Mark Huber [00:00:01]:
Opinions are cheap and proof is gold. I'm Mark Huber, and this is the Proof point. A show from user evidence that helps go to market teams, find ideas, get frameworks, and swap tactics.
Mark Huber [00:00:17]:
In 2025, every B2B marketer needs to be focused on one thing. Building trust. So I went to the toughest industry.
Mark Huber [00:00:24]:
To pull that off.
Mark Huber [00:00:25]:
Cybersecurity. And talk to six of the best B2B marketing leaders to learn just how they're doing it. On today's episode of the Proofpoint, I'm joined by Mary Yang. She's the CMO of six Sense. No, not that.
Mark Huber [00:00:36]:
Sixth Sense.
Mark Huber [00:00:37]:
The cybersecurity Sixth Sense. Mary and I dove into what really happens behind the scenes of cybersecurity marketing. Whether it's layoffs, acquisitions, navigating tricky leadership dynamics, and bouncing back from campaign missteps, she's seen it all. She shared the hard lessons she's learned throughout her career and was very vulnerable about some of the career defining moments that shaped how she thinks about marketing. I love this combo. Enjoy.
Mark Huber [00:01:01]:
All right, so Mary, I have to break this to you. You realize you're on the proof point, not that slurps.
Mary Yang [00:01:09]:
Unfortunately, yes.
Mark Huber [00:01:11]:
I don't even think I really know the full story from last night, but we had a dinner that we co hosted with Novatic and Ray, who's here, and one of the co founders of User Evidence kind of yelled across the table and said, you had a podcast idea. So let me hear the actual idea and I'll tell you if it's good or not.
Mary Yang [00:01:26]:
Sure. So this is hilarious. We're actually brainstorming activities, sort of next projects for Brandon, Brandon Ho, who I love and adore. And he was saying, you know, he's working on some things. And I said, hey, you know, have you seen those YouTube videos where they're just slurping noodles and you're just watching people eat and slurp noodles?
Mark Huber [00:01:45]:
Yep.
Mary Yang [00:01:45]:
And he was like, yes. And so we had this whole idea about, you know, he could run a new project where he's slurping noodles, all kinds of noodles, but also brainstorming. So it's a noodling while noodling podcast slash video series.
Mark Huber [00:02:01]:
I would subscribe to that.
Mary Yang [00:02:03]:
Right. I feel like it's pretty. I feel like it's pretty cool. And then, you know that slurps was Kelsey's fabulous tagline.
Mark Huber [00:02:10]:
Yes.
Mary Yang [00:02:10]:
So now we're just. We're all about slurping.
Mark Huber [00:02:12]:
That's amazing. All right, well, I guess I'll have to keep my eyes out and see if that actually comes to life sometime in the next couple months. So I very thankfully got to sit through your panel earlier today and before we get into the actual panel and some of the things that you talked about and really landed with me, I would have not been able to guess that you were dealing with a little bit of chaos right before the panel. What were you working through as a.
Mary Yang [00:02:34]:
CMO as part of the integration efforts? Today was the day that the IT team basically merged our Outlook accounts. And so one of our salespeople, for some reason, his HubSpot got completely sideways and he was emailing out of our customer support email and then prospects were emailing back, but it was going to the customer support inbox instead of him. And so I was like, got on this thread with seven different people, including the IT teams, and it was like, Mary's going to have to deal with this. And I'm thinking, why do I have to deal with this?
Mark Huber [00:03:06]:
Well, and then you're probably what, like an hour, less than an hour until your panel started?
Mary Yang [00:03:11]:
Well, no, that was like literally three minutes before the panel started. And I was like, okay, I'm going to shoot off this email also. I'm getting on stage. I will be back in an hour.
