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Back on T-R-A-C-K (formerly Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders) is where founders learn how to build a true marketing growth engine — one that runs smoothly, scales sustainably, and supports the business you actually want to lead.
After hundreds of conversations with marketing leaders on Tea Time, one truth kept surfacing: too many founders are stuck chasing what’s shiny and new instead of strengthening the systems that create consistent, compounding growth.
Back on T-R-A-C-K is your reset. Join me and a lineup of fractional marketing leaders and founders who’ve paved the way — or are finding it in real time — as we share honest stories, practical strategies, and proven frameworks to help you get clarity, build momentum, and stay the course. Because growth doesn’t come from doing more — it comes from getting back on track.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't have to be an or statement, it can be an and. Like they can beat us out with budget and we can still win where it matters.
Speaker 2: Own it. I love it. Hello. Welcome back to T-Taiwan Tech Marketing Leaders. It is 2025. Y'all, are you ready? Are you buckled up? Are you like, rick-roared, ready to go?
Or are you more taking a backseat and leaning in and just enjoying the ride? I'm so curious. I am so excited to kick off this episode. This was a happy accident because somebody else was supposed to be here and I'm very sad that they aren't, but don't worry, they'll be back in February. But I had this opening and I had just had this wonderful, wonderful, wonderful conversation with a lovely Kelsey Purcell and it was just like this coffee chat and I was like, oh no, no, no, I need to have her on the show. So I called up Kelsey and said, hey, what are you doing Thursday?
What a co-te-gout. She was like, yeah, let's do it. So here we are, folks. Here we are. I am so excited because we are going to probably tangent at left-right center, but I always bring us back to center because the conversation we're going to have today is going to get super meta as we talk about the importance of making hard conversations conversational. I did it.
I wasn't sure it was the wrong tone. Yes. Yes. Hard conversations conversational. We're going to dig into that, but first, we have to know about Kelsey because you don't know her like I know her and I want you to know her like I know her because she is wonderful. Kelsey has 10 plus years of digital marketing experience as a data-driven problem-solving marketer who is committed to always figuring it out and constantly evolving with the digital world, wearing the necessary hats and remaining chill and easygoing on the way. She's awesome. While she knows what she's doing, she's also super chill about.
Speaker 1: Kelsey, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I'm so happy. I love happy accidents. I'm a big like, Wabras, how do we just incorporate that in? So I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2: I'm clearly very excited to have you. I've chipped it over my own words because I just want to get to the root of all the things we're going to talk about. So let's kick off your story. You know, whether marketing found us or we found marketing, it's always a joy to hear how you got into it. So where are you now and how did you get there? Okay.
Speaker 1: So now I am literally living in my dream location in the Outer Banks, North Carolina. And it's because like I'm able to do this because of what I do. So I work remotely. I'm at my second cybersecurity startup and I love it.
I feel like I've really found like my home as far as where I, who I like to work with, the environment, all of the things. But I have to laugh because when we were having our coffee date, you were like, you know, it's not like a doctor or whatever. You don't dream of being a marketer when you're like growing up. But I was thinking back and I really started when I was in high school. So maybe didn't get into the classes in high school, but I was taking business classes. I was doing like the marketing thing and you could do a like early release program if you had a job. So I originally thought that I wanted to be in like the therapy, like therapist world. And then I did business marketing and I was like, Oh no, I want to, I want to be in marketing. I'm really good at it.
I really enjoy it. And so I went into college, like I'm going to have a marketing degree. I got my degree in marketing. I worked in college, like doing advertising and marketing. And then from my first job, I have been in marketing.
So maybe I'm not the, the typical marketer. I don't think I dreamed of it when I was little. I actually, full disclosure, wanted to be like a pilot, like a jet pilot. But yeah, I sense, you know, things got, got real-ish. I've been in the marketing world and leaning into it. So, oh my God, that's how it all started.
Speaker 2: High school. You learned about, you, you've had, you've had an, High school. Imagine the game. I was in like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I was, I was like full, full marketing nerd starting high school, like junior year of high school and just kept riding that way. I'm still on it. So I don't see it stopping anytime.
Speaker 2: I, it's so interesting because usually when you like find something in, um, usually when you find something you like or love doing it, like I, so I went to, when I found photography in high school and decided I wanted to go to college for it, but then college sort of beat the creativity out of me and ruined it. And so, uh, when I left my, my uncle, who helped me get my first media planning job was like, I'm sending you to New York simply because you're going to be a photographer and not a media plan for media planner forever. And I was like, yes, exactly.
So I was like, man, I did my Turkey G-Wagen. And I was like, what's your What's your thoughts on what marketing meant to you as a high-schooler versus where you are today? Has it drastically changed or is it somewhat just the same of what it's always been but you just know more?
Speaker 1: No. I think there are foundations that are the same, right? But I truly think in high school things aren't totally hard because you don't have a lot but high school is like a weird awkward time and I was good at it. It just tapped into my strengths and I had great teachers and then the strengths just kind of continued and it came really naturally to me and I enjoyed it, right?
