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Demand-Geniuses is the podcast for revenue-focused B2B Marketers. We bring you the latest insights and expert tips, interviewing geniuses of the B2B Marketing world to bring you actionable advice that you can implement to accelerate growth and progress you career. The role of Marketing in B2B go-to-market strategy has changed drastically. It's more important to revenue generation than ever as buyer engagement becomes more digital. We equip you with the information you need to thrive in this new, revenue-critical role.
Tom Rudnai (00:01.75)
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Demand Geniuses podcast. So I am super excited by my guest today. So I'll let her introduce herself properly, but I've got Katherine Aragon with me. So Katherine has a long background in marketing. I'll let her go through it all, but for a little bit of context, time leading 30-person content teams at Crazy Egg, rank content at Sales Hacker, which I think is now going to market now. Katherine, I think that's quite cool. I've been seeing a lot from them recently.
and now runs her own kind of consultancy and also another business called Access XL. So first of all, have I got my introduction right? And is there any more context you want to give us on what you're doing?
Kathryn Aragon (00:38.284)
Yes you have.
Okay, well thank you for that. Again, my name is Katherine Aragon and I have been in marketing for 20 years, supporting every stage of the customer lifecycle for B2B companies from startup to Fortune 500. And so as you've observed, I've worked with Crazy Egg, which is conversion rate optimization, with Sales Hacker, which was all about B2B sales. And along the journey,
One of the things that's fun for me is I get to learn from every company I work with and this has resulted in this entire framework of marketing and revenue growth that starts with Lead Gen and goes all the way to retention because it really does take the whole thing.
But along the way, I've also written seven books and I founded the Business and Growth Media Group, which includes a podcast, a newsletter, and a business book club. Currently, I'm an executive coach focused on marketing and revenue growth. And I work with clients to solve whatever growth challenge they're facing, whether that's lead gen sales enablement or customer retention.
Tom Rudnai (01:57.13)
Okay, fantastic. So first of all, seven books. Wow. All on the same kind of topic or when was the most recent one?
Kathryn Aragon (02:00.278)
Yes.
Kathryn Aragon (02:05.83)
No, early on, would, you my first book was largely to promote the content marketing services I was providing at the time. And that one is old, it needs to be updated. But I wrote a little collection around writing and things like that. But I've also written one on sale, customer success. I did another broader marketing book with a client.
So it's been a pretty wide variety and a lot of what I do either started or has been expressed in these books.
Tom Rudnai (02:43.574)
Yeah, okay. Well, and so let's focus a bit more then on before we get into some of the questions that we want to get into on what you're doing now. So maybe give us a little bit more context on first of all, what you love about the current role that you have and how you work with with kind of founders and SaaS companies.
Kathryn Aragon (03:00.024)
Well, and really, when it all comes down to it, the reason I chose Business and Growth as the name of my media group is because growth is something I am passionate about. I feel like we should be lifelong learners, lifelong growers, and we should always be developing and evolving. And so for me, I get a great deal of joy from helping my clients succeed. I feel if I can help a company
Tom Rudnai (03:06.176)
Hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (03:29.09)
grow by serving its customers better, it's a win-win-win. And that just makes my day. So trying to turn that into something that is monetized has been a challenge throughout the years. But ultimately, I realized over the last year in particular, I was codifying everything I do at every stage. Why is it that every time I work with a client, I drive growth that
maybe had been flatlined before. And I started just putting together all of these frameworks and realized, you know what, if I stack them, I've got an operating system that consistently drives growth. So that is my new offer. And it is a revenue growth OS. And it's a consulting, so I would like to work with executive C-suite folks.
to help them drive growth for their companies and help them serve companies that are an ideal fit, keep them long term, so revenue is a given.
Tom Rudnai (04:36.994)
Yeah, and I think that must be one of the real unlocks of having a bit of a background in writing, right? Because what you do, sounds like almost by accident, is you end up chronicling everything that you think and your entire framework and belief system, almost.
Kathryn Aragon (04:49.165)
Yes.
Yeah, it's like, it helps me think. If I can start writing it down and I can see all the connections, I'm very good at creating systems and workflows. And when I start seeing the connections, I put it together and it's like, wow, look what I've done. It gets really exciting. And I do enjoy sharing that with people and helping them implement it in a way that actually works.
Tom Rudnai (05:16.364)
Yeah, okay. And so let's get into a little bit more about kind of the work that you do then. So is there a particular stage of a company's development that you tend to get involved with? Because it might help guide us.
Kathryn Aragon (05:27.086)
Traditionally, people think of me as top of funnel. so lead generation is something they'll come to me for. Historically, they would come to me for running their blog or things like that. Interestingly, I've been trying to get out of specifically content marketing since about 2017.
Tom Rudnai (05:31.031)
Hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (05:47.618)
but apparently I branded myself really well. So I struggled with helping people realize that I'm more of a strategist and a very holistic thinker. So even when I was running the blog, would observe the challenge was, okay, I'm bringing all this traffic, but what's happening with it? And so the goal is to make sure that everything we do from top of funnel to middle of funnel down to the sales and beyond drives revenue.
