Ian Faison & Genelle Kunst

Building Opportunity with Partner Marketing


Genelle Kunst share her insights into building opportunity with partner marketing, optimizing your website to personalize the customer journey, and creating a brand community.



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[MUSIC]

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Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries.

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I'm Ian Faiz on CEO of Caspian Studios.

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And today I am joined by a special guest, Emily.

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How are you?

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I'm doing great.

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How are you?

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Excited to have you on the show, excited to chat about

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collective health, one of my favorite companies.

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So cool to finally have you on the show,

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chat about marketing and everything in between.

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So what was your first job in marketing?

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My first job in marketing, I actually worked at a hospital

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doing internal comms mostly, but a little bit of

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advertising, a little bit of PR and just kind of got my feet wet.

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But it really set me on this path for health care marketing.

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And after that, I realized could not do the big business

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established organization thing.

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I had to totally pivot to startup mode.

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And I've been there pretty much ever since.

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And so tell us a little bit about your role at Collective Health.

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Yeah, so at Collective Health, I sort of my dream role in the

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sense that I get to oversee everything related to our top of

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funnel lead journey.

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So that's content, social, a little bit of business development,

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email.

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And it's really exciting, but I will say it's also a little bit

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scary because then if we don't, you know, our lead targets

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or they're not high enough quality, I don't have anybody

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else to blame now all on me, but also makes it fun.

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Let's get to our first segment, The Trust Tree.

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This is where you can go and feel honest and trusted and share

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those deepest, darkest, man, Jen and marketing secrets.

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What does Collective Health do and who do you sell to?

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That's a great question.

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So Collective Health was founded to solve this broken

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employer health insurance system.

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We do that a few ways, but I think the biggest way to think

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about it is make it easier for employers to see how they can

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better support their people and make it easier for people to

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get the care that they need when they need it.

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And we sell mainly to employers, as I mentioned, but one of the

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kind of interesting things about our business model is

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employers rely on brokers or consultants to help them navigate

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this health insurance field.

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So for us, as a marketing team, we really have kind of two

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audiences, those employers, which are represented by HR

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leaders, benefit leaders, and then they're brokers and

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consultants.

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So trying to make sure we're messaging to both folks.

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Yeah, I've had the pleasure of sitting down with your CEO,

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Ali, a few times, who's phenomenal CEO.

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He's absolutely great.

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And there's just so many things that were illuminating to me

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about health care and about how much of that responsibility we

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put onto employers.

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And one of the crazy stats that I remember hearing is just this

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health care number rises every year.

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And if you're a CFO who loves to count the numbers and makes

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sure all the numbers add up, that this is an expense that they

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have no idea what's coming every year.

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And every single CFO thinks about this stuff all the time, but I

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had no idea that that was the case.

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Yeah.

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And not only that, it's actually the biggest expense for a company

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after payroll.

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So it goes payroll and then health costs.

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And to your point, to not know what those health care costs

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are going to be every year, can you imagine how stressful that

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is for a CFO who likes to have everything projected and planned

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well in advance?

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Stressful for me as a CEO.

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And we have a fraction of the number of employees that these

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other folks have.

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And so it creates such an interesting challenge, as you

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mentioned, with your marketing.

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So you have this true committee approach.

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We talk about committees all the time as it relates to marketing.

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And you all have this committee of the CFO needs to take a look.

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The CHRO is interested.

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These brokers, which have so much influence on this, tell me

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how you think about personas and looking at those.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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For us, it's such a challenge to make sure we're speaking to

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all audiences while still staying true to key core message.

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So where we've netted out is focusing different stages of

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the funnel to different personas.

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So our top of the funnel is really focused on that broker

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consultant, because often they're going to be the ones who flag

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us to their employer clients.

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Then as we get into middle of the funnel, those employer

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clients, which are typically the benefit leaders, the HR leaders,

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that's where we focus our middle of the funnel tactic.

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And then as we get to bottom of the funnel, you're exactly right.

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That's where we pivot to the CFO, the cost savings,

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just the cost planning message that seems to really resonate

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with that group.

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How does your marketing team, how is it structured?

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How is your sales team structured?

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Yeah, that's a great question.

