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Dave Gerhardt (Founder of Exit Five, former CMO) and guests help you grow your career in B2B marketing. Episodes include conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, and subject matter experts across all aspects of modern B2B marketing: planning, strategy, operations, ABM, demand gen., product marketing, brand, content, social media, and more. Join 3,500+ members in our private community at exitfive.com.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:00]:
1234. Exit. Exit, exit. All right, Matt, is your brain fried? My brain is fried.
Matt Carnevale [00:00:19]:
Oh, my God. I have to, like, close my eyes for three minutes before this call. Cause I had to spinning today.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:26]:
This is so. And then, like, I just sent, like, five notes about this webinar we're doing and this thing and that thing. I'm like, oh, man, these guys going to hate me right now. Oh, man. So today we did, we unveiled our new brand. And how would you sum up the reaction, Matt?
Matt Carnevale [00:00:42]:
It's positive. Definitely positive. It's crazy, though, how people, like, how many people responded that they loved it? How many people responded that they loved it and had feedback? Like, hey, here's one thing I would change. Even a couple people who were mad, who were like, why did you change from two word exit five to one word exit five?
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:59]:
Somebody was mad about that.
Matt Carnevale [00:01:00]:
Not mad, but they took a shot at us. They're like, oh, how much did you pay someone to just.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:05]:
No. Where did somebody say that?
Matt Carnevale [00:01:07]:
In our email. Someone responded to her newsletter.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:09]:
Oh, my God. Somebody said, how much did you pay? That's amazing.
Matt Carnevale [00:01:13]:
How many did you pay just to go from exit five? Two words to one word?
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:20]:
Oh, I can't wait. I'm going to go through the emails later and I'll have to fire back and tell them.
Matt Carnevale [00:01:24]:
But, I mean, I've done rebrands at other companies and I've never, ever gotten this kind of response at bigger companies, too.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:30]:
So, yeah, companies that have, like, raised $50 million. And it's incredible. And sometimes when you launch something this, it's hard because, like, we want to launch and announce it, but also, at the same time, the comments and everything are great, but at the same time, we're not really looking for feedback or validation. It's great to get it, but I think we liked it. And I think this is one of the hard parts about marketing, is, like, I think too often we rely on feedback and data and testing, and it's like, do you like this? Do you think it's better? Is it better than what we had before? Is there a reason for it? Does it elevate our brand? And, like, I just saw a comment earlier before I hopped on this guy Kevin said, the brand insight looks amazing. It brings the business to life in a new way. Well done all around. And I think that was kind of all of our reaction when we saw it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:02:15]:
And so I also think given the space that we're in, we are talking about marketing to marketers. Like, we're always going to get you know, this is off or this typo here, like, why did you do that? But for me, positive or negative, I was just blown away by just the engaged audience. I think I continue to be surprised about, like, how real this is, how many people are involved in. It is really cool to see. And I haven't launched anything like this in, like, years. And so it feels great. Feels great to be back on the wagon. And then Dan sent us a message in slack, and he said, hey, the event page is live.
Dave Gerhardt [00:02:48]:
We want to have a waiting list. And so by the time this podcast will be out, we'll probably have the actual page up. But I went right back and I said, all right. This morning we revealed our new brand new website. But I have one more quick thing to share about our first event. It's in Vermont. And so if you're listening to this, you haven't heard it yet. We also announced this.
Dave Gerhardt [00:03:03]:
The event is going to be called drive. It is Wednesday and Thursday, September 11 and 12th, in Burlington, Vermont. We'll probably have all the page up by the time this goes live. We're keeping it small. We're selling 150 tickets. We'll have Ben and Jerry's. We'll have a dinner and an after party downtown. The focus of the event is two days to help get you smarter about b two b marketing.
