Ian Faison & Liam Barnes 30 min

Why it Pays to Listen


Liam Barnes shares his insights into why it pays to listen, how to use content mapping to resonate with your buyer, and why its important to showcase the the value of your platform.



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[MUSIC]

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Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries.

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I'm Ian Faizan, CEO of Caspian Studios.

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And today we are joined by a special guest, Liam.

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How are you?

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Good, Ian.

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How you doing today?

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Doing great.

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Always great to talk to someone who had a podcast,

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talking to Demand Gen, so have plenty of things to share

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and excited to learn about everything at Bionic.

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Yeah, me too.

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Very excited.

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OK, so let's get started with it.

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What was your first job in demand?

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I guess technically speaking, my first job,

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I was interned doing SEO at an consulting agency called

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Directive.

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And the first thing that I had to do as an intern there

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was basically audit.

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I was just basically going through all of our new clients

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and auditing everything that I could possibly find

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that was wrong with their website.

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And so started off doing a lot of the gritty work in SEO.

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And that kind of moved my way into becoming more and more

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interested in the other aspects of Demand Gen.

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Flash forward to today.

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Tell us a little bit about your role at Bionic.

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I was brought into Bionic about 15, 16 months ago.

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There was no marketing function before myself in the CMO

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hopden.

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Today, I'm running all things demands, running events,

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running fields, building out our marketing operations,

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paid media, website, helping from a strategic standpoint

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with go-to-market, so building out Tama and ICP.

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In the next, I would say six months as we grow as a company

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that will obviously change.

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We're an early stage startup, so what you do on day one

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is very different from what you do on day five.

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We'll see where that takes us.

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Let's get to our first segment.

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We're going to go to the Trust Tree, which

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is where you can go and feel honest and trusted

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and share those deepest, darkest Demand Gen secrets.

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Tell us a little bit more about Bionic.

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What does a company do?

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Bionic is a series B startup, so they've

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been around for a little less than two years out of stealth.

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And the space that we're in is, I think, debated,

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depending on who you're talking to.

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But we are kind of coining ourselves

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as application security posture management.

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And I think from a marketing perspective,

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keeping it as simple as possible,

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we help you secure the applications that you build in-house.

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So developers are spending a ton of time developing code

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and pushing it into production and customers,

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then using those applications to be the process sense of data

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or use on a daily basis.

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We help them secure that so that they are not subject

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to potential fines, data breaches, hacks, et cetera.

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So as you can imagine, we probably

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work with most of the industries that handle lots and lots

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of sensitive data.

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We're there to help you find out where that sensitive data is

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and protect it from potential hacks and data breaches.

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Yeah, who are your ideal customers?

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And tell me a little bit more about that buying committee.

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When you're a tool that is looking to basically help you

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protect applications that you build in-house,

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we have to work with companies that build in-house

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applications, right?

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So companies that are developing lots of code,

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specifically in Java.net Python, as well as companies

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that are in the cloud, specifically the companies

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that we're working with are greater than 1,000 employees.

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So enterprise-type solution and in those industries

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that have lots of sensitive data, think retail, e-commerce,

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finance, banking, insurance.

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We work with some auto companies, which is pretty cool.

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But pretty much anybody who's processing

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lots of sensitive data.

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And you mentioned a little bit of how your demand

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is structured, but how does marketing structure fit into your

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go-to-market?

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Yep, so for us, there's kind of say pillars

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as it comes to marketing.

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So I think we're in a unique spot where the business development

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team or sales development team actually rolls up into marketing.

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And so when you think about it, the demand side

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is obviously how we build awareness.

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And then the BDR team is the way that we actually

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go and source that awareness and book meetings

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and try to build pipeline actually to take a step back before

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demand.

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There's product marketing, which is the people who are trying

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to figure out where we fit in the market.

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What's the message?

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Where are we positioning ourselves, things like that?

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And then obviously every meeting that gets booked

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gets pushed to sales.

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So from a marketing standpoint, we're

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doing everything before sales as most typical enterprises are.

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And then working with sales and customer success

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to help with use cases and sales decks and content

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that they need to help sell and customer success

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providing experiences for them to help upsell and maintain

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revenue with your customer base.

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From my perspective, from the demand side,

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obviously my job is to create demand, capture demand,

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and get qualified people in the door.