I didn't, I don't know, this sounds weird but I didn't. There are things that I was good at but I didn't really enjoy them like they didn't fill my cup. But marketing did and when I was in college I had multiple professors who were like, no, come be a finance major, no, come be a CIS major and especially on the CIS world which is ironic now because I'm in the cybersecurity realm.
They were like, we have no women in our program. Please come be in the program but I think marketing just leans into my strengths and I can feel that like individual fulfillment while also doing my job. But most of what I've learned besides like random tidbits that I'll pull on, it's just from experience and meeting people and learning from them and asking questions and sound boarding, like that's all really, really important and marketing changes every day. I mean think about even five years ago, there's an element of influencer marketing and social and video and all of the things that wasn't even a consideration when I was in school. I think when I was in school Instagram was just starting and I'm dating myself now but we used to like post very filtered pictures of our food.
Speaker 2: That's how Instagram has started. Just to give people a little bit of
Speaker 1: where it was and where it's come from in the last ten plus years.
Speaker 2: I mean that's how everybody got started on Instagram, you have to tell us about your week.
Speaker 1: Yes, and like so silly but so little pressure, right? It was just like, oh here we are not created, this is just what I'm doing. Here's my spaghetti.
Speaker 2: It's so true. So in terms of like understanding even back then what your sort of superpowers and strengths were, what were they, that it sounds like they're the same now but how have they evolved since?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm a big problem solver sometimes to a fault and I think this like analytical thinking of, okay how do we figure this out but the creativity that comes with marketing of how do we do this in a way that's notable and not just like a snooze fest and not something that you can point to the street on the street or in our case like on LinkedIn or digital and see it happening 10-15 times. So how do we achieve and like solve this problem that we're facing and that's kind of ever evolving, right? Like my boss and I talk all the time where marketing doesn't have this end game.
It's just consistent and constant and it's always flowing and you're always figuring out like, okay what's the next challenge? What are we going to do next? What's our next like creative thing? Even if you do the most amazing marketing thing, you've now set the standard for yourself so what's next?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think that like problem solving capability and then like the creative element of how can I tap into my creativity and also have this like data driven analysis part of myself because I told you like I was really good at technical things. I'm really good at math. I'm like those elements but I'm also creative and I really like writing and I like that element as well.
So it just kind of married the two. And then the evolution is how I learn and listen from other people because I'm so excitable and then like my ADD is coming out where I'm just like so jumping at the bit, so excited, ready to do something and listening to people and taking it in and like taking a step back to think through what we're doing and how it can be meaningful instead of like jumping one to the other is really been something that's happened like the last few years that I have enjoyed, which previously like could have been a challenge for me but could have been tapped into as like a strength, right? If you're in those environments where you have multiple clients or you have like so many things going on that you need to constantly like be kind of jumping in and like making yourself known. Now I've kind of taken a little bit of like, okay, what do I want to hear from other people and how will that help me have better ideas and having that like combination of conversation.
Speaker 2: So you're jumping to the jump in ahead. I'm going to hold you back a little bit. We're not quite there yet. But I do think this is what's so wonderful about your superpower and I have the same sort of a ha moment in terms of how I figured out later in life how I learn and how I learn is also like the man, and the power of podcast was so eye opening for me simply because I am a I am an auditory learner and I learned so much better and better through listening versus reading. And so that has just been which is why I love podcasting because as a host you just do a whole lot.
I probably should do less talking and do more listening but generally you're supposed to do a whole lot of listening. And I have to say podcasting the last five years has been like the best school ever because of that and where of like what questions and curiosities do I have and getting to sit across tables from amazing sport people like you I get to ask them and listen and find the trends and absorb. And so yeah, I, I agree learning how we learn and then being able to really lean into that has been such a gift of of later years. And I wish I had that when I was younger.
Speaker 1: Do I was just not I was like wow, such because we the types of learners was discussed right like that was something. I don't remember which class if it was like, I don't know, whatever.
And you think, okay, so you could decide what type of learner people are and like you could distinguish that. But there wasn't an offering for them. It wasn't like, oh, instead of reading 100 pages of this book, you can go listen to it or listen to a summary or listen to somebody explain it. It was, hey, we know that you're an auditory learner. So gotta read the text.
Speaker 2: Let me quiz you about what color hat the girl was wearing or let me ask you why they dropped their keys and didn't want to go home. I have no idea what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: And on that element though, and I'll say this because it was a realization for myself, not just like professionally, but talking to different people and how they learn is I can see visuals in my mind. Like, I can see how things are laid out.
It is very, very clear to me from a marketing perspective what the funnel looks like and what different paths people are taking and all of the elements that are pulling together. And I've had to learn how other people learn and think to make that accessible to them and vice versa, right? Like, I kind of look at people and like, okay, tell me what you're thinking.