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So our sales team follows a somewhat traditional structure

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in that it's geo-based.

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And we have specific sales reps for specific territories to

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really get in deep with all the employers in that area, the

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brokers and consultants in that area.

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The marketing team, right now we're grouped functionally, and

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that's worked well, I think as we start to grow, we might have to

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think a little more creatively about that.

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So for now, though, we have campaign and analytics team, we

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have a content and social team, we have a digital team, and then

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those folks obviously work closely with the brand, the product

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marketing and the field marketing teams.

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And what would you say is your marketing strategy holistically

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within that?

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It's interesting.

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It's definitely evolved recently.

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I think I used to think so much about channel versus channel.

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And what would be more impactful?

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Is it a LinkedIn ad or should we really rely on SEO or should we

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have a super aggressive persona on social to start driving folks

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in?

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But what I've since come to realize, and maybe it's an

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obvious insight, but it's this idea that it doesn't really matter

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what channel, these are all just brand interactions.

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And the most important thing you can do is whichever channels

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you decide to be in, because you can't be in them all, be in

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them 100% and make sure that when you are there, your

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creating that thread of a relationship with the prospect,

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so that the next time they see you, it can just start to build

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on itself.

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I think when you start to stack channels against each other,

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you really just start to cannibalize your own marketing

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efforts.

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So it's really important to think about them holistically.

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And again, it doesn't matter where they see your message.

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What matters is how it all melds together and starts to

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build that relationship.

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Any thoughts on how demand fits into that?

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Yeah, I think a mistake that a lot of marketers make,

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especially in the demand space, is they're really focused on

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claiming credit or claiming influence over opportunities that

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are generated by sales.

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And I totally understand it, like, how are you going to justify

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your budget the next year?

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You don't have a number to point to.

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But the risk that you can fall into there is you become

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really focused on only marketing originated deals as opposed to

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against looking at the whole picture, realizing that you and

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the sales team are kind of working towards the same goal

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and just staying super focused on ultimate revenue.

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And however, the fastest, most efficient way to get to that

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revenue goal.

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Any other things about marketing strategy or your personas

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that are unique, any other thoughts?

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I think the only other thing that I'd add is account-based

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marketing has completely transformed our strategy.

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And the biggest takeaway for me when I think about ABM is

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people can overcomplicate it, right?

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It feels like it needs to be super segmented or you need to

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have a custom landing page for each prospect.

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But I think if you develop two to three plays that you think

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will be successful, just run those plays with a limited set

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of target accounts, optimize them, find kind of the winning one

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of that three, and then try two more the next season.

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And just start iterating on it that way and not try and

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overcomplicate your whole ABM strategy.

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To me, that has probably been the biggest driver of revenue

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that we've seen is really focusing on that ABM playbook

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and just optimizing every play every year.

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Yeah, what would be some examples of those plays?

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Yeah, so probably my favorite one, I call it the White Whale.

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And it's this idea of typically the target list is going to be

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some of your competitors' customers who have refused to

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have a meeting with your sales representatives in the past.

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So you know who they are, the salespeople know who they are.

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Everyone knows exactly who these target accounts are.

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Then you create internal Tiger team and you're going to

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figure out how to surround these folks with a 360 campaign

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with email, ads, events, social media posts.

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You're going to be tagging the employers that they benchmark

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themselves against.

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And you do that in a very calculated three month sprint.

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And your only goal for the campaign is to get a meeting.

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And what's so nice about that is for the sales team,

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they've been trying to get a meeting with these folks

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for years and years and they haven't been successful.

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Then when you're finally able to get them that meeting

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and at least kick off that conversation,

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it really just again creates this credibility internally.

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Like hey, if we all band together, we can make the magic happen,

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we can make it work.

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So that's probably my favorite one.

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I love that.

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I think the other one.

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Yeah, no, it works really well.

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I think the key though is definitely keep it short timeframe,

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like a three month period, have a super discernible goal.

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If you start with 100 target accounts, your only goal

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should be get like five meetings.

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Because then you're going to blow it out of the water.

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Everyone's going to be super excited.

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The other campaign that I've seen work really well

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are late stage prospects.

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So what I like about this campaign is it will result in revenue.

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But also you should have a pretty good benchmark

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to determine success.

