Matt Lyman [00:00:00]:
You got to take your people, you know who they are, you know what their roles are, you know what they need, you know the benefits that they're going to get from you, you know the pain points you're solving for them at their company. And then you have to serve it to them in a way that is going to have that emotional connection and it doesn't have to be sadness. Right? Laughter is one of the best.
Nicole MacLean [00:00:22]:
I'm Nicole MacLean and this is Content Matters. Created in partnership with Share Your Genius. Our show consists of three parts. One where we pull in other Compose.ly team members to talk about content that matters to you, like a viral LinkedIn post or the latest trend. The second always includes an in depth interview with a leading marketer, sharing actionable insights and a little inspiration. And finally, you won't want to miss the last segment, aptly called Friends Matter, where we're shouting out some of your friends and mine for their content wins in B2B marketing. Let's cut through the marketing chaos together. Ana, welcome back to the show.
Ana Osuna [00:01:01]:
Hi, thanks for having me again.
Nicole MacLean [00:01:03]:
Of course. This is kind of full disclosure to everyone, an impromptu recording because we just got some tea in the industry. Sorry, I had to that LinkedIn is making some moves on its terms of service. Ana, do you want to let us fill us in what's happening?
Ana Osuna [00:01:23]:
Yeah, well, I don't know much, but I just found out Apollo and Seamless.AI, I believe, were banned from LinkedIn. What does that mean? I don't know, I just have questions. I'm very confused.
Nicole MacLean [00:01:37]:
But yeah, yeah, LinkedIn just, just kind of dropped the Yep bomb this week at the time of the recording. So you're probably listening to this about a week after Ana and I recorded. So there could be more info in which case, yeah, we'll talk about it. Connect with us on LinkedIn, we'll continue the conversation. But this feels kind of, I mean, very much historical in that not only can they not. It's not just like the API went down, it's not that they can't access it, but like their LinkedIn company pages gone, essentially.
Ana Osuna [00:02:13]:
Yep, yeah, I saw that. I'm seeing a lot of theories, but it's very new, so I don't know what's happening.
Nicole MacLean [00:02:22]:
And Linked like paid ads. I mean one, there's so much of a case study that I would love to explore, like for these brands, the impact on them. But then of course there's the impact to users of these services and how much these services rely on giving reliable, verified, accurate data thanks to a LinkedIn integration. So we don't have a lot of information. We're not sure how this is going to impact data quality. But Ana, like as an outbound sales rep, what's going. What are some questions you have right now, like what are you trying to prepare yourself for and how this could change your day to day?
Ana Osuna [00:02:59]:
Yeah, I have a full list. When I saw this, I was like, because I use Apollo, so I don't know how this is going to impact outbound for the ones that we use those tools to actually do our work. So far I haven't seen any changes on my end. It's working fine. I'm getting all the information. But this is all very new. So I'm thinking like, maybe it's working for me because I still have some net new data that I'm still working on and maybe once I finish that, it's like, how am I going to get new ones now? Because how are they going to get new ones so they won't be able to give those to me. Now that is my number one question.
Ana Osuna [00:03:38]:
But yeah, thankfully I haven't seen any impact directly to me just yet. But I'm so confused, like what is going to happen now? Well, no, about it. Like I follow some Apollo leadership and they're not saying anything about it. So it's like, give us some information.
Nicole MacLean [00:03:56]:
They might not know yet. They're probably trying to figure it out. But then there's also features like, hey, let's notify you when there's a job change. Well, nine times out of ten, I'm sure that's because a LinkedIn profile gets updated. You brought up a good point though, because I, of course you think of Apollo, you think of Seamless, you immediately go to Zoom Info. But it sounds like their API pull is less from their data is less from LinkedIn and more from email signatures.
Ana Osuna [00:04:23]:
Yeah, that's something I read. Yeah, they were saying that Zoom Info, it's not going to be affected because yeah, they get their data from email signatures, but some people say that they're going to go after them the next. So I don't know. And also another theory that I read was that Sales Navigator is going to. It's planning on doing something and they're trying to remove the competition.
Nicole MacLean [00:04:49]:
So just don't hate the player, hate the game. But I do think it just goes back to whoever owns the data. Like data is king, we talk about content is king, content is queen all. And it is, but the data is, is the piece because that whatever that is whatever industry you're in. I think this is just a good reminder that LinkedIn owns the data. And I remember talking to someone weird. I won't go into the six degrees of separation, but someone who worked at Tesla and their parents were like, I can't. Like, I mean, it's a car company.
Nicole MacLean [00:05:22]:
Like, I mean, that's only going to last for so long. And they're like, no, Tesla does not consider themselves a car company. They consider themselves data company because it's collecting data. I think Amazon would probably think similarly. Like, they don't make their money from Amazon prime, they make their money from Amazon Web Services. So it's just interesting to think about, like, what is the data that we own and what is the. And how do you make that. Because it's really the competitive moat to.
Nicole MacLean [00:05:47]:
To point, like, LinkedIn can take out its competition if it chooses to go into that market because it owns its data.
Ana Osuna [00:05:53]:
You're not. They have the power. So it will be a smart move.