Dave Gerhardt [00:03:22]:
And we brought in a bunch of people that we know and like and trust in this space to give you an idea to help get you unstuck. I think success is like, you come hang out, we meet each other, network with the community, whatever, but you also get one or two new ideas that you can bring back to your company and put in play. So we just dropped that because we wanted to announce a waiting list so people could know when the tickets are available, because I think it might sell out pretty quickly. But it's just really exciting. It's exciting to be shipping, exciting to be launching stuff. And I sent you both a message last night, but I was like, man, thank you. Thank you for coming to exit five. Thank you for helping me build a team and build a company, because I could have been toiling away with solopreneurship, and I think we're ready to grow the team and bring on a couple more people and, like, continue to build this thing.
Dave Gerhardt [00:04:07]:
So I'm just excited. I'm happy. It's been a really good day.
Matt Carnevale [00:04:11]:
Yeah, yeah. And I'm so excited to be here. I mean, the first couple months of us working together was we were kind of just getting the operating system down you know, learning each other's working styles. But now it's like we're really taking the big swings, and it's super exciting. This is exactly what you hope for joining any company. So first one, someone in the community said, or asked, how do you nurture the 99% of people who visit your website but don't convert?
Dave Gerhardt [00:04:37]:
Oh, you go first. What's your answer?
Matt Carnevale [00:04:39]:
I mean, I think it comes down to a couple of things. I think the first one is like, it's not that unnormal that 99% of people are not converting. I think that's pretty standard. I mean, in the high nineties at least is pretty standard. So for me, I think I would take a step backward and think, where are these people actually coming from? Like, is there a way to understand where they're coming from? Are they finding us through social? Are they finding us through organic keywords? Where are they finding us, and can we actually do more work there? Can we do more work in the places where they're finding us from? Because when people hit the website, a lot of the time they're going to convert because they want to demo or they're not, there's not really too much of an in between. So it's like, can you do more work in the places where they find you? And then the second one is, do you have some sort of middle of the funnel capture? You know, can they get into your email newsletter? I think those are the two ways that I would think of it. If you can get them into your newsletter or do more work, top of funnel, I think that's the best way to nurture people.
Dave Gerhardt [00:05:41]:
Yeah, I mean, the way that I think about this is, this is kind of just what marketing is and what marketing should do. Right. If you people like to talk about how they're, we're talking about somebody's website specifically, but people also talk about the 95 five rule, which is like, only 5% of people are in market in this moment to buy your thing. And so I think when we say nurture, we mean like, get somebody's information and have them on this, like, steady drip of information. But I kind of think that's just the role of marketing. And I think, I like to just think about air cover and like, where are all the places that these people hang out also, 99% of the people are also probably not a good fit. It's probably only, you know, some smaller percentage of people that are, that are a good fit. And so I think this is why good marketing strategy is one that has that gives you the surround sound effect.
Dave Gerhardt [00:06:27]:
And so this is why you need a content strategy, social media strategy. This could be Instagram, it could be LinkedIn, it could be getting people on your newsletter. And for b, two b, we often talk about the best b, two b, marketing strategies to lead with education and expertise. And so I would think about, what are you mentioned, the funnel, stages of the funnel. What are top of the funnel, middle of the funnel offers that you can get people to engage with. And that could be some type of free tool, some type of content. I would think about what those steps are. It's very hard to do this without a real example.
Dave Gerhardt [00:06:59]:
It can be very broad. But for our example, let's just use our business exit five as an example. Ultimately, we would want someone to purchase a subscription to our product, which is our paid community. Well, 99% of the people that visit the website aren't going to do that. So what should we do instead? Well, we could have a free weekly newsletter where we send out useful insights and tips for this audience and. Okay, great. We have 16,000 people on that list and counting. That's one strategy that's going to nurture people.
Dave Gerhardt [00:07:26]:
And we don't often sell in that email. There's a piece of the email that says, like, you could join now, but we don't sell. It just happens to be something in that email. But now we have their contact information, we can reach them. We also have a podcast. So come and listen to the podcast. You can also follow us on social media. We also frequently do webinars.
