Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Interviews with top marketers sharing tactical tips, strategies, and lessons learned to help you grow your business. Hosted by Dave Gerhardt, founder of Exit Five, former CMO, and author of Founder Brand. Learn more at exitfive.com
Dave [0:00:01]: You're listening to the Dave Gerhardt Show.
Dave [0:00:02]: This week, I sat down
Dave [0:00:18]: with Erin May.
Dave[0:00:18]: She's the CMO at User Interviews.
Dave [0:00:20]: She's been there eight years.
Dave [0:00:21]: She joined as the first marketer when they had a two page website and zero recurring revenue.
Dave [0:00:27]: Today she's helped grow the company to over twenty million in.
Dave [0:00:30]: What I love about this conversation with Erin is that she's not talking about theory, she's talking about what she actually did in order over the eight years at User Interviews.
Dave [0:00:38]: She talks about how she picked one niche audience and went all in, how she stacked channels one at a time instead of trying to do everything at once.
Dave [0:00:45]: And how she built a marketing operating system around these things called Bangers, which I love.
Dave [0:00:50]: Yeah, Bangers, they're quarterly ten moments that get the entire company involved from content to sales follow up, and she actually incentivizes employees to post about these with cash, Cold hard cash.
Dave [0:01:00]: We also got into podcasting, her expectations for Ai with her team and why she thinks the brand versus demand debate is stupid, enjoy my conversation with Erin May.
Dave [0:01:10]: Okay.
Dave [0:01:12]: My guess is Erin May, and what's what's great as Erin just asked making sure that we can curse on this podcast.
Erin [0:01:18]: Hell yeah.
Erin [0:01:18]: We'll start.
Erin [0:01:19]: We'll start modest.
Dave [0:01:22]: Yeah.
Dave [0:01:22]: Yeah.
Dave [0:01:23]: It's really...
Dave [0:01:24]: Yeah.
Dave [0:01:24]: It's really interesting that so some people...
Dave [0:01:26]: I thought it's a great ice breaker.
Dave [0:01:28]: Really really just changes changes the tone, but I'm excited to have you on.
Dave [0:01:32]: So your CMO at, User Interviews.
Dave [0:01:34]: Can you tell me about user...
Dave [0:01:35]: What does User Interviews do?
Erin [0:01:37]: That's right.
Erin [0:01:37]: User Interviews is now by user testing, so it's an exciting time here of what User Interviews does is if you need participants for literally any kind of research we've got them.
Erin [0:01:48]: So I like to say any kind of safe and legal research, we will support it.
Erin [0:01:53]: So that's in person, moderated, un moderated, doesn't matter, we'll find your participants.
Dave [0:02:01]: Okay.
Dave [0:02:01]: And you said, sorry.
Dave [0:02:02]: You said now at user user...
Dave [0:02:05]: What do you
Erin [0:02:06]: testing testing?
Dave [0:02:07]: User testing.
Dave [0:02:07]: So many users.
Erin [0:02:08]: It says.
Dave [0:02:09]: So company was acquired earlier this year
Erin [0:02:13]: last year.
Erin [0:02:13]: Yeah.
Erin [0:02:13]: About two months ago.
Erin [0:02:14]: Yeah.
Dave [0:02:15]: Okay.
Dave [0:02:15]: Cool.
Dave [0:02:15]: And your role your CMO.
Dave [0:02:17]: What does that mean?
Erin [0:02:18]: That means I lead our marketing function and because user...
Erin [0:02:21]: Interviews is a marketplace.
Erin [0:02:23]: That's on the researcher and the demand side.
Erin [0:02:26]: So mostly what I do is B2B marketing, but I get a little bit of consumer marketing in the mix too with our six million participants.
Dave [0:02:35]: And you've been there for what last eight years?
Erin [0:02:38]: Eight years.
Erin [0:02:38]: Yeah.
Dave [0:02:39]: And did you join pre revenue?
Erin [0:02:43]: I joined pre recurring revenue.
Erin [0:02:45]: So...
Erin [0:02:45]: Recurring revenue?
Erin [0:02:46]: Free.
Dave [0:02:47]: I mean, basically, that's the only revenue people care about.
Erin [0:02:50]: That's great.
Erin [0:02:50]: So...
Erin [0:02:51]: Yes.
Erin [0:02:51]: Yes, I did.
Dave [0:02:52]: And were you CMO when you joined or, like, did you...
Dave [0:02:55]: Was this part of your career career story?
Dave [0:02:57]: Have you've been there for eight years?
Erin [0:02:59]: Yes.
Erin [0:02:59]: I was the head of marketing.
Erin [0:03:01]: Actually, I think it was the Vp of Content life cycle.
Erin [0:03:04]: But that quickly escalated and head of marketing and then a Vp, and then I took on the growth function, which we can talk about, a few few promotions along the way over the eight years, but always the head of market.
Dave [0:03:17]: Okay.
Dave [0:03:17]: Cool.
Dave [0:03:17]: So I I get a bunch of...
Dave [0:03:18]: I get a bunch of, like, notes and questions in here.
Dave [0:03:20]: We've been learning that the thing that people like the most about this podcast lately is more about the, like, what did you do?
Dave [0:03:28]: How did you do it?
Dave [0:03:30]: How did it work?
Dave [0:03:30]: And it it it's even okay if it wasn't, you know, in the last week or so.
Dave [0:03:34]: I think that what we're learning is so many of the things that people are doing and marketing or our timeless listen, it seemed like one of the one of the big things that was transformational for you all was back in the day, really mixing down on, kinda one core use case in one core persona, and you have some strong opinions about brand and audience building and finding a niche, and I'd love to just kinda unpack that a little bit.
Erin [0:03:58]: Yeah.
Erin [0:03:58]: Absolutely.
Erin [0:03:58]: So when I started very early, I was the eighth higher first marketer.
Erin [0:04:03]: So it's super super early, we had a couple hunch of some marketing things we should do.
Erin [0:04:08]: So for example, we were...
Erin [0:04:10]: Transactional, Let's send some emails to folks who have used the product, but not use it again and get them back.
Erin [0:04:17]: So we had a couple things we knew we needed to do.
Erin [0:04:19]: But really, we were starting very, very early.
Erin [0:04:22]: We had early product market fit.
Erin [0:04:24]: Right?
Erin [0:04:24]: We had people who were using the product getting good value saying good things about it.
Erin [0:04:30]: But how are we gonna scale this thing.
Erin [0:04:32]: Right?
Erin [0:04:32]: So what we did was we took a look at who was using this and getting value now, and we really had a couple of different front personas.
Erin [0:04:39]: We had researchers, and then we had what we call powder, which is people who do research, but are not researchers.
Erin [0:04:47]: Got it.
Dave [0:04:48]: It's like yeah acronym premium.
Erin [0:04:50]: It's an acronym.
Erin [0:04:50]: That's
Dave [0:04:51]: do do research.
Erin [0:04:52]: People who do research, but they're not researchers.
Erin [0:04:54]: And that really breaks downs here product folks, designers, ux as well as founders.
Erin [0:04:59]: Right?
Erin [0:05:00]: Founders for redoing kind of early stage research to validate, you know, their companies and ideas.
Erin [0:05:05]: And so our hypothesis was these researchers are gonna end up being our best.
Erin [0:05:10]: Customers.
Erin [0:05:10]: You know, for obvious reasons, they're doing the most research, They're doing on a recurring basis.
Erin [0:05:16]: Not only are they doing research, but they are doing a lot of research recruiting.
Erin [0:05:21]: So that's the going hypothesis, and so what we decided to take a look at was, you know, how big can we make this thing with this research audience?
Erin [0:05:30]: So we did some, you know, back of the envelope math and we thought we could we could get going with that.
Erin [0:05:36]: We knew they were getting the strongest experience from the product.
Erin [0:05:40]: And then from a go to market perspective, we looked at who is serving this audience and how were they being served.
Erin [0:05:46]: And what I found was a big gap, which was great.
Dave [0:05:50]: And what do you do with that gap?
Erin [0:05:52]: You just sell
Dave [0:05:53]: write
Erin [0:05:53]: write some
Dave [0:05:54]: write some blog posts?
Erin [0:05:55]: You write some blog posts.
Erin [0:05:56]: Well, actually, that's funny You mentioned that Dave.
Erin [0:05:58]: So going just way back.
Erin [0:06:00]: You know, I've started early before with a relatively open field, but...
Erin [0:06:05]: We had a two page website.
Erin [0:06:06]: We didn't have a blog when I started.
Erin [0:06:08]: So me and my head of product, we actually hopped into web flow and built a blog in the, you know, my second day on the job to get things going because we needed to announce their product integration.
