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Dave Gerhardt (Founder of Exit Five, former CMO) and guests help you grow your career in B2B marketing. Episodes include conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, and subject matter experts across all aspects of modern B2B marketing: planning, strategy, operations, ABM, demand gen., product marketing, brand, content, social media, and more. Join 4,400+ members in our private community at exitfive.com.
Zach Roberts [00:00:00]:
1234.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:01]:
Exit. Exit.
Zach Roberts [00:00:12]:
Exit. Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of We're Not Marketers. We got a special guest on the call here today. But before we do that, we'll do a quick intro. This is Zach Roberts here, your sales plotter boy, passing it over to Eric to kick it off.
Eric Holland [00:00:27]:
Yeah, season two. And I'm still the Franken marketer of the group. Gab, go ahead and tell them who you're about.
Gab Bujold [00:00:33]:
Gab Bujold, the sales deck intern. I just do sales deck until I die. Giving it back to Zach, we got.
Zach Roberts [00:00:40]:
A really, really cool guest. And fun fact. When we initially sent him the cold outreach and got a response from my heart stopped for 3 seconds. So we're very excited that he decided to join us here. This is Dave Gerhart. If you've already seen him on LinkedIn, if you haven't, otherwise he leads the exit five community, the largest B2B marketing community. Prior to that, he was a CMO at Drift, marketing advisor at several startups here. And what's really cool is hearing his story of how he, starting from a marketing manager out in the Boston scene, running with the podcast mic from startups to ten years leading from going into CMO.
Zach Roberts [00:01:20]:
And now today, from the exit five perspective here, Dave, before we kick off the conversation here, what else have we been missing from that intro here?
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:27]:
Because, no, I like going on a podcast when people have done their research. And thank you for that intro. If you know that story. I'm down to hang out. I don't like when I go on somebody else's podcast and like, so, Dave, what should we talk about today? I'm like, I don't know. You invited me on your podcast, and they're like. And so I noticed you were CMO at privy. Tell me a little bit more about them.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:47]:
Like, wait. So I appreciate. Thank you for all that. Once upon a time, I still have some of them. I had a Jordan collection to rival Mister Eric Hollande Jordan collection. But that was a different time in my life. Now I'm up here, I live in Vermont, I run exit five, and I enjoy hanging out and talking marketing. So when you, when you hit me up, you had a good play, which is, I have seen you in and around LinkedIn comments, and I think that's the strategy, right? If you want to get somebody on your podcast, and this could be true for anything, marketing or not.
Dave Gerhardt [00:02:16]:
How can you never consume any of their stuff or do any outreach? And I've had multiple side projects. This isn't me. Like, I'm not on a soapbox talking about pitching me, right, as somebody starting my own podcast. Like, back in the day, my first podcast, as you mentioned, 2014, the way that I got guests was I proved that I actually really know who you are. I've been listening to your stuff. Hey, I listened to this interview you did. You said this thing, if you can hit somebody with some kind of obscure detail or you're always engaging on their stuff, I think the chances go up of responding. And so I had definitely seen at least Zach in a bunch of my comments.
Dave Gerhardt [00:02:50]:
And I was like, yeah, sure, I'm happy to. I'm happy to come on and hang out. Plus, when you host a podcast, it is fun to go on somebody else's and just kind of get to sit back and hang out and not feel like you have to ask questions.
Eric Holland [00:03:04]:
I was going to say, do you do any of the editing yourself, or do you pass that off?
Dave Gerhardt [00:03:08]:
Absolutely not. Those days are over for a couple different reasons. Number one is, I was never very good at it. And so I would just edit. I would. My first couple of podcasts, I edited on my own in Garageband, on my Mac. But I didn't actually know anything about, like, the proper way to get the levels right. And so I would just edit in my headphones.
Dave Gerhardt [00:03:28]:
But then I would go in the car and somebody be like, I can't even hear this in the car. Or, like, the intro music would be so loud. And so once I graduated to earn a little bit of income from the podcast, a couple, maybe five, six years ago, the first thing I did was hire somebody for, like, dollar 50 a month on fiverr to just do that. And then now I work with this company called Hatch, Hatch FM, and we have an amazing system now where, like, I record the podcast, we throw it up on Trello. It comes back all post produce and everything. But I know I don't. I don't do it myself anymore.
Zach Roberts [00:03:57]:
We can tell you a bit more about what we got behind the scenes here. But, Dave, you said it earlier, like, hey, this. What we've been doing is a lot of great marketing, but the name of the podcast is we're not marketers. And there's a question we ask every guest that comes on we're going to pass over to gab to kick it off here.
Gab Bujold [00:04:12]:
Thank you, Zach. So, Dave, our product marketers. Actually marketers. Why or why not?
Dave Gerhardt [00:04:18]:
I would argue that. Well, so I can't speak to a particular product marketer, a solo product marketer. The challenge with product marketing is that it's different at every company and is defined differently and the goals are different. Just the role of product marketing, I would actually argue is the most important role in marketing. How's that? Because I think that people get too in the weeds in companies. We get bent around the axle and we get too obsessed, overdose. Little tiny optimizations or tweaks. Or maybe we need to maybe have the wrong sequence going out to these people.
Dave Gerhardt [00:04:50]:
Maybe the ad targeting is wrong. Maybe we need to send another, you know, do another x. It always comes back to the tactics. And if you look at LinkedIn, it is so much tactic driven. If there was 180 percent thing that makes the difference in marketing, it is what product marketing should own, which is positioning and messaging. And so I think positioning is the most important part of great marketing and that is typically owned by product marketing. So as a way of working backwards from your question, 100% product marketing is probably the most important role in marketing. That's not to take anything away from the others.