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But marketing is definitely sprinkled

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throughout the entire organization.

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Any other thoughts on demand strategy or anything

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that you've learned in the past 16 months as it relates

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to building out your demand strategy

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and how that fits into marketing?

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Yeah.

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I would say the one thing that I learned

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is what I knew 16 months ago is not what I know now.

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This is actually my first demand general where

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I'm doing everything.

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My previous role was just doing SEO pretty much.

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And there was a big, I think, learning curve for me

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when I came into Bionic, where I had to learn

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all these different platforms and a lot more

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of the go-to-market side of things,

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how to work with sales.

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I would say my biggest takeaway is your customer

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and the way that they want to be sold in market too

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is the number one driver of how you should create demand.

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In security specifically, there's

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lots and lots of CISOs, which is a lot of the times

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that the champions that we're selling to.

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They hate being sold to and they hate getting ads for gift cards

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and, hey, come in house and we'll give you a gift card

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to take a meeting with us.

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In some instances, it works.

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For the most part, what I was doing when we first

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started creating demand is very different because of that notion

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of, hey, these people are getting pissed off

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that we're doing these certain activities.

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We should go away from doing those activities

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and try to find ways to just communicate with them,

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show them the platform, show them our value,

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and get them in the door that way,

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where they feel like they're taking the first step

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instead of us pushing them through the door.

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Yeah, it's interesting.

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Why do you think that is?

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Is it because it felt gimmicky or it felt too salesy?

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Or, yeah, what do you think?

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I think it's a few things.

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I don't think this is necessarily a security-focused issue.

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I think everyone's sick of being sold to.

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The moment you put head of demand gen in your title

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on LinkedIn, you get hit up by pretty much everybody

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in sales marketing tech.

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And I think people just want to be treated like humans

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instead of treated like another step in the sequence.

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And in security specifically, a lot of the times,

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the way that these good market strategies are being built out

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is a we're going to go sequence every single person

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that fits our ICP over the next three months,

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get their data from a third party provider,

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like seamless or lead IQ or whatever it is,

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and then go email them and call them

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and blast them on LinkedIn,

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which I think is a very important part

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of a good market strategy,

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especially when you're in a price solution.

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But the problem with that is that,

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say, let's say 50% of people don't mind

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and 50% of people do,

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the 50% of the people that do mind,

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you're going to piss them off.

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And if that's your first brand touch with them,

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that's not going to be a good first impression.

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- Yeah.

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- And especially in security,

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like security is all about protecting people's data.

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And when your go-to market strategy goes directly against that,

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it leaves us our taste in the mouth.

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- It's the same thing that I would say

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about like the outbound motion

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that if you're just spamming over and over again,

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that it's like, how many people are you alienating?

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And that's the question that we don't know.

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And I don't know the data on that, right?

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Yeah, you can get unsubscribes for sure.

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But that doesn't like unsubscribe.

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It's a very binary thing.

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It's like, you're either, they either unsub, or they don't.

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But that's not like how mad they are at you, right?

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Or how mad they are at the sales rep

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who has to keep reaching out

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'cause they're bossing them to or whatever it is.

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How do you think that you could do a better job

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of inviting them in the door?

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- There's plenty of tools and companies out there

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that are making a lot of money doing this.

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The other thing is just listening to them.

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I think a big change from what we did even six months ago

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than what we're doing today is

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before we launch any campaign,

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before we create any piece of content,

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we go and have conversations with the people

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that we're selling to and ask them,

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hey, is this something that resonates with you?

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And then when you're actually distributing the content

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or reaching out to them via a BDR

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or launching an ad or whatever,

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it's something that actually resonates

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with the person that you're selling to,

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rather than guessing, which a lot of the times marketers do,

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is they go, I have this feeling based on this thing

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that I heard, I'm gonna go and create a campaign around it.

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And then hopefully it works out.

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Let's go see which I'm all for testing,

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but testing with basically your blinders on

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is not effective.

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Yeah, I think if you really had to boil it down

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to something, I know this is like a cop-out answer,

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but it's true, you have to go and listen.

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You have to go and absorb what they're talking about.