Mark Huber [00:03:20]:
Well, it was an awesome panel. There were, I think it was three different CMOs, marketing leaders and a moderator talking about just really career lessons and kind of horror and war stories over the years. So I'm excited to talk about a few of those. I'm relatively new to cyber marketing in general. This is the first time that I've been at cyber marketing Con. I've learned so much in the two days that I've been here. But I think one of the things that I've really learned is that marketing to buyers in cyber, they're a very skeptical and delicate bunch. So how would you talk about and describe cyber buyers?
Mary Yang [00:03:57]:
I definitely think the skepticism is true. I would probably push back a little bit on the delicate piece. I think it's that they get inundated. Right. There's a panel earlier today where there's discussion about sales and marketing alignment and being more empathetic to the person you know on the other side of the table. And I think the same is true for the buyer. Right. If I think about that buyer, they're in these high pressure roles.
Mary Yang [00:04:22]:
Oftentimes when things go awry, they have to be on and they have to sort of at the drop of a hat, be like, oh, yeah, like that random alert from a log that came online seven days ago was xyz. And here's all the things that I did to immediately counteract what was happening. So I think there's like empathy there. And I think that the skepticism that they have really stems from they've got all of these things they're being asked to do. There's all of these vendors out there saying, we can solve your problem, we can solve your problem, we can solve your problem. And I work for a vendor, I work for a technology vendor. At the same time, I recognize, like most people on the buying side that it's not just tech that's gonna solve the problem. And so I love that answer.
Mary Yang [00:05:06]:
There's also just like all of that that comes into play, Right. And I think that's all part of what drives that skepticism. It makes it difficult really for marketers to kind of break through the noise because Once you get 50 vendors doing this, like, they just write them all off.
Mark Huber [00:05:22]:
I love everything that you said in that answer. What have you seen work well when marketing to those buyers to really build trust and confidence? And I think everything that you mentioned is for good reason too. It's not like they're being unrealistic.
Mary Yang [00:05:34]:
Yeah. So I think that there's a couple things, right? Certainly I'm a big proponent of content that is useful and what is it that you can give and sort of provide to your target audience that's gonna feel tangible and real to them? Certainly every company I'm with, they're like, oh, we sell to the CISO and we need to be super high level and all of that jazz. And I just don't know that that is really the end game. You know, this top down approach sometimes works, depends on the industry, but oftentimes it's the folks who are like day in, day out, hands on keyboards that you really have to convince. And I've worked in organizations where that line of sort of middle manage. I mean, they're the ones holding it all together, right? They're the ones that are stopping all of the stuff that's flowing. All the random great, you know, CEO listens to McKinsey podcast and now like you have to do XYZ.
Mark Huber [00:06:28]:
Oh no, that never happens.
Mary Yang [00:06:30]:
Those middle managers are stopping that from getting to the front lines of people who are actually needing to do the work and vice versa. If they find something that they think is like, not cool, they're just going to shut it down. And so for that group, what can you offer that's meaningful? I think back to when I was working on some cyber threat Intel. I was working for a cyber threat intel vendor, and Russia invades Ukraine, Sort of the world goes crazy. And we had all of this intelligence around critical infrastructure. And you could see what was happening with Russia and Ukraine. You could see where Russia was using sort of IT and cyber attacks to go after Ukrainian critical infrastructure. And you had all of these IOCs.
Mary Yang [00:07:14]:
So what we did was we looked at, well, do any of these IOCs and TTPS match what could happen here in the United States? What does it look like for, you know, a mapping of potential IOCs to a malicious actor that would attack the US energy grid? And then we pushed out a report saying, hey, here's the areas within the United States with these particular critical infrastructure sectors that might be vulnerable in light of all of this stuff that's happening globally, and maybe we should do something.
Mark Huber [00:07:44]:
To shore that up. Lived and kind of worked in a Martech bubble for the last four. Coming up on five years, and the stakes of buying the wrong Martech tool, relatively speaking, are fairly low. Maybe your personal role is on the line, but as a cyber buyer, the stakes that you just described it is an order of magnitude, probably five orders higher, because these are serious, serious consequences. It really puts it into perspective. So maybe let's get back a little bit to the panel that you were on this morning. And it was about war stories and, you know, basically career learnings that, you know, if you were to give advice, you know, the good advice and maybe things to not do to your younger self, these are the things that you would do. So one of the things that I wanted to talk about is just the highs and lows of being a marketing leader at a cyber startup.