Matt Lyman [00:06:00]:
I'm Matt Lyman. I am a marketing leader. I've had about 20 years of experience in B2B marketing across multiple different industries, selling to lots of different people at lots of different price points. And I'm super excited to be here today to talk and chat and talk more about really marketing and all of that jazz.
Nicole MacLean [00:06:22]:
Yeah. If you wouldn't mind going into a little bit more of all those companies. What's your journey into marketing? What's the background?
Matt Lyman [00:06:29]:
It is a crazy, tangled mess I like to always think about as the best stories are. It's true. It looks like a treasure map that a child drew. I went to school for theater. I have a degree from a bachelor's degree in acting and playwriting. So it's not a double major. It was a double emphasis. And my now wife and I met there.
Matt Lyman [00:06:51]:
We started dating when I was Riff and she was Maria in West Side Story. So that was fun.
Nicole MacLean [00:06:57]:
Okay, that's amazing.
Matt Lyman [00:06:58]:
Yeah, I know. It was fun to like be in our college town and we'd go places and be like, wait a minute, I've seen you before. Yeah. Why are you together? But when we graduated, we had a lot of friends that went to different places, theater majors. They went to Chicago, some went to New York, people were in la and some went to Seattle. And I'm from the Seattle area originally. And I was like, yeah, let's just do that close to my family and get big kid jobs. And I was doing a bunch of restaurant stuff and I realized I'd like to be able to pay for rent in the Seattle city limits.
Matt Lyman [00:07:31]:
And I found a job at a bankruptcy law firm in collections. You're all. I'm going to pause for a fact. But no. What ended up happening is I called out my SDR job because I was calling people all the time in. It was a lot of pain and sadness and well, I mean just like the bashing of your head against the.
Nicole MacLean [00:07:48]:
Wall and all that stuff. It's a heavy. It's a heavy.
Matt Lyman [00:07:50]:
It is heavy. And not to bring that down, but it taught me a lot about a lot of different things. And while I didn't like what we were doing, that company actually gave us a lot of opportunity to learn. And I started going. I went back to school, I went back with them for project management training and all of that. And after a couple of years they opened up a marketing job and I was like, I don't know anything about marketing. But I sort of had all of the stuff now that I did this project management. And I came on as a heavy generalist.
Matt Lyman [00:08:19]:
We had a leader who was doing strategy and then me and a woman who I don't want to say she was literally doing admin stuff but like in the. She was a chief of staff, not an admin. So it was just us and learned a ton. I actually implemented a Microsoft Dynamics CRM during that. It was my project for my. My Lean Six Sigma green belt. You're welcome if you're a 30 Rock fan or if you're a nerd did all that. That company got purchased by a competitor and I followed one of our C levels to a new company.
Matt Lyman [00:08:51]:
That new company was in the merchant risk management space. So if you think about every time you buy something from any site and you've got a logo for like MasterCard or Visa on that, they have signed an agreement and this was a company that was monitoring those sites to make sure you're not selling anything illegal. That was where I got really into lots of stuff events. I was doing revots before I knew what revots was. I was working with sales. I was doing sales ops and marketing ops but also managed a small team and I went back to school for my mba, decided I want to know what to do. My wife was working at a college and so I got cheap tuition. Be honest about it.
Matt Lyman [00:09:29]:
But I went back and I did that. We had our first child during that piece and I realized that my commute sucked and I now got an mba. It was time for me to find a new job and I found chef software if you are in the tech space, the DevOps space, you probably know who Chef was. And I started there in 2015, and over the next five, six years, I just worked my way up. I'm a learner. I love to learn and grow and do more, find out more, learn about people and in every aspect. And it started with just essentially campaigns and operations, just me as program manager. There was people doing campaigns.
Matt Lyman [00:10:06]:
I'm not trying to take away from that, but I did all those things, fixed the pipeline, learned, started grabbing the data and understanding how reporting worked. And over time, my responsibilities grew. Somebody once called me a battlefield promotion, because as people would leave, they'd go, hey, Matt, do you want to try this out? And I'd be like, sure. So Chef had a successful exit. Successful is a subjective term. I know there's people, if they're seeing this, are going to be like, unhappy. There's always people about that, right? But it had a successful exit. It was purchased by Progress Software, and I was asked to become a member of the Chef leadership team for there.
Matt Lyman [00:10:45]:
And I stayed there for two years, built my team out, rebuilt my team out, did all of that, met some really cool people, learned a lot about how to work in a business unit that is doing marketing, but then works with a corporate entity on all of the operations and all of the advertising and all of the other stuff. So that was a fun structure. And after about two years, again, I've been at all these companies for five, six, seven years. And after two years, I was like, I've learned everything that I can here. I'm not moving anywhere. The corporate team has a great structure, a great leader. I'm not going up there. So I started looking and I found LeanData.
Matt Lyman [00:11:22]:
Lean Data is the leader in lead matching, routing, revenue orchestration, which I know revenue orchestration's taken a change in the turn, but they do great work. I was a user, I loved the product. So I went there and over about almost three years, had a really awesome time building my team, understanding further about the users of this. And I mean that. But it's our network, right? All of these people on LinkedIn that we all know, that we all connect with are the people that were I was selling Lean Data to and learning about how this all worked. And then also the big piece of that is taking all the content and understanding, like, hey, we're in this shift. How do we tag onto that and grab onto that and run with content to really build that out. So I'm now not at Lean Data.
