00:00.58
dgmg
Ah, will you tell me your name and tell me what you had for breakfast today.
00:04.48
Amrita
Oh my gosh. This is how you start on your podcast I had a little bit of Chi and that's it. That's I'm not a breakfast person to be honest.
00:16.73
dgmg
I go back and forth sometimes I am and then sometimes I think it is nice to kind of let it ride until 11 or or 12 I don't but but then sometimes I wake up and I'm like hungry and I gotta eat right now.
00:27.85
Amrita
Yeah, no I get it the whole intermittent fasting thing. You know people are talking about it these days like a lot and I'm just like but I've literally been doing that my whole life like I just don't eat until like noon or one that's just how.
00:41.35
dgmg
Yeah, it's it's funny how that happens like a trend happens and then people are like wait. This is a trend I've just been doing this thing my my whole life I did I I did it more just like out of convenience like ah like ah I just found when I was living in Boston and like going into the office and.
00:46.54
Amrita
Yes.
00:58.10
dgmg
Process of just like having to get breakfast every morning and I think a lot of there's a lot of like health nutritional advice that' like you got to eat breakfast. You got to eat breakfast. But I think you can get the same amount of meals and just later in the day and then you don't have it. It is a little bit freeing and I have your whole schedule be structured around like I got to eat or I'm going to pass out right now.
01:13.36
Amrita
Yeah, yeah, and then and the newest is that not only do you got to eat breakfast but you have to get thirty grams of protein just just sizable. That's like a burger patty kind of right I think thirty grams and it's like I don't think I can eat that you know if I can have half a banana that's pretty good.
01:21.41
dgmg
Um, right? yeah.
01:31.60
dgmg
Yeah, right, We're not all ah like Hollywood celebrities with with private chefs. You know it's like you got to have you got to have convenience. Okay, so see no what happens is when you ask somebody that then you you start in a normal conversation and it's.
01:36.62
Amrita
Um, I think we doubt yeah.
01:43.76
Amrita
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:46.56
dgmg
I Know you'd be a good guess anyway though because I've heard you I've heard you talk before. So um, let's just start with just tell people your name and background so they can get context for your for your voice and maybe describe what you what you do at superside and and and what superside is.
01:59.56
Amrita
Yeah, for sure. So my name is am Rita Mather I work for a company called superside which is very cool like innovative and disruptive in some ways you know we're tackling an age-old problem which is how the heck do you get good creative done good design done and. The answer is that there's many many different ways and there's many different models and constructs for for doing that and our approach has been to say hey you could be an Amazon you could be a meta you could be a ubs or a Morgan Stanley or whatever and maybe you have this huge gigantic, super powerful internal team.
02:24.64
dgmg
So.
02:38.56
Amrita
That can crank out this amazing stuff. Maybe you use a bit of AiEtc but there's still going to be times where you need added capacity and maybe that is a permanent state that you live in because your marketing team and your go-to-market teams are actually always ahead of the curve. And they're always pushing the boundaries. So it's kind of impossible for the creative team to like fully catch up so you're always going to be in this like state of flux where you're just like holy shit I need more and I need better and I need faster right? and it's like think about how we even do like Facebook ads these days like you need like 57 versions of the same thing to properly test it and. You need that in two days and then by the way the experiment data just came back and now you need to change your whole approach and that whole cycle the the test and learn cycle. That's so part. A big part of marketing now is complicated and design and creative teams just need to find a way to like catch up. So that's that's ultimately the.
03:22.64
dgmg
Earth.
03:30.90
dgmg
Yeah, well, it's interesting. It's it's like um, you you run this for a while in my job at drift I I ran the creative team and that was like I had no idea what I was doing and ah while I was good at the creative part like.
03:31.91
Amrita
Of.
03:36.58
Amrita
Thanks.
03:44.41
Amrita
Um.
03:44.74
dgmg
It was fun to come up with the ideas and come up with campaigns but you know I I noticed really quickly that you kind of keep bumping into the same problem which is like the answer is always yes we can do that. But that means we got to take this other thing off, it's such a game of.. It's very similar to like engineering and like prioritizing different things and it's hard and I ended up building so much empathy for the creatives at drift For example, on that on that team because you know they don't often know the needs of the business or like who which internal you know.
04:02.90
Amrita
Yeah.
04:19.95
dgmg
Relationship between this vp and that vp is like why you need to actually prioritize this page There's just so much nuance and like what's going on and they're like look I just want to create stuff so but but I can't because there's a limited number of hours in the day and so you always it always you bump up against a resource thing and always comes down to do we hire somebody. Internally do we hire somebody externally pros and cons to each approach right? because sometimes you just like I need this I need we need this support now. We need this magically now. It's like I need this work now and in either case to find a good freelancer or to hire someone you got to train them onboard and there just there's a lot that it takes and so I think um.
04:39.43
Amrita
Yeah, yeah.
04:46.33
Amrita
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
04:58.76
dgmg
You know, separate from even like the product right? and you working there I Just think as a marketing org challenge. This is something that a lot of people that listen to this podcast like are probably nodding their heads to and struggle with.
05:07.57
Amrita
Yeah, hundred percent and you know what there's so much more nuance right? like it's I think it's so easy for everybody to dumb everything down to like lack of process. You know like if you if you normally bring up stuff like this no matter what the team is what the department is. Like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you just need a good process and like then you can do it and it's like really some things can't be solved by a good process sometimes you actually need multiple machines working together. Um in in unison and like different machines actually tackle different parts of it I actually have a really good example. Someone gave me insight into how Amazon operates. I mean they're just a case study for so many amazing things. But this in particular. So what they've done is in subsubsidiaries. They've split up the creative team into 3 buckets and there's like 1 team that's purely experimental like all they do is run experiments like that's it they don't do anything else. They don't do anything else.
05:50.17
dgmg
Um.
06:03.58
Amrita
Then there's like a core team and then there's a swat team. The swat team is basically like akin to the core team but they jump on urgent items. So all they do is like tackle like urgent like it's like really no credence to like what's actually strategic and important. But it's just like just tackling the urgent shit and it's always like somewhat execution focused.
06:20.69
dgmg
Yeah.