And then we can pull it out to see what we need to do together. So it's like, how am I learning? How do I see things? What makes me brilliant? But also what makes them brilliant too? And how do we like bring that together so everybody can see the brilliance?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's so important. Like, whenever you're presenting information, I mean, I think that's what makes us great marketers. And to the superpowers you're talking about is the ability to meet people where they are and present information in a way that we know is going to resonate with them because of how they process information and that we are not all the same. Like, I know when I walk into a meeting with my business partner, who's a very different learner than I am, he is a reader, a voracious reader that dude reads like three or four books a month. And so I know that if I can write my thoughts down really intentionally and get that to him ahead of time, then we could have a really great conversation because he's had a moment to absorb what I said versus auditory, where it takes him a lot longer to process what I'm saying versus reading. So yes, to like me being an auditory learner, but not expecting everybody else to be and needing to make sure that we're meeting people where they are, which I think is what makes marketing even so much harder these days, because we have to do so much more.
Speaker 1: Because you don't know. We can ask our audience like, so how do you learn best. So like what reaches you in a great way. And you if you have 100 different people, you could have like 100 different new on nuances of how they prefer to be spoken to, which is essentially what we're trying to do with marketing is just speak to who we think will be interested in what we're trying to say.
But how are we speaking to them? Is it like a visual? Is it a podcast? Is it a email?
Is it like a LinkedIn post? Is it they want to come to us and they want to make like the first move? All of these assumptions that we have to make and then like iterations where we're really learning constantly, which is what I think like why why when you asked about like, how's marketing change? Well, we're constantly learning about what types of channels and like how we can communicate to them. And I think people are also learning how they prefer to be communicated to, especially if we think about like the people in our target audiences that are in their 50s, 60s, and so forth. Well, a lot of this stuff wasn't available to them, but maybe it's their preference now. Maybe they didn't know that this is what they prefer. Who knows. We kind of sometimes and then maybe.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you this. We're going to tangent here for hot tech at folks, but I think it'll it'll be helpful for later in the world now that we live of needing to be able to speak to so many different people in so many different ways. Right. It's taking our marketing and sort of breaking it apart into so many tiny pieces. It's becoming on.
I'm going to speak for myself. It feels overwhelming and a bit unmanageable. Like I have a client who's a coach and we're talking about like all the different places he could be.
Right. He could be on Instagram. He could be on LinkedIn.
He could be on YouTube. He could be. He could be. He could be.
He could be. It's like we don't have the kind of resources that is needed to be everywhere all the time for everyone. So I know that you need to be on LinkedIn and it would be fun because we have video to also be on YouTube and Instagram because we can sort of systematize that. But otherwise, like we got this is where we need to lean into. So how are you approaching your marketing in a way that doesn't feel like you have to be everywhere once trying to meet your audience all the time everywhere?
Speaker 1: Such a good question for startup world as well because we are building the foundation that you then build on. And so we don't have this like, oh, we've been doing the traditional marketing for 10 years. Now, like let's do something new.
Let's expand and we have this great team. I always tell people and if you've worked with me before, you've probably heard this. If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up like doing nothing.
And it kind of feels like really unfulfilling too because as the person executing, you're like, I'm doing all this stuff. I'm everywhere. I'm like putting everything everywhere and then you don't feel like you're seeing the fruits of your labor. So you're doing a lot and not getting a lot done. So when I'm talking about what the goals are and what we want to achieve, what we've tried already and where we want to go from there. That's when I decide, okay, where does it make the most sense to absolutely we have to check the box, right? Like there are some things that you just you have to check the box.
It's easy to do. And then you can kind of say, right, and then how do we get creative? We know that people are consuming video. And to your point, like, can we create video content and then from there streamline a promotion or can we create video content?
And from there, create like multiple pieces of written content that then can be shared easier in places that are more check the box. So that's kind of how I look at it as like, okay, let's take this big goal and break it down to things that are actionable. And we can test and we can try new things. But if we're doing X, we might not be doing Y. And we need to be okay with that. We need to like not have FOMO and kind of key our blinders on and not feel like we're constantly like ambulance chasing or on the on the coattails of somebody else that might have a much bigger team and it might much bigger budget and like different priorities. We don't really know what's happening. So we have to decide what's right for us. And then kind of put our egos aside because even if we love it as much as this is so much fun. I'm doing this.
I know this is like, I'm so brilliant. We have to know when it's time to say, hey, great idea. Maybe not the best for what we're doing right now and like leave it alone.
We have to accept that sometimes things are not going to pan out the way that we expect them to and pivot when the time comes instead of like just continuing to try to make it work. Like you kind of have to make sure that you have this like I always call it a benchmark. If you don't have anything else like if you don't have existing data to rely on I say, okay, what are we trying to reach? And if we're failing, are we failing forward or if we're not like if we're not making it work at all, we just need to scrap it and do something else. We tried.
Yeah. Great effort. Maybe we'll try again at a time but like if we can't control the outcomes and making it positive, then we just need to move on because to your point like there is so much that we can do.
Speaker 2: I love how you talked about the foundation of what you're building right now. I think that's key to any marketing efforts. I literally yesterday was talking to my husband about what we're going to do for MKG in terms of marketing. And he was like, at the end of my thought he left the room like he didn't even take a buyer anything. He just turned around a left room and I was like, are you okay? He's like, there's too many moving pieces. He just left.