Dave Gerhardt [00:07:41]:
And so maybe we can get some one of those people on the webinar. I think it's hard if you try to perfectly match all the pieces, but if you develop a content strategy, I mean, there is no marketing and content as we've talked about anymore. Like, you have to have a content strategy. I think the short answer is a content strategy is going to be the best way to nurture those people. But I would start by thinking about some trip wires, like how can you get somebody onto your email list or in your realm of being able to contact them directly?
Matt Carnevale [00:08:09]:
Yeah. Sweet. Next one is you posted something on LinkedIn about how nothing kills great website copy faster than five cross functional vps seemed to really pop off. So want to talk to you about that one.
Dave Gerhardt [00:08:26]:
Really? What I meant by this is like almost anything in life is when you rely on committees and consensus, it usually doesn't work out great. You know, it could be everybody in your town trying to come up with a solution for a problem. It could be the school board, it could be a group of people in your neighborhood. It could be your friends. Have you ever been on an email chain with eight of your friends trying to decide where you're all going to go for a group trip? It's awful. And so we just decided like, no, you know what? Dave's going to take the lead in this. Here are the three places we're going to pick this one. We're going to Myrtle beach, and that's where our golf trip is going to be.
Dave Gerhardt [00:09:01]:
Right? And we're going to go, and everybody's going to have a great time. I think the same is true for marketing. And especially marketing is a thing where everybody writes, everybody communicates, everybody has opinions on what's good or what's not. And so it's easy. You get way more opinions in marketing than you do. Like engineering. Like, I don't know how to code. I'm not a great, not at all a designer.
Dave Gerhardt [00:09:20]:
And so I don't really give design feedback, or I can't critique your code, but everybody can critique the words and design of the website. Now, it's not to say that you shouldn't factor in those people's opinions and get data. I think you should always be gathering data. Like, I have a swipe file and notion that I keep of things people say about exit five to help shape our messaging and positioning. But I think it means that when it comes time to ship something, you need to pick a leader, have a DrI, directly responsible individual, or whatever you call it, your company, pick a lane and go take their feedback and have one person that owns this. And I think typically what happens is at a company, you have, as you grow, you have these functional leaders. And I just made up this example just to be silly. But like I said, five cross functional vps.
Dave Gerhardt [00:10:03]:
Because as the company scales, you have five vps and they all have competing goals. Like, you know, Nancy is measured on this metric, Bob is measured on this. Carl is mentioned on this, Chris has mentioned on this. You know, Jane is measured on this. And those, all those things all compete. And so what you might not realize is that Nancy's comp plan is very important to her, but actually her thing is only like 5% of the overall business. And so she's going to be loud in that meeting, because if she feels like she's not getting her feedback heard, then that's going to impact her pipeline. And so it's just one example of the downstream effects.
Dave Gerhardt [00:10:35]:
I think part of being a good marketing leader inside of a company is to be able to take the feedback, get opinions, get your data present to people, pick a couple lanes and go. Now, I'm not saying shut everybody out. I'm saying like, hey, all right, the feedback session is open. I'm going to gather it all. I'm going to come back in two weeks and I'm going to present. Here are three lanes that we're thinking about taking this. Maybe let people vote. I don't care.
Dave Gerhardt [00:10:56]:
You can vote. Doesn't mean I'm going to pick your vote, but let's see which one you like the best. Okay. That one. All right, cool. Then I'm going to go break out and it's me and the CEO that are going to make the final decision. And that's how we're going to pick the clearest thing. And I also think you have to build a culture of, you have to be able to disagree and commit.
Dave Gerhardt [00:11:10]:
I think things go bad when you disagree and then people throw rocks at your ideas behind closed doors or they don't commit to it. Like, you and I can disagree on something related to exit five, but let's pick a decision and a deadline date and let's move on. And. All right, cool. This is the lane. We have to pick a lane and go. Otherwise you just end up in this repetitive cycle and always trying to please everyone. My last thing on this before I shut up is I've also seen now, I think positioning and messaging is very important, but I also think there's multiple ways to win.
Dave Gerhardt [00:11:39]:
There's multiple ways to be successful. You have to just pick a lane, go get feedback, iterate and repeat.