Mark Huber [00:08:33]:
So what are some of the highs and what are the. Some of the lows that you've had.
Mary Yang [00:08:36]:
To deal with when you're running a campaign? And it goes really well, like, you kind of. My general rule of thumb is, like, everyone wants marketing to be a science, but it's like this quasi science. It's not really science. There's a lot of numbers. Yes, I believe in numbers. They're important. But at the end of the day, you're gonna run a campaign and you're gonna put a stake in the ground and say, I think I'm gonna do xyz. This is the ROI I'm gonna get.
Mary Yang [00:08:58]:
Whether or not that happens, you can certainly put parameters in place to measure and hopefully get there, but it's kind of just a crapshoot. You're just kind of making it up. And so when it actually Happens when you can pull off a campaign that really hits the numbers or exceeds the numbers. That's amazing. You just feel so good about it. And I think that there's a lot of those examples, and I think that's like, when maybe marketers ride high. Right. I would say there's aspects like that where it's like, oh, you're, you're just doing your job well and you're.
Mary Yang [00:09:28]:
You're exceeding your goals.
Mark Huber [00:09:29]:
All right.
Mary Yang [00:09:30]:
Now, the lows in general, I think the lows end up being about, like, people more than anything else. Right. And when I say people, I also mean things like culture and, you know, the environment. What I've sort of run into is just coming into an org and realizing, oh, like, there's just a lot of morale issues maybe. Right. I'm coming in at a time. I joke a little bit with, like, Gianna. We joke about, like, hey, when.
Mary Yang [00:09:57]:
When a new CMO comes in, it's because things aren't going well. It's kind of like when a new sales leader comes in, it's because things aren't going well. And whether that's true or not true, like, that's kind of the feeling. And so you walk into this space where, like, morale is low and you have to figure out why is morale low? Is it about, you know, the individuals themselves? Is it about the work that they're doing? Is about the company culture? Is it about the way that the teams are structured, the collaboration or lack of collaboration? All of those aspects. And that's the hardest piece. Like everything else, the tech stuff, the operational process, even, like, creating campaigns, it's.
Mark Huber [00:10:36]:
Really, like, none of it to do with, like, actual marketing.
Mary Yang [00:10:39]:
Yeah, it's really, really just all people. Like, that is gonna be the hardest thing.
Mark Huber [00:10:44]:
So during tough times like that, how do you keep people motivated and, you know, keep them up as opposed to feeling down? It's not easy.
Mary Yang [00:10:52]:
So I think there's a couple of things, like, I wanna be as transparent as possible about the strategy, where I think things should go or need to go. And I think, like, being very clear, very direct about it and making sure that everyone knows what's expected of them. Right. Like, that's a big thing is especially in moments of change, people are like, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing or not doing. So I'll be like, here's the broad strategy, here's the goal. This is the goal you're gonna have to work on hitting. And we can talk through how you do that. We can talk about all of the ideas that you might have to get there.
Mary Yang [00:11:23]:
I'll give you some ideas too, and then let's go off and try it. But I think that's a big one. And then letting folks know that they're valued, their contributions are valued, I think that's a big piece too. Just being willing and open to listen. Right. I joke right now. And every once in a while, I've shown my team, like, my calendar where I'm like, quadruply booked at times throughout the week. But when a team member pings me on slack and says, hey, can I get 15 minutes? I'm like, let's find 15 minutes.
Mary Yang [00:11:51]:
It doesn't matter that I've got four meetings I'm supposed to be in right now. Like, let's have a talk. If you think it's important to talk. I'm making the time.
Mark Huber [00:11:58]:
I love that. Now, a lot of what you just talked about, I feel like you may have had to go through recently because aren't you working through an acquisition right now?