06:22.80
Amrita
And I love that model I love that they know that there's these 3 different problem spaces and they're going to have 3 different capacities almost figured out to tackle that because like 1 team can't possibly think about all of those things.
06:34.19
dgmg
I thought I thought that the the team that only handles urgent shit is just called the marketing team startup. Oh my gosh. Yeah, like everything is urgent. But yeah, no I think I think that's great I think even just what you like that Amazon.
06:42.12
Amrita
Um, in startup land. Yeah you and me were there were yeah right? That's that's ah.
06:53.87
dgmg
Ah, kind of team structure makes me think of also just interesting ways to structure marketing orgs like it. It is so hard you have this traditional structure of like you have demand gen and product marketing and then content. But then you're trying to do things on a campaign basis and I've always. 1 of my frustrations like that I learned over time inside of a company was how many people need to be involved and and so one of the reasons that I went and worked on the creative team was like between like myself a video person and a designer just the 3 of us like we could get some big shit done really quickly. And it was just always It's always like man if you just have small teams of people that are aligned around like a specific problem. It. It gets really hard for like 1 kind of centralized body like take in all of the work inside of a marketing team and then spit it out where I love this concept of just like having smaller specialized teams for different.
07:35.00
Amrita
Well.
07:45.52
dgmg
Parts of the funnel are different parts of the business. what what is um so so you run marketing over there your Vp marketing um take us into just you. You told us a little bit about like what the company does can you talk a little bit more about like what is your org what is your org look like and then how do you drive.
07:45.87
Amrita
Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.
08:03.69
dgmg
You know what's the Go-to-market strategy for superside.
08:06.52
Amrita
Yeah, um, I'll get into how the org looks in a second because there's so much context to provide. Um I'd say so I was marketer number one I joined when we were super early stage like we had no subscription revenue. We didn't even really have a product and we kind of had like. Half a product but like it wasn't really like set up for scale and it wasn't really oriented towards this like subscription model. Um, so we had we had nothing and we weren't even called to preside. We recall the parent company concept which no one could spell and we knew we had to Rebrand so literally.
08:36.18
dgmg
And did you did you join? did you join ads like Vp of marketing like you. It looks like you were you were kind of a proven marketing exec before this did they hire you with the premise of like you're going to do this and build the early team.
08:47.70
Amrita
Yeah, exactly exactly which is actually strangely uncommon in our world right? like you've you've seen this like a lot of I think founders and ceos they kind of don't fully understand how to leverage marketing so they end up hiring a lot of you know, sometimes early young in their career Junior marketers. Nothing wrong with that right? like you need that as well. But then that no one has that strategic oversight. So I think in some ways I mean maybe this is just because it's relevant to me but it seemed like the right approach for this kind of business I would more people would consider that. Ah.
09:09.72
dgmg
Yeah.
09:19.75
dgmg
Yeah, let's let's talk about that for a second actually just as a side note one of the most common questions that I get from startup founders that I work with is like hey or 1 off random things is like ah hey what? what should I look for in that first marketing hire and i.
09:32.98
Amrita
There.
09:35.69
dgmg
Agree with you that there's usually I usually tell them like there's kind of camp a or camp b and I think there's pros and cons to to each which is like camp a is you hire the junior person you have a specific idea of what you want marketing to do right now and you as the Ceo have to sign up for being personally responsible for marketing and so like. The example that I have there is like at drift when I got hired at drift I wasn't vp of marketing Dave I was marketing manager Dave and David was the Ceo and he was like we want to start doing content and building our audience for drift I'm going to hire someone that can do content and I became vp over the years because like I rose through content I took on more and that was one path.
10:06.84
Amrita
Yeah. Um, nice Oh wow.
10:14.48
dgmg
And while I was there. There was actually 3 vps that were hired over me right? and so and so it's like you could. There's multiple different paths. That's why I always tell people also like if you get hired over. It's not. It's not over for you and then you have this other scenario which is like maybe the company idea is a little bit more fleshed out and the founders like we want to go for.
10:23.61
Amrita
Yeah, Jeff.
10:33.14
dgmg
You know we want to go for umri like she she's been. She's already done this before but she's scrappy enough where like she can come in and build something and hire I think where companies fail at that stage is when the vp who they're bringing in like doesn't even know how to like log in to Hubspot or.
10:46.76
Amrita
Yeah.
10:49.14
dgmg
Can't create a landing page on your own I think you have to be willing to roll up your sleeves and do some of the stuff.
10:51.35
Amrita
Hundred percent it's not for everybody. You know it's it's definitely not for everybody to get that job and then do the work I mean I think by the time I made my first hire it had been six months so I was doing everything from a to z for six months listen I I think. Think it's important for founders to look at generalists some founder like in your case, it sounds like David Cancelll had a very good idea of where to begin right? He said content marketing is where we're going to invest so I need a great content market or dough like that makes total sense. He had a very clear idea many founders and Ceos. Don't necessarily know that and frankly like it's hard to know that unless you've done this a few times like you the answer really is you need to experiment you just need to throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks and see where it's where it's more sufficient right? so.
11:37.14
dgmg
Well, you need to do you need to learn by hiring you lean to learn by what you said you need by you'll learn by having no strategy and then hiring the junior people to do it is. That's when it just blows up where's like.. It's okay to have no strategy but you need to be like I'm hiring this person to do it and like we talked to her during the interview process and she already told us what marketing here is going to be here here. You go lady take the key take the keys.
11:59.48
Amrita
Yeah, yeah, when fact I mean I'll I'll just give this anecdote when they interviewed me there was like a step where like I had to do like a proper case like an assignment and basically the assignment was what would your marketing strategy be knowing what you know about the company which was like not that much right. And I said listen I don't know shit like I don't know anything. We don't even have a name. We don't have a.com domain. We don't have a website. We have nothing I have no idea so here's how I'm going to run these experiments I've been in b two b tech for a long time I think we emulate that model apply it here here are the 3 parts I would invest in this is the order in which I would do it. Would get money in the bank first first I would invest in performance marketing then I would go to content which is like long-term blah blah blah laid out on my thinking. This is the order in which I would do it like there's no right answer things would change. We're not going to stick to that. We're not going to be like this is the plan and this is all we're going to do like constantly looking at the data constantly doing customer interviews trying to figure that out. Ah, but I had a general plan and and I always like to this this is like an abstract model so it might be hard for people to fully understand but I always like to think of like exploit versus explore there are times in a company's life where you have to exploit the opportunity in front of you. And there's times in a company's life where you have to explore because you just really don't know and that's what a startup is like you don't have anything so you have to be in this full discovery exploration mode. You know you're like a you know Captain of a yacht going out, you're like Columbus trying to like find like where to go and what that looks like you have no idea.