I even created an acronym for it, RACE, R-A-C-E, revenue and customer experience. If you optimize those two things, you will grow, guaranteed.
Tom Rudnai (06:30.988)
Yeah, okay, so there's two really interesting things in there that I want to ask a few more questions on actually. One that you said is, the almost your own personal brand is quite hard to shake. And it reminds me of a conversation that I had very recently actually when someone was asked, talking about how a brand perception is super, super sticky, right? So the example they gave to me is what do Gong do, conversational intelligence, what do outreach do, sales outreach. In fact, both of those.
Kathryn Aragon (06:36.472)
Okay.
Tom Rudnai (06:57.686)
companies have broadly the same offering and try to view themselves as a one-stop shop. Yet that initial perception that they created around where they started is something that they haven't been able to get rid of. And you can discuss whether they should try. But I think as everyone thinks about personal brand, what you've just said is like, that's something that you need to be a bit conscious of as an individual as well, if you're building your own brand.
Kathryn Aragon (07:18.478)
I think it's critically important and even if you're an employee at a bigger company, you have a personal brand and what you do with it determines what you are able to achieve moving forward. I branded myself as a writer early on and that was my passion at the time but the more I learned about the business, the more I realized the strategy side of this is really fun.
Tom Rudnai (07:27.01)
and
Kathryn Aragon (07:47.214)
I want to do more of that. I was, oh, it was a year two ago, I was reaching out to some warm contacts. These were not cold people. And I just asked that initial question, oh wait, we don't need to help with our content. And it was like, you didn't even let me ask my question, really. So the assumption that you will always be what you are today, to me is a problem that we have to really work around. And so owning your personal brand,
Tom Rudnai (08:04.384)
Yeah.
Kathryn Aragon (08:16.556)
It's really about managing that, making sure people see you evolving and see what you're thinking and see where you are so they understand the value you can provide.
Tom Rudnai (08:25.974)
Yeah, because I think it's quite terrifying, right? I don't know about you only in my career. like, I didn't know what I wanted to do. And it was, you have to go and you have to try things, but it's very difficult if you start getting kind of pigeonholed into that thing, right? I think it's probably something that a lot of marketers can resonate with.
Kathryn Aragon (08:32.716)
Yes!
Kathryn Aragon (08:40.406)
so true.
When I first started my business, I really just wanted to get paid to write. Like I said, I was a writer at the time. And people would say, you need to niche, you need to niche. And I didn't know enough about what I was trying to do to be able to niche or create this big complex business plan. I've had so much fun. This year, I've been creating a formal business plan. And just being able to see
my own growth from where I was 20 years ago to where I am now is really incredible. We are always evolving, I guess. We're always growing and we should always be. But back to me being a writer and chronicling that, when you sit down and write something down for yourself, even if you never share it with the world, it's amazing how much growth you can see. Or you'll hear yourself talking like we're talking today.
and you'll hear yourself say something and go, wow, that was good. Look at me, how much I've developed.
Tom Rudnai (09:45.954)
Well, we were just talking before this as well about editing podcasts and it can go the opposite way where you hear yourself say something you're like, no, what have I done? Okay, there's a bit of both. That's good. That's not just me. I think there's something quite interesting about the transition you're trying to make from food itself is being seen as a writer to a more strategic way of working with clients, right?
Kathryn Aragon (09:56.424)
That is so true. Yeah, I've had those moments as well. Right.
Kathryn Aragon (10:12.098)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (10:13.45)
And I think that is quite symptomatic of how content functions as a whole struggle. do you think that's an E to what extent do you think that that transition has been enabled by it? Has the role of content changed a little bit? guess what I'm getting at that lends itself to a more strategic lens for that skill set.
Kathryn Aragon (10:17.388)
Yes.
Kathryn Aragon (10:29.14)
that is a good question.
Kathryn Aragon (10:34.542)
Content marketing in its early stages was became what it was because the inner net was new and we had many opportunities back then that we don't have today. Algorithms didn't exist the way they do today. It was kind of a wild wild west of opportunity and content marketing was a way to market for free because we were just coming out of everything being analog and
Tom Rudnai (10:44.428)
Hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (11:04.43)
then it was pay for play. You had to execute on this certain level. You had to be uber professional and really quite wealthy to be noticed. All of a sudden, it was equal opportunity and content marketing leveraged that beautifully. But it was around 2015 to 2017 when I started noticing the results were slipping. And a lot of it was, let's say Google's algorithm updates.
these days, those were so consistent and so harsh on people. Like people who had been following what they thought were the best practices all of a sudden found themselves on page 50 of Google because Google created a new rule. And we can talk more about that, this whole game we play with SEO and with social media is what...
Tom Rudnai (11:46.583)
Mm.