Dave Gerhardt [00:05:24]:
I think you need people who are going to promote and distribute that message and convert that message, but without the message is the thing. That is the biggest thing. And if I could bet, all I wrote about this recently, like the number one thing that I would bet on is positioning and a unique point of view and a differentiator. And that all comes from product marketing.
Zach Roberts [00:05:43]:
In an earlier post, you mentioned, you spoke about the first three marketing hires that you would have if you were building on a marketing organization with that concept in mind. Like amongst a promoter, designer or math person. Where does product marketing typically fit, Dave? Because one challenge is that a lot of leaders typically misunderstand product marketing and the value of it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:06:03]:
Sure. Well, I think in the early stages it's different. And so in that role, the promoter would also be responsible for product marketing. Because at that early stage, like I'll give you an example. So I was the first full time marketing person at drift. And my job was really the promoter, was to get drift on the map, grow awareness. Right. I needed to start doing those things, but because I was the marketer distributing the message.
Dave Gerhardt [00:06:28]:
Well, what is the message? Like, wait, what is the message? And so I worked really closely with David, the CEO, on the coming up with the company narrative, coming up with the first slice of homepage copy. Right. And I think when we're talking early stage, if that's what we're talking about in those first couple marketers, the very early stages, your product marketing is not going to be very formal, right. It's going to be your product marketing. Your positioning might straight up be like the headline and the copy that you have on your homepage and you're just going to keep riffing on that and working. Or the initial version of a sales deck. I would want somebody, that somebody has to own the story. What is the narrative? And then in that example, I would also have that person be the one that's responsible for starting to get that message out there.
Dave Gerhardt [00:07:11]:
And it just makes sense.
Gab Bujold [00:07:12]:
Right.
Dave Gerhardt [00:07:12]:
Hey, we created this message. Where are we going to distribute that? So we're going to work with somebody, maybe on ads or some type of funnel strategy. That's a great fit for product marketing.
Gab Bujold [00:07:22]:
I like the way you're putting it, and I think you did a really great way of explaining it and going in depth on your book from the brand that I'm seeing on the right corner of your screen. The other part.
Dave Gerhardt [00:07:32]:
Yeah. Nice. I can't see where. Yeah, in the other setup, I had it, like, perfectly framed. I'm going to have to put it somewhere. Yeah, I got a royalty check this month. Actually got dollar 162 this month from book sales. So let's go.
Eric Holland [00:07:47]:
Wow.
Zach Roberts [00:07:48]:
Really awesome.
Dave Gerhardt [00:07:49]:
Let's go.
Zach Roberts [00:07:51]:
That's an increase from what you mentioned in the past year. Right? Because he said it was. That was like a year, right.
Eric Holland [00:07:56]:
That's why he splurged on that mic. That's why he splurged that 200 plus on that mic. He said, I got that royalty in.
Dave Gerhardt [00:08:03]:
That's right. I got about $7 a week from that baby.
Zach Roberts [00:08:06]:
Hey, that passive income right there, that's mailbox money.
Dave Gerhardt [00:08:11]:
Exactly. Yup.
Eric Holland [00:08:13]:
Hey, so I really like how you framed all that. And then it brought an immediate question that I thought, and we may have all experienced this, but then why is the messaging done by committee? Why is positioning messaging seem to be done by committee so often?
Dave Gerhardt [00:08:28]:
I think it's as hard to do. I think that people don't understand that there's an art to this. So I'll give you an example. I was doing consulting for a little bit before I really went all in on exit five. And I've worked at two companies where I think we did a really good job of positioning. And positioning was like a key part of our growth. I didn't use a framework. I didn't use a system.
Dave Gerhardt [00:08:50]:
Literally, it just hit me on a walk one day, or I was riffing on it in text message with the CEO, and we're like, oh, we got it. It's the one or two lines. And you've seen Mad Men, right. Okay. Did Don Draper have a system like, a framework. Like, he's in his house laying out paper. He's just, this is why I love product marketing and storytelling. There is a lot of science in marketing today, but there's also an art to this, right? And so some people have a way with words and a way of distilling things down into a really simple message.
Dave Gerhardt [00:09:18]:
And so I went out and I did consulting. I work with a couple companies, and one company in particular. They didn't like that I didn't have a framework. They wanted a framework for this. I'm like, hold on. I just rewrote your whole thing. I gave you a tagline and story that's better than anything you had, but it never. They didn't buy in because they had a framework.
Dave Gerhardt [00:09:34]:
And so what drives me nuts about the whole storytelling thing is, like, we're more in love with finding the framework than we are. Like, if the three of us can just riff on a call and, like, we go away and Zach texts you later in the day, he's like, yo, I got it. We're going to talk about it like this. Why can't that be the positioning? Because then we go in a company, and we have to put it in a deck and present it to people. And so I was just fortunate to work for two companies where the CEO got marketing. The CEO also gave me a lot of freedom with the marketing and was like, hey, you're pretty good at this storytelling and communication thing. Like, go ahead, do your thing, and then get it to 90% and let's talk about it. The reason that it gets done by a committee is because you might not have that person inside the company.
Dave Gerhardt [00:10:19]:
And people don't often like that. People don't like the. Like, hey, these two people right here, the CEO and this bald marketing guy, wrote the positioning for the company. And then we tell you what it is. They don't like that. They want to all feel like they were involved in the process. And this VP has a different opinion, and this VP is. But the CEO's that I worked with knew that.