13:17.28
dgmg
M.
13:34.34
Amrita
But then when you find land. It's like okay now how do I exploit this opportunity. Oh great, let me establish your trade route. Let me bring more people here. Let me have like lots of mini boats. Whatever that's that's that's really how superside grew all we knew in the beginning was. Hey there's a need for this. We had done enough discovery information that we were like oh there's a need for this. We had a hypothesis for what the buyer Personas would look like but we didn't really know for sure. Um, are in our case, the beauty was that in some ways I was selling to myself so I could get there a lot quicker like one of our buyer personas is someone like myself. So there's just like a shortcut right? like that that was easy and then the third thing we did is yeah we just experimented like crazy and wherever we found the efficiency we invested there which is sometimes I think again that people get caught up in this trap of like. Oh we need to be folk. We need like all these like scalable systems and all and then yeah, there's time for that. But first you need a little bit of money in the bank to prove your hypothesis. Um, so so that we did with pay.
14:32.40
dgmg
So now this is great I think this will actually give us a way to get to the go-to-market so you did a bunch of things. 1 thing that you shared with me before is that since you all have grown from essentially 0 to 30000000 in revenue in 3 years which is fantastic. Good good work I know how hard that is ah and congratulations now you just have to double that and triple that um, let's let's maybe try to unpack that if if we were to just kind of bucket. You know some of the big levers and going from 0 to 30000000? What what would you say there and it could be.
14:54.18
Amrita
Yeah, exactly just.
15:08.84
dgmg
Hey we went all in on this go-to-market strategy and we did this approach or it could be some tool or platform that that you're using like what are what are some specifics in the how how superside went from 0 to 30000000
15:16.34
Amrita
Yeah, so at the at the foundational layer I'd say there's 2 things that we wanted to really dive in on one is this slightly more like product led approach versus a more classic sales led approach and by sales lead I don't mean that sales is going out in prospecting I Mean. Marketing still doing that and and lobbying really hot. You know, high intent leads that have actually booked a demo over the fence. You know we agreed that marketing would do all of that work and sales should really just focus on closing but that whole approach is like a classic sales led approach right? So we said? Okay, we have product Led We have classic sales lead. Let's do both in parallel and see what makes more sense and.
15:56.30
dgmg
And so just just to pause on that and go in there for a second. So that meant that you could go to your website and sign up like if I had a design need I could go and get and fulfill. It self-service.
16:09.29
Amrita
Yep yep, exactly.
16:09.87
dgmg
Up to a certain price point or if it was over a certain price point or need it would go to the In-house a field team sales team.
16:12.87
Amrita
Exactly yeah like a really Matt yeah and usually that never happened usually people wanted to try us out. Do like a couple of projects as we called it and then that would turn into subscription. It.
16:21.33
dgmg
And what would the project be is it you your product goes and finds a freelancer for them.
16:28.35
Amrita
No, so our model is that we have employees so we have a bunch of creatives different talents different talent stack entirely. So we have animators you know motion designers illustrators people that are just like super specialized on landing pages and ui and that type of stuff all these different specialists. So. Usually what would happen in the plg model is people would come in and say hey I need urgent help to do this landing page for my you know, whatever launching vitamin water in Brazil right? like I need a landing page for that all our billboards and advertisings going to point to it get yada so we would be like cool and so that would go to like a ui person that was specialized in landing pages. But it was very I think the the challenge with that model is like you don't have a chance to understand that person's business like totally out of left field right? So for the creative you're trying to process that without that much time and it's like usually tends to be like fast turnaround type stuff.
17:10.64
dgmg
Right.
17:23.18
Amrita
But we said you know what? let's let's just see how that turns out and some of those things did turn into subscriptions right? So that was great. We did that for I think almost a year and our data showed that only three percent of people that started single or multiple projects with us actually turned into a subscription.
17:40.43
dgmg
Yeah, so most of those people were probably people that have better been better served going to fiverr or something and finding a 1 ne-off quick project and that was the literal burning need like found you on Google and like I just need this done.
17:42.48
Amrita
They were. Um, yeah.
17:53.50
Amrita
Yeah, exactly exactly it was like I have a keynote at so ands so conference south by southwest and I just need like someone to help me spruce it up or whatever right? like there was like a lot of those instances where it wasn't an ongoing need so very quickly. Within the first year we realized. Okay, we only need to service those people and teams frankly that have like this like sort of conveyor belt of stuff that's coming down the Pike Kate again using that vitamin water example maybe you're launching vitamin water in Brazil but there's this whole campaign designed around it. And now you need like 57 different artifacts to produce to actually make that campaign come to life. That's where superside shines right? So then we were just like that's the first qualifying question we need to find out is like is this part of something larger and if the answer is no then sorry but like you're not for us. Oops sorry Dave your voice is cut out.
18:46.65
dgmg
I Oh sorry I just was on mute. Um, so so then so basically but you would still take them if they had a burning need but the burning need would be like the hook to get them in and then it would only be a good fit longer term if they were like burning need has me in oh shit they did a good job I'm gonna.
19:01.61
Amrita
Exactly exactly exactly.
19:02.20
dgmg
Upgrade now and hire them to do you know some recurring thing. Okay, and and where were of the people that were fine like how are people how did people know that superside existed where were they how were they finding out about you and signing up.
19:12.47
Amrita
Yeah, so it was mostly I'd say like the plg funnel was primarily powered by search both paid search and organic search which kind of makes sense because it's a high intent kind of value prop right? like you kind of.
19:27.93
dgmg
Um, it was organic hard for you to crack because like the company's not that old I would figure that there's a ton of competition in with the companies that are in this space. How did you crack some of the Seo stuff.