Mary Yang [00:12:05]:
Yes. Yep.
Mark Huber [00:12:06]:
So maybe share just some of the things that, you know, you have been working through and have kind of learned by way of this process.
Mary Yang [00:12:12]:
I definitely think things like that, you know, just being open, being direct about where I want the team to go, the goals that are going to be set forth in front of them, and I think just, like, feedback along the way. I'm asking these team members that I'm sort of inheriting to do things and exercise muscles that they haven't necessarily done before. And. And I think part of the thing that is so interesting to me is, like, people will come and say, you know, I need 10 minutes. And then they'll say, I don't know if I'm doing this right. And I'll say, walk me through your logic, right? Like, tell me how you got to this. And at the end I'll be like, yeah, that all sounds good. Like, maybe the numbers aren't where we want them to be, or maybe that isn't the way that we want to approach things moving forward.
Mary Yang [00:12:54]:
That's okay. I understand that this is where you got to. We're going to move on from here, Right. We'll iterate. It'll be better. And I think those things hopefully have helped with a bit of that integration overall and kind of moving things forward together.
Mark Huber [00:13:09]:
So you mentioned numbers, and it wouldn't be a panel at a marketing event without talking about numbers and attribution and reporting and whatnot. So one of the things that you said on the panel I loved, and it was when you were talking about attribution, and I think it was a hypothetical question where the CEO is asking about something and then you had a great answer back to the CEO and you didn't give an answer. You really asked the question. And what was that question?
Mary Yang [00:13:33]:
Yeah. So the CEO was pushing for, you know, multi touch attribution. And I said, hey, you know, let's look around the table. How many of you C suite individuals book a demo from an email that hits your inbox from marketing? You know, and not a single one of my counterparts at that table raised their hands. And in fact, the CEO was like, nope, I don't. I like, delete the email. I'll go to DuckDuckGo. I'll, like, do some research in, like, in a way that you can't follow me with any cookies.
Mary Yang [00:14:02]:
And then, you know, I might tell someone else to reach out if I'm interested in learning more so that I'm not giving away my information.
Mark Huber [00:14:08]:
Yeah.
Mary Yang [00:14:09]:
And I'm like, of course. This is why multi touch is a very difficult thing to do.
Mark Huber [00:14:14]:
So I don't want to talk about attribution, mostly because it's boring and I don't want to get you all riled up. But there's, I think, a fair degree of education that needs to take place at your level with other people on the leadership team who probably don't know as much about marketing as you do. So what have you learned by way of having to educate your peers and even the CEO on just what you're doing in marketing with your team?
Mary Yang [00:14:35]:
There was a point earlier in my CMO journey where I would get really just sort of defensive.
Mark Huber [00:14:42]:
And I'm in that kind of stage right now in my marketing leader journey.
Mary Yang [00:14:47]:
Yeah, I'd get defensive and I'd be like, look, you hired me at as the expert. Can you just trust what I'm telling you? That was very early on, and I think I realized over time that it's not actually about trust or not trust. Right. The job of the CEO is to make sure that the company as a whole is on the right path. And so they're going to ask the questions, they're going to poke around. If things aren't great, they're going to poke even more. Right. It's all a little bit of like, spot testing or temperature checking.
Mary Yang [00:15:16]:
And sometimes that education really needs to happen multiple times. I think about the sort of advertising thing about, like, you have to see the same message like a dozen times for it to stick and what I've realized is that happens also from marketing and education to your C suite peers and your CEO, sometimes it feels like Groundhog Day with the same message.
Mark Huber [00:15:37]:
I literally wrote that exact bullet in my notes and said it feels like Groundhog Day. And it's critical to educate the leadership team over and over and over again on topics like attribution.
Mary Yang [00:15:47]:
Yes. And other things like, you know, the demand model or brand. I mean, there was a panel earlier where someone was talking about like, you know, if you go into a CMO role and all they care about is demand gen, like that's a red flag. And it's interesting because as silly as it sounds, it feels like all of my CMO roles have been about demand. But I come in and I'm like, if your exit strategy is this, which is typically to get acquired, you can't do that without a brand.