Kathryn Aragon (11:59.468)
what I'm trying to overcome because we've been trying to game systems. That's what content marketing was really about. We create our message and then we go game these other systems and platforms in order to get our message in front of our audience. Today, the algorithms are preventing us from doing that. And that puts us in a very different role. We have to think outside the box. So rather than thinking, I'm going to do SEO,
for traffic and I'm going to go to LinkedIn and share this content or Instagram, let's say, and I'm going to send all this traffic back to my website. Nobody wants to visit a website. We're operating in an old way of thinking. So we have to upgrade our thinking. We have to understand how these platforms are working, what their growth agenda is. We have to understand how consumers are consuming content. And then it's not about tweaking what we've always been doing.
Tom Rudnai (12:55.362)
Hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (12:55.438)
It's about doing something entirely different. Today, if you don't have authority and trust, you won't even win at lead generation. Much less Sales So I put a stage above lead gen, and this is part of going to market, is having an authority ecosystem where you create content and you basically create your own algorithm. You own your content platform. You create the ability to cross promote.
within your ecosystem. And that just gives us a way to work around all of these algorithms. Because we do have to still work with them. But we want to be able to move beyond them. We don't want to be so reliant on them.
Tom Rudnai (13:39.434)
Yeah, well, and I think that's really interesting because I think it's something people always try and strike a balance on, right? Is a K. social media platforms, third party platforms, obviously provide obvious benefits and you just can't ignore that. But I think there is also huge risks to being completely reliant on that. My background is in digital media, B2C publishing. That's an industry that's been absolutely hammered by just the loss of their customer over the last 15 years or so. And it's
Completely for them. It's completely intrinsic to their business model right there What they do is they sell subscriptions or ads on their content and either way those eyeballs are that's their their product almost How do you think about that like you say because I think what you're saying is you have to lean into these social platforms But is it does that carry risk and are there ways to mitigate that risk?
Kathryn Aragon (14:28.99)
Yes, it does carry risk and yes, we still need to do it. In my opinion, the authority ecosystem has really three elements to it. You have to own your own media. So for instance, email is probably the best way to make sure that you can send out messages to your audience and they're most likely to see it. Now know there's problems with email as well, but you need that channel.
Tom Rudnai (14:33.014)
Yeah.
Kathryn Aragon (14:57.814)
You need social media because again, as I said earlier, people are not visiting websites. They're going to their favorite social media platforms. And if you aren't present and if you aren't visible, if you aren't sharing value there, then you may as well not exist. So taking your message to your audience wherever they happen to be, that's part of it. And yes, that is...
that feels risky because we are at the mercy of the algorithm. I don't play nice with their algorithm, if I don't show up every single day, if I don't keep people on the platform, if I try to take them off, I'll get throttled. And then nobody, I put in all this effort and nobody sees my content. And that's why I have a third element. And that is what you're doing here. You're creating a podcast where you control.
what goes live. You could put little inserts to promote an event for, let's say, or some promotion you've got. You've got control over how this works and it's a searchable asset. So wherever you publish it, people can find it. Just like we search for websites or for information on Google, people can go to their favorite platform.
and search for a podcast like this one and they'll find you. So if you're creating that authority content and putting it on a platform where you are findable, you essentially give yourself this, it's like diversifying your investments. Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (16:32.194)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (16:38.124)
Exactly what I was thinking as you were talking. The key to leveraging third party platforms is leverage all the third party platforms and then you diversify and you aren't completely reliant on one.
Kathryn Aragon (16:48.982)
Yes, and years ago we said you wanted to be everywhere. And I think there is an element of that, but within reason, because if you try to overdo this, quality goes down because now you're just spending all of your work creating content rather than running your business. But if you do it right, you can have the best of both worlds. You can have this ecosystem going where you cross promote, share the same message in different platforms in different formats.
because different people like different types of formats. And it gives you a measure of control.
Tom Rudnai (17:26.646)
Yeah, and so what role, if any, then, does a company's own website play within that kind of strategy or that playbook?
Kathryn Aragon (17:35.636)
That is, that's the piece that, and again, I keep referring to the difference between now and the way it used to be, because I think that's key to understanding. We have reached a different phase of digital marketing, and that is digital marketing is marketing. That's what it is now. There's not this distinction between, you know, the old way and the new way. This is what we do. So your website,
used to we used to say no no this is a living breathing asset it's it's not a brochure these days i honestly think it's more of a brochure and i know that's a little extreme but it is people only go to your website to learn more about you to answer a few questions and to decide basically do i want to engage with a human with at this place
or am I willing to do the trial or buy this product? They don't come until they're ready to buy. That sounds an awful lot like a brochure to me.
Tom Rudnai (18:42.182)
But yeah, yes it does. But it's funny how marketing kind of comes full circle that the insult of 10, 15 years ago is now just the right approach, right? Or the way to look at things. But I think also you can reframe that as a marketer as an opportunity, right? Yes, okay, your website's role has changed. It's not this kind of living, breathing entity that's gonna nurture people through every step of the buyer journey. But what it does mean is that if the top of funnel is now happening on social, happening via AI and conversational AI,
Kathryn Aragon (18:52.791)
Yeah.
Kathryn Aragon (18:56.93)
yes.