19:37.88
Amrita
Yeah, and know it was very It was very difficult. It was definitely hard to crack thankfully by the time I'd come in. Um well I I don't know if I should be thankful because it was definitely It was like a lot of traffic but not the best quality traffic. But we had a bunch of blog posts that had been written by the Ceo and with the help of a bunch of freelancers in the past and they were all very designed capability focused so one would be about powerpoint Dax one would be about pitch decks. The other one would be about landing page design like so various and and we had kind of. Sufficient traffic like thirty forty thousand visitors a month kind of thing to those 4 block both? Yeah yeah, exactly they had been written about a year or nine months to twelve months
20:11.20
dgmg
Um, and did he did they just they just wrote those posts and they started to rank at some point.
20:23.50
Amrita
Before I had joined and so they had had a chance to rank and they were very very comprehensive with templates and downloadable stuff and all of that stuff the right way to do it right? Like really solid pillar post but still not the kind of customer we were eventually looking for. So even today they're still active. We update them all the time. Bring in a lot of traffic but shit leads right? So that's that's the thing with search is that you don't have control over the targeting. It's it's really based on intent and the volume and it's a lot of it's a little bit out of your control.
20:42.36
dgmg
Right.
20:54.94
dgmg
Right? Well, you'd have control over the targeting if it was from a longer tail. It has longer tail. It's a much longer tail keyword but the volume is probably not going to be sufficient.
21:07.31
Amrita
Exactly? Yeah, so so I did have something to start off with right? So it was like organic search paid search mainly Lg funnel and ah.
21:11.64
dgmg
Kind of as a gift in the curse though. They're like here's all this traffic and then you got to be the one to tell them like well these people aren't going to buy.
21:21.48
Amrita
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But we didn't know what we were even selling right in the early days I was I was like that just give me everything um, but then in parallel like I said we said okay, we're gonna set up a more traditional funnel which is you know we we warm you up? Ah, however, we bring you to this. Landing page but eventually we'll bring you to this lighting page of um, hey do you do you want to explore this a bit more. Do you want to book a demo with sales just to explore this right now 15 minute we'd experimented with 15 minute call calling it talk to sales calling it request to demo I think I saw a post about that today on your Linkedin. Asking like what is the right call to action. We've experimented so much with that positioning and and found that requested demos the best combo of high intent and high quality. Um, but also bringing in sufficient number of people. You don't want to sacrifice volume and have the highest quality in the world. It's rather It's better that you capture them and then you see what you can do with that.
22:17.12
dgmg
Have you experimented with anything like it seems like you have a cool a cool so you could have a cool sales process because like people are coming to you with actual specific projects in mind and so you're not just like well let me. Let's talk about it. You could have ah you could have a cool model and maybe you've tried this and failed but I'm just thinking out loud like where somebody actually gets to sign up for that specific thing and you could position what I'm trying to say is this is a good example in B Two B Sas where you can position the sales call as an actual good thing right? because you're like.
22:48.64
Amrita
Yes.
22:51.66
dgmg
Hey we can like let one of our experts like talk through your landing page and we can give you a recommendation of what we can do in the time frame as opposed to like just asking a bunch of qualifying questions and taking a bunch of like sales process nonsense. It seems like you can kind of get right to it.
23:07.15
Amrita
Yes, exactly the experience that we've curated is that you don't There's no qualification. You don't talk to some Junior Bdr and then they're qualified in or out or whatever it always goes straight to a sales rep the sales rep has been um. You know I wouldn't say that they're creatives themselves but they're so close to the creative process that they can in a very educated way tell you very quickly can we help you or do you actually need a different solution and that's that's usually a pretty positive thing and even though we don't close the sale.
23:30.98
dgmg
Nice.
23:38.32
Amrita
Ah, we find like a lot of those people do come back eventually for some other type of need which has been great. We've won actually a couple of our big accounts like that. That's ah, that's a various observation and one of the things we're trying to do now is like finding a way to like make that very term key and visual for people. Um, today. It isn't it's not maybe as visual as we would like it to be but it would be nice if it was almost like let's just do a Teardown right now like like let me bring in this expert and like let's just do it right now and that could be really really cool.
24:10.70
Amrita
Um, but yeah, coming back to your original question so we had these 2 motions going in parallel and one of them was primarily driven by search the other one I'd say was primarily driven by ah paid social we we actually were able to crack Instagram in the first three months which was really amazing and we were just able to turn that into a total flight will and machine. Um, and so like a ton of ourites just came in through that and then it was just about figuring out. Okay, what is the talk track. Um, who do we focus on in terms of like where is the wind rate actually good. Where does the water flow more easily. et cetera et cetera as we discovered that we we just narrowed down.
24:45.48
dgmg
Um, who who are you targeting? Um, ah, interesting to hear that Instagram works. So I think it makes sense given like the design component of this but like um, who are you targeting that this works so well on.
24:58.56
Amrita
Oh gosh I'd say in the early days we were targeting anybody that looked like a marketer or a creative or a underserved um business leader. So like you could be like you know sometimes banks have like. Vp of strategy. No idea what they do but like you own some some component and maybe it's like a combination of marketing and sales and some other operational stuff right? But there's a ton of in the enterprise world like there's a ton of these like sort of more I'd say like less defined roles.
25:15.39
dgmg
Sure.
25:33.00
Amrita
And they all have a need for creative. But they're a little bit perhaps practical.
25:35.65
dgmg
Right? I was actually just thinking like this is a fun marketing job. Um, well maybe it's not off the record I'm just kidding I don't know I don't know that no it seems like a fun because um, the you're selling something that is.
25:53.42
dgmg
You're not trying to prove that this is a need right? Every marketing team on the planet and creative team on the planet like it is a fact that they are doing. They're burnt out. They can't take on more work and if a marketer needs something in a pinch you you can't get it from your team internally so like as opposed to. Different companies trying to like create demand for a product doesn't seem like ah what you have to do is create demand. It's more about like how do you get into those conversations and just as I as I was asking a lot I like well what I would just thinking like I wonder was it like some ridiculous ad copy or offer or creative on Instagram and that kind of like actually no, this is like. You're fishing. You're fishing with great bait you're like we can fix we know you have this problem we can fix this problem let's talk and I just wanted to call that out for this podcast because I think so often we we beat our heads against like the tools and the tactics and the optimization where it's like it really is this. This is why the story is the strategy and the.