Dave Gerhardt [00:10:37]:
Like, we're never going to make progress. We're never going to get everyone to think, this is awesome. Also, I've been a part of building a bunch of different brands now, right? And I can tell you that at the beginning of every brand, almost everybody doesn't think the name is great. If you asked anybody, like, if I said, hey, I'm going to call this thing exit five, a bunch of people are like, I don't get it. What is that's not that good of a name. Can't you come up with something else? Two years later, everybody's like, oh, yeah, exit five. That's a b, two b. Marketing community, right? I had a podcast called Tech in Boston.
Dave Gerhardt [00:11:06]:
My wife used to give me such a hard time. She's like, you're the worst at naming things. You just say the literal name of them. She's like, tech in Boston? What kind of name is that? After two years of doing that podcast, in 60 episodes, people are like, yes, I listen to tech, and, oh, I love tech. And Bob, it becomes what you make it. And so I believe that so much of, like, you can't sit around and wait for the committee to bless this thing. You need to be able to disagree and commit. You need one or two people inside of the company to work together and lead.
Dave Gerhardt [00:11:29]:
It doesn't mean you don't take in opinions from the other people. I was a strong partner to sales, a strong partner to customer success, a strong partner to product. But they, especially at drift, they were like, no, we want you to. You're the word, man. Take this and run with it. And that was the part of marketing that I love. It's the art. I got to feel like Don Draper in that moment of, like, coming up with that story.
Dave Gerhardt [00:11:51]:
And I had a really close relationship to the CEO, which is really important in positioning because they're the ones who oftentimes that the founder CEO, right. That's the person who started this company. And that's the why I wrote founder brand. Like, that's the best marketing ingredients you can have. They didn't just start the company out of thin air. They started the company because look at Eric Yuan, the guy who started Zoom. He didn't just, like, one day wake up and decide to start a video platform. He ran, I think it was Webex.
Dave Gerhardt [00:12:18]:
He ran some humongous video platform before that. There's always some core story. And so in my case, at Drift, David, who's a CEO, was a visionary in the sales and marketing technology space. He was chief product officer at HubSpot. He had a bunch of other companies in the space already. So us leaning on each other to create that positioning. Like, there's no space for a committee there. Committees happen when you have, like, a bunch of kind of, like, middle of the road opinions.
Dave Gerhardt [00:12:43]:
The great marketing happens when someone just says, like, nope, we're doing it this way, and it's going to be this way, and you just have to take chances and go with it.
Zach Roberts [00:12:51]:
Underneath your explanation, Dave, it sounded like you built a really solid relationship with the CEO founder. When you're at that early stage startup, one challenge especially for founding product marketers is building that influence with their leadership to have that ownership and that trust. What chatter, like, do you see within your exit five community or from your past experience on how a solo product marketer can build that trust and leadership? So that leader at the end could be like, take that. What you just said here, take this positioning, run with it, and enable it across our organization.
Dave Gerhardt [00:13:24]:
Yeah. So when you're that solo or early marketer at a company. Right. And then in the example of drift, the way that I got permission to be in that conversation with positioning was for the first six months of that company, I just got so much shit done. I didn't care about my title. I didn't have a team. I didn't have a good title. I've reported to CEO only because we didn't have a vp of marketing.
Dave Gerhardt [00:13:45]:
And he was kind of just, we just needed somebody to wrangle that. And I just got in and I just did everything. I got our blog up and running and we got our first couple articles out, and our website traffic went from, like, zero to 1500 visitors in the first two weeks. And I got to present that to the company and they were like, all right, this is cool. Like, we got some attention now. And then we got our first hundred email subscribers. Then, like, I'm on the weekend and I'm thinking about, like, I'm reading articles about SEO. It was the first job opportunity that I had where I got to do all the doing and so I could, like, make changes.
Dave Gerhardt [00:14:14]:
And so they want somebody who takes ownership and autonomy and goes and just gets a bunch of things done. And so before I became involved in the positioning, like, I put a ton of points on the board early on to then earn the right. I got the right. The CEO then wanted to bring me into those conversations. I'll give you an example. There's a guy on our team at exit five right now. His name is Matt, and Matt's been with us for a month and a half. And Matt has just come in.
Dave Gerhardt [00:14:41]:
Boom, just gone. He's just done so much stuff in a month and a half. I find myself now, like, bringing him into more things because he gets shit done and I want him to be involved. So there's an element of, if you're the solo product marketer, I do think this is a space where product marketers can get stuck. Product marketers often default to, like, I got to do my research I got to talk to customers. This is going to take some time. I need a framework, I need a brief. And it's now been.
Dave Gerhardt [00:15:08]:
You've been at the company for six weeks and all we have is a Google stock. You can get there, but I'm just. Especially at a startup, you need to have a bias for action and let's get a bunch of stuff done. And so if you're the product marketer and you come in this company and you want to get the sales deck done in perfect, but you notice that they don't even have a sales deck. How about your first week project is to make a v one of the deck that's just better than what you have now. And it's five slides and you worked on it directly with the vp of sales. Straight out of her mouth, whatever you. Okay? Boom.
Dave Gerhardt [00:15:35]:
That's v one. All right, cool. I think I like this guy, Gab. Like he's. You need to put points on the board. You need people to want to bring you into those conversations. Especially in a role like product marketing where you don't necessarily have all the keys, you have to be brought in on all the things. You don't necessarily own the website, you necessarily own sales, you don't necessarily own demand gen.
Dave Gerhardt [00:15:54]:
But you need to be involved. The way that you do that is by putting points on the board and being a great resource for people. This is just me, by the way. Everybody might disagree this, but I have a huge bias for action. I move really fast. I like people that do the same. And so I want to see somebody come in and like, hey, we hired you because we need this role. We don't need you to do six weeks worth of Google Slides.