Mark Huber [00:16:12]:
Yep.
Mary Yang [00:16:13]:
No one's buying a know nothing company. I shouldn't say no one. But like most, most big orgs aren't buying a know nothing company. And so brand has to become a component.
Mark Huber [00:16:22]:
I love that. So one of my favorite things that you said on the panel was your response to what is the biggest success story from your career in cybersecurity marketing. Do you remember what you said?
Mary Yang [00:16:32]:
I did, I said, can you talk about that story? I said that I successfully negotiated a one year contract with an unnamed analyst firm that everyone loathes. I can talk about it a little bit. I've actually done this a couple of times now and I'm probably going to be put on a list.
Mark Huber [00:16:53]:
I think I'm already on that list. Yes.
Mary Yang [00:16:55]:
But I understand. In some ways I can sympathize with where this firm is coming from, where they want multi year contracts in place. But at the end of the day, especially if you're a startup, it just makes no logical sense to get locked into a long term contract, especially if again the goal is to exit within a certain number of years. Right. And so I've been able to a couple of times now work through this negotiation process where if you start the conversation sort of early enough with your rep, the trick is you do a sort of cancel rewrite and instead of doing what is essentially a one year, you're doing a like 18 month renewal and then it looks like it's a multi year and sort of passes a sniff test. But ultimately I think my biggest negotiation tactic is just that you have to be willing to walk away. And if you're not willing to walk away from that relationship, then there's no negotiation tactic that's going to work. And I was telling some folks on the way to dinner last night, my big thing is, like, I really love negotiating with vendors.
Mary Yang [00:18:00]:
I love it.
Mark Huber [00:18:01]:
Did you, like, get a start in procurement or something or where does this come from? Are you the first person that I've met that's not in procurement that has said that?
Mary Yang [00:18:08]:
I don't know what it is. I think it's just that I'm very outcome driven. I typically am working with very small budgets on the marketing side. And so I'm looking for every way to stretch that dollar. I also got a pr sort of measurement tracking software technology. I'm not gonna name one year down to, like $4,000 for an annual subscription.
Mark Huber [00:18:32]:
Can I hire you to negotiate for us or what? Yeah.
Mary Yang [00:18:35]:
Yes. Yes, you can moonlight on the side.
Mark Huber [00:18:38]:
Oh, my gosh. So one of the other things that really stood out to me in the talk was the piece of advice that you gave to your younger self, and it was about really the need and power of advocating for yourself. Can you expand on that a little bit more?
Mary Yang [00:18:51]:
I mean, when I started my career, I was just willing to sort of take any job, right? I had student loans. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I was an English major, and I wasn't going to become a teacher. And so, you know, things kind of went sideways because I thought I was going to become a teacher. And I just started working. And in that first job, sort of two years went by without any cost of living adjustments or any raises. Even though I thought I was doing good work and I was being told I was doing good work, I went to my next job and I didn't negotiate. And it was awful overall.
Mary Yang [00:19:24]:
But I realized that, you know, everyone else around me was making considerably more than me. And so it wasn't probably until the third career, like, third job that I had in my career where I was like, okay, I need to negotiate. And I mean, I would get, like. I was, like, getting sweaty. I had, like, been there. So nervous, right? I thankfully, in that one, the hiring manager didn't pick up the phone. So I was like. I just left a message.
Mary Yang [00:19:49]:
It's like, probably rambling, hurried message, and.
Mark Huber [00:19:53]:
I'd love to hear that voicemail later. Yeah.
Mary Yang [00:19:56]:
And then I, like, hung up and I was like, oh, my God, what happened? And it was fine, right? There was a bit of negotiation and life moved on. With the fourth job, that was the one where I lost a part of my soul. I worked all the time. And when I say that I was, like, emailing with the CEO at one in the morning, that's what was. For five years of my life, I gave everything to this company and was just thinking, like, oh, they'll recognize my value and they'll promote me and they'll get me where I need to go. And ultimately none of that happened. And I wish I had known, you know, that might have been like 10, 11 years into my career. I wish I would have known that.