Erin [0:06:18]: But to answer your question, no, we didn't just create a bunch of blog posts.
Erin [0:06:22]: We took a a really structured strategic approach to it.
Erin [0:06:26]: So, I've done content for quite a number of years.
Erin [0:06:30]: And, this...
Erin [0:06:31]: If we go back way back eight years ago.
Erin [0:06:34]: Seo was still a really thriving channel eight years ago.
Erin [0:06:38]: So one of the things we did was we said, how could we build out an authoritative library of research content to serve this audience distributed primarily through Seo.
Erin [0:06:50]: So that was an early part of the plan.
Dave [0:06:53]: Well, take me into the the Seo approach because, like, I've been in the early stages of a startup, and sometimes you have a good idea and you write an article But I've never made any real Seo progress that way.
Dave [0:07:05]: Did you have a sense of the keywords that you're were trying to target and you you kinda went after them over time.
Dave [0:07:11]: Like, I I know today, part of your story is, like, built...
Dave [0:07:14]: You know, going from this two page website to content and having this really strong point of view on your your customer in your industry being the the cornerstone of your marketing machine.
Dave [0:07:24]: How did you turn that into content that actually drove real Seo growth.
Dave [0:07:28]: Can you kinda unpack your Seo strategy?
Dave [0:07:30]: Yeah.
Erin [0:07:31]: Of course.
Erin [0:07:31]: So in the case of the field guide, so we have, we called the Ux research field guide.
Erin [0:07:35]: So We got some Seo right there in the name of the thing Right.
Erin [0:07:38]: We build out the Ia.
Erin [0:07:39]: We build out the tax taxonomy.
Erin [0:07:40]: What are we gonna cover here that hasn't been covered in the structured way.
Erin [0:07:45]: Right?
Erin [0:07:46]: And then we matched that with the keywords that have those gaps and build out the entire plan for it.
Erin [0:07:52]: But a cool thing about the way we did that was I'm a big fan of dog food our product.
Erin [0:07:57]: I've done a bunch of research.
Erin [0:07:58]: I've learned a bunch of research methods along the way.
Erin [0:08:01]: So we actually build out, you know, the structure of what is the content that's gonna be in this thing.
Erin [0:08:07]: Right?
Erin [0:08:07]: And then we validated that taxonomy with our researchers through research.
Erin [0:08:11]: So we said, you know, we did an open card sort and does this structure make sense, what are the gaps?
Erin [0:08:16]: So really lightweight fast research, but validating that this actually matched the mental model of our audience before we went whole hog down, you know, a big Seo path.
Dave [0:08:28]: Okay.
Dave [0:08:28]: What else?
Erin [0:08:29]: What else?
Erin [0:08:29]: I'm a big.
Erin [0:08:31]: This is now I think quite trendy or maybe even settled science, but I'm a big un gated content person.
Erin [0:08:38]: And so from my previous life as a marketer, I had this kind of theory that people will give you their email if you give them a compelling reason to do it, but you don't have to c them to do it.
Erin [0:08:52]: Right?
Erin [0:08:52]: And so the idea was, let's build this all out.
Erin [0:08:56]: Let's package it and deliver it as an course experience, so you can kind of choose your own adventure and really, you know, start from...
Erin [0:09:04]: I don't know anything about research methods, Or I don't know anything about insights and really have a structured learning experience around that.
Erin [0:09:11]: We'll deliver it as an email if you want it, and then that will be more than just the whole bunch of blog posts, you know, to your earlier point.
Erin [0:09:18]: But the way we did that was we said, do you want this as an email.
Erin [0:09:22]: You don't have to.
Erin [0:09:23]: You can get the whole thing for free right here on the web.
Dave [0:09:26]: Yeah.
Dave [0:09:26]: I think the thing with, like, content approach.
Dave [0:09:28]: I think that intuitively, it makes sense like, I just wanna make my...
Dave [0:09:32]: I wanna create good stuff that's relevant for my potential customers and I wanna distribute that everywhere.
Erin [0:09:38]: Yep.
Dave [0:09:38]: But the problem is as a marker if you're inside of a company.
Dave [0:09:41]: How do I know that the right people are seeing that.
Dave [0:09:44]: And so it's always been like, I wanna know.
Dave [0:09:46]: So, like, I wanna know, oh, you want this article, Erin put your email in, and I can go back.
Dave [0:09:51]: Can show my company.
Dave [0:09:52]: Look, Erin, you know, Erin dot may at use...
Dave [0:09:54]: This this legit CMO.
Erin [0:09:56]: Look at our title.
Erin [0:09:56]: Yeah Look at.
Dave [0:09:57]: Yeah.
Dave [0:09:57]: This legit CMO got our content.
Dave [0:09:59]: So I always kinda go...
Dave [0:10:01]: Have gone back and forth with that.
Dave [0:10:02]: But inside of the...
Dave [0:10:03]: Inside of a company, can how do you think about the measurement of of content?
Dave [0:10:08]: Because I think really that...
Dave [0:10:09]: That's like the root cause of the the gated content?
Dave [0:10:11]: Like, how do we prove the effectiveness of our content?
Dave [0:10:14]: If we're not...
Dave [0:10:15]: If we don't exactly know who's reading it?
Erin [0:10:18]: Yeah.
Erin [0:10:18]: Well, in part of the bet there, too is we could have our cake create it too.
Erin [0:10:22]: We're not anti capturing emails.
Erin [0:10:24]: I'm anti coercion.
Erin [0:10:25]: Right?
Erin [0:10:25]: So and so the idea was, you know, we're gonna pop up a box, give people, you know, you can push the button.
Erin [0:10:31]: We're not gonna force it at you.
Erin [0:10:33]: And we had a thirteen percent conversion rate on this thing.
Erin [0:10:36]: So we got our emails.
Erin [0:10:37]: We just didn't make anyone give them to us?
Erin [0:10:39]: And I think that comes from having a really compelling experience and a really compelling offer.
Dave [0:10:45]: How did you measure just while we're talking about?
Dave [0:10:46]: How did you tell a story about the measuring content.
Dave [0:10:49]: Yeah.
Dave [0:10:49]: Because at the same time, like, I think about this a lot when it comes up in...
Dave [0:10:52]: In these conversations is, even if that piece of kinda of was really helpful, the way people buy, it's very rare that I'm gonna read article and then immediately by the thing.
Dave [0:11:01]: Mh.
Dave [0:11:02]: And so I'm always interested in, like, how do you tell intuitively, we we know that content works.
Dave [0:11:07]: You gotta get people to know, like, and trust you share your stuff, but how do you tell the story of hey, this is what it looks like.
Dave [0:11:12]: This is how it takes.
Dave [0:11:13]: How how have you...
Dave [0:11:14]: How it...
Dave [0:11:14]: How Erin may measure content?
Erin [0:11:16]: Yeah.
Erin [0:11:16]: For sure.
Erin [0:11:16]: So we'll talk about some of these boxes.
Erin [0:11:18]: Right?
Erin [0:11:18]: So what topics are you covering and the channels you're distributing and the format you're putting the content in Right?
Erin [0:11:23]: But in the early days, there were a couple of advantages that that made this work and made this measure...
Erin [0:11:29]: One was, we weren't doing any other marketing.
Erin [0:11:31]: So we were gonna know quickly if it was working or not.
Erin [0:11:35]: The second is we have a relatively short sales cycle at User Interviews, so we don't have to wait for months and years to know if that pop of funnel is working.
Erin [0:11:43]: We're gonna know pretty quickly, and we're gonna be able to nurture folks to, you know, self serve talk sales pretty quickly as well.
Erin [0:11:51]: So I think it...
Erin [0:11:52]: You know, it depends on how your funnel works and how you're gonna obviously measure success, and that has evolved over the years.
Erin [0:11:58]: But in the early days we're looking for are people coming to our website, are we seeing them raise their hand to talk to sales or sign up, you know, to use the product, and they were.
Dave [0:12:09]: Okay.
Dave [0:12:09]: What would change today.
Dave [0:12:10]: If you were doing this today?
Dave [0:12:11]: Yeah.
Dave [0:12:12]: How'd would your approach to content be any different?
Erin [0:12:17]: I would not make a big Seo play is my first play today.
Erin [0:12:21]: I would obviously be looking at Ae instead of Seo, we're calling at Seo here because, you know, there is a lot of overlap between the two things.
Erin [0:12:28]: But I think the first principles of how we started this would would apply.
Erin [0:12:32]: Right?
Erin [0:12:33]: So again, the first thing we looked at is who's the audience we're really trying to reach.
Erin [0:12:37]: What's that minimum viable audience?
