics that your teams look at from product marketing, content marketing, lifecycle marketing? [00:40:33] And it's because you need a mix. I actually, um, have a chapter on metrics in the book, and I have this like, I mean, I think at this point it spans like two or three pages of like leading indicators per intent. And this is another thing we can talk about, um, the, the audience intent in terms of the next action you want them to take. [00:40:57] There are different metrics [00:41:00] per intent. And so the, it is like, you know, two or three pages of like, for this intent, here's the leading indicators and the lagging indicators for this intent. Here's the leading indicators and the lagging indicators. And so, um, I feel for my data science and, and like marketing ops colleagues, because this is not an easy problem to solve, right? [00:41:18] Like I'm coming at it from the marketing side, but my partners on the other side of that table. You guys, you guys are dealing with a lot. [00:41:30] Phil: I feel like that, that's exactly where I was gonna go. I was like, your, your answer is spot on and really good from a marketing lens. And anyone that's worked with marketers or like is in marketing gets it like leading lagging indicators. It's gotta be a balance of both. We can't just say like, let's put a dollar number on everything and track the incremental revenue number on every single piece of content that we do. [00:41:54] That's just like, not how marketing works. It's not a single tactic, it's the sum of the parts. It's a whole [00:42:00] engine, blah, blah, blah. Like we get it. We're in marketing, but oftentimes. The senior management and the finance team, like, they don't get it. And they are tasked with, you know, a board of directors and they want numbers and financial metrics. [00:42:16] And oftentimes it's like myself in marketing ops and, and even like VPs of marketing that I've worked with, like they want to bring on multi dutch attribution softwares or systems to answer that question specifically, like what drove revenue last year. Like Phil, we just want to know what we did last year that drove. [00:42:35] This much revenue, like I need to assign a single dollar to every single thing that we did so that I know with confidence what to do next year. Like there's just like this mind shift that needs to happen. And I feel like you've explained it really well to marketers, but for marketing ops folks or just like marketing leaders that are tasked with these questions, like Ashley, what drove revenue for, like what did the Lifecycle team [00:43:00] do to add net incremental revenue last year for Atlassian? [00:43:03] And like it, maybe you don't have that question, it doesn't sound like you do, but for the audience, like folks that do get that question, like [00:43:10] Marketing Measurement Needs Bigger Swings and Clearer Signals --- [00:43:10] Phil: how do you start to shift that narrative so that like it isn't a conversation of everything needs to be incremental, everything needs to be revenue. Like how do you make that transformation for others? [00:43:20] Ashley: Yeah, and we, we do get that question. Um. You know, I'm not living in some utopia where like I don't have people asking me, like the ROI, right? So a couple things I'll say on that front. One, consistency of the metrics and measuring those quarter over quarter and year over year. Um, one other issue that I see a lot is people focusing in on time horizons that are too short. [00:43:46] And so it's very noisy. Oh my gosh, it dropped yesterday. Y'all, yesterday was Saturday. Like of course nobody's downloading your ebook on Saturday. Of course, nobody's spending $1 million with you on Saturday, like [00:44:00] it's Saturday, right? Um, or they'll literally pick like a date range, you know, even week over week. [00:44:06] You, that's real short. That's real short. Now if you. Doing, let's say a big event, if you have launched a huge brand campaign, if you're on, you know, you're, you're on a billboard in Times Square and you wanna see if direct traffic to the website or, and, or, you know, brand search is up cool looking at that the week after your billboard goes live in Times Square and doing a a before and after, that's a really good way to be like, well, at minimum more people have an idea that our name exists, right? [00:44:37] So I think that's the first thing, is choosing consistent metrics. I see this a lot where it's like, well actually this fiscal year we're gonna, we're gonna measure this other thing. Well actually we're gonna change the definition of an MQL. Okay, well that's not fair. You can't change the definition of an MQL every year and then be like, well, in 2023 we were doing way [00:45:00] better. [00:45:01] Were we now, were we, right? So that's the first thing. Proper consistent metrics. Second thing, which is I guess one a of that is. Proper time horizons and again, monthly, quarterly, bi-annually. Annually. I think those are much reasonable, much more reasonable time horizons. Um, if you have a program that is regularly changing. [00:45:25] So if you have an email newsletter that goes out every single month, then sure do your comparisons, you know, monthly to understand what is your average of your open rate, uh, C-T-R-C-T-O-R. And then if something outperforms, if something underperforms, like if you're seeing a general upward trend in subscriber growth, but this month subscriber growth tanked. [00:45:46] Okay, let's maybe watch that and see, is it just because it was