Speaker 1: There's so much happening here. I just don't feel like there's room for me in this room. But that is marketing.
Speaker 2: It does feel like there are a million moving pieces but when you're building it the way that we were talking about the foundation first and then the pieces on top of it, it doesn't feel so daunting. So in terms of foundation for you, what are you starting with? You've done startups a couple of times. This is your second startup.
Where do you and I'm sure every startup is different and we can do that. It depends sort of notion but in terms of what's working for you right now from a foundational standpoint, what are you starting with? What does your foundation look like from a marketing perspective?
Speaker 1: Okay, this element might not be me but it is so key is like what are we trying to say? What is the consistent message from first intro to our company all the way through? And what are the core pieces because I feel like anything that you do from there, you want to make sure that the things that you do execute are still relevant because if you do something and then the messaging shifts three weeks later, you want what you've done to still be something that's relevant even if you have to update and make it more timely, whatever it is. So what is the message? What do we want to get done? What are the goals and expectations of leadership around what we're doing? So making sure not necessarily like just taking what their goals are but making sure that it can be supported by the work that you do.
It can be numbers. It can be what their idea of your particular marketing role is. And then I will create an action plan of, hey, here's like a list of the obvious, right? Like content pieces, top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, like partners that we can get with all of the things that you know about or can research.
Podcast is a big one now. And then you take kind of those concepts of, okay, what do we have? Is there any content existing? What can we do with it? Can we take that content and manipulate it across channels? And so that way you at least have like grassroots something running, something going and then doing like creative iteratives that require more time and maybe more stakeholders. And you need co-founders involved and their schedules are a little bit wonky so you know that it's going to take more review process or whatever it is. So get the stuff out the door that way you can feel like, okay, let's check the box. I got it done. I'm feeling productive.
And then go from there of like things that might be a little bit more off the wall or might take more time and might require, you know, more people or contract workers or whatever it is because you don't have a 2,500 person company where you can be like, hey, yeah, call Sarah. Sarah, she's totally like game. She just finished a project, whatever. You kind of your one man show for a little bit. And so you have to and everybody on your team is also doing like a one man band type deal. Like even if it's a marketing like team with you.
Total like everybody is wearing tons of hats. So you have to consider that because like my boss will say she's like, okay, ideas great. Let's get it across the line. Let's do some executing. And that that takes like that planning. So I say the messaging thing because I've seen it change and it's just like deflate to team of we just did all that work. And now we have now it's not as relevant, even if it's still accurate, like it's not as relevant to what we're trying to say now. So it just does. I don't even pivot.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, I have to say that that probably is a crucial moment that was I think about the startups I've worked with of when we've when we've lost our momentum was when the message and change that we had to switch gears. Oh, man, there's nothing that feels like you're starting over more than that. The real conversation we want to have Kelsey around having making hard conversations conversational. It sounds like and we've talked about this so I'm trying to sound like we have no already had this conversation.
We all know why we were very at this conversation. I'm just trying to tee it up. But essentially, what in terms of getting to getting to that messaging piece, which I would I would argue is probably one of the hardest things to do at a company. And then we're still struggling with it 13 years in, and we still have not figured out our positioning. It is the tail is all this time, folks.
It's the hardest thing to do of like, why you why are you special and why are you unique and why should we care? Right. Just another marketing agency. So, yeah, as a quote unquote cybersecurity company, I say that with not meeting any single word of it. I have to know like how I imagine the conversations that need to be that need to be had internally and externally to get there are there's a certain skill that comes with being able to peel back that onion and get to go deep to really touch on why your company, why should we be buying for you. And I don't know that we all know how to do that very well.
So help us out. How do you get started on on having these tough conversations like how do you start breaking down those walls. What do you put in place to say to be able to really get to the heart and the root of the of the issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Carrie, you're so kind like think so highly of me. I don't know that I have like the secret sauce answer, but I'll tell you what I've done and what I've seen to work and also this idea I'm saying like, oh, get your messaging and in play as if it's this like easy.
Why wouldn't you have thought of that? Yeah, totally not the case right like it is so complex. And I'm lucky that they the team here where I'm currently they did such a good job with messaging and branding it's been so nice to step into it. And you listen to so much like as you're taking it in.
And that's where I came back to like, Oh, I I'll just listen. I'll ask questions to people throughout the whole organization. It can be as ease it can be people on sales. It can be co founders, tech teams, R &D teams, and I'll ask them a bunch of questions. It might be something like what are you hearing people say? What was that thing that you presented to a now customer that clicked in their brain to say, Yep, that's why.
And I think, like, sometimes there's this divide with marketing, especially in the tech world because of, you know, the stereotypes of both sides. But the reason that I love like the environment that I'm in is everybody's just like, No, go ask talk to whoever there's no red tape, like, put time on whoever's calendar. But just asking the questions and then listening to presentations, I will sometimes, especially when I first started a place, I'll be on a call that I'm not really adding to, but I'll listen to the co founder, or I'll listen to CISOs. And I'll take notes about things that they said and then like manipulate them into a marketing way and see if that's going to be part of our messaging. And then as we figure out, like, Are things working on social?