Erin [0:12:39]: In our case it was researchers.
Erin [0:12:40]: That I'm gonna do some lightweight research to understand that audience, and that's what I did.
Erin [0:12:46]: So I did a whole bunch of research in like a week, and it was a combination of dog food art product and finding researchers to talk to, and, literally, like talking to them like this on Zoom calls.
Erin [0:12:57]: And then it was doing internal stakeholder interviews.
Erin [0:13:01]: And then it was doing some desk research and, you know, finding out where do these people hang out?
Erin [0:13:06]: What are they complaining about?
Erin [0:13:08]: And these sorts of basic things.
Erin [0:13:09]: I would definitely start with that if I were, you know, to do it again?
Erin [0:13:13]: And then I would find those gaps where are they being underserved?
Erin [0:13:17]: They're hanging out in this channel?
Erin [0:13:19]: Let's say it's Youtube.
Erin [0:13:20]: Right?
Erin [0:13:20]: What is there on Youtube for them?
Erin [0:13:23]: Is this crowded?
Erin [0:13:24]: Is there open space?
Erin [0:13:25]: That's kinda where I'm starting.
Erin [0:13:27]: Right?
Erin [0:13:27]: It's just understood.
Dave [0:13:28]: Yeah.
Dave [0:13:28]: I love...
Dave [0:13:29]: I love the point about the gaps.
Dave [0:13:30]: I think that what's really fun about the job of marketing that I think, gets missed in the nuance of, like, definitive takes on, like, Linkedin about which channel is working or not.
Dave [0:13:40]: It's like, every company.
Dave [0:13:41]: I see such a good eye role.
Dave [0:13:43]: Every every company, It's like, every company is different.
Dave [0:13:47]: Right?
Dave [0:13:47]: They have different funding.
Dave [0:13:48]: They're at a different stage.
Dave [0:13:49]: They're a different size.
Dave [0:13:50]: They, everyone says, like, attract attract a players.
Dave [0:13:53]: It's like, well, actually we can't?
Dave [0:13:54]: We've have no budget and no one knows who we are, and so we just kinda get a couple interns or like, in your case, let's look at the competitive landscape.
Dave [0:14:01]: I remember at one of the companies that I worked at It was, like, yeah.
Dave [0:14:04]: So obvious.
Dave [0:14:05]: Podcasting.
Dave [0:14:06]: Wow.
Dave [0:14:06]: You're a genius man.
Dave [0:14:07]: Was like, well nobody in our niche is doing a podcast because Yeah.
Dave [0:14:10]: And so I think we have an opportunity here and and it turned out that work really well.
Dave [0:14:13]: So I think that's what's fun is kinda like, running that analysis of, like, what are the opportunities?
Dave [0:14:17]: Because every everything is marked everything in marketing has been proven to work at some point in time.
Dave [0:14:21]: It's like, but which guard rails do you have in which plays are you gonna run?
Erin [0:14:25]: Yeah.
Erin [0:14:25]: Exactly.
Erin [0:14:26]: And then that's what's been fun about being in this role for eight years is I've seen it all, and I've seen it all changed.
Erin [0:14:31]: Right?
Erin [0:14:31]: But that framework that, you know, the basic idea of find out where your audience is, understand deeply what they care about, and then go find those gaps and reach them.
Erin [0:14:40]: That's never gonna change.
Erin [0:14:42]: Right.
Erin [0:14:42]: The particulars will change, but that framework won't change.
Dave [0:14:46]: It seems like one thing that you did really well was whether it was the audience that you went after or one particular channel.
Dave [0:14:51]: You you have this kind of playbook of...
Dave [0:14:54]: Stacking channels over time as opposed to being like, we're gonna do all these things.
Dave [0:14:59]: Can you explain that a little bit?
Erin [0:15:02]: Yeah.
Erin [0:15:02]: For sure.
Erin [0:15:02]: I'm a big believer and, you know, the power of distribution and if you can get ninety percent of your pipeline from two channels that makes things the lot.
Erin [0:15:10]: Simpler.
Erin [0:15:10]: On the other side of, you know, the equation, you wanna be somewhat diversified.
Erin [0:15:15]: Right?
Erin [0:15:15]: I've seen experiences where you are very invested in Seo.
Erin [0:15:19]: Google changes their algorithm and now you have a big problem.
Erin [0:15:22]: Right?
Erin [0:15:22]: So it's finding that balance of where can you really dominate, but also having a portfolio.
Erin [0:15:29]: So the way we approach that was through stacking these channel, content medium combinations one at a time, And then as we stacked them over the years, we sort of throttle and dialed up and down where we're placing our bets based on what's working well for us and based on how those channels and audiences are changing over time.
Dave [0:15:51]: How did you think about planning for the next phase of growth because a lot of times you have, like you said, these one or two core channels, but then the growth plan for the company continues to grow?
Dave [0:16:03]: You can't just like, I have this argument with Dan.
Dave [0:16:05]: My business partner all the time.
Dave [0:16:06]: Like, we can't just...
Dave [0:16:07]: It doesn't work like, you you can't just, like, do more podcast because the podcast is growing.
Dave [0:16:11]: You can just, like, do more episodes, and it works.
Dave [0:16:14]: You need find new channels and a mistake I made as a first time Vp marketing was Almost being so over indexed on, like, what's working right now and not having enough plans for the future and having enough space that things might fail, but I gotta plan some seeds that, you know, when we're ready to turn up the dial on this channel, we can do it.
Erin [0:16:32]: Yeah.
Erin [0:16:32]: Balancing the long term in the short term is always really difficult as you as you know, I think if something is working, and you can find more scale with it.
Erin [0:16:40]: You do not wanna slow down on that.
Erin [0:16:42]: That's first things first.
Erin [0:16:43]: Right?
Erin [0:16:43]: But your point.
Erin [0:16:44]: You've always gotta have the next thing lined up.
Erin [0:16:46]: So when I'm...
Erin [0:16:47]: If, let's say I'm I'm looking at this from a channel perspective?
Erin [0:16:50]: I'm looking at...
Erin [0:16:51]: What is the ceiling for this channel?
Erin [0:16:53]: And, like, how do we get there and how fast can we get there?
Erin [0:16:56]: So is it...
Erin [0:16:57]: If we ten or content, we will send our pipeline.
Erin [0:17:00]: Well, let's do that.
Erin [0:17:02]: Like, does the math make sense, then let's do it.
Erin [0:17:05]: And so for the podcast example, the constraint is...
Erin [0:17:08]: I don't know.
Erin [0:17:09]: How many of these episodes, this for audience wanna listen to.
Erin [0:17:12]: Right?
Erin [0:17:12]: That might be a constraint.
Erin [0:17:14]: Very often it's not production.
Erin [0:17:16]: In theory, you could produce as much as you wanted.
Erin [0:17:19]: So you have your audience appetite for consumption.
Erin [0:17:22]: You have paid budgets whatever it might be.
Dave [0:17:25]: Anything that didn't work.
Dave [0:17:26]: That you can share?
Erin [0:17:29]: I always like to say there's things that haven't worked yet.
Erin [0:17:31]: Because to your point, right, it's the timing.
Erin [0:17:34]: It's all those combinations of things.
Erin [0:17:37]: I've had things that haven't worked and we've tried them again in it, and it did work.
Erin [0:17:40]: So as an example, when I was leading our growth team on the participant side of things.
Erin [0:17:46]: We wanted to get a referral program going.
Erin [0:17:49]: Right.
Erin [0:17:50]: Or, like, this is gonna make a lot of sense.
Erin [0:17:52]: We'll, you know, do an incentivized referral, We'll pay the participants to refer other participants.
Erin [0:17:57]: Yep.
Erin [0:17:57]: This is a no brainer.
Erin [0:17:59]: First version did not work.
Erin [0:18:02]: If we have quit there, we would have lost what is now one of our biggest growth channels on the participant side, and I think that's a big lesson too.
Erin [0:18:10]: Is knowing when to quit and knowing when to try again?
Dave [0:18:14]: Yeah.
Dave [0:18:14]: It's like, can you can you go long enough until you hit that inflection point.
Dave [0:18:18]: Right?
Dave [0:18:18]: It's like, I've been doing the same...
Dave [0:18:20]: I got...
Dave [0:18:21]: I got injured a couple months ago, and I've been trying to work my way back and I'm doing the same workout for two and a half months and literally just now I'm starting to feel like, man.
Dave [0:18:30]: I'm noticing like a huge difference.
Dave [0:18:31]: And a month ago I was a really bored and ready to change something up, and I I think that's a weakness of mine in all aspects of life is, like, how do you balance the rent Yeah.