Matt Lyman [00:12:10]:
So, yeah, I'm currently doing a lot of learning. I've decided that like, hey, I'm going to use this time to obviously rest up, take some time to look for a new role, all of that. But like, hey, you know, let's go finish that 6sense certification. Let's go sign up for the demand based one. Let's go to Asana. Like any free certifications that are out there right now, I'm like, let's do it. Because why not, right? Like just keep going and understanding it. So when you go to the next.
Nicole MacLean [00:12:35]:
Spot, what has been the most interesting thing you've learned in the certifications?
Matt Lyman [00:12:41]:
Oh, I'm not going to call any companies out or anything but a lot of them are, hey, learn how to use our tool. Some of them are very much a, you have to buy our tool. Like it's almost robotic as you're reading through it. So you have to put a filter on there. Actually, I'll go back. You know, I was actually a certified Salesforce administrator at one point and rev.
Nicole MacLean [00:13:02]:
Ops and yeah, yeah, revenue, yeah, it.
Matt Lyman [00:13:05]:
Was all that big nerd likes to break stuff and put it back together. And I think I learned a ton during that of the certification. But that is so hands on. Like you are going to be doing these things. So when you go and you look at some of the newer tech companies and the newer certifications, not all of them are as hands on. Some of them are very much about the theory and the idea. The big thing I learned is sign up for free trials for stuff. Because I'm going to use Asana as an example.
Matt Lyman [00:13:32]:
If you don't have a paid account for Asana, it's actually kind of tough to do some of the certifications. So sign up for the free trial, get to know it, understand it, dive into it and really like, oh, hey, this is how we structure it. And I think when I look at marketing leadership processes and all of that, I love processes. But if you're not rigorous in it or you go for a long time without relearning it or restructuring it, it can break. And so if you think about going and taking an Asana, I'm like, yeah, I know that. Oh, I know that. I. Oh, I kind of stopped doing that.
Matt Lyman [00:14:05]:
Okay, let's do that again. So kind of a long winded answer. You can cut any of that out you want. But I think it really is just, yeah, sign up for the free trial so you can get the most out of these certifications and then really it's take them Seriously. And look at where you've been and say, yeah, I might know this, but I'm learning it. I need to keep doing it and just refresh it.
Nicole MacLean [00:14:26]:
Well, it's such an interesting content slash lead gen play too. And even a customer retention piece of as you're saying, a lot of these are maybe a little more geared towards someone's already actively using it. And so how do you keep that stickiness? But there has to be a legion piece of that too. But then if you walk away and say it's, oh, this was just a sales pitch.
Matt Lyman [00:14:48]:
Well, definitely. And I think one of my pet peeves just in marketing, generally speaking. And my Revops teams have always hated me for this. I do not believe in blocking personal emails for things. So it is a lead gen. But having a personal email is not a bad thing. You think about it. Right now I'm in between roles.
Matt Lyman [00:15:12]:
I'm still doing stuff and I might go somewhere that wants to pull up one of these companies. I'm learning it. And that's where you get those ideas of. Yeah, it's a lead gen piece, but that's how you build your community and that's how you build your base. Get these people excited about stuff. Again, I'm not going to name stuff because this is not Matt calling companies out time.
Nicole MacLean [00:15:31]:
Yeah, no, no, no, no.
Matt Lyman [00:15:32]:
But go to do one of these certifications and it wouldn't let me put my personal email in luckily. But I have a nonprofit email that I could use to get into the tool. But if you think about it like it's a certification, why do I need that? I want to be able to take certifications with me. That's actually something Salesforce has gotten right that you can connect both your work email and your personal email into it. So when you leave, it stays with you if you do their trainings. I think that's a really good point.
Nicole MacLean [00:15:59]:
Yeah, that's a really good point because there's a hundred percent of difference between even someone who wants to download a white paper or an ebook, which most people are actually anti form gating on that now. But then to have something like the certification piece, you are probably losing those future buyers. It's being a little shortsighted.
Matt Lyman [00:16:20]:
It can be, it can be, I think certifications and training. And this is something I learned at Chef because we had a really, really, really strong community and like it was big enough that anytime you did anything, somebody was going to comment on one of your marketing pieces. And we had a training platform that you could use. Whatever Email. Because you're going to use us when you go between things, you can jump between. And I think that's a really important chunk of stuff that people are forgetting is we are selling, especially in B2B, we're selling the people.
Nicole MacLean [00:16:55]:
I did a post Business to human.
Matt Lyman [00:16:57]:
Exactly. Yes. Yes. I had a salesperson once tell me that they didn't want me to run a March Madness campaign to enterprise because enterprise won't interact with that. And I'm like. But people interact like millions of people do. March Madness brackets. So why not? We may have a different message.
Matt Lyman [00:17:17]:
We're going to have a different conversation, we're going to have different benefits for them, but we got to hook them first.
Nicole MacLean [00:17:24]:
Yes. I say, yeah, business to human. Often we miss that.
Matt Lyman [00:17:28]:
Yep. I like that a lot.