Tom Rudnai (19:11.618)
It changes the role of the website because what you now have is these super high value, high intent, educated prospects who are coming to your website to try and decide whether to buy your product. In what world is that a bad thing?
Kathryn Aragon (19:23.105)
Exactly.
Exactly, and then you understand what you're trying to do off-site. Before they get to the website, you're trying to get them to the point that they're ready to buy before they hit your website. That's the goal.
Tom Rudnai (19:36.93)
Hmm.
Yeah. So it changes how you have to look at your, your website content. It's probably going to be a lot more product oriented that kind of. So I published a blog not that long ago. kind of spent the best part of a week down a rabbit hole looking into the kind of effect AI is having on, on search traffic. Right. And what it's cannibalizing is informational search terms. If you want to find out the answer to a question, you're doing top of kind of start of the bio journey type research. You go and you talk to chat GPT about it it helps you work it out. What you then.
Kathryn Aragon (19:54.456)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (20:05.997)
Yes.
Tom Rudnai (20:07.458)
What isn't really being impacted yet and probably won't be for quite a while is commercial search terms and transactional search terms. So it changes your SEO strategy because yes, you probably need less content, but also it's not these kind of very wishy washy listicles at the top of funnel. It's people with super specific search terms and how do you appeal to that and get them into your owned ecosystem then at that point.
Kathryn Aragon (20:14.616)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (20:30.84)
Well, and this is here we're talking about SEO, essentially. And the thing is, let's go back to what Google actually is and always was. And that is an AI chatbot. So here are these all of a sudden chat GPT perplexity, these other AI tools come out and people are like, why are we even using Google? Because these tools will not only go find the content, it'll summarize it and pull out the answer we want. Well, AI.
Tom Rudnai (20:33.569)
Yeah.
Kathryn Aragon (21:00.716)
Well, Google, I'm sorry. Google ultimately saw this and realized, wait, we have the original AI tool. Let's just upgrade the way we do SEO. So now what they're doing is we type in not a search term, we type in a question. It gives us the answer. Now, if you think about this, AI tools and Google are all user generated content platforms.
Tom Rudnai (21:12.098)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (21:28.332)
We are creating content, they're making money off of it. They're using our information to answer questions. So let's get to the root of what they're really saying. What we're really talking about here is people don't search for a website. They don't search for an article, they search for an answer. And this is what you're saying. Once, you know, the top of funnel, I want an answer, they go to chat GBT.
or sometimes perplexity, it kind of depends on the context for me as to which one I'll go to. But if I'm doing a direct search for a website, or if I'm doing, want to understand a product better, then those are the commercial terms. I use Google. Many times they will give me the direct answer I want. Other times they'll take me to the website. And then the website is really the content we're creating should be answering questions.
So if we think in terms of what do our people, what do our ideal customers need to know in order to make us the market of one, the number one choice for them. Now we're not just optimizing for Google anymore. We're also optimizing for all of these AI tools. And I've actually had prospects come to me and say, I learned about you through AI, not through a web search. So.
Tom Rudnai (22:48.63)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (22:51.586)
This fundamentally changes the way SEO works. I think it's less about keywords anymore. And it's more about understanding our customers, the information and the questions they're seeking, the questions they have, the information they're seeking, and making sure we're providing that on our website. we are the thing these AIs use to provide answers and make recommendations.
Tom Rudnai (23:17.054)
Yeah, it's about understanding the bio journey, right? Because when you do that, you can start understanding, okay, what are the questions that people are trying to answer at each point? And then you can make a decision as to at what point you want to try and bring them into your domain. Where, like, which points in that bio journey, do you go and meet them where they are? And when do you say, okay, now you're asking questions that we actually need a bit of a, because it's, it's, you can build different relationships in each of these channels, right?
Kathryn Aragon (23:20.534)
Yes.
Kathryn Aragon (23:29.944)
yet.
Kathryn Aragon (23:40.79)
Yes, exactly.
Tom Rudnai (23:41.204)
own channels give you ability to build up first party data and potentially try and use that with a call to action to build a human to human relationship. And there's a point in the bio journey where that's how you help them along, but it's not at the start.
Kathryn Aragon (23:53.142)
Mm-hmm. Right. So yeah, if you understand the entire journey and understanding the touch points where you can intersect with their search for answers, you want to build authority and trust at each of those touch points. And that's really what it's about. Because if you think about a company that is there for you before you buy, you feel really good about that company. You feel like, well, if they're there for me before the purchase,
they'll be there afterwards. Whereas the companies that make it difficult to find answers, those are the ones that move down your selection pool. The ones that provide the right information are the ones that move to the top. That's how we need to be thinking about content, SEO, customer experience, because to me, customer experience starts before the sale.
Tom Rudnai (24:44.812)
Yeah, well, and it's interesting because I think content marketing traditionally almost by design has made it super, super difficult to answer questions. It's that thing like if you Google a baked beans recipe, but beans on toast recipe, the first thing you're going to see is the history of beans on toast. And then you're going to see all the different components to beans on toast because they're trying to jam beans on toast into that article as many times as they possibly can. it's a flip. Yeah, exactly. And so you have to scroll three quarters of the way down before you get your recipe.