Dave [0:18:40]: You know, the patience because you're like, well, let's kill this.
Dave [0:18:42]: The team is busy.
Dave [0:18:43]: Everyone's stressed out or they got...
Dave [0:18:44]: We got fifteen other priorities.
Dave [0:18:45]: It's like, it's hard to know sometimes what's worth continuing to invest in.
Erin [0:18:50]: It is very hard.
Erin [0:18:51]: It's always very clear in hindsight, but I think it's, you know, just having a hypothesis of Why isn't this working?
Erin [0:18:56]: You know?
Erin [0:18:57]: Did we did we really think through if this channel makes sense for us, and there's a lot of, you know, things you can think through there, but I'll tell you, for example, one that hasn't worked for us yet is influencer.
Erin [0:19:07]: We haven't quite figured that out.
Erin [0:19:09]: Right?
Erin [0:19:10]: Is it because we don't have influencers with a large enough audience?
Erin [0:19:14]: Is it because we haven't armed them with the right offer?
Erin [0:19:18]: You know, is it a tactical question or is it a structural question?
Erin [0:19:21]: But I would say, I have faith in this one.
Erin [0:19:24]: I think this one's gonna work for us, but it it has not worked yet.
Erin [0:19:27]: So we're not gonna drop everything else we're doing that is working to put everything behind figuring that out, but my my god sense is that that's one that can work for us.
Dave [0:19:37]: About any lessons as far as, like, structuring your your team?
Dave [0:19:40]: You've had a team of, sixteen people.
Dave [0:19:42]: Obviously, that, you know, will fluctuate over time and things change.
Dave [0:19:46]: But what's your kind of operating system for for running marketing?
Dave [0:19:49]: Do you have any particular routines and rhythms that you like certain cadences around campaigns are planning or week to week running the team?
Erin [0:19:56]: I do.
Erin [0:19:57]: I love an operating rhythm, and that's something that, you know, we're always tweaking over time, but we pretty much run things on a quarterly cadence.
Erin [0:20:05]: You know, one of the content types if you will, that has been very, instrumental on our success is we call them bang.
Erin [0:20:13]: Some people would call them a tent poll.
Dave [0:20:15]: I like Bang.
Dave [0:20:16]: Bang is nice.
Dave [0:20:17]: What.
Erin [0:20:18]: Like Bang bang are banging, you know?
Erin [0:20:20]: And so we really orient a lot of her calendar around these bang.
Erin [0:20:25]: And so we'll have two to three bang a quarter.
Erin [0:20:28]: In the past, you know, we've tried to structure them around a theme.
Erin [0:20:33]: Sorry.
Dave [0:20:34]: And is it is it a piece of...
Dave [0:20:35]: Is it a content?
Dave [0:20:36]: Is it like an article?
Erin [0:20:37]: Yeah.
Erin [0:20:37]: So there's a mix of top of funnel and bottom of funnel Bang.
Erin [0:20:40]: Right?
Erin [0:20:41]: And so what they are is there really are major launches of the quarter.
Erin [0:20:44]: You know, So we talk about stacking these different channels.
Erin [0:20:47]: Right?
Erin [0:20:47]: And we started with this kind of very pragmatic Seo driven field guide.
Erin [0:20:51]: The next thing we added was these fingers, which we didn't call them that at the time, but it was even back then eight years ago, I knew doing a bunch of keyword driven me to blog post was not gonna be the secret to our success.
Erin [0:21:06]: So it was how do we take these pain points?
Erin [0:21:10]: Right?
Erin [0:21:11]: These motivations that we now are heroes these researchers have and do something meaningful with that, Do something unique with that.
Erin [0:21:19]: And So our first true bang was our Ux research tools map.
Erin [0:21:23]: And now we do this every year.
Erin [0:21:25]: And the general idea there was, you know, the loom escapes.
Erin [0:21:30]: I'm sure, you know, the the marketing tech...
Erin [0:21:32]: Stack and you've got your zillion logos in the sort of point of it is like, oh, my god, There's so many logos.
Erin [0:21:37]: Right?
Erin [0:21:38]: So the idea was let's do that, but for Ux research, but let's actually make it visually kind of beautiful and interesting to look at And my big thing as a marketer was I don't know about you Dave, but I always was irritated with the box I ended up in, like, with what what my company was in when I done Mart tech.
Erin [0:21:57]: It's like, that's the wrong box.
Erin [0:21:58]: Stop putting me in the wrong box.
Erin [0:22:00]: And so this idea of, like, not only...
Erin [0:22:03]: Am I in the wrong box, but I should be in four boxes.
Erin [0:22:05]: You you know, I want...
Erin [0:22:07]: I wanna be in as many boxes as possible.
Dave [0:22:09]: The worst is so when you get the...
Dave [0:22:10]: It's forwarded to from the Ceo and it's, like, why are we not in this box?
Erin [0:22:14]: Why are why why are not?
Erin [0:22:15]: Yet.
Erin [0:22:15]: Exactly.
Erin [0:22:15]: You're like, I don't know.
Erin [0:22:16]: I didn't pay enough to the analyst relationships.
Erin [0:22:19]: And so I took all my personal pet peeve and got to make my own math.
Dave [0:22:24]: Nice.
Dave [0:22:24]: I Love the...
Dave [0:22:25]: I love the concept of Bang or so so a couple things just talking to our listeners second, like, I think...
Dave [0:22:29]: Yeah.
Dave [0:22:29]: It's a perfect example of just kinda like, making up the rules.
Dave [0:22:31]: Like, there's no...
Dave [0:22:32]: There's no school that you would went to.
Dave [0:22:34]: That's, like, in once a quarter, you're gonna do a bang and a bit a bang.
Erin [0:22:38]: Right.
Dave [0:22:38]: And and but I love this because I think I like to think about this, like, operating cadence for for marketing?
Dave [0:22:45]: I think so much of the success of a marketing team whether we wanna admit it or not.
Dave [0:22:49]: Like, you know what really matters?
Dave [0:22:50]: Like, the pro product, engineering the road map?
Dave [0:22:53]: Like, what am I got?
Dave [0:22:53]: It's, like, what ingredients do I have from the company, Yeah.
Dave [0:22:57]: And a lot of times you you don't.
Dave [0:22:58]: You might not have a big product.
Dave [0:23:00]: Like, of course, marketing is easy when, like, product ships a bang, and then you're like, okay.
Dave [0:23:05]: Cool.
Dave [0:23:06]: We have a big launch we're gonna do.
Dave [0:23:07]: Like, that's a lot of work and it's stressful.
Dave [0:23:09]: Yeah.
Dave [0:23:10]: But it that it makes marketing pretty easy.
Dave [0:23:12]: It's like, when we don't have all those things, like, what the hell are we gonna talk about.
Dave [0:23:15]: And so I like what you have which is, like, I'm gonna go map out.
Dave [0:23:19]: Okay.
Dave [0:23:19]: I know that I got a road map from the head of product.
Dave [0:23:21]: I know what the next kinda of six months are gonna look like.
Dave [0:23:24]: We got this in April.
Dave [0:23:25]: We got this thing in June, but I don't have anything in May.
Dave [0:23:27]: Oh, that's a great month to do our bang.
Dave [0:23:29]: Like, let's let's get the Ux research tool report lined up to now we have to...
Dave [0:23:34]: Now we do that over time and we have...
Dave [0:23:36]: The steady drum beat of of stuff from marketing.
Dave [0:23:38]: And I also think it's really healthy to have, like, a forcing function.
Dave [0:23:42]: When I was at drift, we called them marketable moments, and it was like, Yeah.
Dave [0:23:46]: We are gonna do a product launch.
Dave [0:23:47]: At the first Tuesday of every month, no matter what.
Dave [0:23:50]: I don't know what the one three months from now is, but, like I know we're gonna do it, and it just was a great disciplined to get on, and I believe that, like, marketing creates momentum for the rest of the company.
Dave [0:24:00]: Do you feel anything I just kinda rift on there?
Erin [0:24:03]: Oh, no.
Erin [0:24:03]: A hundred percent.
Erin [0:24:04]: And the marketable moments I've heard you talk about those and very much, you know, the similar idea here.
Erin [0:24:08]: I think there's so much not in our control as marketing teams.
Erin [0:24:13]: The market always wins.
Erin [0:24:14]: Right?
Erin [0:24:14]: This has been a huge learning for me.
Erin [0:24:17]: And But there's a lot in our control, and that's what you have to optimize for, and that's what this is is like we can control, putting something totally awesome and unique and differentiated that our audience is gonna love, and we can do it at the cadence that we set.
Dave [0:24:31]: How would you come up with Bang?