Dave Gerhardt [00:16:13]:
And here's what we could do. Like, I want you to start making progress right now. Let's put something on the board. And when I talk about this in exit five and other people, some people are, well, you can't really know what changes to make until you talk to customers. I'm not saying don't talk to customers. I'm not saying change everything right out of the gate. But there are small wins. Like, hey, I noticed this email that goes out is pretty bad.
Dave Gerhardt [00:16:34]:
Can we change that? It's those little things early on that I think build up your credibility and you get the right to have those conversations later.
Gab Bujold [00:16:41]:
I really like that take. And I think it's kind of like the snowball effect of let's do as much as possible, even if it's half baked, it's better than nothing or being seen as we got this guy or this gal six weeks ago and all they're doing is a Google Doc or trying to do research. So pushing stuff, showing your expertise and then keeping in mind that this version is not necessarily the final one. You still need the data, you still need that research, but at least you can be seen as, hey, Zach is pretty good at what he does. Why not bringing on more projects and then tackling enablement strategy and all those stuff?
Dave Gerhardt [00:17:14]:
Thats a great point. I think to add on to that, the stage of the company matters a lot here. If you join the marketing team of however many people at Salesforce, can you just come in and break everything and fix everything right out of the gate? No, but in a scenario of being at drift when there was just nothing, I could just go write an article, I could just go make a landing page. We changed the website copy three times a week for the first two years of the company. I think the speed is your advantage and you need to get the feedback loop going as fast as possible. And that is such a key ingredient to product marketing. I love it.
Gab Bujold [00:17:47]:
I think you said smart organization that we had some guests that worked for enterprise and I think also the same. It's just that the timeline will be longer. You're all working on making sure that you hit those quick wins with all of the teams together. But yeah, I think it's all about you need to show up value before you say, let's take a step back and research. Otherwise it can be challenging, especially if you don't have the authority to work on those projects.
Dave Gerhardt [00:18:11]:
Yeah, I think the internal piece matters a lot too. And so there are a lot of companies where the product organization, product managers might do a lot of things that look like product marketing at other companies. And I've seen this kind of play out a couple of times where it's like, whoa, wait, we just hired gab to do product marketing. But how is his role different than Matt, who's our product manager? And I think you could either instantly clash or you can be like, hey, we're here to help the company win. Like, what are the things that you do and what are the things that I do? And like, let's put our superpowers together and find a way to be one plus one equals three versus a lot of this breaks down when you're constantly at odds and you're smiling about this because you must have had experience with this in the past.
Gab Bujold [00:18:57]:
100%. Yeah.
Eric Holland [00:19:00]:
Zach, I got a asking for a friend question. All right, so you've come in, you've got a pretty big product that needs some repositioning because the market has identified. They just don't get it right. Obviously it's a different take and similar to how we've talked. Right. There's going to be a lot of people who feel very strongly about that positioning and hold it near and dear to their heart. Got any tips on any of our listeners who can actually get that across the finish line and prove value in saying, let's put it up on the website, kind of like you said, and testing or changing it three times a week?
Dave Gerhardt [00:19:36]:
Yeah, I think first, when you can lead with the data, lead with the data. And so what you said to me is telling, it's like, hey, this is not working. So we can all have your opinions about you liking this or not, but like, can we agree that our win rate has gone down for the last six months or it gets hard if you're not able to articulate that this is not working? And so I would lead with that and let everybody marinate on that. Is this working? If it's working, let's not change anything. Or if it's working, my approach would be like, how can we make it a little bit better? But if it's not working, then like, hold on, this is crazy. Why are we going to continue to do this? Then? I would try to find you need to make the sales side of this, whether it's the VP of sales, the sales leader, whoever, need to make that your partner in crime, and you need to be of service of that sales function and be like, let's go and do this together. Product marketing can battle with everybody except for sales. And I got a great lesson from Dave Kellogg.
Dave Gerhardt [00:20:33]:
I don't know if you know that. It's on my podcast. Dave Kellogg is, he's been a CEO, he's been a CMO, he runs one of the best b two B SaaS blogs out there. It's called Kel Blog. He's like the master of SaaS. And he said to me on the podcast, he said, if you're in the marketing seat and the CEO tells you to go this way and the CRO tells you to go this way, who should you follow? And I was like, I think the CEO, he goes wrong. The CRO always follow the revenue and the rest is going to fix itself. And he's totally right, which is like at the end of the day, sales, because to this point, Eric, if the product was flying off the shelves, then you wouldn't have a positioning problem.
Dave Gerhardt [00:21:07]:
And the company would be winning and nobody would care. Right. And so sales cures all. And so when I'm trying to figure out positioning, I gotta figure out how I get this right. With the sales side of this first doesn't mean do exactly as they say, but how do I get them involved? How do I make them feel heard? How do I create a version of this that sales is excited about? Then you're gonna have to kind of bring in the CEO, and then you're gonna have to bring in product because sometimes you can get sales involved and they're fired up. You pitch the positioning and product is like, yikes, this check is a little bit bigger than this. Mouth is a little bit bigger than what we can cash right now, and we can kind of deliver on this, but not fully. And so you need to kind of shop that around accordingly.
Dave Gerhardt [00:21:49]:
But I would start with sales. I would start with, hey, is this working or is this not? How do I bring sales in? And then it also just depends on the CEO. At some companies, the CEO is like, nope, don't want anything to do with marketing. I think at most companies, the CEO cares a lot about positioning. And so figuring out what, what your relationship there is going to be like. I would also say you need to show your work along the way. The worst thing you can do is be like, hey, we're doing a positioning project. You go away for four weeks and you're like, all right, meeting, all hands meeting.