Kathryn Aragon (25:07.31)
And it is food and toast.
Yes. And see, that's why that focus on keywords lowers the quality of our content. It provides a worse customer experience. And so I'm trying to look at everything I do, marketing, customer success, all the entire thing with different eyes. Because I believe we're at an inflection point where we are reinventing what it looks like. And those of us who figure this out early are the ones who are going to win long term.
Tom Rudnai (25:14.104)
So it's...
Tom Rudnai (25:20.311)
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (25:43.328)
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I'm going to, so let's take the perspective of someone who's listening to this, who maybe works in a relatively small marketing team and it's kind of hearing this and thinking, okay, so I need to optimize my blog for AI. I then need to have these great bottom of funnel pieces that can capture questions. I also need to be across every social channel. Like where do you start and how do you, it's got to be a process of building up to this, right?
Kathryn Aragon (26:07.974)
Yes, and you just said it, building up. When I work with a startup or a beta, I start building from the bottom up because remember revenue and customer experience are the two most important things to business growth. you, let's say you have a startup, right? So you've got to get paying customers before you can move up in your marketing plan or your growth plan.
Tom Rudnai (26:10.796)
Hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (26:34.982)
And the idea is you make sure that the next level where the customer is going to go is already built out. So if I want to get some new customers, I try to build that onboarding sequence first. That's also going to help me understand how to talk about the product. I could create a couple of, I call them edge content. It's basically product content, a sales presentation in article format.
And this can be used to support customers, but also to sell to them. This becomes your sales enablement content. And so real quickly, with just a few assets, you can advertise, you can do customer support, you can sell to the customers. And then once you have that, your three revenue levers pulled, now you can start building out your authority ecosystem. And if you do that right, you've taken care of all of your content.
Tom Rudnai (27:34.338)
So it's about and kind of links into the like winning by design and the revenue architecture piece that people that gets a lot of the people talk about a lot now, right? So one thing I can think again as someone trying to implement this it requires a long-term perspective, right? And so I don't know you work a lot quite directly increasingly with founders who founders often are very impatient.
Kathryn Aragon (27:41.388)
Yeah.
Kathryn Aragon (27:45.262)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (27:49.975)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (27:58.806)
people with a board that's asking them to hit revenue targets. So it can be a difficult thing for a marketer to go when they're asked what they've delivered this year. It's like, yeah, okay, we didn't get to the leads yet, but all the framework is there, ready. Like, how do you go about managing that conversation as you implement the architecture that you need to implement?
Kathryn Aragon (28:02.456)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (28:17.078)
I think it's about building their confidence that what you're doing is strategic and will affect the bottom line. Again, keep revenue as your number one priority. But the reason customer experience has to go with that is if you don't provide a good customer experience, they'll leave, they'll bail on you, and you won't have the revenue. You've got that symbiotic relationship you've got to focus on. But if your board understands
that you're focused on revenue, which is going to impact them. Then they'll support what you're doing. They just have to understand it's strategic, it's measured, and it will affect the bottom line positively.
Tom Rudnai (29:00.642)
Yeah, and so that part it's measured. How do you go like talk talk us through a little bit of what are you measuring?
Kathryn Aragon (29:07.968)
Okay. Traditionally, we measure a lot of vanity metrics, engagement numbers, and especially at the top of the funnel. Further down, think less so, but we're still measuring things that don't, that may or may not make a difference. When you are measuring revenue, you're measuring time to revenue, things like this, you know, how quickly are we converting people? Those are actually the right numbers.
Tom Rudnai (29:18.37)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (29:38.21)
Then you get further down, how long are we retaining people? What's our churn rate? And if we can improve those numbers, the three things you really have to focus on is you've got your number of sales, the size of those sales, and then how long are you keeping customers, because all of that impacts your revenue. So measure those and then use those other numbers as leading indicators.
to understand, am I engaging the right audience? Do I need to refine my messaging? So those vanity metrics, I'm never against them. I just don't think we should build a business on them.
Tom Rudnai (30:21.878)
Yeah, it's always my, I probably said this on this podcast a number of times, but it's always my thing. Valid to metrics are great. They're very useful leading indicators, but they should be no one's North Star. Across all of go to market, the only North Star anyone should ever have is revenue. And it's about how can we collectively do the best job of contributing to that. So there is always going to be an element to that, particularly for marketers who've traditionally been put in this pigeonhole at the top of the funnel. And they will always still be found as board CEOs, CROs.
Kathryn Aragon (30:31.211)
Exactly.
Kathryn Aragon (30:39.682)
Right.
Kathryn Aragon (30:46.755)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (30:50.231)
right.
Tom Rudnai (30:50.612)
even some CMOs who have come from that world and will continue to do that.
Kathryn Aragon (30:55.062)
And that's why I want to tear down the silos. There should be this continuous flow, just like the customer experience is continuous. So should the internal workings of the organization. It's a team. And we shouldn't have marketing doing one strategy, sales doing another, and customer success doing yet another. This is all one continuous flow. If we want to create the best customer experience, it needs to work that way.