Dave [0:24:32]: Like, it was, like, a Ami amir was a creative process?
Dave [0:24:35]: Like anybody could pitch ideas for Bang?
Dave [0:24:37]: How do we come up with them?
Erin [0:24:38]: Yeah.
Erin [0:24:38]: We have quarterly planning processes.
Erin [0:24:40]: And over time, some of these became recurring once a year thing.
Erin [0:24:43]: So those go on the calendar.
Dave [0:24:45]: Right That...
Dave [0:24:45]: That's like, the ultimate.
Dave [0:24:46]: Right?
Dave [0:24:46]: If you, like, you eat a home run with the Ux research tool.
Dave [0:24:49]: And now you're like, oh, let's plug this in and like, let's do this every every year.
Dave [0:24:52]: I worked at a constant contact back in the day, and they did this, like, small business.
Dave [0:24:56]: They did, like, this survey every year and it was like, this massive thing for them.
Dave [0:25:00]: It worked.
Dave [0:25:00]: Hey, let's do it every may.
Dave [0:25:01]: We're gonna run the Ux research tools report.
Erin [0:25:04]: Yep.
Erin [0:25:04]: Exactly.
Erin [0:25:05]: And so we do a state of user research state of, you know, lots of people do state of.
Erin [0:25:09]: We used our own technology to do it.
Erin [0:25:11]: We...
Erin [0:25:12]: You know, it's all about just doing it better.
Erin [0:25:14]: Right?
Erin [0:25:14]: Like, having a great experience.
Erin [0:25:15]: Having a big sample size, really getting into the weeds of the data, pulling out insights that are actually interesting to people.
Erin [0:25:22]: So doing it, but kicking it up an notch.
Erin [0:25:24]: That was our approach to that one, and it is, again, there was a gap.
Erin [0:25:28]: No one was doing it.
Erin [0:25:29]: If someone were doing it, we would have done something else.
Dave [0:25:32]: Okay.
Dave [0:25:32]: So you're you're doing quarterly planning, you're you're planning out the bang.
Dave [0:25:35]: How do you figure out, like, what should what should be in it?
Dave [0:25:38]: Like, and maybe...
Dave [0:25:39]: Let's think about today?
Dave [0:25:40]: If you were doing this today?
Dave [0:25:41]: How do you decide?
Dave [0:25:42]: Is it an article?
Dave [0:25:43]: Is it a blog post?
Dave [0:25:45]: Is it an email?
Dave [0:25:46]: Are we doing a webinar?
Dave [0:25:46]: Is there a press release or are we doing it?
Dave [0:25:48]: How do you figure out all the pieces around it?
Erin [0:25:51]: Yeah.
Erin [0:25:51]: So what what do people used to say is, like, content is king and distribution is queen.
Erin [0:25:56]: I, you know, I think something that we've really, really leaned into is a channel first approach, meaning, we're not building our content calendar until we have a strong sense of what our channels are and what they can do for us.
Erin [0:26:10]: So we start from the channel and then we fill in our calendar.
Erin [0:26:13]: So doing it today, it's...
Erin [0:26:15]: Where's our pipeline gonna come from what channels do we need to be active in and where are these banner gonna get distributed And for us, right now that is absolutely social media.
Erin [0:26:26]: Right?
Erin [0:26:26]: Linkedin is killing it for us.
Erin [0:26:28]: Despite all the challenges with the linkedin algorithm and everything else?
Dave [0:26:31]: Yeah.
Dave [0:26:31]: Let's let's let's just double click on that.
Dave [0:26:33]: What what is that?
Dave [0:26:34]: Where...
Dave [0:26:34]: What are you posting on Linkedin?
Dave [0:26:36]: Is it from the company page?
Dave [0:26:37]: Personal pages?
Dave [0:26:38]: Can we...
Dave [0:26:38]: Can you explain some of the strategies say Linkedin is working?
Erin [0:26:41]: Yeah.
Erin [0:26:41]: Hundred percent.
Erin [0:26:42]: So it's it's all of those things together.
Erin [0:26:43]: So we have our founders doing founder led.
Erin [0:26:46]: We have employee advocacy, and I'll talk about how that fits in with the bang.
Erin [0:26:51]: So we do something called...
Erin [0:26:53]: Pg P.
Erin [0:26:54]: This is part of our quarterly operating rhythm, and what we do is we get the entire company involved and basically amplifying these bang throughout the entire funnel.
Erin [0:27:04]: So everyone in the company is encouraged to participate in sharing this stuff on social.
Erin [0:27:10]: There is a paid incentivized contest for whoever gets the most shares on this stuff.
Erin [0:27:16]: Right?
Erin [0:27:17]: So We do that for a week or so.
Dave [0:27:20]: What do you what do you get if you win that?
Dave [0:27:21]: How do you intend by that?
Dave [0:27:22]: Cash.
Dave [0:27:22]: Oh, that's why it works.
Erin [0:27:25]: Exactly.
Erin [0:27:25]: Right.
Erin [0:27:26]: Exactly.
Erin [0:27:27]: Curl called herd cash.
Erin [0:27:28]: So we do that.
Erin [0:27:30]: And then on the sales side of things, and we've tweaked this over time about a week or two weeks later, they're gonna follow up with everyone we could see that engaged with that content with those bang, and then they're gonna reach out and try to...
Erin [0:27:44]: Try to book a meeting and and make a call.
Erin [0:27:45]: So...
Erin [0:27:46]: And they get incentivized for booking those meetings as well.
Erin [0:27:49]: So that kind of two phase one two punch has been a great way to get the whole company involved and turning these bang into actual pipeline.
Dave [0:27:58]: Do you tell people what to write Or is it, like, here's a link?
Dave [0:28:01]: Here's a link that the bang coming out on Tuesday write whatever you want about it and we'll see who gets the most.
Erin [0:28:07]: Yes.
Erin [0:28:07]: And yes.
Erin [0:28:08]: We always get them to the starter copy.
Erin [0:28:09]: Right?
Erin [0:28:10]: Links and images and, you know, the all the resources they need, but...
Erin [0:28:13]: Very much encouraged to to make it own.
Dave [0:28:17]: Okay.
Dave [0:28:17]: What else?
Dave [0:28:17]: This that was great.
Dave [0:28:18]: I love the topic of bang and having up operating system.
Dave [0:28:21]: What what else is kind of been key key to your marketing success?
Erin [0:28:25]: So there's two kinds of bang.
Erin [0:28:26]: There's the top funnel Bang that are really a hundred percent in our control.
Erin [0:28:30]: And then there's the bottom of funnel bang also known as a product launch.
Erin [0:28:34]: And those are less our control.
Erin [0:28:37]: And we have certainly taken the step of we said we're gonna launch this on March fifteenth.
Erin [0:28:42]: Of and we do it.
Erin [0:28:43]: Come hell or high water.
Erin [0:28:44]: We've also taken the step of this would really be better if we did it in a couple weeks once we actually have the products.
Erin [0:28:51]: So we've done that both ways.
Erin [0:28:53]: But they're always on the calendar, but the reality is we have to be a little bit more flat.
Erin [0:28:57]: Flexible and those are a little bit less in our control, which is why we love our top of funnel bang.
Erin [0:29:02]: But we give those the same treatment.
Erin [0:29:04]: We give those the Pg Palo treatment.
Erin [0:29:06]: And so you put all that together and you've got a kind of flexible all hands on deck, full company full funnel social media, explosion happening.
Erin [0:29:15]: So that's an important part of our operating rhythm them?
Dave [0:29:19]: What would you say to someone who is struggling to who likes this idea, but it's...
Dave [0:29:23]: Struggling to maybe get their whole company on board and and wants wants multiple people to post?
Dave [0:29:28]: Beyond the founders.
Dave [0:29:29]: Like, I think you've tapped into something where you have employees and your incentivizing them.
Dave [0:29:33]: How do you how would you get how would you get over that hump?
Erin [0:29:36]: Start small.
Erin [0:29:36]: I think what's...
Erin [0:29:37]: When you're trying to make a new thing happen, get a get a band of believers together right to workshop how you're gonna do this with and get them on board and get them excited and telling other people to participate.
Erin [0:29:50]: I really do think the cash is helpful here.
Erin [0:29:53]: It's motivating even if it's not a lot of cash.
Erin [0:29:56]: And you gotta have a great idea.
Erin [0:29:58]: I think that the User Interviews crew has taken a lot of pride and the bang we've put out there because they're really good and people want to share.
Erin [0:30:06]: Them whether they be in sales or some other team.
Erin [0:30:09]: They're excited and proud to share that stuff, and they know the people, you know, their customers, their prospects that they're sharing it with, they're gonna like it.