Nicole MacLean [00:17:30]:
Who's at the other end of the email? Who's at the other end of the social post? And it's all you. Marketers are in an interesting position because I feel like we are that bridge and we always have to remind, like, what's in the best interest of the business. And we have KPIs to hit and a lot of pressure. But then also, at the end of the day, we have to understand and connect with clients. Tip of the spear. Like before anyone else in the business sometimes gets to connect with them. And so you have to know them as people first.
Matt Lyman [00:17:56]:
Yes. Yep. You have to have a knowledge. You know, this is going to sound bad as a marketer, but I've always found those, like, structures where you have a slide or two to has a picture of a human being on it that says marketing manager. This is what they're doing. This is who they are. And it just. I just find it kind of hokey.
Matt Lyman [00:18:15]:
That's just in my brain. But there's so much information in there and doing that research to understand them. But it's also understanding it's more than just their role now. Right. I was looking at a McKinsey report recently and that's right. I don't have a job and I'm looking at McKinsey and company reports. Guys, I was looking at a McKinsey report and it was talking about who people are planning to market to this year and it has moved to it's Millennial and Gen Z. Like, we've moved on.
Matt Lyman [00:18:49]:
And just for the record, I'm an elder Millennial, so I get it clarifying. But I just want everyone to know I remember where I was when. When Reagan was president. Anyway, there are certain things there that we have to keep in mind. And I think that's why you see a lot of really successful social posts or blog posts or videos that have that emotional tieback to something. Right? Memes. They still are. But there was a time about a year ago when every B2B company was memeing it.
Matt Lyman [00:19:21]:
And I know because we were too. And we were having a great time. And I had a couple members of my team that were Gen Z and we used to like, make little jokes of like, all right, Gen Z, what are we doing here? Because you have to understand, so you gotta take your people, you know who they are, you know what their roles are, you know what they need, you know the benefits that they're gonna get from you, you know the pain points you're solving for them at their company. And then you have to serve it to them in a way that is going to have that emotional connection. And it doesn't have to be sadness, Right? Laughter is one of the best. Look at the super bowl commercials, right? The ones that stick out are the ones that were funny. So. Yeah.
Nicole MacLean [00:19:59]:
And it's funny you say that because. Real example from our team. We are. We just redid our newsletter. We just launched. We wanted to create through my pen. You saw that. Why not? And we had this idea to personify the newsletter.
Nicole MacLean [00:20:13]:
It's not novel. A lot of people do it. And we started relating to like, can we have our version of Clippy? You know, we're a content company, so we have a Post it. Her name is Post it. That's good.
Matt Lyman [00:20:24]:
I like that. With two t's, right? Yeah.
Nicole MacLean [00:20:26]:
Yes, exactly.
Matt Lyman [00:20:26]:
I like this.
Nicole MacLean [00:20:27]:
And I remember pitching this to our CEO to be like, okay, this is kind of the vision. This is what we're thinking. And I said, think of Clippy. But like, not 1990s. And he was like, everyone hated Clippy. Why are we doing that? And I was like, what do you mean, everyone? I love Clippy. Like, everyone I know loves Clippy. And he said, google it right now.
Nicole MacLean [00:20:45]:
And if you Google literally said AI overview, Clippy is considered like a universal failure. And I was crushed. But as I've asked people, the millennials have a nostalgic, positive feel. Gen X, who probably had to use Clippy and found it super annoying.
Matt Lyman [00:21:02]:
He was super annoying.
Nicole MacLean [00:21:04]:
Don't like it. Or the elder Millennials as our CEO, I don't think is Gen X. Yeah, he's on the border. He's an exennial. He was like, Clipia was the worst. And I was like, no. And so everyone I've talked to you know, in getting market feedback on this. And the millennials and the Gen Z's think this is great and they literally like, oh, it's like Clippy.
Nicole MacLean [00:21:23]:
We love Clippy.
Matt Lyman [00:21:24]:
Yep. But that's the fun stuff. That's exactly it.
Nicole MacLean [00:21:28]:
But the generational thing, the shift in that now more millennials are in the decision making seats and roles and I'm not advocating, I mean, or go everyone go create your version of Clippy.
Matt Lyman [00:21:38]:
Yeah, they'll get your own Clippy. I do like the name of Post-it. That's really great.
Nicole MacLean [00:21:43]:
Thank you. Thank you very much. If anyone wants to follow along in our newsletter, we'll add a link to the show notes.
Matt Lyman [00:21:48]:
There you go. There you go.
Nicole MacLean [00:21:50]:
Yes. I literally feel like she's my child. I show everyone, like, can I show you this really cute thing we're working on?
Matt Lyman [00:21:56]:
Yeah, that's some of the best stuff too. Because then people start reacting to it and you're like, oh yes. And unless there's no thought put into it, you probably can't really fail on something like that. Somebody watching this is going to go, oh, here's 15 examples of failure. But we created he's not a mascot, but he kind of is a mascot, but an automation otter or an orchestration otter. And we started giving away otters at events and all this stuff and people were just like, yeah, heck yeah, this is great. I'm doing this. And our an engineer that actually went into our customer portal and hacked away and made the customer portal AI the otter.