November and December? Like there's seasonality, right? So looking at the seasonality, um, looking at the trends year over year in the right time horizon with consistent metrics. Um, that's, that's one piece of this. I think the [00:46:00] second piece of this, and this is controversial, but like go, go big or go zero. [00:46:07] I think a lot of people, they think we're gonna in invest an incremental dollar, and then we're gonna see an incremental dollar 25 or an incremental dollar 10, or an incremental dollar 50. That is very small increments. And particularly for an enterprise company that's doing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue or a billion dollars in revenue, right? [00:46:31] You wanna measure at the dollar level? I no dude, either turn off an entire channel, turn it completely off for a quarter and see what happens. And of course that's terrifying because like, wait, no. What if that's the one channel that actually works, right? Well, you wanna know if you literally want me to attribute it to a single channel, start turning things off and let's see what happens, right? [00:46:56] Or if that's too scary, just in case it's working. [00:47:00] Go hard in a channel. Go spend five, 10, $20 million on an out-of-home campaign and see what happens, right? Like spend, you know, invest in, do double the amount of trade shows you do, and double the amount of investment per trade show, right? If you normally spend $20,000 for booth space and a sponsorship, five Xs spend a hundred thousand dollars, see what happens, right? [00:47:28] But this idea of like, well last year we did a 10 by 10 booth and we did like the, the little, you know, flyer sponsor. So this year we're gonna do a 10 by 20 booth and a lanyard sponsor, and we wanna know exactly how many additional leads we got. Cool. So you went from 20 5K spend to 30 K spend, and you don't understand why that's not driving millions of extra dollars in pipeline. Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. [00:48:00] Right. And again, I am, I recognize that I am coming from a context where we have the ability to actually do that level of go big or go home amount. And I think that's part of why I say it that way, because like I've seen it, we, you know, we have, we have done some really go big campaigns and we can see the impact of that because it was such a shift in the investment that the before and after is obvious. [00:48:35] Um, even in smaller companies. I've seen that a little bit. But, um, that, that's, that's what I would say is like, okay, if you're, if, if people really genuinely, actually wanna know. Turn it completely off or triple, quadruple five x down on it. But this little like onesie twosie optimization, oh, we're gonna experi, we're, instead of just doing an AB test on our subject line, we're gonna do an A, b, C test on our subject [00:49:00] line. Y'all. Are you even getting statistically significant audience sizes at that size? Right? By the time you segment it down that way. [00:49:08] Phil: Yeah. Yeah. Lots of hot thoughts on, on AB testing for, for subject line there, but I, I love your point about like this not just being really good advice for, for enterprise teams because the, the proponents of incrementality who aren't big fans of MTA, like they say something similarly because like some of the drawbacks I bring up about incrementality and everything needs to be an experiment is that in startups you don't have large sample size. [00:49:33] Like Atlassian has incredible traffic and they can do really fun things with really small changes. With Stat sig. But in like startups, like you're barely getting any traffic. Like email experiments aren't a thing because click-through rates are in the 1%, like what is the value of that? But their, their counterpoints are just like, the experimentation you should be doing in startups should be big bets, like big ideas, doubling down, tripling down 10 [00:50:00] XA 10 x angle on something to see like big lifts. [00:50:03] Because once you have a big lift, then it doesn't matter how small or big the sample size was, if the lift was big enough. Right. So anyways, that, it was really interesting to, to get your thoughts on there, but. This conversation has flown by. So I want to give you a chance to chat about the book. Um, I, I, you were kind enough to send over a, a teaser of, of the upcoming book. [00:50:25] Um, we chatted a bit before we pressed record. I heard your playground framework as kind of a spin on the traditional linear funnel, um, several years ago at, at, at inbound. Um, and this is one of the key frameworks that you, you finally got a chance to really like, write more words around, like, I feel like it's. [00:50:42] Been in the back of your head for many years, but now I'm sure with the book you've gotten a chance to really like, crystallize some of your thoughts around it. Uh, you're essentially encouraging marketers to move away from the linear funnel to a more like playground free for all approach, if you will. [00:50:56] Um, I was, [00:50:57] The Playground Theory Destroys Your Marketing Funnel --- [00:50:57] Phil: I wanted to ask you like, is your beef with the [00:51:00] funnel, just because it assumes a linear path. Like at the end of the day, people have various journeys of buying, right? Like this digital journey that we talked about, but at some point they consider the product, they have an intent to try it, and then they buy it. [00:51:16] Do you disagree that like at some point, you know, after