How do we pull this message into a small clip for a short social video? We'll kind of massage it and take it from there, but it's always going back to that core component that we want people to know about us. I think sometimes with marketing, we always want to evolve and do something different and whatever.
I think that there's brilliance and consistency. Once you have that message, even if you're changing topics or you're going from a top of funnel conversation to middle or bottom, you can still string that along and have that consistency throughout and have that messaging that you know resonates and just move it along or change it a little bit based on where the channel is. I'll tell you, for example, for one, some of the feedback came from a third-party meeting. Some of it came from episodes of podcasts before I came. It's the story of our co-founder being a practitioner and him understanding the scars of CISOs, from personal experience to creation. It's something that I've incorporated in parts of the strategy and multiple messages and different pieces of content. I think that it's really important to listen and hear those elements and then pull them into what you're doing. It helps not be distracted by the next shiny thing. How do we do a shiny thing, but still stay true to what we need to say and who we need to say it to? Storytelling is so key.
Speaker 2: In a way, what I love about this is it's the giving credibility of the company through the person who created the company and lived where people are. I find that founders sort of lose sight of that they were once they built the thing because they were once the person who had the pain to begin with. I love that you're pulling that through. I think that's so key. It sounds like from the lot of what you're doing from a marketing perspective is making things more conversational in general. Even by telling this story, it all of a sudden opens up to all these questions I have that I can't answer because we don't have time. Even just that, you tend to be able to make things so naturally conversational. For what we talked about from the point of this podcast is about how we do that. The importance. Let's talk about why you're feeling like now's the time to make things conversational to begin with.
Speaker 1: I'll talk specifically about our audience and cybersecurity in general. It can be very, very heavy with the information being shared by companies, by marketers, by news sources. There are multimillion dollar breaches. People's lives are changed. There's so many elements of why we have cybersecurity solutions and the fear mongering and the technicalities of it being shared so loosely.
This is opinion-based, but it was just a lot all of the time. I was doing some research and I realized that there was at least one company that was created for CISOs because they were so burnt out. Gartner did a report that I think they expect in 2025, hopefully this has changed, that over 50% of CISOs were going to change roles entirely.
Not just leave the company, they wanted to change roles because they were so overwhelmed with the pressure and the psychological impact of what's expected of them. There's that element. Who are we talking to? Who are the people behind our ICP characteristics and how are we reaching them? Are they going to be able to hear us as a unique company when there's so much noise, they're so heavily marketed?
I was on a call with somebody who was a CISO and he kept nicely saying, I feel so special to marketers because we just put so much information in front of them all of the time. That was one element. The other element was, how are people consuming this? How do we take these very technical concepts, these very important solutions and make it in a way that they can hear us with how we're saying it, how we're reaching them, what format we're reaching them in and then know, yes, they'll get the data. Yes, they'll get the severity of this problem and this challenge.
They need to know that they're not alone and that we can have a conversation about it. It's not as daunting as this black hole of 90% of companies are being breached and all of this and all of the things. On the flip side, there might be this promise of be 100% secure, never get a breach. That is not something that anybody can promise.
Right. You have to find this ground of do we need to fearmonger them and is that effective? Can we just be realistic about what we're offering that can be backed up by the solution and speak to them in a way that makes them feel like, okay, yeah, I get that. I can talk to that person. I can have a conversation with that person and being in Rume Sitzos and being at events and talking with them. I know I can have a conversation with them directly. Now I guess I'm just going to do that behind the camera on video and we're going to extend that to other video elements like street interviews and all of these fun things that create this juxtaposition in a very serious industry and very serious, very technical, very, very driven, type A personalities to make it more conversational and get them to be more open to what we're trying to educate them about. It's all education and information that we're sharing and the decision that's made is influenced by that, but ultimately it's their decision and they have to be once comfortable making it one way or the other.
Speaker 2: I think it's helpful to make it conversational too because we don't have to assume that we know where they are. And then hopefully make that, it's just what you were talking about earlier of like, how do we not do so much? Well, you cannot do so much by actually understanding in the moment what people need. And so you just have the thing for that one moment versus trying to anticipate what everything will eventually be someday. So let's have it on hand and create the thing. So I really love when it's conversational, it gives you the opportunity to create it on the fly versus having to have it rip forward right ago. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And to just do it. We talk about, okay, we don't want to assume where they are, but we also can't assume that they wouldn't be interested in a marketer being behind the camera and having education around this space in a very conversational way because I know my role. I know that we are not going to have an in-depth technical banter.
We're not going to talk about what I've coded because I haven't since maybe my space days will date me again. But we also can't assume that they don't want that type of content and that type of channel. And so we get to say, why not? I always say, I'm not afraid to be wrong. So why not just assume that I'm right and prove otherwise?
Speaker 2: Assume that this will work until we know otherwise. Yeah. And if the worst thing out of it comes from
Speaker 1: having a microphone and a tripod, we're doing okay.