Matt Lyman [00:22:35]:
So it's like you're talking to Otto and it was great. Our E team wasn't necessarily like we needed a mascot or anything and we're like, well, it's not a mascot. It's quite literally just a tool that we're using. It's a piece of swag for right now. We're going to see how it goes and what it looks like. And if people like it, they like it. And I think that's what it should be.
Nicole MacLean [00:22:53]:
I need to do more research on this because I'm falling prey to looking at a headline and now I'm going to talk about it as if I know the full story, but that apparently Duolingo has killed off their owl.
Matt Lyman [00:23:04]:
I just saw that too. Yeah.
Nicole MacLean [00:23:06]:
And I'm like, but everyone loved the like the owl was so iconic and you did so much on social and now you've killed it. And I feel like you're getting a lot of buzz right now. But the long term impact of something that was so branded a Mascot, whatever you want to call it. I'm very curious to see how that kind of where they go from that.
Matt Lyman [00:23:25]:
I am too. I liked that they did that and then you started getting Duolingo responding and things like that. Let's be honest, they do a really good job on their marketing team. So this feels like a very well structured planned out thing. It could not be and it could be a very short sighted, but I don't think that's what it is. It actually reminds me a lot of if you're into college football at all. I didn't watch these games, but of the bowl games is hosted by Pop Tarts or sponsored by. And last year they killed a pop Tart.
Matt Lyman [00:23:57]:
I don't know what they did, but they like toasted him and he was gone. Oh, that's right. They toasted him in a giant toaster. And then it opened up and there was a giant pop Tart. An actual edible pop tart that people were eating. So it was double weird. But they brought that pop tart back this year. Like they made it this huge thing where it was like.
Nicole MacLean [00:24:15]:
Cuz I saw it this year and I was very confused. But okay.
Matt Lyman [00:24:18]:
This year like they, they had a thing saying. So I'm not saying that that's what duolingo's.
Nicole MacLean [00:24:24]:
It could be a zombie owl.
Matt Lyman [00:24:25]:
No, I mean it could be really cool. Like, like if you think about it, it was like a caterpillar. I'd be like, oh yeah, he's coming back in a month as a butterfly. Like we know what's happening here. So I am excited to see what they do because it. When you do something like that, especially at a company like that, you have to, you've got to have it all buttoned up to make sure that you're not just sending out a tweet and then going oh crap right now.
Nicole MacLean [00:24:47]:
All right, that was short lived.
Matt Lyman [00:24:48]:
Yep.
Nicole MacLean [00:24:49]:
All right, so I want to go back to your history. You gave us your, your background. If anyone had the marketing bingo card. We. I think there were some bingos on all of the different channels that a marketer can be in. And when we were prepping for this, we kind of talked about just like the new expansion of how much a marketer actually needs to do and the evolution of the role. And I heard you talk about specializing at one point and then pulling back up into generalist mode. Like I'd love to dive in on that.
Nicole MacLean [00:25:17]:
This piece of like what is the marketing role today look like? Especially a leadership role in marketing.
Matt Lyman [00:25:24]:
Yeah, it's a really, it's a really, really great conversation to have. You were recording this, like, we were just talking earlier about how we're seeing it all over the place now, like different titles and if we remember the term growth marketing when that first came out, which I actually still believe in, I think that's a really. It's very specific.
Nicole MacLean [00:25:44]:
And I mean, I like it better than demand, honestly. It was quippy and we were like, oh, growth hacking. And it's like no one wants to be a growth marketer, but it's like actually growth is way more. I like it better than demand Gen. Yeah. It encompasses more things.
Matt Lyman [00:25:58]:
Yeah. Because demand is just one piece of that funnel. It's not. Yeah. And so I think, like, there's a lot of interesting things coming out now. I've seen conversations around growth engineers. Is that what I said earlier? Oh, dang it.
Nicole MacLean [00:26:10]:
Go to market.
Matt Lyman [00:26:11]:
Go to market. Engineers. I can't believe I just forgot that we talked about this like 20 minutes ago, but go to market. So GTM engineers and then Mike Rizzo from MarketingOps.com shout out had a really cool post, really smart post about how maybe it should actually be called Architects because Engineer feels very much like you have to know all about all the tech and all that.
Nicole MacLean [00:26:33]:
Why does marketing keep stealing from engineering? We have growth hacking, growth marketing, and now we're go to market. Engineer, go to market.
Matt Lyman [00:26:40]:
Yeah, sure, sure.
Nicole MacLean [00:26:40]:
Architect.
Matt Lyman [00:26:41]:
Yeah, well, and I think it, like, it makes sense as you start to talk about it. Right. I've interviewed with people over my career where they've said, are you more of an artist or more of a plumber? Because there's this understanding that, that marketing leadership, especially you're one of two things. This is not off topic. I'm going to keep going here, but one of the things is if you think about cmos, this is a generalization for sure. But they tend to be either the person who's going to come in with a bunch of energy and work to help you either change, update, launch, or something with your brand. Right. Could be a category creation, could be anything.
Matt Lyman [00:27:19]:
And then you have the other side that, you know, they tend to, I mean, again, generalization. But they flip. They go back and forth at companies. They'll bring in that person and then when that person leaves, they bring in the plumber. Quote, unquote quote the person who's going to fix all the underlying tech issues. The back end, how are we working? What's the operational processes? So I've been asked that. I got asked that by somebody. And I was like, that's a really good point.