this crazy playground journey, they do go down this linear path to buying? Walk us through the playground analogy. [00:51:27] Ashley: So, yes, and what I'll say, I think there's, there's a couple of pitfalls with the linear journey. First, I think it's more of a retrospective measurement tool than a forward-looking strategy tool. You are correct that a certain number of people become aware, explore, whatever, try it, and then buy or do not buy. [00:51:47] Um, that's the first pitfall. The second pitfall is that it basically is a very company centric mindset. So. It only starts when I, as a marketer or a salesperson [00:52:00] recognize that you are on a journey. It completely ignores all of the things that happened prior to you being on this journey. Right. So, if I think about this, and you and I were talking about this before we hit record, you were like, yeah, I, I was so fascinated with the playground and I was gonna talk about this. [00:52:17] And then I was like, wait a minute. I think I heard this before at Inbound, and then you went on a, a journey doing some research, and you're like, oh, there's a bunch of podcasts where she's talked about only the playground journey. So at what point were, were you aware like that you're gonna basically buy my theory? [00:52:37] At what point did you consider that you wanted to accept this theory? And then at what point did you, in this case, decide not to buy it for this conversation as like a core? Discussion point for this episode, right? Like we could, we could run this on your journey as well, right? [00:52:55] Phil: My lifecycle began before I even knew it started. [00:52:58] Ashley: and then [00:53:00] so you told me this, right? [00:53:02] And I was like, oh, that's so interesting because to me, I've been talking about this for, at this point, like six years. But for you, you, you just rediscovered it, right? If you hadn't said that to me, I would have no idea that you had consumed my content at inbound, that you had forgotten about it, that you came back to it and thought it was interesting. [00:53:22] Like I would have no idea about that. So those are kind of the two big pitfalls from a, with the funnel is that it's more of a retrospective measurement tool, not a forward looking strategy tool. And it's very company centric. It's, it's only when I recognize that you're doing something. So when we talk about the funnel, we have to shift that mindset. [00:53:42] And I actually would say it's not a free for all, right? Like. If, if you land in the middle of nowhere and you're like, I don't know what any of this is or where to go, right? That's disconcerting. So we do, as marketers want to design journeys. We want to design them. We want them to be smart, helpful, [00:54:00] seamless, and impactful. [00:54:02] But we have to do that in a way that's smart enough that no matter which way the audience goes, they don't hit a dead end or they don't experience that friction. And so things like our CTAs, like from a very tactical perspective, the learn more, CTA, kill that. Nobody knows what that is. What happens when I click that button? [00:54:23] I don't know. Versus contact sales. Book a demo, sign up, try for free, activate a trial, read the blog, watch the video, register for a ticket. If you look at how I'm promoting the book, I don't just generally say grab a copy. I say pre-order so that people know that they're not gonna receive it immediately. [00:54:44] And it's funny, I've even had a few people ping me and be like, yeah, my book still hasn't arrived. And I'm like, well, you're gonna be waiting for another three months buddy. Like you did you miss that It said pre-order, right? Somebody else commented, they're like, um, yeah, I, I clicked on the link and there's no reviews for the [00:55:00] book. That's correct. 'cause no one has received it. Like again. And, and so again, there's even that, right? I made it very clear when I said pre-order comes out in May, whatever, people still miss it. But for the most part, that clarity, not just buy the book pre-order now, grab a copy, and then obviously once it comes out, I'll say, grab a copy today. [00:55:24] Great. You'll, you'll get your book within, if you've got Amazon Prime two days, right? If you buy on Kindle, you'll get it immediately. Um, so even the CTAs, when we think about that, it's like, it's actually not that hard. To design the journey in a way that humans actually can trust you. They understand what's happening and it's helpful to them. [00:55:46] Even though it sounds scary to be like, you're telling me I have to throw out my whole framework, and I'm like, kinda, but hear me out. Here's what we're replacing it with, and there's stuff you can do today regardless of whether you buy the book, fix your [00:56:00] CTAs. [00:56:02] Phil: I love it. [00:56:02] Building Content That Matches Actual Human Thinking --- [00:56:02] Phil: I think there's like two concepts in there in your book that, um, like support this transformation or this like rethinking of the funnel. Um, there's like content depths and content intent, and I feel like they're replacing the trier, uh, the the traditional linear funnel. And, and I want to give you a chance to, to unpack that a little bit. [00:56:24] Like let's say the typical funnel to, to make it simple like awareness, interest, consideration, you've got conceptual, strategic and tactical content depths. How do these content depths help marketers deliver different outcomes compared to the traditional linear funnel