Dave Gerhardt [00:22:16]:
I'm going to show you all the positioning work that's asking to just get blown up, even if it's great. People just don't like that because they don't feel like they were brought in. And so even if you're not going to listen to the opinions of everybody, even if you just go sit in the meeting and smile, you need to bring everybody into the process. And so you need to have like a, hey, here's a really early v one. I want to just show you how we're thinking about things. Open it up for feedback, but let people know that this is still very early. The more you can bring them in early and help them shape it, I think that's a very important part of it.
Zach Roberts [00:22:47]:
What does bringing in early look like? Is that having, like, an email update say, hey, here, this is what it looks like. And curious what the.
Dave Gerhardt [00:22:54]:
Yeah, it could be that I would even go all the way back to the step at the beginning. Like, people need to know that we need to make a change and we're going to work on it right and so ideally, if we're talking about like an early stage startup or something, I would want the CEO to be like, maybe Eric has the power to send that message, but if not, I would be like managing up to the CEO and be like, hey, look, we're going to go do this positioning thing. I think it'd be a good message from you to mention at the management team meeting that we're going to go work on it. And it's like, hey, FYI, we've seen our win rate go down over the last six months. I think it's time that we start tackling positioning. So Eric, Eric and I, I've asked Eric to lead that charge with me. Eric and I are going to start to work on this over the next couple of weeks. I just want to give you a heads up.
Dave Gerhardt [00:23:33]:
We'll have more to share soon. We're going to bring in all your opinions. We want to factor everything that you all have to say. We're going to get this going. And then like in two weeks we're going to have a cross functional positioning session where we're going to show you how we're thinking about it. Let's have a brainstorm, like a working session together, something like that, where you let them know that it's being worked on, bring them in early and then have a v one of something to show. I also think it's really important to show. I think too oftentimes positioning gets just trapped in a Google Doc forever.
Dave Gerhardt [00:24:02]:
And this is kind of like related to my rant on frameworks earlier. The positioning doesn't mean anything unless you can execute on it. And so I think people need to see, and here's what the homepage is going to look like. Here's what the sales deck is going to look like. They need to see how this message is going to be distributed.
Eric Holland [00:24:18]:
All right. If I get no other gold nuggets out of this conversation, that was like a whole bar for me. I appreciate that a lot, Dave.
Dave Gerhardt [00:24:25]:
Cool. And the Jordan one is and will always be the best Jordan, just so.
Eric Holland [00:24:29]:
You know, 100% agree. You can't see it all, but yeah, I got them.
Dave Gerhardt [00:24:32]:
I can tell all over.
Eric Holland [00:24:34]:
And fun fact for you, I won't wear anything other than one, three, four and fives. I've got kind of like chicken ankles and everything above that just does. Not very flattering.
Dave Gerhardt [00:24:42]:
So because they cover up your ankles, that's why?
Eric Holland [00:24:46]:
Yeah, like they just. Not good, right? A little bit too high.
Dave Gerhardt [00:24:50]:
Wait, you get on this level though.
Eric Holland [00:24:52]:
Hey, that's what I'm talking about.
Zach Roberts [00:24:54]:
Hey. Oh, are we rocking the same sandals?
Eric Holland [00:24:58]:
That's what I'm talking about. Okay, checks over stripes.
Dave Gerhardt [00:25:04]:
Let's go, let's go. It's true.
Gab Bujold [00:25:09]:
Well, sandal all day.
Dave Gerhardt [00:25:10]:
Can you put that beat on as we transition here? That would be great. Thank you 100%.
Eric Holland [00:25:14]:
We're going to put Zach, you hear that? Sicko mode, Drake.
Zach Roberts [00:25:18]:
Noted.
Dave Gerhardt [00:25:18]:
That's the intro. Yeah, that's.
Eric Holland [00:25:19]:
Yeah. I'm like, yeah, we got to have that on, Dave. We like to have a little bit of fun on every show. And it started off actually off with Anthony Perry. We created a messaging torture chamber device where we put you in a very uncomfortable position to pick two options, right? A or b. They're supposed to hurt your heart and make you essentially hate us, and then you're forced to pick one of those options. No pleading the fifth is allowed. So how do you feel about those rules?
Dave Gerhardt [00:25:48]:
Let's go.
Eric Holland [00:25:49]:
All right, so you've got some money to spend. Are you going to spend it on brand or content?
Dave Gerhardt [00:25:54]:
And you can only do one content all day.
Eric Holland [00:25:57]:
Really? All right. I like that.
Dave Gerhardt [00:25:59]:
Yeah, content is brand.
Eric Holland [00:26:01]:
Okay, fair enough. All right. You got to hire someone to do ads or just do social.
Dave Gerhardt [00:26:06]:
Just do social all day. And that's what I'm good at. That's, like, where I have strength. Right? And so I believe that you can make a huge dent in a brand. Like, to. The reason I said content, the reason I said social, organic. Give me a LinkedIn page, a Twitter account, or something, and I think you can make a ton of progress without spending a lot of money.
Eric Holland [00:26:26]:
Agreed.
Dave Gerhardt [00:26:27]:
I just think we're in the era of pr. When I came up, companies would be spending ten to 20 grand a month for a pr retainer. And now I'm like, who are you even pitching? There's no media outside of big publications like the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, which is very hard to get in. And gone are the days of just, like, raising money would get you press. I would just throw all that away and, like, you just see random people build massive audiences through newsletters and sub stacks. Like, you can do that for your niche. And so I would just start writing online is the simplest way that I would explain that.
Eric Holland [00:27:00]:
I like that. Any of you guys agree with him?
Zach Roberts [00:27:03]:
Oh, yeah.
Eric Holland [00:27:03]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dave Gerhardt [00:27:04]:
Those kind of felt like trick questions. There's a lot of people who would answer brand and then ads because they don't know the social media game. But if you do, then you need to play the game.