Matt Lyman [00:27:42]:
I think that there's a lot of other versions. And so I think that's where we're getting to with this engineer and architect is there's. It's not just one or the other. Somebody said scientists want something that's a great idea because we're testing things or we're trying things. So as we look at it as marketing leaders are changing and we go back to what we said with our Personas, right? The world is very different and selling is very different. B2B selling especially is very different than it was when my father was doing B2B sales and going door to door and making phone calls. Right? It's very different now. We have all of these tools, we have all of these upcoming tools.
Matt Lyman [00:28:22]:
We've got AI coming out of everywhere and everything like that can help you do every single thing. You are no longer just going to be social media. Maybe you are. Maybe you come in and you start with social media, but you don't want to just sit and do social media mostly. And if you come in as a campaigns person, great. But you have to know everything. Whether or not you're an expert at it, you have to know. So if you think about a campaign, especially any sort of integrated campaign, you better understand how it's going to affect your website, your SEO, any content builds that need to happen.
Matt Lyman [00:28:57]:
Your sales structure, team and strategy. How about advertising? Are you going to do that? What about social? Where does it fit on the calendar? How does operations ingest it? As we've all been going through that, and you had the explosion of tools like Marketo and HubSpot and all of that, it was no longer just one system. You have all of these nuts and bolts. You also have as a leader a stronger need for reporting on a more regular basis. So you have to know how to build those reports. You might have an OPS person who can show you or build the templates or build the whatever, but you need to know how to do that. And so I'm not trying to be Nostradamus here. I don't think that this is, you know, it's not the wave of the future necessarily, but I think that you're going to see a lot more of those where it's, hey, head of or VP of.
Matt Lyman [00:29:46]:
And as you look through the job descriptions, it's get your hands dirty. You need to be launching products. You need to do this, hey, we're an $80 million company, we have three marketers. You're going to come in, lead them, but you're also going to be expected to do these things pretty much great. I think that's definitely what we've been seeing for a bit.
Nicole MacLean [00:30:07]:
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Nicole MacLean [00:30:56]:
Get matched to the best agencies for your business and request quotes. At Clutch Co slash Content Matters, you'll be one step closer to having those projects off your never ending to do list so you can shift focus back to the big picture. That's Clutch Co Content Matters and I book Shout out the next CMO Reddit 3, 4 years ago now. But it was literally what you were talking about is that if you watch the evolution of marketing, we come from actually our traditional roots of ads and ad agencies, of having campaigns and campaign managers and you would look at the efficacy and the ROI by campaign. And then as Martech came out and we had all of these niche solutions, so came the niche job where you would use that tool and you would report on how well is social doing, how well is events doing, how well is PPC doing? And it became, I think, actually harder for someone in leadership to show the efficacy of everything.
Matt Lyman [00:31:59]:
Right.
Nicole MacLean [00:31:59]:
And so often, I mean, I'm sure you've been there too, where you're talking to your CMO or your CEO or your cfo and this one piece has no roi, but you take it out and now suddenly everything else goes down and it's like. Because this was actually like fueling all this other stuff. Yep. And I think we're actually going backwards a little bit in saying like, no, you have to be a little bit more of a generalist and you need to look at marketing is at its core omnichannel. It has to be. And it's now with all the specialized tools, it's almost harder to really look at like a campaign roi and like, did this social post make a difference? Did this event make a difference? Well, maybe. But also all of it probably made more of a difference.
Matt Lyman [00:32:45]:
Yeah. Oh, man. We're going to get into an attribution conversation, which could take us.
Nicole MacLean [00:32:49]:
No, I can't. I don't know if we can. The attribution piece is the. Well, the bane of my existence.
Matt Lyman [00:32:54]:
It's. Oh, man.
Nicole MacLean [00:32:55]:
But it's true. I mean, that is the natural. Nice.
Matt Lyman [00:32:58]:
It does become that, like, who owns this? But it's fun to see all of the. The sort of waves of things that go right. It was two years ago that we were hearing everything about you have to make sure as a marketer that you're pushing pipeline and revenue and. But I think that to tie back to what you were saying is that that's where what I've done with some of my teams is monthly business reviews, where you have on a certain second Wednesday of every month or whatever, we're doing a monthly business review of the previous month. And you categorize it based off of your company. If my favorite marketing term is it depends. But is it based off of campaigns or is it based off of strategy? So at Lean Data, we had implemented, we have four big priorities and our campaigns are tagged that way. So let's talk this month about last month.
Matt Lyman [00:33:45]:
What did we do in this priority? Right. And you start to put those together and it's a mind shift. It definitely is. Of how do you sit down and actually report out? We've said, you know, social, but great. You've got these social metrics. Hopefully you're tagging them in a certain way. So you can say it's based off of this strategy. But what about emails? You're going to get all these emails.
Matt Lyman [00:34:06]:
Like, nobody wants to say, hey, we sent out eight emails and we got a 25% click rate.
Nicole MacLean [00:34:11]:
Cool.