Erin [0:30:18]: So it reflects well on them.
Dave [0:30:19]: It's like, it's a good If...
Dave [0:30:21]: You're not asking everyone to, like, I think the cringey thing or the people don't like doing is, like, when you ask the whole company to promote something that's kinda like, ugh, I don't wanna...
Dave [0:30:30]: I mean, I don't promote this webinar, Like, I don't, we we won some award.
Dave [0:30:34]: Like, I wanna post that if it's...
Erin [0:30:35]: I'm so.
Erin [0:30:36]: Excited to share that, the dot no you aren't.
Dave [0:30:40]: Exactly.
Dave [0:30:40]: Well, like, you created something, like, hey, we published, like, the definitive guide to, like, Ux research tools.
Dave [0:30:46]: This is genuinely helpful to people in our Ic.
Dave [0:30:48]: Right?
Erin [0:30:49]: That's right.
Erin [0:30:49]: That's right.
Dave [0:30:51]: I like all the versions of the bang, Tofu bang.
Dave [0:30:53]: Tofu bang, Bo food Bang.
Dave [0:30:55]: Yeah.
Dave [0:30:55]: Mo bang.
Erin [0:30:56]: Doug new band.
Erin [0:30:57]: Right?
Erin [0:30:57]: To Party.
Dave [0:31:00]: Tell me about your podcast podcasts.
Dave [0:31:01]: You've done...
Dave [0:31:01]: You've been podcasting for a long time.
Dave [0:31:03]: Hundred and seventy five episodes.
Dave [0:31:05]: Yeah.
Dave [0:31:06]: Why why do a podcast?
Dave [0:31:07]: Everyone's got a podcast?
Dave [0:31:08]: How do you measure Roi and a podcast?
Dave [0:31:10]: I wanna...
Erin [0:31:11]: Seven years ago, everyone did not have a podcast, and that was very much part of why we did started the podcast.
Erin [0:31:16]: So it was that same approach of where's the gaps?
Erin [0:31:18]: So I did some desk research I talked to some researchers.
Erin [0:31:21]: Do you listen to.
Erin [0:31:23]: Again, Like, we're not gonna start a podcast if they're not listening the podcast.
Erin [0:31:26]: That's that's a big hurdle.
Erin [0:31:28]: To feel like, hey, guys.
Erin [0:31:30]: You should listen to this new media that you don't naturally want to do otherwise.
Erin [0:31:33]: But they did listen to podcast.
Erin [0:31:35]: There were a couple of podcasts around that some of them had posted once a month, you know, they're not posting regularly.
Erin [0:31:42]: They're not dominating the conversation.
Erin [0:31:45]: We've gotten in.
Erin [0:31:46]: Let's try it out.
Erin [0:31:47]: And I did not ask for permission to do this.
Erin [0:31:51]: I, learned garage band.
Erin [0:31:53]: It I see, like, it was hack.
Dave [0:31:56]: Me too.
Erin [0:31:57]: Yeah.
Erin [0:31:57]: It was very, very hack in the beginning, which, of course is, like the most fun.
Erin [0:32:01]: So we we just did it.
Erin [0:32:03]: Did it on anchor, which is known by Spotify, got a couple of guests.
Erin [0:32:07]: They I think Maggie Crowley, You know, back of the day was one of our first ten guests probably.
Erin [0:32:12]: And I will say that researchers have been the easiest most fun audience to market.
Erin [0:32:19]: You I've ever worked with, which is a lot of why I've been here for so long.
Erin [0:32:23]: They have been very willing participants in our marketing.
Erin [0:32:26]: It has never been hard to get researchers to be podcast guests.
Erin [0:32:30]: They're very invested in, the craft and, you know, giving back to the community and all of that.
Erin [0:32:36]: So it wasn't hard to get guests.
Erin [0:32:39]: Once we learn in garage ban, it wasn't hard to produce the thing,
Dave [0:32:42]: Yeah.
Erin [0:32:42]: And people are listening to it.
Erin [0:32:44]: Like, right away.
Erin [0:32:45]: I couldn't believe it.
Erin [0:32:46]: And so it just felt this is fun for us.
Erin [0:32:51]: We're getting good feedback from researchers.
Erin [0:32:52]: People are listening to it.
Erin [0:32:54]: Let's just do this for a while and see where it goes.
Erin [0:32:57]: One of the curse and benefits of podcasts is the attribution.
Erin [0:33:02]: But we knew that up upfront.
Erin [0:33:03]: We knew we were not gonna be able to tell a super clear Roi story.
Erin [0:33:07]: Fortunately, I work with founders, who are okay with that.
Erin [0:33:13]: And that was very helpful.
Dave [0:33:15]: I think you got into it for the right reasons, I think when it...
Dave [0:33:18]: If you get into...
Dave [0:33:19]: If you're like, we're gonna...
Dave [0:33:20]: We we need ten incremental sales meetings
Erin [0:33:23]: exists right.
Dave [0:33:24]: And so therefore, we're gonna start a podcast.
Dave [0:33:25]: Then it's like, well, how are you gonna measure.
Dave [0:33:27]: But the fact that maybe because the head of marketing kinda like, sku works, Like, she's got garage band on her laptop.
Dave [0:33:33]: She's doing the editing.
Dave [0:33:34]: Like, we're just gonna we're just gonna try this thing and it works.
Dave [0:33:37]: And I think so many people that I've talked to, you learn the value of a podcast like, months in or, like, all...
Dave [0:33:44]: You know, you're doing it, And then one day you just get like, a Dm from someone like Pam.
Dave [0:33:48]: I didn't know if she listened to that podcast.
Dave [0:33:49]: Like, that's crazy.
Dave [0:33:50]: Did you know the CMO of for, like, the messages I've gotten over the years from having this podcast.
Dave [0:33:55]: I'm like, wait, what you listened to my little podcast?
Dave [0:33:57]: Like...
Erin [0:33:58]: I know.
Erin [0:33:58]: It's...
Erin [0:33:59]: You know, And I it was just like, the...
Erin [0:34:00]: You saw the charts going up.
Erin [0:34:01]: Okay.
Erin [0:34:01]: Somebody's downloading it.
Erin [0:34:03]: I don't know who but somebody.
Erin [0:34:04]: It's they live in the United States.
Erin [0:34:05]: That's great.
Erin [0:34:06]: That's where we do most of our business.
Erin [0:34:07]: They're probably into research because why the hell else would you listen to a user research podcast.
Erin [0:34:13]: Right?
Dave [0:34:14]: Did did you look at...
Dave [0:34:15]: Did you think about the, like, the return of it as...
Dave [0:34:17]: Fueling some other part of your content machine to, like, beyond just, like the the actual episode?
Erin [0:34:23]: Yeah.
Erin [0:34:23]: For sure.
Erin [0:34:24]: But I I was gonna say, you know, I had the same experiences as you, Dave where when I really got it was after Covid when we started doing a lot of events again.
Erin [0:34:33]: And I would go to these events and people would come up to me, like I was a celebrity because I host this podcast, and I swear Guidance it's not why I got into this at all, but it was, like, wow.
Erin [0:34:43]: Like, people who, I really respect to are very important in this industry are actually listening to this thing.
Erin [0:34:50]: That's all the attribution.
Erin [0:34:51]: I really need here.
Erin [0:34:53]: But, yes.
Dave [0:34:54]: Well, it's, like, different.
Dave [0:34:55]: It's different than, like, if I just got your email.
Dave [0:34:57]: If I just got your emails.
Dave [0:34:58]: I'm like, And that's not really Erin.
Dave [0:34:59]: That's just like the, you know.
Dave [0:35:00]: Marketing automation system at our company, but someone that's actually listening to you for hours and hours and hours that builds up And then
Erin [0:35:07]: it's a relationship.
Erin [0:35:08]: Yeah.
Dave [0:35:08]: For sure.
Dave [0:35:09]: Yeah.
Dave [0:35:09]: Like, if we could measure...
Dave [0:35:10]: It's like if you could measure marketing by, like time spent on a channel.
Dave [0:35:14]: Yes.
Dave [0:35:14]: And that we were able to wait that somehow, and we knew who everyone...
Dave [0:35:18]: Everyone was I was listening would be insane.
Erin [0:35:20]: Yes.
Erin [0:35:20]: Yeah.
Erin [0:35:21]: I think the depth of the connection as you know.
Erin [0:35:23]: It's...
Erin [0:35:23]: You can't see that in an attribution dashboard, but you meet...
Dave [0:35:27]: What's the state that...
Dave [0:35:27]: Are you still doing the podcast today?
Erin [0:35:29]: We are.