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And I think you see this a lot now in Martech,

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but it's been happening in development tech for years

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is the idea of having evangelists,

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having people that are in your company

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that are actually a part of the community

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to go and be a part of the community

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and just spread the good word about what you all do.

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All right, let's get to our next segment.

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The playbook is where you talk about the tactics

9:02

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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Uncutable budget items.

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So I'm gonna say the first two that are uncutable,

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and I think that they're the most effective.

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One is basically our field budget,

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which is us working with vendors,

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typically doing one to one meetings

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with people that are in RCP.

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Those typically are the lowest volume,

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but the highest converting for us

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because it's basically just ABM and sales.

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So we could get into an argument

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whether or not that's marketing or not,

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but it's under my purview, so it is.

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- So why do you think what you're doing there

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is working in his uncutable first off?

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- Yeah, so this goes back to why things

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are effective in marketing in general, right?

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When you go and have a one-in-one meeting with somebody

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and the intent is they're open to talking to you

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and we are there to basically educate them

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about what we do.

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The likelihood of conversion is already gonna be higher

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because the guard of I don't wanna talk to you is already down.

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And so it's the reason why when you have things

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that are in balance coming through ads on LinkedIn

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with the offers, the conversion is lower than

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when someone comes to your website and raises their hand.

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It's because they are already saying,

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"Hey, I've seen what you do.

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"I'm interested.

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"I wanna have a conversation.

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"Let's go and book some time."

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So it's a similar motion

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where these people are already opted in

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and they already wanna learn about you

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and they already wanna talk to you.

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And the other thing is,

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CISOs have told us that they enjoy those

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because they are looking and blocking time

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to learn about new tech,

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to learn about new vendors, to talk to people.

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That's what they're allocating their time for.

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And so if they think that your tech is good

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and they wanna bring it in,

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then it typically converts it to pretty high clip.

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And if you're targeting us correct

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and the people that you're talking to

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are more likely to convert based on all the data

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that you've developed,

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that's why it's more successful.

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- Okay, uncutable number two.

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- So I would say number two is just advertising in general.

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But again, I think this would change

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depending on the size of company

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and where we are as a company.

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Right now, my argument is,

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we are trying to build out a category in security.

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We believe that we are the only company

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that can do this thing.

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And this is what we wanna call it.

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In order for me to effectively,

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one, make sure that we have product market fit,

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and two, really create demand out of nothing.

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I wanna get as many people as physically possible

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into the product that we think we can sell to.

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And so for that purpose,

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we run a lot of gift card ads.

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Because my intent is,

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hey, the people that are in our ICP

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are gonna be receiving these ads,

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and the people that you wanna sell to anyways

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are gonna be the people that are joining these meetings.

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And the companies that you wanna sell to

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are the people that are gonna be joining these meetings

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I have buy-in from sales.

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Now, the other part of it is it converts really well for us

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and we have a huge ACV.

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Like our contract value is well more than my

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annual advertising budget.

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So it's really easy to wear if I run gift card ads,

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and they close one deal, I already covered my costs.

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That's a little bit easier to get buy-in

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from an advertising perspective.

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The other thing is, I wanna be constantly

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in front of the audience that I'm trying to sell to,

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and the most effective way to do that

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is through advertising at the scale

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in which I need it to right now.

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We don't have a big enough audience to do it organically.

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We're building that up,

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and we've done a pretty good job.

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But as of right now, we don't have the audience size

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across all of our social channels,

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and we don't have the awareness to where

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I could put out a LinkedIn post and 40,000 people will see it.

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And so for me, that is uncuttable,

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because if we want to continue to grow as a company,

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we can't slow down that awareness factor.

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And so obviously there's ways to track

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whether or not it's working or not,

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which is why we have a form field on our inbound form

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that says, "How'd you hear about us?"

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- Yeah, so do we.

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- Yeah, we see about 50% from LinkedIn,

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whether that's organic or paid, can be up for argument,

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but I bucket it all together.

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So yeah, for me, that's it's an uncuttable.

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The part that will get cut eventually,

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and it will get cut a little,

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just get converted over to brand awareness

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is the gift card stuff, the quote unquote "legend stuff."

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But again, the argument for me right now

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is it's partly gen, it's part just product marketing.

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You get a lot of information out of someone

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who hasn't seen a platform before.

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- Sure, yeah, totally.