Matt Carnevale [00:11:46]:
Yeah, it's funny. I saw this post and I laughed because, well, I didn't react with a laugh now that I'm looking at it. But at the last company, when I first joined, we were redoing the website. And this is literally my first week. Someone in the team, I think it was whoever was leading the project, was like, hey, Matt, would love your feedback on the site. We're going to roll out. And I opened the document and it was literally a table with maybe 20 to 25 names and a different row for each page. And it was all populated.
Matt Carnevale [00:12:15]:
And I was like, man, this is like 100 different data points to review. Like, this is how are we going to implement this? And it's funny because when we launched the site, when the agency launched the site, they actually implemented like zero of the feedback in there because it just became way too overwhelming. Whereas we redid the website a year or so later. And the person leading the marketing team at the time was just like f everyone. Like we're taking this site to 80 85% and then we're going to talk to like the CEO and two other people in leadership, get their feedback for 30 minutes, implement that and just launch it. Like you don't want to shut people out. But like we were able to get the website from concept to completion like 60 days because of that. And I think that's the only way.
Matt Carnevale [00:12:59]:
You just have to pick the lane and go like you said. And you can involve a couple important people like the CEO you always have to involve because they always want their claws in the website. But other than that, do it and then you can revisit a couple months down the road.
Dave Gerhardt [00:13:11]:
Yeah, I think it falls down when it's also not clear, like who should own this. I think that solves a lot of the things. And so like at the companies it's been, at the companies I've been at, I've been involved with it, with the CEO and it was like, okay, Dave and so, and so are going to do this. Okay. I think it also is like when you're not sure who's going to own this, that's also where a lot of the challenges here start. Oh, we can do it. No, no, it's got to be very clear. And I think it's got to be the head of marketing in this EU.
Matt Carnevale [00:13:36]:
Yeah, exactly. And another example I'll bring up before we move on is like you're talking about different teams having different goals and I think that's a really important piece as to why it won't work. Because if you take like, and I'm thinking of examples from my past, like the head of product or product person may be so passionate about making sure we include this one feature that actually isn't that relevant. But they're KPI'd on getting people to use that thing. So they're like, there has to be a webpage on this thing. But meanwhile no one else in the business believes that anyone cares about it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:14:06]:
And it's hard to do. It's hard to go against what people want.
Matt Carnevale [00:14:10]:
Yeah, exactly. It takes tough conversations. Right.
Dave Gerhardt [00:14:14]:
That's why we spent $150,000 on a branding agency to change it from exif five capital to exit five lowercase.
Matt Carnevale [00:14:20]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. We just couldn't make a decision internally so we outsourced it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:14:24]:
Yeah, spend, spend.
Matt Carnevale [00:14:27]:
Exactly. Cool. Last topic. I think it was another one of your posts you were talking about how b two b buying happens through word of mouth, peer recommendations, social media and content. And we're pretty much saying that if those aren't the pillars of your revenue strategy, to screenshot the post and send it to the team.
Dave Gerhardt [00:14:46]:
Yeah. Who writes these posts? Who is the ghost writer? If my ghost writer is listening to this, please send me a message. So that's something that I really believe in. Chris Walker talks about this. It's the dark social. I can't keep up with it. It's a dark, so whatever people call it, the dark social, the dark funnel, it's basically all these things happen, all these conversations happen online and you don't control them. But I think your marketing strategy has to enable them.
Dave Gerhardt [00:15:09]:
And it all ties back to what I've said a lot here, which is the best marketing strategies to educate and entertain your potential customers. And so how do you do that? Is it go to adwords and buy ads? No, it can be, you can do entertaining ads and creative, maybe with meta or something, but I think it's more of this or what we talked about earlier with a content strategy. And so that to me is the hub, I think. I just think that's how you got to drive it in b two B. It's got to be. We are driving a considered purchase. The opportunity we have is to build fans and followers because we're entertaining them and we're educating them. Like the reason that 25 year old Dave got promoted at his job was because he read the HubSpot blog at a time where nobody else was sharing useful, practical marketing content.