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So you have your historical conversion rate

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of like a late stage opportunity to one.

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And then what you're going to do is have all your closing

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messages, all the messages you think would work really well

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to push someone over the line.

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And then you compare that group to your historic conversion

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rate.

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And you should be able to see a big boost in closed one

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revenue.

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Because these folks, especially for those committee decisions,

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if you surround sound those groups, they're like, well,

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I see these guys everywhere.

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So you might as well go with them.

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They're definitely the safe choice.

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Yeah, it really makes me think of something

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that I talk about a lot on the show, which is in your committee,

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there's, let's just say, 13 people in your committee.

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And there's probably seven of them

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that they think about your product 15 minutes a year.

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Right?

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Like, that's it.

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And it's like, you got to make sure

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that when they show up to that 15 minute meeting, or let's say

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it's a 30 minute meeting, or it's one of the tools

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in the discussion in that hour that when you get brought up,

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that they're not going to be like, who's that?

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Exactly.

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There's that famous thing, you know,

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saying no one gets fired for choosing IBM or McKinsey

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or whichever industry you're in.

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But I think it's also true that when there's a younger

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company that seemingly has a lot of momentum,

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that it's similar idea, right?

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You have this third party validation,

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'cause quote unquote, they're everywhere.

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I see them everywhere.

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So that's how I typically tell a lot of other startups,

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get those late stage deals when you're up against

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some of the more established players.

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I love it.

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Late stage play, it's dawned on me after 100 plus episodes

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of DGB that in the playbook, we should probably talk more

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about plays that was really fun.

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Okay, let's go to our next segment.

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The playbook where you talk about the tactics

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that help you win.

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You play to win the game.

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(upbeat music)

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Hello, you play to win the game.

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You don't play to just play it.

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What are your three channels or tactics

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that are your uncutable budget items?

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Okay, so definitely won't be a surprise.

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Number one, account-based marketing.

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I think if you have a limited budget,

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which so many of us do,

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you can't use brand pray anymore.

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It's just as irresponsible at this point.

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So that's number one.

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Number two is actually from a staffing perspective,

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having really great content creators.

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People who are good writers,

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people who can deliver great copy, clever captions,

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funny emails, that is so critical to build

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that brand relationship with prospects.

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In B2B, we think about them committees

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or we think about them as faceless organizations,

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but it's just people and people want to work

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with funny people.

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So having those writers is very underrated,

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I think, in a lot of organizations.

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And then I think the third,

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I would probably say is just a really good measurement tool.

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And it doesn't need to be expensive one.

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It doesn't need to be an all-encompassing one,

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but you need a way to understand what's working

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and what's not, because especially if you're in

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a cutting budget situation,

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you have to have numbers to back up those assumptions.

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So something that will allow you to say,

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this type of content performs better

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than this type of content.

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Or this blog led to so many more conversions than this blog.

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So therefore, we should probably focus more

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on this type of content in the future.

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That to me is mission critical.

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- What types of tools are you looking at for stuff like that?

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- Yeah, so right now we use Google Analytics, of course.

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We use HubSpot and we use Demand Base.

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It's our three core sources of truth.

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I am very intrigued by a lot of the content marketing

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analytics platforms from the social listening tools.

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But I think again, when you have limited budget,

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you're a smaller company,

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you really have to stay focused on the ones that can

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better more of the Swiss Army knives,

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that can do more with your investment dollars.

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- Yeah, we've talked about it in the past year

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about like this, the dark funnel stuff

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and how important listening is just in general now.

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It's like classic sales 101 is listen to us

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as much as you talk sort of thing.

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I think as marketers, we're always trying to figure out

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better ways to listen.

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So I'm really excited just how far the industry's come so far

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and how it continues to go.

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But I need the listening stuff even better.

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- Yeah, absolutely.

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Absolutely.

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There's actually one other thing that I didn't mention,

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which is a can't cut and it's relatively new for me,

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but probably not for most of the listeners,

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is any fully branded chatbot and having that sort of ability

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to be able to engage with visitors to the website

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in a much more real authentic way.

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I've just never seen a better demand gen tool than that.

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- You're preaching to the choir.

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This is, I've qualified makes this show.

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So.