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- We try to do it throughout the marketing team.

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We have a, you must listen to at least three calls a week

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and give a breakdown of everything

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that you've learned about that call

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and post it into our channel.

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And the reason for that is twofold one,

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you get a lot of information that you can pass

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to the entire organization, which is helpful,

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and two, you learn more about our audience,

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which makes you a better marketer,

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which makes you better at your job.

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It's another positive that comes out of these

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like gift cards.

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- Yeah, I love it.

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And I think that there's the moments where they say,

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"Hey, I had no idea who you were.

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This sounds pretty cool."

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I'm probably not buying this for two years.

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In the meantime, and then that person changes their job

14:00

a month later and then they buy it at their new company

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or whatever it is.

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Think about that all the time of like,

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how important it is to just get swings at the bat.

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And that's where I totally agree with you on advertising,

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especially like you said, if your conversion is like,

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"Hey, if we close one of these deals,

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pays for my ad budget,"

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if you're in a situation like that, which is great,

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then why not just try to get as many of those demos

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as you can?

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Now obviously sales, you don't want to be pitching people

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that have no perpents you did it by,

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but if they're in your ICP and you're targeting the right folks,

14:28

you're accepting those as an actual opportunity.

14:30

Even if they walk into the call and they say,

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"I straight up don't have budget,"

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to me as a marketer, I'm like, "That's okay.

14:36

Talk to our person.

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Fall in love with our product."

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And then you can fall in love with it all over again

14:40

next year during budget season.

14:42

- Honestly, that's what most companies here,

14:44

hey, we're closing up the year.

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We don't have budget this year.

14:47

Low reach out to me in January,

14:48

or even back in May, June, July,

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hey, budget season starts in September.

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And we're planning for next year in September.

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So let's go and get a POC kicked off in September, October,

14:59

and then we can see whether or not that works for next year.

15:01

I think like most companies,

15:02

you see that ramp up in Q1, Q2,

15:04

and then slowly die out towards the end of the year.

15:07

- Yeah, now to add another thing

15:08

that there's an opportunity cost with advertising

15:11

and spending those dollars where you could do other stuff.

15:13

Obviously you could focus on organic channels.

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You could do other things, but the idea is like,

15:18

we're talking to Jason from metadata

15:20

and he's saying that whether it's hate adwords

15:22

or whether it's advertising,

15:24

using that as the wedge that gets you from here

15:27

to your content objectives is so important.

15:30

Like eventually the tables will turn,

15:32

all of your investments in content will continue to perform

15:36

and then outperform advertising.

15:38

But until you get there,

15:40

there's not a lot of other options to get your name

15:42

in front of the many people.

15:43

- And by the way, your content,

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I think this is a big gap that people don't understand.

15:47

Like the brand awareness stuff that we do

15:50

is a healthy mix of brand and then all of the content

15:53

that we create.

15:54

So I would say like probably 25% of the ads that we run

15:59

are just ads that we create that match our message

16:04

or our a demo video of what we do

16:07

or like a hype video that we created

16:08

to make our brand look nice, right?

16:11

The rest of it is all content distribution

16:13

that you get in feed, right?

16:14

So I know like a lot of people,

16:16

the refine lab folks and metadata and all of them,

16:20

they all kind of subscribe to the same thing.

16:22

People should be consuming the information within the feed

16:26

of the social media platform

16:27

in which you're distributing, right?

16:29

All the content that we're creating

16:31

and the ads that we're building off of that content

16:33

is all just converted in like repackaged content

16:36

that fits LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook and Instagram

16:39

and all that stuff.

16:40

So that I always like to separate,

16:43

I think at the beginning of when I worked bionic,

16:45

I was like, oh, demand should own content

16:46

because content is something that needs to be distributed.

16:49

Quick shout out to my counterpart

16:50

who runs marketing, Jamie.

16:51

She owns content because one,

16:54

she gets the industry a lot better than I do

16:56

and she's more tech savvy in that sense.

16:58

But two, she understands what needs to be done

17:01

from a content perspective about matching it

17:03

with what our audience cares about

17:05

and she also gets what I need from a demands to end point

17:08

to where we can take the concept that she creates

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and I can turn it into whatever I want

17:12

in order to distribute it effectively.