Matt Lyman [00:34:12]:
Neat. So I think this is why I say it depends. Is my favorite word because or my favorite term because as you get into strategically thinking about it, you have to be able to say as a team and as a company, this is what our North Star is. And as we get into that, these are the reports and the data points we need. So if you go into a company and that company is looking at marketing, being tasked with number of inbound meetings, hey, that's fine if that's what it is. As a leader, you want to come in and try to help, maybe change that over time, it depends. But still look at pipeline for yourself. Still have those reports for revenue.
Matt Lyman [00:34:53]:
Any data point you want to see, you should see it. Not all of them are going to be KPIs. Some of them are going to be leading indicators. I believe in the MQL and I don't believe in it as a way for me to say look how great we are. I use it as a way to say are we getting the right people over to sales? And so we have to know how that all works. And being able to report out on it is a big piece.
Nicole MacLean [00:35:17]:
Yeah, I mean we can go so far in different directions on that too. Hey, this might be our first two part episode guys. But the, I mean I've also seen so many posts of like the MQL is dead or like I think we actually talked about it on the show a few few months ago. There's a post that went viral of like an email click is not an mql. A social share is not an SQL. And I agree with that.
Matt Lyman [00:35:42]:
Yeah.
Nicole MacLean [00:35:42]:
But it all comes together to paint a picture. And part of whether we're an artist or a scientist or whatever is you do have to have that, that view of the picture. But it also goes to execution. We just, you know, wrapped I guess probably by the time this comes out. RKO a few weeks ago. But we started by watching of course the Steve Jobs interview because it's classic but it was the one where he's talking about at Apple you could have the best idea, but if you didn't know how to execute it, who cares? And I think that is a trap that you get into leadership. And that kind of goes to what you were saying with marketing is you have to be both. You do have to have the idea or you have to know when you hear an idea from one of your team members, you don't have to have all the ideas yourself, but when you recognize an idea, how you execute it and execute it to precision with the right reports and having the right structure and that only gets more complicated at larger companies is what I think changes.
Nicole MacLean [00:36:40]:
So we go back to the Duolingo conversation from earlier. How they execute the next phase of this idea is going to. Is either going to set them apart and continue to make them one of like the best that we've seen do this or we're going to say you had a really interesting idea but you kind of effed it up.
Matt Lyman [00:36:55]:
Yep.
Nicole MacLean [00:36:56]:
Because your execution long term wasn't fully thought through.
Matt Lyman [00:36:59]:
And if this had been three months ago, that this happened, I would have fully expected there to be some sort of a reveal in a Super bowl commercial. I would expect that Dua Lipa is now their spokesperson. Like, they just signed a contract and so I'm excited to see where it goes. Because you create the wave now, can you write it right? And I don't know, it's going to be fun to watch. Like when you, you kill off your spoke. It's like they did that with the Peanut guy, right? With Mr. Peanut.
Nicole MacLean [00:37:27]:
I think they did, yeah.
Matt Lyman [00:37:28]:
Yeah.
Nicole MacLean [00:37:29]:
When you think about leadership in other functions and I don't know, I mean, I'm not ahead of engineering, nor have I ever been, nor will I probably ever be, but I think of like a head of sales. You still need to be able to execute and like be a great salesperson and come in when you need to. But a lot of what you do is coaching and is more in the treetops. And as marketing, I feel like you still need to be able to have your chops every so often to be able to get back in, stay close enough to it. And I think that does exist for everyone. But marketing is so multifaceted that it's so easy to fall out of touch.
Matt Lyman [00:38:07]:
Yes. Yeah. And everything changes so fast. I mentioned the AI stuff. If you're not paying attention to it. I saw something the other day too where people were talking about how so many job descriptions now say AI and tools and they don't want just you going to ChatGPT to identify things. It's a great tool, by the way. We all know that's a great tool and you can use it for super simple things like, hey, ChatGPT, here is a list of 40 companies that we think are super cool.
Matt Lyman [00:38:37]:
Can you give me another 10 that match this? But based off of this, this and this and it'll give that to you, you're like, hey, here's our ABM list. Great, right? Like you can do that, but you've got to start understanding how it all ties together. And that is why I think that a lot of really good marketing leaders come from the operations side because they understand or at least have experience with the operations stuff. And not to blanket statement with. You have to be a generalist to be a marketing leader. I actually think that it's as you said, you have to be able to jump in there and do some of the work. I do think that's where you start to see people making the right career decisions. They go to the place that fits their skills or what they want to do.
Matt Lyman [00:39:18]:
So if you're a leader that wants to be strategic only, hey, that's fine. There's companies out there that are going to want that. Being able to, as you said, to coach stuff. If you get out of touch on email deliverability rates. Right. All these changes with cookie policies and things.
Nicole MacLean [00:39:35]:
Right.
Matt Lyman [00:39:35]:
Or are you tracking it and are you able to coach your team on it? I think we could relate that almost to gdpr. When GDPR first came out, I was the person who had to hit delete on a third of our database because people had not re upped to opt into our email database. Great. You have to know what to look for and how to do that and if you don't have it, then.
Nicole MacLean [00:39:56]:
Yeah. The number of times I have to say I don't know that this person actually opened your email. I'm so sorry to tell you. If it was one second after you sent it, it was probably the privacy bot.