26:33.60
Amrita
Now. Yeah yeah.
26:49.20
Amrita
Yet.
26:51.60
dgmg
The product piece of this matters so much and then the rest of the marketing becomes easier when you have the right fit.
26:55.85
Amrita
Yeah, no that That's ah, absolutely great point like we're not necessarily creating the Demand. We don't have the pressure to do that and these buyer Personas are very clear that the and the problem exists I think the thing with us though and this is why it might that the part of the. Job That's not super fun and easy I would say well I should say it's not super easy but parts of it are fun is that for us. We actually need to reframe that right. Everybody comes in with this like very standard frame of reference. It's like yup I have this need? Oh you're going to solve this like an agency or you're going to solve this like a freelancer marketplace. Right? Um, and and we're like no no, no, we're this like different model and here's where it makes sense and here's where it doesn't make sense and like that whole reframing is actually not that easy. Um there. There are customers that are good fits for us and there's absolutely customers that are going to be horrible fits and sometimes we still sell them and that's maybe not a good thing.
27:30.66
dgmg
Yep.
27:50.53
Amrita
Um, so that that's where the marketing magic lies. It's not so much the bring in the horse to water. It's like getting.
27:55.20
dgmg
Yeah, ah, that's interesting. Yeah, it makes a ton of sense because like the need. It's a very um, impulsive needs- drivenven like thing like I need this right now. Yes I can pay 5 grand to get this website page done by with two weeks from now. But i. if if I'm the buyer I'm kind of only thinking about that I'm not I'm not coming to that conversation like prepared to talk about my next six months of creative needs.
28:16.70
Amrita
Exactly exactly you have no roadmap you just want to solve that need the other problem it creates for us is that our our marketing machine in the beginning was just tapping like just picking off the low-hanging fruit right? like as it should be like you just want to like get traction. You just want to get money in the bank. So we picked off a lot of the low hangging fruit and then there did come a time I'd say like maybe especially about a year ago where we were like okay wait a second I think we have picked up a lot picked off a lot of the low-hanging fruit and now we need to go to the people that don't have a. Ah, super clear understanding of their own second order pain points like maybe they're first order pain points. But if we actually want to start selling people beyond just their immediate need which by the way like you know ebbs and flows and might come come up sometimes and might not other times we can't be um. We can't be waiting around for people to recognize that need we need to go to them and show them why there's a better way and so to do that we have used some of the same you know frameworks and tropes that you and others like April Dunford have talked about but we've kind of tried to coin a term.
29:13.77
dgmg
This.
29:26.39
dgmg
Ah.
29:26.88
Amrita
That allows people to change their frame of reference. We've coined a term called cas creative as a service that is clearly different from an agency and clearly different from a Fiverr and so that allows people that allows us to be like people are like oh what What is this cast thing. What and why should i. You know, take note and and then then we can get into the story of why which is just an opportunity. We're hungry for.
29:44.78
dgmg
Yeah, so all god so this all stem from my initial question which is about asking about go- to market tell me this is wrong or right I feel like and by the way up the when I do these interviews I'm kind of like a'm just like ran writing random shit down trying to come back to different things. But. So my guess would be that from an ah acquisition and interest standpoint that stuff is easier for for you. You can you know between Seo and paid and I'm I'm sure you're doing events and content and traffic. But you have no problem like getting people to be interested in in this thing. It seems like a lot of the marketing.
30:14.25
Amrita
Yes.
30:23.20
dgmg
Day-to-day challenge that you have is going to be around you know product product marketing muscle and bottom of the funnel types of activities is that right.
30:28.72
Amrita
Yeah, hundred percent yeah top of funnel acquisition not hard at all. It's it's really like changing people's minds and. Forcing people to be like wait a second the solution I have right now is is not great I need to think about something different that actually makes me more resilient and sets me up for scale which crazily a ton of marketers. Don't think about because they think of creative as someone else's problem.
30:42.40
dgmg
Um, yeah, yeah.
30:52.50
dgmg
Right? Alright,, let's talk about Let's talk about some of the things as a marketer and you that you and your team are doing to try to crack this problem because a lot of people listening actually would be thrilled to be in this position which is like I got a bucket full of people who are interested and we got to do a better job at getting them to buy So What. What are your kind of big rocks or initiatives in in marketing as much as you can share to to go after that. How? how are you approaching that.
31:14.57
Amrita
Yeah, so we talked about this like positioning thing that we're trying which is you know, really going to be like a campaign- led almost pseudocategory creation I Hate to use that word because it's a big word. We're not necessarily trying to create a category. But. Very clear positioning that this you know makes us distinct from the incumbent solutions that are out there and showcases I think like the the winning part of what we do? Well, that's one that's like a huge body of work and that.
31:42.65
dgmg
By the way category or not I think what you're doing is great which is like you're you're naming it like I think category or not is a separate discussion but you're like oh what does superside do instead of like well it's not you know, creative as a service. It's like everyone's going to understand that or at least to the point where they might.
31:47.18
Amrita
Um, or it mean? yeah.
31:58.28
Amrita
Um, yeah, exactly.
32:02.11
dgmg
They might say interesting tell me more. They don't have to understand all of it but they're just going to catch them I think it's a great hook. Yeah.
32:04.35
Amrita
Hundred percent and most people are like okay tell me more. That's exactly what we're looking for is like just give me the permission to tell you more right? I need to illustrat unpack this for you. So that's one huge body of work and everything that surrounds that the second thing is like we've really pivoted this year the team the
32:10.87
dgmg
Yeah, oh.
32:22.10
Amrita
Pretty sizable content marketing team that we have that focuses on everything from content creation to social to Community. We're pivoting that entire team to very much focus on middle and bottom of funnel but almost entirely on bottom of Funnel. So conversion-oriented content mind. Bending mind changing content like stuff that will actually make you be like wait a second like we want that we want people to like do the nodding and like going along and like you know to the end of it. They're like okay, cool I get it but we actually want people to stop dead in their tracks and be like wait a second. What? what are they talking about? Why do I need. I Need to pay attention to this I need to understand this better. Um, and we're gonna yeah ah.