Dave Gerhardt [00:15:57]:
And so when I had to build my first presentation to my boss about a marketing plan, I went there, I found their content, I used their template, I created it, it worked, she loved it. I felt good about it. Okay, cool. I'm now becoming a fan of this company. Oh, now they're having an event. I'm going to buy a ticket and I'm going to go to the event. Which product am I going to be most likely to buy at the end of the day? Now, this doesn't always solve the problem. You're still going to be shopping in b two B.
Dave Gerhardt [00:16:23]:
But I think it increases your odds. You want to stack the deck in your favor by being somebody that people know, like and trust through your marketing. And that's just always been the strategy. That's why I'm building this company now through content and through media. This is just something that I have a bias towards and I think we're pretty good at with content and audience building and I have a bias towards building companies and doing marketing through those channels. I also think if you talk to anybody in the demand gen side or anybody that's really good with digital and paid, these two things work perfectly together. When you have the strong brand content machine, the ads get better. The paid stuff gets better because you, a, you already have an audience, b, you're already, you have traffic, and so you're able to like retarget a bigger audience and having a cold pool of people.
Dave Gerhardt [00:17:08]:
People also know who you are, and so when they do see your ads, they're more likely to convert on them. But also, you've tested lots of ideas and content and topics like, we haven't spent, other than like whatever we spend right now on LinkedIn ads that you're doing like a month or something. We haven't really spent any on digital on paid. Right. But if we wanted to right now, we could very quickly come up with, like, don't you think we would know the three or four topics that people really want to know about? Like, if we had to come up with ad campaigns, because we have this content business, we have so much feedback and data from our audience about what they want. And I think you can do this even if you're not a media business like we are, if you're selling a software product, it can be the same approach.
Matt Carnevale [00:17:50]:
Yeah. And it's exactly what you said. These things are an enabler of the other things. So taking an example from us, like our LinkedIn ads.
Dave Gerhardt [00:17:59]:
Yeah.
Matt Carnevale [00:17:59]:
We're not spending a lot of money on it. And I don't know the benchmarks in the industry, but I remember the day I launched the ad, like, I looked a couple of days later and our click through rate was like 25% or something insane like that companies would hope for even like a two or 3% click through rate. Right? Like 25% is nuts. And it was such like a broad audience. It was just anyone who has marketing growth or anything related to marketing and growth in their job title on LinkedIn. Right. So that goes to show you how much air cover we actually have on our brand name. Like, so many people just clicked into our ads.
Matt Carnevale [00:18:31]:
So you have to do those things. And even if you want to do the other things, you still have to do those things because they're going to make the other things perform better.
Dave Gerhardt [00:18:38]:
Yeah.
Matt Carnevale [00:18:39]:
And then another point I'll bring up is I always like to think of it like, what's one of the last things I bought and the experience that I went through to buy that thing? And it's funny the other day I was thinking of, I bought this, like, monthly subscription to this workout program. And the reason I bought it is because I got an injury. And then I started looking up solutions to that injury. And then YouTube started feeding me videos to solution set industry and I found.
Dave Gerhardt [00:19:02]:
This guy from knees over toes.
Matt Carnevale [00:19:04]:
Guy Nisa or Toska.
Dave Gerhardt [00:19:05]:
Yeah. Is it. Ah, come on. Am I good or am I good now?
Matt Carnevale [00:19:08]:
Wow. That was nuts. How did you know that?
Dave Gerhardt [00:19:11]:
Yeah, I just figured, I've seen all of his content. I think he's very smart. It's a great approach. Yeah, yeah.
Matt Carnevale [00:19:16]:
So, I mean, look, that's the way to do it. So reverse engineering your own buying process is also a great way to understand what other people might be doing. Right.
Dave Gerhardt [00:19:22]:
The hard part is, Matt, people don't. I wish I had, like, these frameworks so often. The answer to these questions for me is positioning and content. Yeah, people don't want that, though. They want the like, oh, do this. Oh, here's what you're going to do. You're going to open this thing, you're going to do this thing. But to me, it all comes back to positioning and content.