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- There you go.

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Well, I mean, honestly, like I was trying to optimize pennies,

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right?

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And then we got a chatbot and I was like,

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oh wow, we can get this a lot easier.

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- So content creation, you mentioned that as having people

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on a team that are just kind of like thinking of funny stuff,

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thinking of cool stuff.

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How do you do that?

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Are you doing like marketing power hours?

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Is it just people grinding in their sweatpants

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on their couch, thinking of funny stuff?

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Like how do you do that?

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- The best ideas have come recently.

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We've transformed our marketing meetings.

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So instead of just being one hour status update

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or presentation circle, we actually do the old Zoom breakout rooms

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and each team has to come back with a few ideas.

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And what's really helpful about that for larger teams is that

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removes the stress of throwing out wacky idea

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'cause in a smaller group might laugh and be like,

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I just know it's pretty good.

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We should put it on the list.

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And it just, I think it creates more of a glide path

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to coming up with those ideas that ultimately

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will lead to something really different, clever and fun.

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- I love that.

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I saw something, somebody was posting,

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was like companies should be remote naysynchronous

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except for creative teams.

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And as a company who's 100% remote

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and we're basically our whole company as creatives,

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it is super hard to do it remotely.

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But I think that the younger generations of folks

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are learning that piece as they go.

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They don't necessarily understand the like,

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how to be a business professional part as much

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'cause that part is harder to learn

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like when you're not sitting around your peers.

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- Yeah, I think you're not together, absolutely.

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- But from a creative standpoint,

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I think it's actually like,

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I think you can still be super creative remotely.

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You do need to figure out how to make time for it.

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- And I think the big thing too with that

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is having that psychological safety in your team

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and making sure that your team knows

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that there are no bad ideas in a brainstorm

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and just having fun with it.

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It's so hard over Zoom,

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but I definitely think it's possible

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in kind of like smaller groups.

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- Yeah, don't bring an umbrella to a brainstorm.

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- Yeah, exactly.

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That's the worst when someone's like,

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"We actually tried that two years ago

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and it didn't work."

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- Oh my gosh.

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- It was super helpful, thank you.

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- We share that with content all the time

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with like my castor video series.

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We hear that all the time

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or someone's like, "Well, we try to podcast

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like three years ago."

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And you're like, "Well, like..."

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- How do you get that?

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- I mean, I think-

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- Yeah, but what a thing.

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- As if nothing has changed in three years

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and as if that would be like,

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"Yeah."

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- We wrote a blog post three years ago

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and that thing did not convert.

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And you're like, "Yeah, well, maybe like

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three episode podcast series

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that's like titled the name of your company."

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Yeah, probably it was a terrible strategy.

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But I think that that's the sort of stuff

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that content is like, what happens

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is everything gets noted to death.

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Then it gets to the leaders, senior leaders,

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then they noted to death.

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And then now you have something super safe, super boring.

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And all of us are trying to make stuff that isn't boring.

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- Exactly.

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And it's so easy to spot the stuff

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that was decision by committee.

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So it doesn't mean anything.

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It's just more buzz words.

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And yeah, the creative that really stands out

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is the one where it was like someone's crazy idea

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and they got it through from the backend.

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- I did something the other day.

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I post on LinkedIn.

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We were about to run a bunch of ads for Caspian.

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And I posted all the ads on LinkedIn

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and I had people and I was like,

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hey, could you just comment what,

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which ones you like the most?

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And we got great feedback on the ones.

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And someone was like, couldn't you have done A/B testing?

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Like, why would I spend money on A/B testing?

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Why do I like?

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- Yeah, I could have found this for free.

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- Yeah, get a bunch of this stuff for free.

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But there's like little things in there with creative

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that's so tricky and we can use ads

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and we can do all that sort of stuff.

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But figuring out the copy and like one of the,

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this is always the case of creative.

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One of the ones that we didn't think was the best one,

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people thought it was really funny.

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- Always happens, yeah.

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And I've seen that with message testing too.

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Well, you'll do formal focus groups

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and you'll say, which one do you like best?

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And it's always the one that you least expect.

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The funny thing about that though

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is unless sometimes you have that external validation,

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like, yep, this focus group approved the weird idea

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that sometimes it's still hard to push that stuff through.