Erin [0:35:29]: I'm hosting one next week.
Erin [0:35:30]: We had Ben was stepping in for a while, but I'm I'm back.
Erin [0:35:33]: I'm back to being our lead hosts.
Erin [0:35:35]: So still going.
Erin [0:35:36]: Okay.
Erin [0:35:37]: But, yes, It fuels to your question.
Erin [0:35:39]: It fuels are our Linkedin and and many of our other channels and what those channels are and what we do with the guest has changed a lot over time as those channels have developed.
Dave [0:35:48]: Let's wrap up and tell me about your feelings about...
Dave [0:35:51]: I'm gonna ask you a very simple question and I'm gonna let you take wherever you want?
Dave [0:35:54]: What what is your feeling is about Ai and marketing.
Erin [0:35:57]: The Oh, I think you were gonna ask me about brand and demand.
Erin [0:35:59]: If you say about that too.
Erin [0:36:00]: My feelings about Ai and marketing.
Erin [0:36:03]: I think I agree with, you know, there's a lot of just sort of consensus thinking that I actually agree with.
Erin [0:36:09]: Right, which is that Ai isn't going to take your job.
Erin [0:36:12]: Person who learns is Ai well.
Erin [0:36:14]: I agree with that.
Erin [0:36:15]: I don't, you know, think that's particularly unique, but I think that's probably true.
Erin [0:36:18]: I think that part of why I love tech marketing in particular Ux are marketing is this intersection of the technology and humanity of the tech and the people.
Erin [0:36:30]: And for someone like me, this is very exciting because the technology has never been more powerful, better, and more in need of humanity.
Erin [0:36:39]: Right?
Erin [0:36:40]: Like, we've all experienced the Ai s, nothing new guys, like marketing sla has been around for a long time.
Erin [0:36:47]: It's just faster and worse and higher scale now.
Erin [0:36:51]: So I think back to those fundamentals.
Erin [0:36:53]: Those are all still true of knowing your audience.
Erin [0:36:56]: Now we have Ai to do that even better, even faster, use it, but don't create Ai slot with it.
Erin [0:37:02]: So I think it's an amazing opportunity that I am super pumped about,
Dave [0:37:08]: Ji expectations like, within your team about how people are using Ai Do you expect them to be using these tools?
Erin [0:37:15]: Yeah.
Erin [0:37:15]: They need to be.
Erin [0:37:16]: And I think I've tried to be supportive and somewhat patient and do it in phases.
Erin [0:37:21]: So last year was the year of...
Erin [0:37:23]: You gotta be using this stuff.
Erin [0:37:25]: I'm gonna meet you where you are.
Erin [0:37:27]: We're going to enable you.
Erin [0:37:29]: We're going to, you know, give you budget, give you L and d time.
Erin [0:37:32]: We're gonna do show in sells.
Erin [0:37:34]: We're gonna do hack, all this stuff to to help everyone.
Erin [0:37:38]: Start from where you are and end up somewhere sort of more Ai mature.
Erin [0:37:43]: That was our approach last year.
Erin [0:37:45]: This year, it's like, let's go faster.
Erin [0:37:47]: Yeah.
Dave [0:37:49]: Yeah.
Dave [0:37:49]: Well, now it's like, you just really don't have any excuse because now I have such fo, like, I'm thinking of myself as, like, I'm a early adopter and all stuff a man.
Dave [0:37:58]: I I I'm sure you feel out, open up, like, Linkedin Or I go to Youtube.
Dave [0:38:01]: I'm like, I'm not doing anything.
Dave [0:38:02]: I'm not scratching the surface of Ai.
Dave [0:38:05]: But I think the the part that there's no excuse on is, like, most of the time, I'm literally, like, if I'm using Claude as an example, I'm asking claude.
Dave [0:38:14]: How to better use claude.
Dave [0:38:16]: Like, the Ai can help tell you.
Dave [0:38:18]: So, like...
Dave [0:38:18]: That's hey.
Dave [0:38:19]: I wanna I wanna try to create this deck.
Dave [0:38:21]: I'm speaking at an event next week and I wanna try to create this deck like, you know, without having to do Google slides.
Dave [0:38:25]: How would you do?
Erin [0:38:26]: And if you're a smart person with some experience, which I think you and I both are, you can be like, you can be like, Thank.
Erin [0:38:32]: Wrong.
Erin [0:38:33]: You know, that's terrible advice.
Dave [0:38:36]: Well, I actually, I shared this with my team yesterday because I think it's real.
Dave [0:38:39]: Like, I've been, you know, annoying pushing Ai.
Dave [0:38:42]: Like, we should be doing this.
Dave [0:38:44]: We should be doing this.
Dave [0:38:44]: We should be doing this and I spent no joke.
Dave [0:38:47]: I spent an hour gathering all the materials.
Dave [0:38:49]: Like, I'm gonna write my deck with Claude, and I know there's a bunch of Ai apps that people love to make slides.
Erin [0:38:55]: Funny.
Erin [0:38:55]: It just didn't...
Dave [0:38:56]: It didn't work for me.
Dave [0:38:57]: It did not work for me because of my the process of, like, how I write and how I talk and how I wanna deliver that on stage.
Dave [0:39:04]: I use a lot of, like, there's kinda a slide that might have, like, one word and a picture of my daughter on it or something.
Dave [0:39:10]: And it's like, how do I teach...
Dave [0:39:12]: That...
Dave [0:39:12]: Oh, that's my transition.
Dave [0:39:13]: So I just was like you know what I gotta...
Dave [0:39:14]: I'm gonna use Claude to maybe do some research and get some data and get some points here, but I I actually...
Dave [0:39:18]: I've been spending the last few days building this myself.
Dave [0:39:20]: I think it's a perfect example of like that.
Dave [0:39:22]: That's not something that is can be outsourced.
Dave [0:39:24]: It's like, outsourcing a stand hey hey hey your a stand up comedian, like, have a like, write your whole talk and sound the same.
Erin [0:39:31]: Yeah.
Erin [0:39:31]: Exactly.
Erin [0:39:31]: Exactly.
Dave [0:39:33]: You you wanna talk about branded demand.
Dave [0:39:34]: So...
Erin [0:39:35]: No.
Erin [0:39:35]: I just was anticipating what you might ask me.
Dave [0:39:39]: Oh, well, tell me.
Dave [0:39:39]: What's your opinion on?
Dave [0:39:40]: Go ahead.
Dave [0:39:41]: You you have a couple minutes.
Dave [0:39:42]: They shoot your shot.
Erin [0:39:43]: I Well, I just think the whole argument is stupid.
Erin [0:39:45]: I think that, like, brand and demand are both very important.
Erin [0:39:49]: It's a funnel guys, you know, and and like we're were talking about earlier.
Erin [0:39:53]: I think, you know, this idea that ten percent is the right amount to spend on brand or twenty or what is stupid be
Dave [0:40:01]: Like it like, it could be quantified to be like, no.
Dave [0:40:03]: We need to spend this amount.
Erin [0:40:04]: What do you even mean by that first of all Right?
Erin [0:40:06]: Like, is that a brand channel or a demand channel?
Erin [0:40:09]: Like, they're
Dave [0:40:10]: They both beat each other
Erin [0:40:11]: It's beat each other.
Erin [0:40:13]: It's it's just so silly.
Erin [0:40:15]: And so that's...
Erin [0:40:16]: Why...
Erin [0:40:16]: What do
Dave [0:40:17]: you think the does do you think the silliness comes from, like, internal, like, Cfo, Ceo, marketing not being able to like, articulate How the the Roi of a, of a billboard or of a podcast?
Dave [0:40:27]: Like, what...
Dave [0:40:27]: What's this...
Dave [0:40:27]: Where does it come from?
Erin [0:40:29]: It's a very good question.
Erin [0:40:29]: I think that's probably, you know, I think the what the post was very Roi heavy and, you know, created a lot of these kinds of conversations.
Erin [0:40:37]: But I think we just wanna be very...
Erin [0:40:39]: Is it this or is it this?
Erin [0:40:41]: It's like it's those?
Dave [0:40:42]: Both.
Dave [0:40:42]: Yeah.
Erin [0:40:43]: It's those?
Dave [0:40:44]: Well, it's like, I I actually...
Dave [0:40:45]: I would use the...
Dave [0:40:46]: The...
Dave [0:40:46]: The...
Dave [0:40:46]: To your point about the z thing.
Dave [0:40:48]: Like, I would use, the example of like Zoom as an example during, like, Covid.
Dave [0:40:51]: I was like, Do you think do you think selling is easier for the sales team when everyone in the world is using Zoom and everyone is talking about Zoom, like, of course, that is that is brand.