Mary Yang [00:20:34]:
Yes, hard work is important, and it pays off in a lot of ways, but no one's going to advocate for you the way that you do.
Mark Huber [00:20:41]:
So that is an incredible lesson to learn at any point in your career. How does that play out today? Because you still need to advocate for yourself.
Mary Yang [00:20:49]:
I think I get to be in a really privileged position, and I've said this to a few people in my life recently, where I don't need my job. And I realize that is a luxury. And so in a lot of ways, for me, the advocacy is around my team and the people that I think do really good work and making sure that they're given the opportunities to grow, that they're being given appropriate salaries and recognition. That's really the big thing for me is making sure that all of those folks that I rely on to kind of keep things moving and help helping to meet company goals like, that they're taken care of.
Mark Huber [00:21:27]:
So asking for a friend, AKA me, this is the first time that I'm in the seat of a marketing leader and hiring and growing my own team. So how do you go about those conversations with your team to kind of know what's important for them and what you need to advocate for?
Mary Yang [00:21:40]:
I think it's just questions, right? It's like, what do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to do? Do you have a clear sense of that? And if you don't, that's totally okay, right? You don't have to. I think one of the things that on the panel, my two panelists, Joy and John, said were, you know, like, you don't necessarily have to climb the ladder. If you really love product marketing, you could be a great product marketing leader and not be a cmo, right? So I think that's absolutely acceptable. And I think that's one thing that we probably should say more of. I'm not 100% sure that I would choose to be a CMO again if, like, I was doing my life over, but I think that it's having those conversations with Your staff offering them the option to explore other areas. One of my roles early on, like, I got my start in content marketing and then I ended up doing street execution, sort of demand marketing. And it was really helpful. But I was also like, oh, I kind of missed the content piece.
Mary Yang [00:22:37]:
And I just chatted with my boss and said, hey, you know, if there's an option to do some content, if there's some ability for me to do that while taking care of all the rest of my stuff, I'd love to just keep my toes in that bucket a little bit. And she was like, great. Yes. You know, and having those conversations and making sure that your staff know that they can have those conversations with you, like, that's important.
Mark Huber [00:22:58]:
So you mentioned the word execution. And this was a bullet that I'm looking at in my notes right now from the panel this morning. And what you said, you said, and I love this. Strategy without execution is absolutely meaningless. Yeah, tell me more.
Mary Yang [00:23:12]:
And my story was like, you know, I talk with folks who are younger in their career and they're like, I want to do strategy. And the thing is like, that's exactly what I was like 15 years ago was like, I want to do strategy. What do you mean? I have to write this newsletter, right. And I just, I realized as I've gotten more experience that you can think up of the most brilliant strategy in the world, but someone has to do something with it. Otherwise it literally means nothing. It's just words on a PowerPoint slide.
Mark Huber [00:23:41]:
Or worked at Accenture for two years. I'm very familiar with what you're talking about.
Mary Yang [00:23:44]:
Exactly right. Management consulting is a perfect example of this. Right. And so at some point, I think you both have to, especially if you're in the startup world, if you're developing the strategy, you have to have an understanding as a leader of what it's going to take to execute that. And your team has to have an understanding of how they can execute to help drive that strategy forward. They can absolutely be part of that process. Right. And developing that strategy or developing the execution.
Mary Yang [00:24:09]:
Execution of it in broader terms, that's all fine and good. But at the end of the day, like, marketing is about doing things, getting things done, getting things moving. And so I often think, like, you know, great, like, strategery is fabulous. What are we doing to actually drive things forward?