Dave Gerhardt [00:19:41]:
And if I started any business ever again in the future, if I owned a bike shop down the street, the marketing channel that I would start on is some form of content, because that is the best marketing. It could be Instagram, could be a podcast, it could be email, it could be YouTube shorts. It could be whatever it is. I think content is still so underrated and it's even going to become more important in the world of AI, like where all your competitors and everybody else, great, let them use the AI copywriting tools. And I'm not even meaning to poo poo on the copywriting tools. I think there's great products out there, but I just think that it's going to be even easier for most people to just create mediocre content. And I think that's a fantastic opportunity for people who create great content to continue to win and continue to lead. And I think that's the opportunity in B two B.
Dave Gerhardt [00:20:25]:
And you could go and find the receipts, talk to anybody that I've ever worked with, a head of product ahead of sales, and ask them about how much content and brand strategy. And when I talk about brand strategy, I don't mean the colors in the font, I mean the what we say to the market, how much that had an impact on sales. It has the biggest impact on sales. It gives the sales team stuff to talk about. It gives them air cover, it builds relationships with people who know you. It is the only way to do marketing, in my opinion. I'm not a paid guy, so I'm not going to say, oh, the secret is LinkedIn ads. That's one thing you could do, but I think that would be boosted by content.
Matt Carnevale [00:21:02]:
Yeah, yeah. You're talking about the fundamentals. If you get those right, the rest follows. And I don't think it could ever be the other way around.
Dave Gerhardt [00:21:09]:
Yeah. All right, check this out. So one cool thing that we're doing right now is Matt runs a community at exit five. He just started feeding in. Like, every time somebody joins our community, we asked them, like, why did they join? What do they want to learn? And where did they hear about us? And Matt started piping this stuff into slack, into a slack channel. And it's so amazing because people give us this data. Like, I'm just reading one right now. This is 603 this morning.
Dave Gerhardt [00:21:31]:
Why'd you sign up for exit five? To get marketing advice and connect. What's your role? Marketing manager. How'd you hear about us exit five podcasts? This next one. How'd you hear about us LinkedIn? How'd you hear about us LinkedIn? Another one. How'd you hear about us LinkedIn? Another one. How'd you hear about us exit five podcasts? I love this data because it's like, is this perfect data? Does this tell us, like, oh, if we do six more podcasts, that. No, but directionally, it's like, oh, these things are working, so let's go do more of them. I just love, like, I love simple things in marketing like this that make a big impact.
Dave Gerhardt [00:22:01]:
It doesn't have anything to do with us talking about on this podcast, but that's just like a little thing of just like, okay, now we get to go cook. We think we know what people like. Let's go make a dish for them. It's never going to be like, here's exactly what they want. We don't know that, but we can do our best based on those assumptions. So.
Matt Carnevale [00:22:17]:
Yeah.
Dave Gerhardt [00:22:18]:
All right, Matt, good to see you. I actually feel like my dopamine, it's gone down, like, doing this podcast, like, all right, I'm back. I'm reset. I got to go do this call, a reference call. I hope I help her get this job. I'm going to say amazing things, so I got to go do this call. Good to see you. Great week at exit five, and thank you for everybody for listening.
Dave Gerhardt [00:22:35]:
Go check out our new site, exit five.com. Dot. You can sign up for exit five seven day risk free trial there. You don't have to pay anything. You can come check out the whole community. At some point, we have to work on that. We give people access to this whole community, let them come in for seven days and then churn. Well, I don't know, but for now it is that way.
Dave Gerhardt [00:22:52]:
And if you like this podcast, send me and Matt a message. Hi, exit five.com dot. We read them all, especially if you want to know how much we spent on the brand agency to change from Capital E, exit five to lowercase e, exit five. All right, we're out here. See you, Matt.
Matt Carnevale [00:23:06]:
Thanks. Exit.