17:14

So yeah, I don't like the fact that a lot of what I'm seeing

17:18

in a lot of these companies, especially in Deep Tech,

17:20

like the security and developer technology

17:23

is like content is just like a channel

17:25

when really it's like everything that you do in marketing.

17:28

- Yeah, for sure.

17:29

It's a huge frustration for me as well as a company

17:32

that does podcast as a service

17:34

because you throw the term content around

17:36

and it could mean 50 things to 50 different people.

17:38

Like the copy that you're writing in your paid campaigns,

17:41

the images, what does video mean to you?

17:44

What does audio mean to you?

17:45

There's a million different ways to do that.

17:47

The audio in your demo video, who does that?

17:50

Is that different from an audio that you're doing

17:51

for a podcast series?

17:52

Is that different from what you're doing in an event series?

17:55

It's also interconnected anyways

17:57

and someone needs to be able to at a minimum

17:59

be a center of excellence owner on saying,

18:02

"How are we making stuff and are we making duplicative stuff

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and where can that stuff go in other places

18:08

where it would be valuable for our community,

18:10

for our customers, for our prospects and all that?"

18:12

Okay, uncutable number three.

18:14

- So I think for me, it's tough

18:16

because I'm gonna get pushback on this,

18:18

but I think it's at a minimum,

18:20

it's this term air coverage

18:22

that a lot of people don't find value in.

18:24

I find value in it for my competitive standpoint

18:27

and a present standpoint and that's event marketing.

18:30

Now, when I say event marketing, I don't mean trade shows.

18:34

It can be trade shows can be included in it,

18:36

but I don't solely mean trade shows.

18:39

When we think about what I talked about earlier

18:41

about the people that we are selling to

18:44

want to be sold to in the way that they want to be sold to,

18:46

not the way that we want to sell to them.

18:48

And events are really good places to break down barriers

18:52

because you get the human element

18:53

and yes, it can be overwhelming.

18:55

And there can be, I was just at AWS reinvent,

18:57

there's 50,000 people there

18:58

and there's 150 vendors all trying to sell

19:01

to the same 50,000 people.

19:02

But ultimately, I think it comes down to your approach

19:04

and there's two different approaches.

19:07

Let's go to these events and scan as many leads as possible

19:09

and then pass them to the BDRs and try to sell to them

19:12

where the way that I usually determine success

19:14

at these events is cost per demo given to a target person.

19:18

I think last year at AWS, we spent,

19:20

let's just call it like 40 grand.

19:22

We scanned 700 leads and we maybe got an opportunity

19:25

out of one of them, right?

19:27

And the way that we approached it was,

19:28

hey, we're new here.

19:29

Let's give out t-shirts to every single person

19:31

that's stopped by a booth.

19:33

We'll hang them out in front of the booth

19:34

and try to get people that want to get them.

19:36

By the way, they're awesome t-shirts.

19:38

People that did actually like them.

19:39

But this year, we decided to not put the t-shirts

19:43

front and center and instead let people come up to us,

19:46

let them read the message about what we do,

19:48

see the map on the TV that we had, look at a demo

19:51

and then determine whether or not that person

19:53

who actually interested or not,

19:54

if they wanted to get more information,

19:56

we would scan them and then put notes down.

19:58

And the cost per demo provided to someone in our ICP last year

20:03

was probably 10 to 15 times more expensive than this year,

20:07

even though we spent probably twice as much money.

20:10

And that's because the approach was,

20:11

let people who are actually interested come and talk to us,

20:14

focus in on them very deeply,

20:16

pretend it was basically a sales meeting in person

20:19

and then create that human element.

20:21

We talk about your issues,

20:22

we talk about your priorities right now.

20:24

If there's any projects, we show you the demo,

20:25

we show you how it would incorporate into your organization

20:29

and then go from there.

20:31

So I would say it would be a cutable one

20:33

if I did version one, it would be a cutable budget

20:36

if I did version one, which is the lead gen side of things.

20:38

It's uncuttable if I can get a cost per demo

20:41

given to someone in our ICP as low as we got it

20:44

in the last event that we did.

20:45

The other part of it is like all of our competitors

20:47

are at these events and if I think every marketer is scared,

20:52

if we don't show up to the event and our header is there

20:55

and we're not and someone's looking for us,

20:58

then we're gonna miss out on something.