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- And it goes back to A/B/M, right?

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Because like part of the thing that I think is often

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the mistake there is when you A/B test yourself

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and to get, okay, this copy is the best.

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But if you look at the LinkedIn example that I just gave,

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there was like a group of people

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that loved number one and number two.

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And then there's a group of people that loved number four.

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And then there's people who are like,

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oh, I actually really liked three and five.

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And so what's interesting to me is that so often we like,

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A/B tests ourselves to get to like the one answer.

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But the truth is, is that like people convert

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off of different types of content.

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They, some people like really funny silly stuff.

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Some people like zany stuff.

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And then you're like, well, that's off brand for us.

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It's like, well, on brand is making money.

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So like. - Yeah, exactly.

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Exactly.

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But the other thing about the A/B testing too

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that's kind of funny is you'll get an insight.

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And then I think it's easy to over apply it.

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So one test we learned that the word discover for CTAs

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significantly boosted ad performance across the board.

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And we're like, oh, that's great.

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We'll start using discover everywhere.

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And we got to a point where we never were not using discover.

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And so I think there's like this point where all the data

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is helpful for a directional perspective.

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But I think we sort of lose it a bit when we use it as like

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the only recipe that we can use for a successful campaign.

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Like there has to be that element of creativity involved.

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- Yeah. And with this crazy circuitous buying cycle

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that we're all in now, this crazy customer journey

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is like discover is a great, maybe that word was super great

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for 80 to 30% type opportunity people.

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But the person who's like needs to buy right now,

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like I'm screaming out like I don't want to discover

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anything, just solve this thing for me.

19:50

- And I think that actually is the most under invested

19:53

in buying group.

19:54

And it's just because they're the easiest to snap up

19:57

but so many companies make it nearly impossible to buy

20:00

or even just to get pricing information.

20:03

Even though we know that most buying cycles start with

20:06

the team trying to get budget estimates together.

20:09

So if they can't get a budget estimate for your service

20:11

then maybe you fall off the short list

20:13

because they get it from your competitors.

20:15

- Yeah, great point.

20:16

What's the stat?

20:17

It's like if you don't respond within five minutes,

20:19

if the CEO of your number one prospect

20:22

walk in the door of your headquarters,

20:24

everyone would be like flipping over tables

20:26

to like run and greet them and show them whatever.

20:28

And if that happens on your website,

20:29

it's like they fought a leader quest.

20:31

Like yeah, okay, we'll get to it, Tara.

20:33

- Exactly.

20:34

- But what if our competitors see it?

20:35

It's like spoiler alert, your competitors already know

20:37

your pricing, so worry about it.

20:39

- Yeah, right.

20:40

Back to the ABM as an uncountable budget item.

20:43

What sort of ways are you spending money

20:45

on those ABM activities?

20:46

- So one of the really cool things

20:49

that we've been able to crack the code on

20:52

is doing more campaigns across social channels.

20:55

So in the past, it was sort of like LinkedIn or display

20:58

or forget about it.

20:59

But some of the data now we've been able to get out

21:01

of demand base has allowed us to create ongoing campaigns

21:04

on Twitter, ongoing campaigns on Instagram stories,

21:07

and just really targeting our buyers wherever they are,

21:11

even if it's not necessarily a traditional B2B ABM channel.

21:15

And that's been so huge for us

21:17

'cause you can spend so much less on those networks

21:20

than when you go to a lot of the trade pubs

21:23

than are just one of a sea of vendor logos.

21:26

- Yeah, it's exactly right.

21:28

We see a lot of the same stuff as we're promoting podcasts,

21:30

the various different series,

21:32

because same sort of thing,

21:33

it's like we just can't compete promoting ads on LinkedIn.

21:36

Like you just, it's so expensive.

21:38

- It's insane.

21:39

And it's frustrating too, because the results are good

21:42

and you know who you're getting when you do it,

21:44

but I don't know.

21:45

I think there's an over-reliance or an over-index

21:48

on people are on LinkedIn, they're ready to do business.

21:50

So we have to show them the business ads.

21:52

People take time throughout their workday

21:54

to distract themselves.

21:56

And if we can pull them back in

21:57

with a business-related ad, like that's not a bad thing.