approach? And do you think. [00:56:44] Ashley: Sure. So, um, conceptual is really about the what and the why of the idea, and so it's more theoretical or philosophical in nature, and it helps the audience think about and understand the problem space. Strategic is around the process tools, key [00:57:00] knowledge components that have to be in place to make that conceptual idea a reality. [00:57:04] And it helps the audience think about and understand the solution space, develop the criteria to evaluate solutions, and then do their own research. And then at the tactical level, you've got, you know, prescriptive, it's nitty gritty, the step-by-step instructions, the habits or tasks that have to happen regularly to implement those strategies to make that conceptual idea a reality. [00:57:25] Nowhere in there did I say, ah, yes, we will buy the product, we will implement the product, we will use the product. Sure, that might happen, but the solution might also be new knowledge. It might be practices, it might be rituals, it might be eliminating something, right? So you can see that like, oh, conceptual is awareness. [00:57:48] No understanding how to think about the problem space is not the same as being aware. Of a company or a product, right? So the example I give is fitness. [00:58:00] So if we think about it, what does it mean to be healthy and fit? Most people agree it's some combination of diet and exercise, but you're gonna answer that question very differently if you're muscle and fitness versus yoga journal versus runner's world, right? [00:58:12] So, uh, my bio says fitness fiend, I like bodybuilder style workouts. So I, I choose to answer this as muscle and fitness. So at a conceptual level you're say you, you'll say you're healthy and fit. If you have big muscles and you eat a high protein diet, where is the product pitch in that statement? Do I need to buy a product to get big muscles and eat a lot of protein? [00:58:38] I mean, I kind of think you do. You gotta buy some whey protein 'cause it's really hard to eat enough chicken to hit your protein goals, right? You might need to buy a gym membership to lift heavy enough weights to actually be able to build those big muscles, right? But. Also, maybe not. Maybe you're a rock climber and you've been able to build big, strong muscles, right? [00:58:57] So, so that's at the conceptual level. At the [00:59:00] strategic level, this might be, um, talking about having good form when you're lifting or different sources of protein. And then at the tactical level, this is 10 tips to build bigger biceps or five chicken dinner recipes to try this week. And so you can see none of those have to lead you down a buying path. None of them are pitching a product, none of them are pitching a service, none of them are pitching a company, right? So you recognize that you can have that conceptual, strategic and ual depth of content. So let's say for example, uh, bodybuilding.com, they have a lot of education about these things. And so if, if I land on an article that's, let's say a peer reviewed study about the importance of protein and it, the opening line is, you know, protein is the building block of muscle. Great. Why do I care about that? Now I have a link that'll take me directly to that medical study that shows that having big, strong muscles and a high protein diet leads to longer, healthier living. Right? If I [01:00:00] already know that now I wanna read on and say, you know, scientists have discovered new sources of protein. [01:00:05] Oh, that's great. What are they? Right? I don't have to click that link to go read the study to convince me that I should eat more protein to build my muscles. Then maybe there's a sidebar that says, you know, struggling to get your protein, buy this protein supplement. And the CTA is explore supplements, buy, supplement, add to cart, right? [01:00:25] Let's say someone told me that I should eat more chicken, and I'm like, I don't really know why to eat more chicken, but they sent me this recipe and at the beginning, right? The recipe is like, chicken is an excellent source of protein. As you think about your, you know, macros and I'm like, what are macros? [01:00:42] I don't really know what those are. So I can click the link for macros and then it takes me to a strategic depth article that talks about fat, carbs, and protein, or the key macros. And you need to think about that as you design your diet. And in the, um, in the sidebar, there is a meal plan template, right?[01:01:00] [01:01:00] And so I can click that and maybe it's a free template and now I can just use it, right? Or maybe I buy it, or maybe it's a free template. And it's like, are you struggling to do your meal planning hire nutritionist to help you? Right? Okay. Now you've got tactical buy intent content versus tactical use intent content versus strategic learn intent content. [01:01:19] And you can see how all of that all goes together with proper linking, proper CTAs. The audience can pop up or down if they already know this or that, right? And so it designs this journey that's endless, it's frictionless and does not automatically assume. You need to buy this piece of, you know, this supplement or you need to buy this gen membership. [01:01:39] Right? So that's the example I give and I, I do, I go into this in the book, but when you hear it in that context, it's like, this makes perfect sense, right? And it, it is hard to apply in a B2B perspective, but it's not a free for all. It's not it, it's not like this fluffy