33:01.51
dgmg
So what does that look like I love that so they're focusing their efforts on mind-bending bottom of the funnel content. So is that like an article and you just need an article. You just need a ah 2500 word killer.
33:15.62
Amrita
I I wish which yeah though I wish I wish that was the antidote I mean it'd listen. It could be for some people I think a lot of a lot of people. You know that there's different ways to do this What we're trying to do is you know as an example.
33:16.20
dgmg
Well-researched well-written objection smashing article like what is it.
33:34.58
Amrita
1 of the programs we're standing up is you know customer led storytelling which sounds so obvious. But I think I think how we've gone about it in the past hasn't been the greatest. We've kind of unpacked like what the customer used us for and like what they got out of it. You know the classic like.
33:38.94
dgmg
Yeah.
33:51.68
Amrita
Challenge solution. Whatever it was. You know result. But I think our approach now is going to be hey maybe it's a video. Maybe it's ah it's a webinar It's very bite sized. It's going to be like 10 minutes max and we're going to get the customer to actually elevated to like a higher level business problem. So it could be. Hey I'm ah I'm the director of performance marketing at so-and-so so big financial services company. Our Cac has been through the roof you know we we over the pandemic it kind of shot up and we were never able to bring it down now. It's like what the hell do I do right? It's like okay, there's all these like 5 different things we can do. But we realized very quickly that creative is at the at the center of all of this and so we have to just do like a lot more rapid testing blah blah blah blah and then you distill that problem down into like how you actually did that and superside is a player in that whole ecosystem I don't think we need to say oh my god you solved your big problem of reducing cac by using superside right? like that's ridiculous. Think that type of storytelling where our future customer can see themselves in the same shoes can be like oh my god I have that cac problem I need to be thinking about this formula this playbook this framework. Oh and by the way superside can help me with that. That's the kind of thing that we want to bring across so.
35:04.44
dgmg
Nice.
35:06.28
Amrita
That could come in many forms I'm just giving 1 example here, but that's that's an example of something.
35:08.98
dgmg
I like this that you wrote you you wrote this on Linkedin about a month or so you set up writing a long-ass memo to the marketing team about 2023 content strategy and I can't wait to share it with the world by narrowing our focus and by narrowing our focus and favoring depth instead of breadth.
35:14.87
Amrita
Um, oh yeah.
35:26.28
dgmg
Breath will weather this capital scarcity environment and aiinuced content tsunami. Can you can you explain that? What do you mean by? ah for the for the people listen What do you mean by focusing on depth instead of breath I mean I think you you kind of just talk you talk through it. But do you have an example of maybe something that's in the works that you can.
35:31.32
Amrita
Yeah, fusa. Yeah, yeah.
35:44.60
dgmg
Can share.
35:44.95
Amrita
Yeah, um, yeah, the du thing we kind of talked about I think it's also like I want to address that it also means saying no to things. So for example on the blog. We've been very search focused so we write content. To match up with what people are searching for obviously in correlation with the things that we care about that Venn diagram right? But we've but we're actually actively now going to move away from that this year and and really kind of go to like the areas that require. I'd say like significant um, it's it's the kind of thing that teases out like the wheel at the core selfish desires and and problems that our buyers face an example of that is so a very a very simple one I mean there's a bunch.
36:31.30
dgmg
Um.
36:34.65
Amrita
But but a very simple one is a lot of the creative directors. We chat with and our customers, especially when they talk about their selfish desires. It's often something like this. It's often. My team is demoralized I need to help them not be demoralized. You know. Um, and and that's different than saying I need to optimize my team or I need to do more I need to crank out more creative like it's not really about that. Those are all the rational needs and stuff right? But it's like ultimately where they're hurting is like their team is demoralized. So How do we tell the stories.
37:02.42
dgmg
Yeah, yeah.
37:09.70
Amrita
That allow us to position superside along that selfish desire and that selfish pain.
37:13.82
dgmg
Um, well, it's interesting you you you also can I think this this is another kind of meta lesson in this which is like you're also positioning is very much a moving target and at this time in business right now and in the world that you sell to something that. Most companies care about is like they're getting crushed from a budget standpoint right? They're they're cutting budgets they're having to do layoffs and then to your point about team morale and this and that and so I think it's smart to like okay, well let's use those factors. We. I do see many companies that don't ever change their positioning because it's it's got to be relevant and that could change next quarter right? It's like six months from now everything you know comes back and then it's going to be a different a different conversation that you could spin your story that way and so I think it's it's just cool to hear you do that and I I think that's an underrated ingredient of positioning that it. Don't be afraid to change it I think we don't like to change it because it takes so many meetings and people involved which is like make the case for not having to do that who leads that effort this creative as a service thing. Can you talk about how that came to light inside of the company.
38:06.75
Amrita
Yeah.
38:18.30
Amrita
Yeah I would say like we didn't really have anybody actively thinking about it. Um, the only thing that the Ceo and I guess agreed on is that. We were tired of people referring to us as an agency or sometimes they would call us agency 2.0 which was even worse because I was like two point zero I was like we're well beyond tu anyway, ah so so we experimented with um, giving our platform that powers our service. A name we thought that if we brought the platform to the forefront and really talked about the tech and how it's purpose built and but but but but but that that would work so we experimented with that we called it. A design ops platform for various reasons which actually part of it actually worked out really well because it entrenched us with a lot of design ops professionals which is a new.
39:05.34
dgmg
Um.
39:06.71
Amrita
That you know a lot of big creative teams invest in um, you know Airbnb has an entire department called the design opbs team which is separate than the design team. So that experiment failed because I think. I think it's still only talked about a portion of what we did and not the entire model and the movement that we were trying to create around it. Um, so we we knew that that wasn't quite working the way we imagined. And we knew we that we needed to ah you know come up with a new term. But then we also weren't sure like if it goes into category creation territory and there was one day where I think we were just battering around stuff on the marketing leadership team and. And I and I think I I just said like it would be nice to kind of like hitch a ride on this like Sas bandwagon I was like no if if we were like creative but for Sas but like or like creative like for Sas and I think it just like we just like spitballed it like it just came out. You know we were just we were just trying to like be.