22:00

- How do you view your website?

22:01

- We're actually launching a new website next week,

22:04

which is very exciting.

22:05

I know, a little stressful, but very exciting.

22:08

But it's given us a chance to kind of step back

22:10

and say like, what do we want in a website?

22:12

And for us, the most important thing

22:14

is really helping to build that relationship,

22:16

make it as easy as possible for people

22:18

to find what they're looking for.

22:20

And chat honestly is probably one of the main drivers

22:23

of that for us, to just try and get in front of people,

22:26

let themselves select before they have to navigate

22:29

the website.

22:30

But then if they choose to explore on their own,

22:32

just making sure even silly things,

22:34

but like nav items are super clear what you're getting.

22:38

If you want to get specific information

22:40

about this piece of the product,

22:41

or you need to understand our founder or anything like that,

22:44

making it as easy as possible for people to get there.

22:46

- All right, let's get to our next segment, The Dust Up.

22:51

This is where we talk about healthy tension,

22:53

but that's with your board,

22:54

your sales teams, your competitor, anyone else, Emily,

22:57

have you had a memorable dust up in your career?

23:00

- Oh man, I've got a few.

23:02

I think a recent one that was kind of interesting,

23:04

not at collective health, but another organization

23:06

was the tension between growth marketing

23:09

and the more traditional marketing function.

23:11

So like the brand world and how in this world

23:15

where so much of marketing budget needs

23:18

to have an ROI attached to it,

23:21

how you can make room for your friends in brand marketing

23:24

when your work in growth marketing,

23:27

you have to have that ROI

23:28

and you feel like it's a sales team, right?

23:30

Like you have a number attached to your work,

23:33

whereas the brand team can make this thin

23:35

maybe like a safer area.

23:37

But the way around it I found is again,

23:39

like really remembering that all of us want the same thing.

23:43

We all want the company to achieve

23:45

or exceed that revenue goal.

23:47

And really trying to get on the same page

23:51

with the brand team to sort of stay like, listen,

23:53

for us to be successful,

23:54

this is what we need to do from a campaign perspective,

23:57

which means we need super quick turnaround with creative.

24:01

We need this type of video asset and we need it on these dates

24:05

so we can really run these campaigns with fidelity.

24:07

So I think just being super clear with expectations

24:10

was kind of the way to solve it in that scenario.

24:13

- Any other marketing stuff that we missed

24:16

before we get into our quick hits here,

24:19

any other stuff that you're excited about investing in

24:22

or maybe a favorite campaign or anything like that,

24:25

big trends coming up?

24:26

- Yeah, I think we talked a little bit about it,

24:28

but the dark social stuff, the dark funnel,

24:30

it's super interesting, super terrifying.

24:34

We've seen some of it impact our business now

24:37

in both positive and negative ways.

24:39

And we're still trying to figure out

24:40

how do we harness this?

24:41

How do we measure it?

24:43

How can we maybe covertly impact it?

24:46

But to me, I think that's gonna become

24:48

a huge area of marketing.

24:50

So there's anyone starting their career,

24:52

that's a good place to focus and become an expert in for sure.

24:55

- Yeah, I think it's about how do we figure out

24:57

how to accelerate word of mouth and get our customers

25:02

and our fans posting in these private groups, right?

25:07

There's so many of them.

25:08

We get it all the time where it's like,

25:10

hey, we heard about you on this Discord.

25:12

You're like, what?

25:13

What Discord?

25:14

- Yeah, exactly.

25:15

- Who's on that?

25:16

- You're making me the link.

25:17

(laughs)

25:18

- No, exactly.

25:19

The thing is they're invite only, right?

25:21

So it's like your SDRs can't join.

25:23

I mean, we do this with developers,

25:24

like developer relations, right?

25:26

- Yeah.

25:27

- And so I wonder if there's gonna be more

25:29

like relations type people in the future,

25:31

these community leads or sub community leads

25:34

or something like that.

25:35

Because it still doesn't solve the answer

25:37

of someone posting about your company,

25:39

but at least like technically someone

25:41

from your company is in the chat, which is amazing.

25:43

- The risk to brands cannot be overstated.