Matt Lyman [00:40:07]:
Boom. That's one of my favorites. Like, oh wow, that email had a 75% open rate. Oh, let's look. It's all at one company. Yeah, no, that's the privacy bot guys.
Nicole MacLean [00:40:18]:
Exactly.
Matt Lyman [00:40:19]:
Yeah, that's my favorite one. I mean, I don't want to burst your bubble, but sorry.
Nicole MacLean [00:40:24]:
Yeah, right. I think now if they open it five times, probably not the privacy bottom. So to your point, it's now knowing which metrics and if you're not in it and you're not following along saying, okay, one time open rate is probably not the best, two time open rate, probably a little bit more accurate.
Matt Lyman [00:40:39]:
Yeah.
Nicole MacLean [00:40:40]:
And that's maybe something to look for and train and then training your team, but then also knowing how to try to find that and report on that if email is a big thing for you.
Matt Lyman [00:40:49]:
Right. That's a good point for sure.
Nicole MacLean [00:40:51]:
Matt, any soapbox, any final thoughts you'd care to leave the audience with something.
Matt Lyman [00:40:58]:
That I'd like to talk about and just let everyone know. As a marketing leader, I saw TED talk about this and I'm like, yes, it's still there. I learned from one of my leaders a long time ago to look at your new hires or people you're looking to hire people during interviews about their abilities, not their skills. And what the distinction there is is very easily described. If you have somebody who comes in who's been using Marketo for 15 years and they're an expert at Marketo, but you use HubSpot, there's no reason to kick them out of the interview loop. They have the ability and they can learn that Skill. I think a lot of times we get stuck in a lot of companies have the review bots and things that go through the things. But look for those skills that you need on the team, those complements to the skills you have on the team, those cultural compliments as well.
Matt Lyman [00:41:53]:
Right. As you're hiring. But like the ability of somebody is not always shown based off of the tools they've used or the companies they've worked at. So I know that's like, oh, well then how do you quantify it? But my point there is I've. I have a long list of amazing people that have been on my team that I would not have expected to be so amazing at what they do based off of their history that came in and did just phenomenal work.
Nicole MacLean [00:42:23]:
I think a great example of that is problem solving. How many times have we hired someone because they did it before?
Matt Lyman [00:42:29]:
Right.
Nicole MacLean [00:42:29]:
They were a sales leader and took a company from zero to whatever billion. And I'm sorry. And then you actually work with them and you're like, how. No offense.
Matt Lyman [00:42:40]:
Just like, no offense, sales guy. But yeah.
Nicole MacLean [00:42:43]:
But I'm not sure what. And they can't, they can't replicate it because there was something about the skills that they had in that moment in the environment, in all the things. And I feel like the problem solving piece, that ability to know, okay, I have this ability. I can now apply it in different situations.
Matt Lyman [00:43:02]:
Yeah.
Nicole MacLean [00:43:02]:
And sometimes I think we get a little mystified. And that's not the word. We get a little taken by someone who can say, I did this to, to this.
Matt Lyman [00:43:10]:
Yeah.
Nicole MacLean [00:43:11]:
In this set of environment. But can they do it again when those circumstances are not the same? If you have the ability to do it regardless of circumstance, that's the person you want on the team.
Matt Lyman [00:43:21]:
Totally very hard example. Like specific example would be if you're interviewing a field marketer or an event marketer or something like that. Ask them the biggest nightmare they've ever had and find out what happened. What. How did they solve it? What did they do? Because they're going to show you their thought process. I know.
Nicole MacLean [00:43:38]:
Former event. I'm just like, all of the nightmares just came flooding back.
Matt Lyman [00:43:42]:
I've never really been an event manager, but I've run events, I've played events, I've done events, I've done all that stuff. And yes. Just. Yes.
Nicole MacLean [00:43:49]:
This is great. This is awesome.
Matt Lyman [00:43:51]:
I had a great time. Thank you.
Nicole MacLean [00:43:58]:
Welcome to another edition of Friends Matter. This week is a little special because we're calling attention to a nonprofit that is near and dear to Matt's heart. R.I.D.E 4 ALL. R.I.D.E 4 ALL started as a way to increase awareness and raise funds to support programs for people with Down Syndrome. And what started as a 321 mile bike ride over the course of three days evolved into R.I.D.E 4 ALL, whose purpose is to support recreation for people of all abilities. This coming Thursday, March 21st is actually their annual Day of Play. The goal is to have kids and families of any and all abilities come together to play and celebrate inclusive recreations. This celebration of inclusion is for absolutely everyone and can include play activities like basketball, soccer, Hula hoop, Frisbees, even bubbles. If you're near the Seattle area, there's an in person event just south in Burien.
Nicole MacLean [00:44:48]:
You can join, but if not, grab your friends and family and be sure to plan something active and inclusive on Thursday. And again, a huge thanks to Matt for sharing this nonprofit with us and helping to drive awareness. If you know someone doing cool things, tell us about them. You can nominate them at Compose.ly/FriendsMatter. That's Compose.ly/FriendsMatter. Thanks for listening to this episode of Content Matters, created in partnership with Share Your Genius. If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a review and share with a friend. Otherwise, you can find all the resources you need to stay connected with us in the show notes. Till next time.