Mark Huber [00:24:27]:
Yeah. And I feel like earlier in my career I was thinking, how can I get promoted faster or how can I stop doing the actual work? And I'm a first time VP of marketing. Right? Now I still enjoy doing the actual work. Yes, I do enjoy the strategy part and getting to do the things that I've always wanted to, but I wanted to be that type of VP of marketing that is still getting into HubSpot is still like doing the actual marketing. I just find straight up people management as being really boring and not really what I want to do, but it's.
Mary Yang [00:24:54]:
Also like the hardest part of the job. So I'm like, oh, if I need to upload a list of HubSpot, like, let me go do that instead of dealing with this HR nightmare over here, like, that's the thing I would choose to do. I'll write a blog any day of the week if I can avoid, like, having to deal with, you know, hey, your performance isn't great. Hey, let's work on this. Yeah, I mean, those are the hard.
Mark Huber [00:25:13]:
Conversations, not the fun stuff. So to wrap everything up, the fun stuff, what are some of the big things that you're thinking about as a marketing leader for next year? We're almost, you know, at the start of the new year and I'm currently in the thick of planning right now.
Mary Yang [00:25:26]:
Yeah, that's a great question. I wish, I think. I wish I had a better answer.
Mark Huber [00:25:30]:
You don't have to give away the secret sauce.
Mary Yang [00:25:32]:
Ultimately, I don't know that I think that there's a ton of secret sauce. Cyber marketing is. It's this whole ecosystem in and of itself. But I think you've got the big events, you've got the digital tactics, you've got ABM you could be running. I feel like it's a little bit of all of those things. I don't know that there's a silver bullet. If anything, it's about. To me, I think for next year, the biggest challenge and the biggest potential win is for my organization at least, like really being able to set ourselves apart, improve brand awareness.
Mary Yang [00:26:08]:
Those things go hand in hand. And then making sure that that's in service of a larger goal, which is to drive revenue and drive pipeline and demand. Right. And ultimately it's a little bit of all the potential tactics that get you there. I was listening in on a influencer panel at the conference and it was interesting because my takeaway was cybersecurity. Influencers can be great if you have a bad product and you have to be, as an organization, you have to be willing to potentially get roasted. And I'm like, oh, maybe influencer marketing is not quite the right thing at the moment, but that is the one that, like, if there Was any tactic out there where I'm like, oh, it'd be interesting to explore, might be that one.
Mark Huber [00:26:54]:
So for me personally, I've done some influencer work myself outside of the cyberspace, but I think what's cool is there's been this evolution from the start of this year. A lot of companies asking to do paid posts and the volume of requests that I was getting just went up and up and up and now it feels like it's getting away from just the hey, will you post this for X dollars and more. Hey, you have a following in our ic. We'd like to partner with you. Let's create some sort of three to six month partnership where you are kind of involved in our marketing doing different things, not just, you know, trying to post as a megaphone on LinkedIn. And it's been really interesting to see that evolution firsthand. So I'm curious if that came up at all in the talk.
Mary Yang [00:27:40]:
I think there was a little bit of that in the talk. It was, you know, these sort of longer partnerships versus a bit of one offs and that, that's, that's, I think what influencers would prefer so that they get a little bit of time to get to know the company that they're partnering with. It was also if the company that they're partnering with, at the end of the day they're like, you're not the real deal. They're just going to say that.
Mark Huber [00:28:00]:
Yeah. And what it sounds like is cyber buyers more than anyone are able to sense that right away and they know their stuff.
Mary Yang [00:28:07]:
Yep, 100%.
Mark Huber [00:28:08]:
I love it. Mary, this was awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the proofpoint.
Mary Yang [00:28:11]:
Thank you.
Mark Huber [00:28:13]:
Thanks for listening to the proofpoint. If you like what you heard during this conversation, you probably will like evidently my bi weekly newsletter where I share my biggest hits and get honest about my misses as a first time VP of marketing. You can subscribe using the link in the show notes here. In this episode, the proof point is brought to you by User Evidence. If you want to learn more about how our customer Evidence platform can help you build trust and close deals faster, check out userevidence.com.