21:00

So maybe not uncuttable for me,

21:02

but it's definitely uncuttable for,

21:03

I think every single leader in our organization.

21:06

- How do you view your company website?

21:08

- I think it's good for how much work we've put into it.

21:12

We don't have any like actual development

21:14

really work going into that much.

21:16

I have a contract that I work with that helps with

21:18

some of the nitty gritty, but every page you see there

21:21

for the most part, I built by myself.

21:23

I think where we've spent a lot of time on the website

21:25

is making sure that the messaging is good,

21:27

that none of the demo is gated except for one thing,

21:29

which is that Gartner report

21:31

and that there's demo videos available

21:34

so that people can see the product whenever they want

21:36

and that when they're going through all the pages,

21:38

they see screenshots of our actual platform.

21:40

So in that sense, I think it's great,

21:42

but I mean, really haven't even scratched the surface

21:44

with what we could do on our website,

21:45

plus we haven't implemented qualified yet.

21:47

So it's almost there, but not quite.

21:49

- Hey now, love a good qualified reference.

21:52

Anything going forward that you're excited about to build,

21:54

whether it's that or other stuff for marketing for next year.

21:57

- I'm a web guy, digital is my thing that I'm good at.

22:00

And so what's funny is I consider myself

22:03

like a technically trained SEO,

22:04

and that's my specialty,

22:06

that's where I can get really deep into work.

22:08

I haven't done SEO at all over the 16 months

22:11

that I've worked at Bionic.

22:12

I'm excited for starting to get more into that

22:14

in the new year, and we have probably two or three

22:17

big projects coming next year

22:19

where we're gonna build out tons of really useful content,

22:21

lots of campaigns that we're gonna be building out,

22:24

building out the structure of the website,

22:26

making sure that the framework of it

22:28

and the flow of the information makes more sense

22:31

to the people that we're selling to.

22:33

A lot of like positives coming in to the next year.

22:35

- Y'all have used your chief architect

22:38

to bunch in content creation.

22:40

And this is something that I think a lot of companies

22:43

have just like rockstar talent sitting in their organization

22:46

and also things like LinkedIn and the algorithm there

22:50

want user-generated content as we've discussed

22:52

a bunch on the show.

22:53

So leveraging your employees to share things

22:56

is a lot of times a lot more efficient and effective

22:59

than just coming from your brand.

23:01

I'm curious like, why did y'all decide to do that?

23:04

And how do you think about using internal talent

23:06

for external content?

23:08

- We actually have headcount for evangelists.

23:11

I think coming into the new year,

23:12

we're gonna have two or three different people

23:14

that are gonna come in and their sole purpose

23:16

is to be a part of the community and to create content

23:19

and to be active on social media.

23:21

And the reason for that is because our tech is very technical

23:25

and it's the reason why we're an enterprise solution

23:27

and not like a product led model as of right now.

23:30

It's because it's a very technical thing

23:32

that needs to be explained.

23:33

And being able to have someone who's been there,

23:36

done that has been an engineer, has been in security,

23:38

has been a part of the community,

23:40

has had the same issues that our target audience has,

23:43

is the most effective way to get your rest across

23:45

because you're not coming at it from a,

23:47

I'm trying to sell you a six figure piece of software.

23:51

It's, hey, I've had these issues

23:53

or in the engineering side of things,

23:56

I've created these issues that security has to deal

23:58

with on a day to day basis.

23:59

Trust me when I say to you that this is a very unique way

24:03

to look at it is more effective than, hey,

24:05

we're a new startup, we'd love to get your opinion on our tech.

24:08

Can we book 30 minutes?

24:09

It's something that I've, and I said this a little bit earlier,

24:11

it's something that I've started to notice

24:13

that marketing tech companies are starting to invest in.

24:16

Like when you think of the people that are probably

24:18

have the loudest voices in tech, it's things like,

24:22

you know, starting in March tech,

24:22

it's people like Nick Bennett, who was a marketer

24:26

and started to grow his personal brand.

24:28

And then all of a sudden,

24:29

basically became the head of evangelist in there.

24:31

I didn't know about Caspian before we booked this podcast,

24:35

but your company and the people at your company

24:37

are active on social media.