Dave [0:40:59]: Right.
Dave [0:41:00]: And I'm even thinking about the little sandwich shop down the street.
Dave [0:41:04]: Like, if they make a better...
Dave [0:41:05]: Sandwich and people like it and the food really good.
Dave [0:41:07]: That builds brand, which then helps create demand, like, there...
Dave [0:41:10]: It is all interconnected.
Dave [0:41:11]: It's when we...
Dave [0:41:11]: Everything breaks down when we have to try to like, justify this spend and, like, it works twenty five percent of our budget is gonna go to brand.
Dave [0:41:19]: But like, sandwich setting shitty outbound emails also like, hurts your brand.
Dave [0:41:23]: You know, they did...
Erin [0:41:25]: Yeah.
Erin [0:41:25]: No.
Erin [0:41:25]: Exactly.
Erin [0:41:26]: Exactly.
Erin [0:41:26]: So I don't know.
Erin [0:41:28]: I think it came from, like, it's the...
Erin [0:41:30]: What do they say?
Erin [0:41:30]: You're explaining you're losing.
Erin [0:41:31]: I think it was just marketers found themselves in this really.
Erin [0:41:34]: Difficult position, and I think that's where a lot of it came from, but brand is very important.
Erin [0:41:39]: I'll I'll say that.
Erin [0:41:41]: Yeah.
Dave [0:41:41]: So that it...
Dave [0:41:41]: That topic does come up all this time.
Dave [0:41:43]: It's like, how do I hit the sales goal this quarter while also building a brand for the future?
Erin [0:41:49]: Yep.
Erin [0:41:49]: Yep.
Erin [0:41:50]: Gotta do both?
Dave [0:41:52]: Okay.
Dave [0:41:52]: Anything else?
Dave [0:41:52]: Anything I should have asked you?
Dave [0:41:54]: What's the question of your podcast house?
Dave [0:41:55]: What should I have asked you that Didn't asked you?
Erin [0:41:57]: Yeah, nothing.
Erin [0:41:58]: You asked me good stuff.
Erin [0:41:59]: Is there anything we did to cover?
Erin [0:42:00]: You don't...
Erin [0:42:00]: We didn't get into the the researchers and how we reach them.
Erin [0:42:04]: I'll just say quickly.
Erin [0:42:04]: I think that
Dave [0:42:06]: Sure.
Erin [0:42:06]: I think the thing that we have done this entire eight years in making researchers our heroes in our core audience is we have consistently told them that they matter that research matters that the work that they do matters.
Erin [0:42:19]: And that humans matter to research.
Erin [0:42:22]: So what we it matters.
Erin [0:42:23]: And I think particular topics that are top of mind will change, and that's what keeps it fun and exciting.
Erin [0:42:29]: The channels change.
Erin [0:42:30]: That's fun and exciting.
Erin [0:42:31]: But how...
Erin [0:42:32]: Your reach an audience doesn't change.
Dave [0:42:35]: Yeah.
Erin [0:42:36]: And that's been very fun for me to get the experience to to do that for such a long period of time and all these different ways.
Dave [0:42:44]: Well, let me...
Dave [0:42:45]: I'll I'll jump...
Dave [0:42:46]: I'll take your thing and just kinda like, raise it up.
Dave [0:42:47]: So, obviously, like, Air Erin is the CMO of a company that sells to researchers.
Dave [0:42:51]: Right?
Dave [0:42:52]: The thing you said though is, like, that the real thing is you...
Dave [0:42:55]: You're...
Dave [0:42:56]: The whole...
Dave [0:42:56]: The center of your marketing strategy is making your customer the hero.
Dave [0:43:00]: Mh.
Dave [0:43:01]: And so everything you're doing is trying to, like, elevate them, elevate their profession, like, create things they care about.
Dave [0:43:08]: Like, that...
Dave [0:43:08]: That's the secret.
Dave [0:43:09]: So someone could take...
Dave [0:43:10]: I'm trying to come up with, like, what's the takeaway that someone could apply to any industry.
Dave [0:43:13]: Mh.
Dave [0:43:14]: Sell Hr finance accounting, research.
Dave [0:43:17]: Is like, you made them the star.
Erin [0:43:19]: You made them the star and you tell them that they matter that you care about them and, you know, I think that there has been a move to make B2B mark getting more exciting, more consumer like in some ways over the years.
Erin [0:43:32]: But at the end of the day, we're all people with emotions and
Dave [0:43:36]: we...
Dave [0:43:36]: Yeah.
Erin [0:43:37]: Wanna feel connected to something and, work is emotional for people.
Erin [0:43:40]: And so I think if you can convince them and actually need it that you care about them and have their back, I think that will take you pretty far.
Dave [0:43:50]: Yeah.
Dave [0:43:50]: We put a lot of stock into, like, what our what our job is.
Dave [0:43:54]: Like, it's just everybody...
Dave [0:43:55]: I told me it's a very American thing when I use this wine at an event.
Dave [0:43:59]: But, like, I'm a marketer like, that Matt...
Dave [0:44:02]: Like, hey.
Dave [0:44:02]: You meet someone out.
Dave [0:44:03]: I go meet a, kid's friend and they're like, what do you do for work?
Dave [0:44:06]: It's, like, the first question out of their mouth.
Erin [0:44:08]: Yeah.
Erin [0:44:08]: Yeah.
Erin [0:44:09]: Forty hours a week.
Erin [0:44:10]: You know?
Erin [0:44:11]: Plus...
Dave [0:44:12]: Forty.
Dave [0:44:12]: Already you talking about.
Dave [0:44:13]: I work.
Erin [0:44:14]: I work.
Erin [0:44:14]: Starting point.
Dave [0:44:15]: Nine nine six forty.
Dave [0:44:16]: That's like half fun.
Dave [0:44:17]: No.
Dave [0:44:18]: This is great.
Dave [0:44:18]: Okay.
Dave [0:44:19]: Ara.
Dave [0:44:20]: Thank you for coming on the podcast.
Dave [0:44:21]: Go find Erin on Linkedin.
Dave [0:44:22]: Obviously, probably all follow her.
Dave [0:44:24]: Many...
Dave [0:44:24]: Let me I'm gonna look you up real quick.
Dave [0:44:26]: I don't even get know.
Dave [0:44:26]: Let's see.
Erin [0:44:27]: That don't even know.
Erin [0:44:28]: Tell me.
Dave [0:44:30]: She has have seven thousand.
Dave [0:44:30]: I'm gonna mark this timestamp stamp this seven thousand seven hundred and seventy six followers for now.
Erin [0:44:35]: Four.
Dave [0:44:35]: You will at least have seven thousand seven hundred and seventy.
Dave [0:44:38]: It's Four more.
Dave [0:44:39]: By this...
Dave [0:44:40]: Because, I'm gonna make everybody on the team go follow you.
Erin [0:44:42]: Okay.
Erin [0:44:42]: Great.
Dave [0:44:43]: But this was awesome.
Dave [0:44:43]: Send a message, tell her that you heard her on this podcast and that you related to what she's saying and and go follow on Linkedin because you need more good people who are actually out there doing the work to follow Erin good to see you.
Erin [0:44:54]: You too.
Dave [0:44:55]: Thanks for coming
Dave [0:44:55]: and hanging out.
Dave [0:44:56]: I appreciate you.
Erin [0:44:57]: Yeah.
Erin [0:44:57]: Thanks, Dave.
Erin [0:44:57]: OK.
Dave [0:45:02]: Hey.
Dave [0:45:02]: Thanks for listening to this podcast.
Dave [0:45:04]: If you like this episode.
Dave [0:45:05]: Do you know what?
Dave [0:45:05]: I'm not even gonna ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that.
Dave [0:45:10]: I something better for you.
Dave [0:45:11]: So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at Exit Five, and you can go and check that out instead of leaving a rating a review, You go check it out right now on our website, exitfive.com.
Dave [0:45:23]: Our mission at Exit Five is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing, and there's no better place to do that than with us at Exit Five.
Dave [0:45:30]: There's nearly five thousand members now in our community.
Dave [0:45:33]: People are in there posting.
Dave [0:45:34]: Day asking questions about things like marketing planning, ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers, building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are so you can have a peer group or maybe just venting about
Dave [0:45:48]: your boss.
Dave [0:45:48]: You need to get in
Dave [0:45:50]: there and get something off your chest.
Dave [0:45:51]: It's a hundred percent free to join for seven days so you can go and check it out risk free, and then there's a small annual fee to pay if you wanna become a member for the year.
Dave [0:46:00]: Go check it out, learn more when exitfive.com, and I will see you over there in the community.