feel [01:02:00] good. Like, well we can't sell anything. [01:02:04] It's rude to sell. No dude, if somebody wants to buy, you should freaking sell. If somebody doesn't wanna buy, you should give them the option not to do that. And make it very clear, I don't wanna waste my time with people who don't wanna buy. Send them over here. If you're ready to buy, excellent, please tell me that. [01:02:18] And I will make that as easy as possible. Right? So I think, I think that's the other thing people think ditching the linear funnel means that we're, we have to be fluffy or it's this ethereal thing. And I'm like, no, dude, I, you go. [01:02:31] Phil: Very cool. I really appreciate the, the practical breakdown with with fitness there. And, um, yeah, it leans perfectly into my last question for you. Our conversation is flown by here. Um, [01:02:42] Why Baking Cakes Makes You Better at Marketing --- [01:02:42] Phil: we ask this question to everyone on the show, Ashley, to, to close out the conversation. You're obviously a team leader or marketer, a speaker, author. [01:02:49] You're also an avid baker, a fitness feed, an actor, also a singer. You got a ton of stuff going on in your life. Um, how do you remain happy and successful in your [01:03:00] career? And how do you find balance between all the things you're working on at work and outside of work while staying happy? [01:03:06] Ashley: Yeah. I think the biggest thing for me is from a happiness perspective, having that mix of focus in driving toward a goal, whether that's in the gym or at work. I. Also having that mix of creativity, whether that's with buttercream in the kitchen or whether that's on stage or in rehearsals for musical theater. [01:03:27] Those are, those are some things, I think that ability to chase a goal, that ability to have a creative outlet. And then the other key piece of this that is not indicated in all of those activities, but is indicated in the title of the book, the people getting to do all of that with people that I like, that push me, that excite me. [01:03:49] The human piece of that. Like this is why I, I've had people ask like, oh, why don't you play guitar and go sing at coffee shops? And I'm like, nah, dude. The musical theater with other people, like [01:04:00] singing live with other people is freaking cool. Creating those harmonies, I can't harmonize with myself, but trios, quartets, duets. [01:04:09] Like I can harmonize with another person. That's cool. You know the cakes. Well, I do more baking when I'm gonna go into the office and hang out with my colleagues or when I'm gonna take cake to a rehearsal or opening cast party. I don't just make cakes for myself. Like, I like treats, but no dude sharing the cake. [01:04:27] That's the fun part, right? Um, same thing, even, even with the gym, right? I could build a gym in my garage, but I like to go there and see these other people who are freaking strong and striving and like training for their marathon or training to hit their pr. Looking over and seeing them and being like, man, that person is crushing it. [01:04:49] And then knowing that I am that person to someone else in the gym, it's like this symbiotic relationship where you've got, you know, all of this really good energy. So that's kinda what I'll say is [01:05:00] I, I, I think in terms of the balance, it's making those trade offs and leaning in. Um, you can't do it all at once, but you can lean into different areas. [01:05:08] But in the, for me. The six to 12 month time horizon, making sure that I am hitting all of those areas with people is the key. [01:05:18] Phil: Awesome. Love your answer. Love the callback to the humans, uh, featured at the center of your book there. Um, yeah, feel free to plug the book. We'll obviously share a link to pre-order for now. It's good, the, the CTA, but after, after it's live on Amazon. We'll, uh, we'll swap that out for, uh, get your copy in in two days on Prime. [01:05:37] But yeah, uh, plug the book a little bit. [01:05:39] Ashley: Yeah, so the book is called Human-Centered Marketing, how to Connect With Audiences in the Age of ai. Um, it incorporates three key frameworks that I've spoken about over the last couple of years. So one is the playground framework that we talked about today. Another is around the social media spectrum, which actually calls back to the very beginning of the episode with this idea that social is not just a broadcast [01:06:00] channel. [01:06:00] I actually argue that it is also not just a conversation channel. And so we've gotta go beyond, uh, to this community phase. And then finally, the four pillars of thought leadership and how to work with different types of B2B creators throughout the marketing mix. All of those tie into building trust. [01:06:18] Building rapport, attracting and retaining audiences in a way that serves them. So that how are we matching those problems and solutions for the humans behind the screen? And obviously that conversation is more important than ever in the age of ai. So I do sprinkle in a little bit of like, here's the place to use it. [01:06:35] Here's the place not to use it. Here's how to think about this and make this mindset shift. Here's some of the core things that stay the same, no matter how the tech changes. So that is the book, Human-Centered Marketing, how to Connect With Audiences in the Age of ai. It comes out in May. [01:06:51] Phil: Awesome. Ashley, thanks so much for your time today. This was super fun. Really appreciate [01:06:55] Ashley: Thank you.