Eric Holland [00:27:13]:
Yeah, I figured I knew which one you were going to answer here. This one. I'm very curious. So you can go to events that are hosted by others or host your own events.
Dave Gerhardt [00:27:21]:
Go to events that are hosted by others, but do my own events at their event.
Eric Holland [00:27:25]:
Aha. So instead of spending booth money, have your own event, huh?
Dave Gerhardt [00:27:30]:
Yeah, exactly. Do a dinner. We did a bunch of cool stuff when I was at drift at Saster one year. We invited, like, 20, 2030 people. We invited them to. We rented out Barry's boot camp for that morning, and we invited them there. And that little thing created this amazing connection with, like, 20 or 30 people that we wanted to sell to or our existing customers. And I don't have an ROI number on that.
Dave Gerhardt [00:27:53]:
It didn't. We don't know, like, yes, three people purchased drift after that, but the relationships and buzz we created and, like, brand affinity from doing that was so worth it. I also went to Sastre one year, actually, two years. I went and I brought a Zoom h four n podcast recorder, two XLR mics, and a backpack. And I messaged a bunch of people on LinkedIn, like, on the flight there, and said, hey, I'm recording a bunch of interviews on site while we're there. And I did, like, ten interviews. We got a ton of content. Just like, me carrying my backpack around by myself, microphone in people's face.
Dave Gerhardt [00:28:26]:
And again, I can't tell you, like, we closed six customers from that. That might be the better part of having a booth, but we didn't spend 50 grand to go and do that. The reason I gave that answer is because it's just kind of like the marketing 101 piece. Go to where everybody is. And if everybody's at Saster and Dreamforce, you've at least narrowed down. Like, where is everybody? That's one of the hardest questions in marketing, is, like, how do I get in front of my customers? Well, where are they? They're at this event during this time. Okay, so then what are you going to do, man?
Eric Holland [00:28:53]:
This is a level up for us three today. All right, deal.
Dave Gerhardt [00:28:56]:
But hold on, hold on. But all these answers, though, are actually the most simple answers. We just get lost in the, like, we make b, two b, marketing, or marketing, we get lost in the funnel and the metrics. And, like, it is kind of just the more you can simplify it, that's where the answers are. And I got this drilled into my head when I was at drift from David, who was a CEO. He's like, stop obsessing over SaaS metrics. Stop obsessing over b two b marketing. Like, use your brain.
Dave Gerhardt [00:29:22]:
What music do you listen to? What shows do you watch? Who influences how you buy? Like, those same things apply just now. Figure that out for this world. And that just rewired my brain to be how I think today.
Gab Bujold [00:29:34]:
I feel like we're not taking into account the human part in b, two b decision compared to, like, b two c. Like, sometimes we're, like, always focused on, we sell to businesses. We sell to businesses. But who owns businesses? Who work at businesses? People, humans and all of that. So I think there's a big. Not disconnect, but I've been in that situation before where you obsess over SaaS metrics and you get, like, paralysis analysis, but it's all about what do I like to do with my free time? What are my passion, what do I like to do? And this is basically how we try to steer the direction of the pod as well.
Dave Gerhardt [00:30:05]:
Yeah. Can you get attention from the people that you want to sell to? Is kind of what it all comes down to. If you can do that, then you earn the right to have the next conversation. Doesn't mean that you. If you don't have the right product, you don't have the right pitch. It's going to fall down eventually. But part one is at least getting in the door to have a conversation.
Eric Holland [00:30:21]:
100%. All right, so I got one more question for you, and we'll pull you out of this and get back to the regular conversation. But you're in Boston, so is it a main role or a Connecticut roll for you?
Dave Gerhardt [00:30:31]:
I've never heard of either of those things. What's that?
Eric Holland [00:30:33]:
A lobster roll. Huh?
Dave Gerhardt [00:30:35]:
A main. I just call it a lobster roll.
Eric Holland [00:30:37]:
Oh, so you didn't know there were two versions?
Dave Gerhardt [00:30:39]:
No. No.
Eric Holland [00:30:41]:
All right, so the main one is the cold one.
Dave Gerhardt [00:30:43]:
The main is cold, and then the.
Eric Holland [00:30:45]:
Connecticut is, like, hot with butter.
Dave Gerhardt [00:30:48]:
Oh, yeah, the cold one. The cold one. But it's got to be proper. It's got to be, like, fresh. If it's borderline. I'm not eating a borderline lobster roll. Like, it needs to be, like, at least $32 kind of lobster roll, you know, like.
Eric Holland [00:31:01]:
And not coming from a grocery store.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:03]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I got, um. Two years ago, I got Lasik surgery. You can get surgery on correct your vision for your eyes. It was, like, a pretty expensive procedure, and I was googling it, and I found this, the subreddit. And this guy was like, you know, I've actually. I found a guy, and he can do it for $400. I'm like, I don't want that.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:21]:
Whatever lasers they're putting in your eyes, like, redraw your cornea for like a couple hundred bucks. Like, I'm good. You can have that one. So I want that. The lobster roll has to be proper.
Eric Holland [00:31:31]:
All right. And I totally agree. Most of my family's in Connecticut, and so, yeah, no one's getting a gas station lobster roll and living through that.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:40]:
Yeah. Where exactly is Connecticut?
Eric Holland [00:31:43]:
I'm actually, I'm in Pennsylvania, as I call it, Dave. So we're a little close. I'm down in central Pennsylvania.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:48]:
I'm not. Well, I'm not in Boston. I live in Vermont now, so I'm up in nature.
Eric Holland [00:31:52]:
What part?
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:53]:
Burlington.