40:05.78
dgmg
Yeah.
40:08.28
Amrita
You know, synonymous with something that people understood that was the insight that it had to be synonymous with something that our audience which is highly concentrated in tech internet and gaming that they understood and and Sas just kept coming to mind and I think we just came up with it and I think we just. Pitched it around inside the company people didn't hate it and yeah people didn't hate it and actually there was like a very fortuitous event. We were chatting with um Jason Calacanis about I can't remember what the call was about it was me.
40:29.90
dgmg
That's how it always starts I didn't hate it.
40:42.80
Amrita
Head of performance marketing and Jason and like you know he's he's a big deal. He's been around the block he he knows everything about saas businesses startups who name it and he said and Rita tell me what superside is and like I and I had like we think we had like 5 minutes with him so it was like very crunch time right? and I was just like but but I think it was.
41:00.20
dgmg
Um, what was the call for.
41:02.44
Amrita
For um I think we were trying to advertise on his podcast I think yeah and I I think sometimes he joins those calls if it's interesting for him I don't think normally he leaves it up to like dominions but he just he just showed up and we were like oh wait a second so because we had just talked about this cast.
41:05.69
dgmg
Got it? okay.
41:11.94
dgmg
Yeah.
41:20.17
Amrita
I ended up like blurting it out saying like you know superside is like creative as a service like we're like creative sa for you know, Baba and and he just loved that so much and he said listen when I do oh yeah, that's right, it was for his podcast advertising. He said when I when I do these plugs for companies. He's like I like to record it in my own voice I don't like to follow a script so you tell me what this company is and I'll just do it and then when he finally did record it and we saw the output of it. He had just positioned cast and used it so beautifully in a sentence I was like oh my god this is it.
41:50.70
dgmg
Um, isn't that that's I love that I mean that's that's why that's a perfect example of why like a make a decision pick a name and go start to tell people what you are because eventually like the market tells it back to you and a lot of the positioning work is like.
41:52.83
Amrita
Ah, key did our marketing for us.
42:07.55
dgmg
It's really hard when you're just sitting there either in a room with a team or you have the open Google doc and you're just like trying to write it. It has to be ah has to come organically and so like boom you got a name for it. You put it in some creative. They actually tell it back to you differently I mean I've seen this multiple times it could be ah the way a customer. The way a customer responds to an email and they're like hey I've always thought of you as this and that email gets screenshotted and sent around or like your Ceo meets with a customer and the customer says it this and the Ceo texts you and's like listen how she described us and you're like ah that's it and I think you have to move fast to open yourself. You have to like make a commitment to then move.
42:26.39
Amrita
X Pocket. Yes.
42:43.35
dgmg
Then you can you know, get get some data on that really quickly Now you're like Boom This guy said it a he liked it and he said it better than us I bet if I looked over your superside copy copy somewhere. You got you've now taken that and turned it into copy that you're going to use at some point.
42:57.17
Amrita
Yeah, yeah, 100%. So like now we're using it everywhere but that was just like an early proof point right? that was like okay someone else outside our company. Got it right away within like 30 seconds and like set it back to us in a better way and let's just like float it and try to use it and I think what the Ceo also heard. Um, how Jason said it like I think it kind of sunk in better with him as well and you know already people didn't hate it and now we were just like okay, there's something here and then we just started slowly testing it. We hired our first product marketing hire. Um. In the fall of last year and he just talked to a bunch of customers in his first three months on the job and just like use that term nonstop with every customer and good response right? Like that was just like okay check like customers aren't hating it. They get it. Most people are like okay, interesting tell me more. And granted these are people that know us and have already purchased but those are the best people to talk to to see if it's like actually like jiving with their impression of us.
43:58.16
dgmg
I love that and I like that the big lesson is not some tool or some channel. It's this overall story of getting the company aligned around creative. Um, as a service. Okay, what's what's changed with where are you placing bets in marketing and in 2023 and how is that. Different than maybe it was last year or the year before what's what's some new stuff that you're doing.
44:15.72
Amrita
Yeah, yeah, so the 2 things we already talked about this cast thing and then pivoting all of content marketing and then I guess the third thing is like we're heavily leaning into expansion of existing accounts I think this is like a known thing like if you sell to enterprise. At some point all of your big bucks are actually going to start coming from existing customers because why not they already know you you have a champion inside so we're just turning that into playbook that's a huge focus of the company this year so marketing sales or tag teaming it. We're figuring that out. Yeah, so.
44:44.93
dgmg
What what role do you think marketing will play in that.
44:50.65
Amrita
Interestingly I think we have a lot to do with accounts selection. Um I mean I could say on this podcast that I think our first the first time at this rodeo was not fruitful and I think it started at just like not knowing who our best fit customers are and how to expand within them you you even though it's expansion. You you can't go about it. Willy -nilly you still have to kind of go with customers that fit your ideal buy our profile etc. The 1 thing that we look at very carefully for example, in case, this is a clue to other people is what what is the level of respect. And accountability that our buyer personas have inside the company if you're a company that does not respect design or the creative team for example, chances are they don't have a lot of leeway and chances are they don't make their own decisions so to go there and just try to sell to them to the creative director there or the head of design there. Pointless so we try to think about that like you could call it whatever right? but like importance or respect or or amount of clout.
45:53.78
dgmg
How do you? How do you get to? that is is like a judgment call by the by the sales rep or something. How do you know that.
46:00.46
Amrita
Yeah, no, we we look at it industry by industry and we've split um Industries we've actually said hey generally you know tech companies grow and understand marketing and creative to a large extent. Not every company out there but generally right.
46:11.40
dgmg
Um, what's the industry that doesn't bank banking.
46:16.64
Amrita
I would say well in financial services I would say there's like a whole smattering of stuff so crypto and fintech obviously huge on the list right? Like they they love it. They get it I would say then it starts to taper off strangely in insurance. And um, in insurance in particular and lending also to some degree they understand marketing and creative particularly from an advertising lens not maybe holistic marketing. But I'd say like from an advertising lens for sure. Banks actually have so much regulatory stuff and they have so many hoops to jump through that even if they get it. They can't really do that much about it. So Actually that's not an audience for us so we split financial services for example into these like subcategories where we think we can win.