Speaker 2: In terms of, I love what you said about, it's all about going to talk about making things conversational and doing that. It's easy to say that from a sales perspective because that's what they're supposed to do. It's just have these one-on-one personalized conversations on a regular basis. That's part of their job. As marketers, it's not seen as part of our job necessarily, unless you do things like podcasting, like we're doing today. But you talked about it, you glossed over it.
I want to circle back on it and make it tangible for people. But you keep calling them street interviews. Paint us a picture here, Kelsey. You can see it in your beautiful brain. So pull it out for us in words of what street interviewing will look like and mean. And then how are you going to create that content? And then what are you going to do with it?
Speaker 1: Yes. So this came from a conversation with my boss. So I started this company in October and just hit the ground running. I'm so sad that I don't have the examples because I was rained out in Boston when I was going to do it. But we will have examples soon.
It's in the works. So street interviews think like everybody on, well, not everybody, but a lot of people on TikTok are doing these interviews. Let me talk to a stranger. Let me ask them about something. Well, I'm going to try to tailor my audience a little bit more to be more in the cyberspace or assuming that they're in the cyberspace and talk to them about what do NHIs mean? What do you think the NHI acronym stands for?
How do you see the cybersecurity evolving from your point of view? Because again, it's very different. On TikTok, there are deep fakes already.
And that's just the norm for them. Whereas when I joined TikTok, I was like, first of all, I'm too old for this, but I'm not. And second of all, the nature of it took a learning curve for me. And so these people who are in college or who are studying the in cybersecurity, they're getting to learn about it in real time, whereas I'm going back and educating myself. So we're just going to have a chat on the street about what NHIs are.
What do you think or know about the challenge at hand? How do you see them evolving with the current state? Because developers aren't going anywhere and hackers aren't going anywhere. And those are two critical components of the non-human identity issue, which is what my company does. So I'm using it as my example.
So where do we see it going from here? And making it like cool hip. I already have the jeans picked out that I'm wearing because I've had multiple teenage girls multiple compliment me. Like as I'm putting my baby in the car, my 17 month old, they're like, I love your jeans.
I'm like, oh, mental note. I am so are they preppy? Are they so preppy? They are so baggy. They're like, they're called elephant leg jeans. They're so baggy and comfy for me because I don't know. I wish like baggy jeans and t-shirts and tennis shoes were in when I was in college and high school because that it's just so comfy. So now I get to go like outside of college campuses, in cities, and pose. I'm going to be a poser like I'm young, hip and cool.
Speaker 2: You're going to a specific conference to do this because you said you're going to zone in on CSOs and the cybersecurity crowd, but you have to know that they're cybersecurity crowd because you're talking about very technical things. So I'm assuming you're going to some sort of conference where all these people will be hanging out naturally.
Speaker 1: It will happen at conferences because I will be there. So if anybody watching sees me, I love it. If you want to chat, let's do it. On the sidewalk. Very fine. Yes, I'm with it.
But I'm also going to be some college campuses. So yeah. Yeah. So I have like a few different, I'm very big on like, let's not recreate the wheel. Let's just hop on the wheel that's already turning. So I have a few different things planned around college campuses this year. And I think that that's like, one, they're, they're, I feel like a little bit more open to that these newer concepts.
They're very comfortable like in front of the camera. It's a great way for us who are maybe trying something new to try in a way where you're like, I don't care what this 20 year old thinks about me, but let's have fun together and like, let's get this going. And what you can do with it and being, being like part of our brand and relevant to who we are and what we're doing, how do you kind of spin that? I think a lot of it is like, we just have to try. You just have to do it. I love that. Yeah. If you're there or if you think it works, like just why not try it?
Speaker 2: I have more questions, but I'm going to pause because our audience is just, is, is more important than I am. And they have some really good questions. So let's dive in here. Beth asked, Kelsey, what is the timeframe you use to test something to see if it works or not? Does it depend on what type of marketing channel?
Speaker 1: Totally can depend on the type of marketing channel and where you're going, but I don't want to say that because that's not like super helpful. I think that if you have a specific channel and you're trying to test something, get an idea of the benchmark of how long before it can take results because there are so many factors, right? It can depend on your budget. It can depend on how big your audience is. It can depend on how many ads or how many things you have running. And then on the flip side, if you're testing this whole new concept, like I am with video, that can take much longer.
If what you're able to measure or not able to measure, it can take much longer. So if I'm testing something and I get to set those parameters, I will do a couple of things. I will set expectations and make sure that they're understood by leadership and who is measuring my success on the program. And we have to prioritize what we're doing and I don't want them to deprioritize something because we didn't leave enough time in order to determine whether or not test was successful. And so I'll kind of determine that and get them on board. The other piece of advice that I will have is when you're launching a new test, especially if there's paid money around it, it can kind of feel like hitting the big red button and being like, oh my gosh, I'm spending money.