Eric Holland [00:31:54]:
Oh, okay. All right. I've got it. I'm a big fan of mount Snow.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:58]:
Nice. All right. Yeah, well, you'll see it. You'll see it when you're here in September.
Eric Holland [00:32:01]:
So I was telling the boys yesterday what a better time of the year to get up to Vermonthe looking forward to.
Zach Roberts [00:32:07]:
Dave, quick, before I ask this question here, we done with the torture chamber? Was that it?
Eric Holland [00:32:11]:
Yeah. Truthfully, didn't make it as torturous as I normally would, so he lucked out this time. They're normally really painful questions.
Zach Roberts [00:32:19]:
Dave, question for you. So earlier in the conversation, you talked a little bit about marketing, befriending sales, and really following the revenue. And I remember you had a conversation on your podcast with Ian Faison about podcasting. And it feels like this has been an emerging trend in, like, b two b to say the least. I'm curious to hear your take on it. Is that more b two b podcasts are coming out because they see it as a channel of acquiring customers and getting revenue and following someone like yourself, who you've said this many times before, hey, like, this podcast has been a huge acquisition channel for our business, and it seems like it's conflicting with what you said before. So, hey, like, your goal here is to, like, put points to the board, help influence revenue. But one thing you guys said in the conversation is that, like, if you build a podcast, you're not going to start seeing results around, like, a year, a year and a half year.
Zach Roberts [00:33:09]:
So, like, for product marketers who are considering tapping as a podcast, as a new channel, how do you set those expectations with sales to say, like, hey, we have this innovative idea. We're going to do this, but you're not going to see results in probably a year? I'm curious, like, how do you navigate.
Dave Gerhardt [00:33:26]:
That I think this is part of the job is you need to be able to do long term. You need to be able to do short term and long term stuff. In the example earlier, if I only came in and only put points on the board and was always running around playing whack a mole, putting out the next urgent fire, that would only work to a point. And we would never build a foundation to grow over time. If you don't invest in SEO early, it never has the chance to compound. Right. And so I think what I would do in that scenario is I think you need to have a clear story about why you're going to do a podcast. Where does this fit in the, in the overall brand and as a company, what purpose does it serve to your business? And because it's not going to point points on the board early, this is where marketers make a mistake.
Dave Gerhardt [00:34:12]:
It can't be the only thing that the team sees you doing, right? And so you're like, hey, we're going to go do a podcast. It's not going to put any points in the board for a long time. And like, by the way, I'm also not going to have time to do anything else that doesn't work. But if you can start to build it in 20 or 30% of your time, like, I think you got to look at the split. I think 70% of your activities should be, this is roughly, you know, whether you want to call it 80, 2070, 30, 60 40, whatever, let's say 70 30. 70% of your activities need to be focused on today. How do we drive sales today? 30% has to be in the future. And in that future bucket is going to be a lot of things that are about building your brand.
Dave Gerhardt [00:34:49]:
And when I talk about building brand, I like to think of brand as your reputation. Not your logos, not your colors, not brand marketing. But like, how do we build a reputation for this company over time? Now, what if I said to you though, that one of the reasons that we want to start a podcast actually is because right now we need to create a lot of content about this topic. We have developed a unique. So back to let's make this whole thing go full circle. We're great product marketers. We've developed this absolutely killer positioning. We have a killer brand story.
Dave Gerhardt [00:35:18]:
We're going to use our podcast as a way to help get this message out and create content at scale with a small team. Because what we're going to do is we have a whole new way of thinking about HR and how companies need to be doing HR today. And so our CEO has deep experience in HR, and she's actually going to be the host of our podcast. And each week, she's going to talk to somebody in the industry. Right? Your sales team is going to understand that, and they're going to be like, oh, okay. So this is like a perception thing. So, like, our CEO is going to be seen with interesting people. We're going to be creating an hour's worth of audio content with her every week.
Dave Gerhardt [00:35:51]:
That's kind of become sales enablement. There's a reason for people to go and reach out, send a podcast episode. Now, all of a sudden, each podcast episode is becoming three clips for LinkedIn. And we're also going to be able to, like, ghost write a couple posts for her each week. And so we're going to start to build up this content machine. See how I'm pitching you more on, like, we're starting a podcast. No, I'm telling you how this fits into. The podcast is a piece of our, like, integrated content strategy, and it's an anchor piece to that.
Dave Gerhardt [00:36:15]:
Or, like, ian does something different than I do. I've done interview shows, like, focus on interviewing experts, but Ian does something like, he does really deep scripted fiction shows like Murder and HR. Right? That's going to be a show that, you know, you're trying to sell to HR people. We're creating this podcast that's going to be a conversation starter for the people that we want to sell to. Right. And over time, you'll be able to see it. And when I was at drift, David and I, the CEO, we had a podcast called Seeking Wisdom. We were a marketing technology company.
Dave Gerhardt [00:36:43]:
We never talked about marketing technology on that podcast. We talked about books. We were reading workouts, lessons, and learnings. His experiences as an entrepreneur, me, like, as an up and coming worker, what I'm understanding that podcast grew so fast and became such a driver of pipeline for our company. How does that make sense? We didn't ever sell our product because people started to get to know us and like us and trust us, and they listen to our podcasts and like, yeah, I really like what those guys are drift are doing. I don't really know what their product does yet, but, like, I love listening to this podcast. Then when we have a launch and we're on everybody's radar, and they're like, okay, you know what? I've been listening to their podcast. I really like these guys, huh? I think I might be able to use this thing for my business.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:23]:
Let me go and check it out. Right? That's how buying happens. I think that can't be your entire marketing strategy from the get go, especially if you're in a short term sales crunch. Like, if we need pipeline right now, then I'm not just going to say, go do a podcast. I'm going to be like, let's make a list of our 20 best fit customers right now, and we need to get on the phone and get on email and get front of them. But I think it's a key part of building the foundation for building your brand long term.
