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What are the best brands doing to stay relevant, build trust, and create content smarter?
At Share Your Genius, we have the same questions, so we're tapping the best in the space for their answers—one voicemail at a time.
Join us each week for quick hits of insights from b2b marketers and leaders.
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[00:00:09] There's a lot at stake when you're entering a new market. But without trust, even the best strategy doesn't actually work. Christie Horsman, she understands that. And so I needed to call her because I was curious about scaling marketing efforts. She's the head of marketing at UpCodes, but Christie loves helping small to mid-size companies scale into new markets by keeping one thing front and center. The customer. She's a big believer in knowing your go-to market inside and out, and she's seen how the right mix of influencer partnerships, thought leadership, and engagement can open doors even in the most crowded categories. She's also helped launch the industry's first AI powered
[00:00:49] code to spec workflow so she's no stranger to navigating complex launches and carving out a new space. So as I'm thinking about the growth of Share Your Genius and the growth of our clients, I called her to ask, "What is the secret to scaling marketing efforts?" And here's what she had to say.
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[00:01:16] Christie Horsman: Hey Rachel, sorry I missed you, but I got your message and I heard your question about entering and scaling into new markets. In my experience, I've had the privilege and opportunity in my career to enter in a few new markets at a few different companies.
[00:01:35] The first thing is market research, understanding the market, understanding the players in the market, you know, you could be entering a new market where nobody's there.
[00:01:45] That's something that we're doing now at UpCodes where we're creating a category. Or you could be entering a market like we did at Thinkific where there was a very serious incumbent, someone who, a company that you know, had a really strong brand, that we had to position ourselves against. So understanding the market and understanding where you're gonna sit in that market, understanding your value propositions to your customer is really important.
[00:02:08] And how they're going to measure you against anyone else in that market. The next thing is,most marketers would lean on is paid ads. That's not incorrect, but I think that the way that people use them could be incorrect, and you end up spending a lot of money really quickly when you have to realize that when you're going into a new market, the biggest thing that you need to be building
[00:02:33] is trust. You're a new player in an already busy space. You need to build trust with the buyers, your buyer persona, your ideal customer in that market. And one of the ways that we did this when we attacked the LMS space for Thinkific Plus, and, actually going all the way back to Hootsuite days,
[00:02:54] is we did a couple things with people who were in the market. So today we call them influencers. We called them ambassadors in the space, people who were power users of other products. We invited them to use our product. We recorded them using our product. And we created a lot of content around these ambassadors or influencers in the space.
[00:03:15] Andonce they see someone who they know and they trust using a product that they're saying may trust, the trust obviously starts to build. The other thing that we try to do is use content in a way that is obviously very top of funnel, but we think about it as thought leaders in the space.
[00:03:33] And this is something that's obviously been done before, but I think where we are today in AI driven search, trust and thought leadership kind of go hand in hand. The difference is, is that your thought leadership is not coming from a company, it's coming from an individual within that company.
[00:03:48] So whether that's a really dialed in marketer on your team, that's your CEO, your CMO, someone who can talk really well, has a really great kind of online persona, but also has a really great background that they can have interesting takes, interesting opinions, and what's going on in the market. That content is really important.
[00:04:11] And I think it's really interesting because marketers will probably look at that content and kind of scoff and say, "Well, that's not really gonna get you anywhere from a traffic perspective." But what it is getting you is it's building that trust. And without building that trust in that new market, you're never gonna be able to establish that foothold.
[00:04:26] So we wanna have this, you know, unique genius position, of someone coming out and really bringing that thought leader in the space and again, building that trust.
[00:04:36] Through all of this, it can be great content use on your website using your paid ads. This is where you start kind of building through that top to mid to bottom funnel content, and you start building your funnel out and driving conversions
[00:04:50] whether that be through direct paid ads or it be through on your website, or it be through affiliate marketing, if that's something that works within your industry. I think the scaling part is capitalizing again on customer reviews, capitalizing on, what we call lighthouse customers.
[00:05:07] So if you're able to, you know, you target and win a couple of really amazing customers that, you know, if I win these and I get their logos on the site, I'm gonna be able to win, you know, five more. And then I win those and I win five more. And it really is about logo building at that point and making sure that you're, again, building the trust.
[00:05:24] That's what people are looking for.
[00:05:26] Thanks, Rachel.