I have to answer for it. Like this is really stressful and blah, blah, blah. So for the first week, and I break this down, like first 24 to 48 hours, you make sure everything's running properly. You're not like blowing through budget, your parameters are set. And if you have less budget, err on the side of caution, because I would much rather a test take longer than blow through money and have to answer for thousands of dollars that you're like, yeah, probably shouldn't have had the audience that big or something along those lines.
And then for the first two weeks, your program might be ramping up. I'm using this as an example for like if you're doing a test on LinkedIn or something like that. And the month mark is where I say we might be able to see it leaning one way or the other. So monitoring on a monthly basis as you know, tests and campaigns get a little bit more traction. But my reporting for some of the tests are quarterly goals, only because there's so much fluctuation that can happen. And when you're doing test, Beth, like control your controlables, what can you control in the matter? And then what do you have to consider that could be something that like you didn't anticipate budget changes, audience, etc.
Especially if you've never done it before, it's the first time. So timeframe does depend. But if you find your kind of baseline that you want to, that you want to reference, and then manipulate it so it works for you and works for your team and your budget and your audience size, if you're really nervous about testing something, you can always expand. It's a little bit harder to dial back. So I sometimes will start more conservatively with like audience size or ads or whatever, and then expand from there. I feel more comfortable with budgets. And that doesn't matter if I have a company who's spending $50,000 a month or $5,000 a month, like the value of the dollar is still there. So you can always start conservative if you're nervous about tests or kind of the leadership is like iffy about what you're doing and then expand from there.
Speaker 2: I totally agree, especially when it comes to ads. Google hates when you change too much too fast. So dialing up budgets, left right center will freak it out, and you will get nowhere. So I love what you're saying, Kelsey, and completely agree of like putting a little bit in, getting it dialed in, and then building upon it. I do want to say too that the idea of a testing schedule is really tricky because you don't know what you don't know. And so I love what you're again, just sort of doubling down on the aspect of iteration. So don't just pull something because you gave it three months doing it the same way and decided it didn't work.
Set some clear KPIs and get after it and make changes on a regular basis to really see, give it a good run of if you've tried everything and it still isn't working then okay, but like turning something on, giving it three months, not changing a thing, and then deciding it's not working is not necessarily the problem. So definitely dig into the diagnosis of that.
Speaker 1: And it's not like a true test. So I think a lot of times we want things and especially in the tech world when you're dealing in care, you've heard me say this, we want like a black and white picture. We want like, yes, no, this worked, this didn't work. And we know in marketing that marketing is like a million shades of gray. So we have to find that in between where we say, hey, these are KPIs, these are our assumptions. This is the hypothesis, this is the goal. And we outline those things. And then we have the gray parts where it's, and this is everything that we're testing. So yeah, yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2: I could talk about this all this could be in the podcast in and of itself because I, yeah, I mean, I also believe in, I'm going to pause because Juan Pablo Garcia asked so many great questions and we're all going to get to one of them. I'm so sorry, Juan, but we will circle back with you. How do you deal with the momentum of big established companies have in marketing communications and cybersecurity and the risk adverse ICP you work with? Yeah, yes.
Speaker 1: That's a big question, Juan. And I don't know if I have the full answer. I can tell you what I do. And it's really hard because we don't know what's going on at like Wizard of Oz. We don't know what's happening behind the scenes. And in this case, like, we do have, I'm in a startup, we are, you know, we are cost efficient in what we do.
And I don't have a Coca Cola budget. So I have to keep my blinders on and say like, yes, okay, that's what they're doing. That's what they're saying. We have to be cognizant of that, right? Like we have to be in tune with what big companies and competitors are doing.
And I'll use my last startup as an example. So and this is a good example, we have to be in tune with what they're doing. And we have to get back to that focused aspect that we talked about, which is what are our goals? What is our messaging? What is the best way to disperse and reach our goals? And that might be more like budget friendly than a person with a seven plus figure budget for just marketing.
So I'm going to give a perfect example one. And this comes from my previous company. It's, it was a DSPM startup.
It was since acquired by a major corporation. So we started bidding on Google keywords. And I've worked with wonderful people who were part of the organization, they were extension of us on an agency when I came in, we started bidding on data security posture management, DSPM keywords, when the search volume was like nothing.
Yeah, it was like 50, maybe search queries per month. But we bid on them for months. And we stayed true. They weren't getting like a ton of results. We kind of had to answer to that. And we just had to stay consistent to stay consistent. And then that was in like June, see little lovey hand. That was in June 2022, May, June. And then in November, big ID and whiz who are huge and have astronomical budgets, what we are working with, and like power, right?
Like there's power in their domain. There's so many things that like Google considers. They announced that they were adding DSPM solutions to their stack. And so with that big announcement, our, our search queries grew a little bit like month over month, search queries went to like 1000, 2500, 3500. But we own the search impression share of it, because we stayed true to what our goals were, what our visions were, what we wanted to control.
Even if that didn't happen in the timeframe that it did, we knew that that was, that was a direct connection. And that that was what we needed people searching for in order for our ads. So our search impression share was like between 80 and 90% ownership of those key terms. And it went from 50 search volumes a month to 3500 and plus.