Tom Rudnai (31:04.811)
Hmm.
Tom Rudnai (31:24.13)
And so from an organisational standpoint, I guess one thing you're saying is we need to kind of collectively own all of the key metrics, right? Because what you're talking about in terms of some of the metrics that we look at as marketers, they're metrics that organisations are tracking. They're just not part of the marketing conversation at the moment, but that's a missed opportunity.
Kathryn Aragon (31:32.622)
Yeah.
Kathryn Aragon (31:40.736)
I think it is. When we are too siloed, we confuse the customer because every group within the company has a different message and a different way of talking to people. So it feels disjunct. We can also end up overlapping, which creates more confusion and also wasted resources. And we can leave gaps where people fall out of the journey. So by making a more cohesive, holistic strategy,
we fix all of those gaps and problems that are interfering with revenue.
Tom Rudnai (32:16.93)
So at a tactical level, sounds like I think one answer that we can kind of paraphrase here is around measurement and making sure that you are structuring people's KPIs and their goals in a way that encourages the right behavior. Are there other kind of tactical things you've seen work when it comes to building that alignment between marketing, sales, and really customer success as well, which I think is a key part of what you're saying, right?
Kathryn Aragon (32:43.074)
Yes, and I'll tell you a story of one client. And this is what really opened my eyes. think this project was key to some of my thinking now. And this company did zero top of funnel marketing. And I helped, I came in and helped them develop this bottom of funnel knowledge base slash sales enablement content. And we started growing.
Tom Rudnai (32:59.65)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (33:11.946)
incredibly within 14 months they exited with a very successful sale. we, let's see, what did he tell me? We doubled sales, we cut time to revenue in half, we doubled up sales. So we're talking revenue and this was zero top of funnel marketing. are so, I don't know, we're so in love with these strategies that may or may not even be necessary anymore.
because things have changed to this degree. But he prioritized knowing his customers and we created precisely what they needed to buy and stay with us. And he was competing against Salesforce, some of these big names and he was winning in his industry.
Tom Rudnai (33:59.776)
I think it's such an interesting thing. I almost recognize it as a parallel of the way that I feel myself behaving sometimes just day to day where sometimes strategy doesn't correlate well with our obsession with efficiency, right? We love output and there's something about strategy which is taking a step back and not having a tangible output necessarily for the day. So I can, if I'm gonna go and try and get customers for Demand Genius, I can spend a day building a strategy.
or can spend the day sending a hundred outreach messages to people, which one's gonna make me feel good at the end of the day? It's the one that produced a vanity metric, which has got three replies and I've got a bit of dopamine from them. So it's so reflective of our mindset in general.
Kathryn Aragon (34:40.76)
Mm-hmm.
I have the same struggle myself. It just feels like more tangible if I've taken that kind of an action. But if we will every now and then, and we need to do this regularly, step back, evaluate what we're doing strategically, and be willing to ask the hard question, does this even work? Or is this fluff? We talked before this call about no fluff marketing. I think that's the key. We've got to get rid of the fluff.
Tom Rudnai (34:49.73)
Mm.
Tom Rudnai (35:12.236)
Yeah, and it's a challenge. I think it's probably one of very few functions that has this issue, but where the fluff is almost imposed on it, right? have to because people don't particularly, we talked about as well. Everyone thinks they're a marketer, right? Until they actually have to do marketing. But most functions have this natural suspicion of anything when they try and be fluffy, right? Imagine you don't get sales reps or sales leaders that are fluffy about their goals. It's very transparent, very simple.
Kathryn Aragon (35:18.783)
yeah.
Kathryn Aragon (35:41.666)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (35:41.674)
As a marketing, you have to be the one to lead the push away from what you're doing being fluffy.
Kathryn Aragon (35:47.958)
Right. When I was at Sales Hacker, we were the media company for the brand. so, yeah, it was all fluff, really, if you think about it. I was trying to be very strategic when I came on. Growth had flatlined, and they wanted me to reignite growth, which I did. But it was a hard battle because I was streamlining and I was removing.
activities and they were like no no no that's not how we do things and I think but look at the result of what you've been doing let me try my way and within nine months we had started the day curve.
Tom Rudnai (36:26.594)
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it's also it's a it's almost a misuse of the VC funding that we that we get as software companies, right? We've taken we have we're lucky that we have access to a tremendous growth capital generally because of the scalability of what we do. It's attracted a lot of VC money, but we've always funneled that towards this aggressive, inefficient top of funnel strategy. Whereas what it should be going towards is allowing us to take this slightly more longer term strategic view that isn't obsessed with the day to day.
Kathryn Aragon (36:33.762)
Yes.
Kathryn Aragon (36:42.894)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (36:53.358)
And really if you move that focus, all that energy down to all of the revenue levers, now you're going to spend more time talking to customers and I know you're very good about doing that but some companies are not. It's only through talking to them that you're going to find that product market fit very quickly. If you understand the way they talk, the things they care about, what matters to them,
Tom Rudnai (37:08.864)
Hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (37:20.35)
then you're going to refine your message much more quickly at the bottom of the funnel. Then you can build that top of funnel and you won't have the fluff because you know precisely what needs to happen up there to build your authority and trust.