46:59.56
dgmg
So.
47:06.75
Amrita
And we only go after those categories similar in media and entertainment like you'd be surprised like of course netflix Walt Disney you know master class. All these guys get it. They're super into it. But then there's traditional media that just isn't there and then you you just you know you just have to go around them so that's. The account selection part is like really important. Um, but really after that the main role that marketing can play in. It is like really figuring out sort sort of more like customized messaging and creative. You know it's it's roughly all the same story but there's like a level of personalization that needs to happen. Um, so we try to do that and and and more recently this year this is a new bet. We're actually going to be doing custom things like brand new content like it could be an ebook or a guide or it could be a webinar that we specifically run for that account around a stop in a one-off way topic that.
47:55.20
dgmg
As a and and a 1 ne-off way wow so marketing might write a dedicated piece of content to close 1 customer. That's awesome.
48:00.99
Amrita
About.
48:04.62
Amrita
Yeah, exactly. But it could be like for us the ltv on an enterprise customer is gigantic. So let's say we spend even $5000 on that dedicated piece of content that's going to yield like to 400000 right so that's
48:15.81
dgmg
Right? And it is that how you think of your revenue plan is it from a target account standpoint now.
48:22.33
Amrita
Yeah, so on expansion. Yeah, it's like basically we go through it account by count figure out hey what are the tier one accounts and then what here are the accounts that we're going to put a shit ton of effort into like from a marketing lens. And here are the ones that will still like do expansion playbook stuff with them. We have like an army of bdrs Now that's going to like outreach all the subsidiaries and all of that stuff. But they're We're not going to do like the custom things that we've talked about for the tier One accounts. So That's a huge that's a huge investment and a totally different playbook than what superside has done in the past.
48:47.34
dgmg
So cut.
48:55.15
Amrita
We've been very obsessed with payback period and efficiency in general in the past and I think for the first time this year ironically in a resection we have gitchched that for the first time to try to invest in these high cost activities.
49:07.85
dgmg
Um, and do you have the freedom to do that because things are going well or is this just a bet that you're making.
49:21.66
Amrita
Um, her I mean it is bad in terms of like how it comes about I would say I'm just thinking out loud that this is a very good question I think we just have so much. Alignment and the company around expansion that anything we can do to move the needle on expansion in particular, we kind of you know what this that I'm thinking out out loud in real time. But maybe I'm I'm obsessed with like modeling everything. Even if it's like back of the napkin like just like what is what is this. Potentially going to yield what is this potentially going to cost and we didn't actually do that for this particular Playbook. So now I'm thinking maybe I should go back to the drawing little bit.
50:00.67
dgmg
Well I was wondering if maybe you know it's also possible that like because it's very specific and that and you and the focus is large revenue you have to take more kind of creative. It's not such a channel that needs to be under the roi microscope because. The acv is going to be hopefully so much more than even if you were yeah sure we don't need to measure the exact roi on this $5000 guide that we wrote because we're trying to close a half million dollar customer and it's part of that campaign. Maybe I don't know I'm not at your well the reason I was but the reason I was asking was um.
50:31.21
Amrita
Right? Yeah, no, that's that's a good.
50:37.91
dgmg
Just interesting to hear somebody say that we're in in a world where a lot of vp marketing are under a tighter microscope to no to no payback period. You've done it historically historically and here's a new channel and you you don't have to do it.
50:51.51
Amrita
Yeah I mean no one's asked for it and everyone knows what the plan is and everyone's like gungho and go for it. So I guess we just never did it? Um, but yeah like I think the realization across the whole company is that if we want to move upstream.
50:54.28
dgmg
Um, yeah.
51:04.87
Amrita
Almost exclusively sell to enterprise that that requires a different go to slightly slightly different. Go-to Markete and it probably means more upfront cost. That's that's what I've realized from talking to people that I've just nailed Enterprise. So yeah, well.
51:16.10
dgmg
Yeah, that makes sense.
51:19.96
Amrita
We'll we'll never shed our efficiency roots like we'll always be obsessed with the ltvcac ratio and looking at payback period and all of that stuff. But you know I think certain risks are totally appropriate. I would also say like the risk appetite or a company is definitely higher than most other companies I've I've worked for a lot of b two b saas companies and yeah, things just get things get approved a lot more easily here and sometimes you don't even have to go get the approval because. You know our Ceo encourages local decision making.
51:51.24
dgmg
That's great I mean that that makes a huge difference when you can just sure let's go. Let's go test it and let's go try it as supposed to like we have to make this huge business case just to do this.
51:58.53
Amrita
Yeah, yeah, and you know what? sometimes it's the Ceo that's coming up coming to us without his ideas like he's the best. He's like a mark. He's like a half economist half marketer at heart which is like the perfect combo because he's prudent but at the same time like he's like crazy and like has all these lack of ideas which is great. You.
52:12.54
dgmg
Yeah, yeah I meant that that that's that's fun I mean that that's that to me is like the ideal marketing job is when you have creative you know visionary type ideas coming to you and sometimes your job is to actually filter that you know you got to figure out. Okay, well.
52:18.11
Amrita
Ah, this is my.
52:31.66
dgmg
Just said this now this is the complete opposite but which one which one should we do you know there's there's a lot of guessing at the same time. Um, okay I Rita this was great I I feel like I could have talk to you I could talk to you for 3 hours but I have to we got wrap up. Um I'd love to have you back on in the future for for a followup I think you're.
52:34.43
Amrita
Yeah, yes.
52:43.45
Amrita
With method.
52:49.36
dgmg
Ah, great to talk to a great interviewer a great person to have on this. You've interviewed me, you're great at that and it was fun to have you on this end. So I'd love to have you back at some point because there's a bunch of questions that I didn't get to but people can check you out on Linkedin we will put your Linkedin there they can go and check out superside superside dot com.
52:54.93
Amrita
I Think it's a might.
53:07.51
dgmg
Ah, and if you liked this episode send amrita dm on Linkedin and be like hey I heard you on exit 5 and you're great and I hope more people find out about you and the company because it's been a pleasure to talk to you all right? I'll see you later I'll talk to you soon bye bye.
53:18.98
Amrita
Likewise Thank you so much for having me talk to you soon.
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