So we benefited from those companies. And a lot of times that'll happen. But like, it's hard to not compare yourself and to not say, okay, well, they're going to beat us out because they have the budget. That can be the case sometimes. But it doesn't have to be an or statement. It can be an and like, they can beat us out with budget.
And we can still win where it matters. And as far as like the risk adverse ICP, oh, it's hard, like it's hard marketing to security people. It's even harder marketing to people who aren't very clear in like what their titles are, especially if you're in a brand new market where you have an ICP, but not really because depending on the organization, the team can look differently, they can be called something different, etc. And so that's where I say, okay, that's where you need that balance of brand awareness and paid targeting. Because the brand awareness, if you're saying the right thing, it will reach the right people takes more time. And you have to understand that. But you can't accomplish anything with one or the other, like it has to be both the effort and the money. And finding that balance and the the risk adverse ICP will, they will come eventually when they have the problem, when they have the pain, when they've heard it from the right person, and say, like, hey, we really need to pay attention to this. And if you've positioned yourself as the source of truth and trust, then you're kind of like one, you're already one like above and totally over time.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, brand y'all, it's like it is, is long overdue. We should have been paying attention to brands so much sooner than we have been. But brand is going to be the key.
The consistency part of showing up consistently with your brand, with your messaging, with those keywords that aren't quite there yet, but will be. I mean, all roads are going to lead. I've been, I've been following Rand Fishkin forever. But recently he has been on this like drum of brand, because it's going to be the thing that breaks through by showing up consistently saying the consistent things to your audience.
And then them researching around the problems they're having and you showing up that recognition is going to pay 10 fold in the long run. So yes, to all of that. Oh my gosh, I want to unpack all of the things that we can't. I know we're just going to, we're just going to come back. This is going to be great. You're going to come back and we're going to hang out and we're going to have, and Juan is going to chime back on in with all these amazing questions along with Beth. We hope to see you next time. Thank you both so much for chiming in. I thank you, Kelsey, where can people find you? They want to know more. Where should they go?
Speaker 1: Oh, just come stock my LinkedIn, get in touch with me and truly part of marketing, like be a soundboard with each other and feel free to do that with me on LinkedIn. Don't like send me a really weird salesy message, but if you're just like, Hey, I saw you on this podcast and that way I connect with you and I know to like to respond to your message and then just soundboard with me. I'm totally open to that. And I feel like that's where we get better as marketers, especially like, Hey, I might not be an expert, but what do you think about this idea? Totally open for that.
I love it. I do it a lot with a lot of people that I know in the industry of various roles. You just, I think like, you've been with me on LinkedIn. I think my LinkedIn, you tagged it. It's like slash Purcell, Kelsey. So I'm staying really elusive, but we'll stick with the Kelsey Purcell.
Speaker 2: Before we go, Kelsey, you're clearly more than a marketer, even though you've been doing it forever. What's one thing for 2025 that you are most looking forward to personally to bring you joy? Or maybe there's something already happening right now that's bringing you joy, but we need more joy in our life.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll do one quickly. I'll do one like work related and one not. So I've been doing walk and works where I go on like a one hour walk, 30 minutes out and back, maybe not even like 45. And I do a like brainstorm, outline, answer emails if I'm feeling like really froggy, but I feel like that's really refreshing and really nice. Sometimes you just need to go touch grass and that brings me joy because I get to see animals and all the things.
Yeah. And then the other part is I live at the beach and I have had all of the things happening the last few years with two kids. So I really want to get back into surfing and like prioritizing time in the water with me and my kids, my husband's a phenomenal surfer. So that's really important to me is like finding that balance, which can be hard, especially if you work from home, but so necessary. And that brings me joy, like going to see where I live and enjoying it. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: Love it. I want to say some so Guernsey, they swim all year round in the freezing cold water because apparently it is so good. I saw my bucket list before I leave Guernsey, I will go swim in like the dead of winter because apparently it's like amazing for your mental health. There is something powerful about the water and I am so here for that. So I'm going to keep asking Kelsey if you've been out so many we're going to make it happen. We always scratched the surface of the conversation that we so wanted to have.
We ran out of time and there was just too many good questions to leave them open ended. So thank you for your time. I will have you back. You just have to come back on. Please do.
Speaker 1: I'm holding it like I love this and we can just have podcasts and tea time and coffee and one and one and no. Absolutely. All day. I was reading Elijah and then seeing Beth and I was my brain was combining the two Elijah, Beth, no, both of you will be there.
Speaker 2: We look forward to seeing you next time. I'll be above. Well, stay tuned for Kelsey and part two. We will get that program for you while I promise. I'm so grateful. So grateful. Thank you all for listening.
If you like this episode, please like, subscribe and share this episode. It was brought to you by MKG Marketing, the digital marketing agency that helps cybersecurity and complex friends get found via SEO and digital ads. It's hosted by me, Kerry Gardio and co-founder of MKG Marketing. And if you'd like to be a guest, DM me.
Oh man. Love to have you all on. Thank you all so much. Thank you to Elijah, my podcast sidekick and we'll see you next time.