Tom Rudnai (37:35.136)
Yeah, and it's something I did. was a question that came up in my mind earlier a little bit, actually, was we talked about you need to understand the bio journey in a lot of depth, right? And I think a lot of people will be sitting there thinking, okay, how do I do that? So one way is always going to be conversations. Are there other things that, or like specific tactics that you recommend that can help you build that empathy and that understanding?
Kathryn Aragon (37:47.331)
Yes.
Kathryn Aragon (37:56.716)
I feel like for me personally conversations are so rich that they help me. Someone will say something, just drop a nugget. And I'm like, I hadn't thought about that. But you know, we can send surveys. We can test messaging on social media. I use LinkedIn that way a lot. I'll put out a lot of different posts and just look at what resonates. There's so many lurkers. If I can pull the lurkers out, I know I've got a good message.
So by testing your messages, by sending surveys, asking direct questions, interviewing people, especially if you have really good customers, interview them. Ask them what's different. Why are they choosing you? Why are they staying with you? What can you do to make it even better? And get to know those people. Basically, it's like doing ride-alongs. You want to go around with your best salespeople and
Tom Rudnai (38:36.8)
Hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (38:53.826)
figure out, you listen to those conversations because there's something happening there that's right and we need to tap into that.
Tom Rudnai (39:00.726)
Yeah, I love that. think it's something I'm very conscious of as we build out demand genius of making sure that we're creating a mechanism for everyone in the company to spend time on the front lines building that. So we have this concept of the customer concierge. So we don't really want to be a particularly sales led business. It doesn't make sense for us with what we do, but we do want to make sure that we are there and still interacting directly with customers. And so this idea of the customer concierge where basically they're just there as a resource. If you need help deciding whether to buy.
Kathryn Aragon (39:10.517)
nice.
Kathryn Aragon (39:23.512)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (39:30.11)
on boarding, getting more value from the platform. It's just people who you can book half an hour with and book up and we'll do our best to help. But it gives us this great entry point for us as a business. Everyone during their onboarding is spending a decent amount of time as the concierge. And it's something which you try and build a muscle for everyone to go and you've got an hour block twice a week or something where that's what you do.
Kathryn Aragon (39:50.488)
think that's brilliant. really do. know, sales led companies have this advantage in that they're always talking to the customer. If you're a product led company, you've got to engineer that because it isn't inherently part of the sales. And I think that's why many companies don't bother. It's uncomfortable to be proactive about reaching out to your customers, especially if you built a business that didn't require it. So it's being intentional.
Tom Rudnai (39:57.762)
Hmm.
Tom Rudnai (40:02.284)
Yeah.
Kathryn Aragon (40:18.7)
and making sure you're going out of your way to talk to people really is your best bet.
Tom Rudnai (40:23.808)
Yeah, no, I love that. I think we could go on for all day, but I think our listeners probably don't have that much time. So what I'd like to do before I let you go is we have a couple of quick questions that we'd like to do at the end of these episodes. So if that's okay with you, let's get into that. So first of all, and we've covered this a little bit, in your career, what's the biggest change that you think has occurred in B2B marketing since you started?
Kathryn Aragon (40:28.014)
you
Kathryn Aragon (40:49.474)
B2B marketing is going back to pre-internet strategies. So it is more pay to play, it's harder, and it requires smarter execution.
Tom Rudnai (40:59.586)
Love that, and I think you can see that so much in the tactics that people use as well. What's coming back, it's community, things like that, like getting opportunities to get close to people. Yeah, love that. For you personally, what skill or what trait has been the biggest needle mover in your career?
Kathryn Aragon (41:08.76)
That's right.
Kathryn Aragon (41:18.19)
For me, it is thinking outside the box and being willing to break the rules.
Tom Rudnai (41:23.552)
Nice, I like that. That's a good one. You sound like a nightmare to manage, but... Yeah, okay, so you don't need to. But I think that explains why you've gone out on your own, Katherine. Cool, and then another one. So if I were to give you a blank check to do kind of one initiative, place one big bet, you'll kind of plan a...
Kathryn Aragon (41:24.884)
No.
I could be, I suppose, but I always bring results, so hey.
Yes, probably so.
Tom Rudnai (41:51.648)
budget that no one would ever be stupid enough to actually give you and let you lose with? What would you do and why?
Kathryn Aragon (41:58.742)
I would build a media empire. So it would build on this ecosystem idea, but I would be a Red Bull doing it. It would be that high quality because attention is the ultimate currency.
Tom Rudnai (42:06.657)
Mm.
Tom Rudnai (42:12.992)
Yeah, I like that. I mean, it's what you had an opportunity to do a little bit with Sales Hacker, right? That was there, your kind of outsourced media arm, and they set it up deliberately almost with journalistic integrity, right? It's that kind of approach.