25:46

I've observed a lot of executive teams

25:48

are kind of slower to realize the brand risk that's there.

25:51

One negative interaction with a customer

25:53

or a promise that wasn't kept,

25:55

it can do such serious harm for your business

25:58

because late stage prospect sees that negative feedback

26:02

and they're like, oh, okay, well, I don't want that.

26:03

I don't want to deal with that.

26:04

Even if it was such a unique situation

26:07

that would never be repeated.

26:08

Yeah.

26:09

I don't have a solution.

26:10

I would love to hire someone who knows how to help us

26:13

in that area, both from a proactive

26:15

and a defensive perspective,

26:17

but maybe one day.

26:19

- Okay, let's get to our final segment.

26:23

Quick hits.

26:24

These are quick questions and quick answers,

26:25

just like how quickly qualified helps companies

26:28

generate pipeline faster, tapping your greatest assets

26:30

at your website to identify your most valuable visitors

26:33

that instantly start sales conversations,

26:35

quick and easy, just like these questions.

26:37

Go to qualified.com to learn more.

26:39

Quick hits.

26:40

Emily, are you ready?

26:41

- I'm so ready.

26:43

- Number one, what's a hidden talent or skill

26:45

that's not on your resume?

26:47

- Oh, I am very good at asking trivia questions,

26:52

even if I don't always know the answer.

26:54

Like in any situation,

26:55

I can ask really good trivia questions for that group.

26:59

- What is one trivia question that you would often ask?

27:03

- I would, so for you, if I was at a party with your team,

27:06

I would say, what is the number one podcast

27:10

on Apple right now?

27:12

- It's probably Joe Rogan, whoopi my guests,

27:15

maybe he's here for-- - It's a good trivia question, right?

27:17

- Maybe it's your time daily.

27:19

Yeah, it's great trivia.

27:21

- I don't know the answer, but I know this group

27:24

will fight over it, so it's perfect.

27:26

- That is true.

27:28

What is your favorite book podcast TV show

27:30

that you've been checking out recently?

27:32

- Oh, so I love this really silly Hulu show,

27:36

Only Murders in the Building.

27:37

Just soup, I'm still halfway through.

27:39

- Oh, yeah.

27:40

- Yeah, slowly plotting through it,

27:41

but it's just one of those shows that really guilty pleasure

27:45

can turn your brain off and just totally enjoy it.

27:47

- It's so good.

27:49

Do you have a non-marketing hobby

27:51

that maybe indirectly makes you a better marketer?

27:53

- Oh, that's a good question.

27:55

You know what, I got really into cooking

27:58

during the pandemic, and I think what it taught me

28:01

is it's okay to go off script a little bit,

28:03

unlike baking, which I had done prior,

28:05

which you really have to follow the recipe with cooking.

28:07

It's okay to kind of improvise a little bit

28:11

and not to stretch the metaphor too far,

28:13

but I do think it's helpful in marketing as well

28:15

to remember that you don't always need to follow

28:17

the exact same process that worked previously,

28:20

like trying new things,

28:21

and that's how you're gonna find the stuff that really works.

28:24

- What is your best piece of advice

28:27

for a first time head of marketing?

28:29

- I think the most important thing is

28:32

become best friends with the sales team

28:35

and prove to the sales team

28:37

that you have their interests at heart.

28:39

If marketing and sales are walking in lockstep,

28:42

there's nothing that the organization can't do,

28:44

and they're smelling that the organization leadership

28:46

can say no to, because marketing and sales

28:49

are gonna drive everything together.

28:50

- Any final thoughts?

28:52

- Well, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't say

28:54

if you are unhappy with your company's health insurance

28:57

to go to collectivehealth.com and explore our offering,

29:00

because you deserve better.

29:02

- You absolutely deserve better, unequivocally,

29:05

that is the case.

29:07

It's been wonderful having you for our listeners

29:09

go to collectivehealth.com.

29:10

So learn more, go nudge your CFO, your CHRO,

29:14

and say, hey, we should use collective health

29:15

for self-funded employer health benefits.

29:18

Emily, thanks so much, and we'll talk soon.

29:21

- All right, sounds good.

29:22

(upbeat music)

29:25

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29:27

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29:30

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29:32

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