Gab Bujold [00:37:46]:
It's all circling back to what you said at the beginning, the story, making sure we're able to, what is the why instead of, let's just start a podcast?
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:54]:
Ultimately, yeah, you got to have a reason. And just because somebody I see people like, and I think Ian didn't agree with this, which is fine, but they were like, don't do an interview show anymore. Don't do what Dave does. Don't just bring on experts and interview them. Maybe. Maybe that might not work in your niche, but what if it does? What if you're a really well connected founder and you actually have an amazing network of people and you're interesting on the mic and you could interview them for every week and get interesting content? Like, then go and do it right. Or what if you're just three people that met through work and have a common interest and you're going to start this podcast together without a goal? Why are you doing it? It comes back to the, why are we starting this? And then you can find a way how to sell it to the sales team.
Gab Bujold [00:38:32]:
Exactly.
Dave Gerhardt [00:38:32]:
Pineapple.
Gab Bujold [00:38:33]:
I have a hard stop in five minutes. Everything you're sharing so far is golden. So in five minutes, I need to go. If we keep the conversation going, like, I'll just leave and the guys can take over. I just wanted to give an Fy, otherwise, I know, I just quit my job and I'm about to receive a ton of hate messages from my boss, so that's why.
Dave Gerhardt [00:38:52]:
Oh, that's fun.
Eric Holland [00:38:54]:
Well, I gotta say, I didn't even realize we got to an hour this quickly.
Zach Roberts [00:38:58]:
Yeah, I think we're wrapping up anyway, too.
Eric Holland [00:39:00]:
I was like, what? Leave me. You gotta leave, gab.
Dave Gerhardt [00:39:03]:
But I just want to say it. Can I just say it? Pineapple.
Eric Holland [00:39:06]:
Pineapple. Yeah. Well, then that's cool. Zach, I think we could kind of do the outro part here.
Zach Roberts [00:39:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. All right, we're wrapped up here.
Dave Gerhardt [00:39:16]:
All right.
Eric Holland [00:39:16]:
No, this is fucking awesome. So, Dave, thank you for coming on today, another awesome Friday with the we're not marketers. Boysenheid, I wanted to ask you, especially for our listeners who are interested and haven't already followed along and know what you're doing, where can you kind of point them to? And do you have any things coming up in the future that you want to tease?
Dave Gerhardt [00:39:36]:
Go to exit five.com. seven day free trial, or dial 1800. Exit five. One of our staff will be happy to take your call. And I just sent the three of you. I looked you up. None of you is an exit five member, but I just hooked you up free for life. I sent you an email.
Dave Gerhardt [00:39:52]:
There's a link in your email. So go join exit five.
Gab Bujold [00:39:55]:
Wow.
Dave Gerhardt [00:40:00]:
That's the best CTA there is.
Gab Bujold [00:40:02]:
You're making my day.
Zach Roberts [00:40:03]:
That's the similar feeling I'm feeling right now. After when I sent you that cold in mail, then when I got your. So this similar feeling right now.
Dave Gerhardt [00:40:09]:
Yeah. So go in there.
Eric Holland [00:40:11]:
You guys know he's going to charge us double for the trip in Vermont. That's what's going to happen for that ticket.
Dave Gerhardt [00:40:16]:
No, no, no. We'll have sponsors pay for it. The tickets should be affordable.
Zach Roberts [00:40:20]:
Looking forward to it.
Eric Holland [00:40:22]:
This is cool. So, yeah, I guess what? Find you on LinkedIn and exit five, right?
Dave Gerhardt [00:40:27]:
Yeah, yeah. Exit five. If you're in b two b marketing and you want to go a little bit deeper, get some b two b marketing knowledge, sharpen your tool set a little bit. Hop in there, join the weird, not marketers boys in there and check out exit five.com. and I'm on LinkedIn. Dave Gerhart, thanks for letting me hang out with you guys. These things are fun to do. Two weeks ago when we were going to do it, I had the flu.
Dave Gerhardt [00:40:46]:
Like the real flu, like 103 fever flu. So I'm glad I was able to bring the better energy today. Thanks for hanging out. I appreciate you guys.
Zach Roberts [00:40:54]:
Certainly. And before we hop off here, a little bit more about that event you mentioned here at the start of our conversation, can you give us more details?
Dave Gerhardt [00:41:02]:
Still working on it. September 11 and 12th in Vermont. There's no website yet. We're working on it right now, but I've paid the money for it. It's happening September 11 and 12th in Vermont. We're doing a small gathering for b two b marketers. Come join us if you want to go do something different. If you're tired of going to Dreamforce, you're tired or go to the big events and you want to come hang out with us, in Vermont.
Dave Gerhardt [00:41:25]:
We're going to do a little exit five get together for two days in September and I'll have more to share soon.
Zach Roberts [00:41:31]:
And if you are a product marketer who doesn't identify as a marketer, we'll be there, too. So.
Dave Gerhardt [00:41:39]:
Maybe you guys can host, we want to do these little breakouts. Maybe you guys can host one for the people who are not marketers but came anyway.
Zach Roberts [00:41:46]:
Let's talk more. We got you.
Dave Gerhardt [00:41:48]:
All right. Sounds good.
Zach Roberts [00:41:49]:
All right.
Eric Holland [00:41:49]:
Well, thank you to everyone for coming to another episode of we're not marketers. Yeah.
Zach Roberts [00:41:55]:
All right. Take care, everyone.
Dave Gerhardt [00:42:09]:
Exit.