Kathryn Aragon (42:18.189)
Yes.
Kathryn Aragon (42:25.482)
Yes, exactly, and I did it with Crazy Egg as well.
Tom Rudnai (42:29.098)
Yeah, okay. And it's interesting. So I think of that as almost in contrast to what you say about owning about not worrying so much about owning the customer. Do you want to talk about that a bit?
Kathryn Aragon (42:41.838)
I hear what you're saying. Yeah, and the media brand is a fun thing for me. And it's that place where you build authority and trust. So it doesn't mean the other stuff wouldn't be happening, but I would go having built out the bottom stuff and all the revenues going, we've got everything else in place. I think it would be great fun to build an incredibly impressive media brand.
Tom Rudnai (42:53.206)
Mm.
Tom Rudnai (43:09.57)
Yeah, okay. No, I like that. And then one more and then I'll ask you for a quick recommendation. So I always think it's important. You have a lot of people listening to these and people come across really, really smart. But we're not, we're all idiots sometimes. So in your career, what was the biggest fuck up that you made? Like that moment where your heart sank?
Kathryn Aragon (43:26.853)
yeah.
Kathryn Aragon (43:32.474)
rather than just one, I'm going to kind of summarize all of them. Opportunity blindness. I am so stupid when it comes to seeing an opportunity that's staring me in the face. And I'll pass on, I'll just make a random comment that they go, okay. And then walk away and I'm like, wait, what just happened? That's my thing. I guess I get.
Tom Rudnai (43:35.146)
Okay.
Tom Rudnai (43:45.986)
Hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (43:56.47)
I get stuck with whatever I'm thinking or wherever I think it's going and I don't see that good opportunity.
Tom Rudnai (44:03.404)
Yeah, I get that. I get it all the time at conferences, for example. I'm so conscious of these places. I don't want to be that person who's like trying to sell all the time. And so you end up someone's literally like asking you about the product and I'm not going to tell you about that.
Kathryn Aragon (44:06.508)
Yes.
Kathryn Aragon (44:16.246)
Exactly. Yes, it's that kind of a moment. It's like, oh no, did I do that again?
Tom Rudnai (44:20.788)
Yeah exactly. Nice. Is it something that you've got better at and like how? What told me through how you've fixed it?
Kathryn Aragon (44:27.214)
I don't like do you ever really recover from that? I'm trying I'm trying to be more conscious and more aware and maybe more intentional. So a lot of this strategy that I've developed is it's for me as well as my clients. And so making sure I'm very aware of the touch points and that I'm, I'm putting them first instead of just I have this thing on my mind that's making me blind.
Tom Rudnai (44:38.082)
Hmm.
Kathryn Aragon (44:55.438)
you know, really pay attention to the people I'm with.
Tom Rudnai (44:58.016)
Yeah, okay, nice. And then last question is just one recommendation or something that you think people who are listening to this should go and check out that's going to teach them something, a book, a podcast. I am going to ban any of your seven books though.
Kathryn Aragon (45:12.12)
okay. Yeah, that's okay. So this is a book that was recently on our podcast. It's called Lit, L-I-T by Jeff Karp. And this one was a fun read. It wasn't this super hard strategic book, but it shifts the way you think about productivity and success. To me, it's definitely worth reading. think anyone and everyone could get value from this book.
Tom Rudnai (45:38.678)
Nice, I love that. I've been super topical to what we've been talking about a little bit, right? Of, we conflate those two things because the short-term rewards lie with productivity, the long-term rewards lie with success and strategy.
Kathryn Aragon (45:42.092)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Kathryn Aragon (45:49.23)
Thank
Exactly, and this guy looks at it very differently from the average person. He's ADD, so a lot of this strategy was developed for himself to make himself do stuff like that he knew he needed to do, and he's incredibly successful. So I think we can read it and take his word for it.
Tom Rudnai (46:11.328)
Nice, okay, perfect. And then last thing, just quick opportunity, this is why I'm going to allow you to mention any of your seven books, anything you're doing at the moment that you'd like to briefly plug.
Kathryn Aragon (46:18.382)
Well, I am launching this new growth strategy, the Revenue Growth OS, and it's really what we've been talking about today. It goes from that first touch, first brand awareness, all the way to keeping customers for life. And this is what I'm working on. I'm super excited about it. I would love for your listeners to check it out at KatherineAragon.com forward slash OS.
And if you book a call and mention the podcast, I'll give you a special launch price.
Tom Rudnai (46:52.507)
and you've taken my line there, because I was going to say to everyone, you need to go there, you need to tell her that you came because you listened to this podcast, because then she'll come back on.
Kathryn Aragon (47:00.14)
That's right, I will come back on but it'll benefit everybody. So yeah, come check it out and let's book a call.
Tom Rudnai (47:07.072)
Nice, perfect. Catherine, this has been a pleasure. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on, spending some time with us and sharing sharing your ideas.
Kathryn Aragon (47:15.64)
Thank you for having me. It has been a joy.
Tom Rudnai (47:18.346)
Awesome. Right, thank you everyone.