24:40

But if I were to hire someone,

24:42

I don't know any other podcast studios

24:43

that are focused solely on that.

24:46

So this thought of people starting to understand that

24:49

people in the industry that you respect are active

24:52

and they provide value and then you're like,

24:54

oh, they work for this company

24:55

and we need a solution that their company solves.

24:58

Maybe we should go and talk to them.

25:00

It's not like a novel marketing idea.

25:02

It's something that's been going on for a while.

25:04

Developer tech and Deep Tech

25:05

has just invested a lot of time into it.

25:07

- Yeah, thanks for the kind words.

25:09

But I totally agree.

25:10

And I think this is just like extremely underutilized

25:14

for a lot of industries.

25:15

And developers are just like notoriously hard to reach.

25:20

They have high BS detectors.

25:21

They don't like a lot of things.

25:24

And so we treat them differently.

25:26

But then you look at other folks

25:28

and you're like,

25:29

finance communities are the same way.

25:30

Maybe the retail community is more of that way

25:32

than we realize.

25:33

Maybe there's, et cetera.

25:34

And you start going down the line.

25:35

We've done 50 series with all sorts of different

25:37

subject matter experts that have their own followings

25:40

on LinkedIn and other places.

25:42

It's like anecdotally,

25:43

we've seen that over and over again.

25:44

But you look at like how well evangelism does work.

25:47

Obviously, Salesforce has rolled out tons of evangelists

25:51

over the years.

25:51

And I think a lot of people say,

25:52

company X has a lot of money to burn.

25:54

And you're like, yeah, but they continue to invest in it.

25:58

That's the thing that is interesting to me.

25:59

If it was that stupid of an idea,

26:01

they probably would have cut it.

26:02

And I think the heroes of this user generated content world

26:07

are getting a lot of benefits.

26:08

Therefore, you need to have a strategy that encompasses

26:12

how human beings from your team or evangelists

26:14

or a silly external to you are going about sharing your stuff

26:18

because it is valuable.

26:20

So you just have to have some type of strategy for that.

26:23

All right, let's get to our next segment, the DustUp,

26:25

where we talk about healthy tension,

26:27

whether that's with your board, your competitors or someone else.

26:30

Do you have a healthy dust up in your career, Liam?

26:33

I guess it could be unhealthy too if you want to show us the truth.

26:36

I've worked with a couple of companies who are like,

26:38

hey, we should run some competitive ads.

26:40

We should do some competitive content.

26:42

We've gotten a couple of non-a-season assists of like,

26:45

hey, take our name off your website, type stuff.

26:47

And then usually the response is, hey,

26:49

if you want to fill out the same chart that we have and send it

26:51

to us, we'll make sure that it's accurate.

26:53

Just notice the documentation so we can confirm.

26:56

And that's usually when they ghost.

26:57

So I think a couple of instances that I probably can't name,

27:01

but I am all for public competition

27:04

when it comes to talking about doing content about et cetera

27:07

about competitors because it goes both ways.

27:09

And ultimately, if both of the parties are truthful

27:13

about what's going on, about the tech, about what they do,

27:16

about the position in the market, et cetera,

27:18

then really let products speak for itself.

27:20

And if your product is better and people need to know that,

27:25

how else to tell them and compare it against a competitor

27:27

that you're going after.

27:28

So it happens behind closed doors.

27:30

Trust me, there's battle cards,

27:32

especially at the past two companies that I've worked with.

27:36

There's battle cards of,

27:37

this is everything that people judge a tool in our space about.

27:41

This is what we do, this is what they do,

27:43

and this is what we don't, and this is what they don't.

27:46

And then in sales meetings, they pull up the battle card

27:49

and go, what do you care about?

27:51

Well, here is everything that they do,

27:52

and here's what we do.

27:53

The gap that we cover is this,

27:55

and we think they're better because X, Y, and Z.

27:58

So if you can healthily and do it publicly,

28:01

I think it's worth it.

28:02

The best instance of this is how metadata did it with sixes.

28:06

They basically were like, look,

28:08

we get comparing it to six cents all the time.

28:10

We don't overlap in very many ways.

28:13

Here are the few that we do,

28:15

but oh, by the way, we use six cents as well.

28:17

Kind of play, right?

28:18

I think that's a really great one.

28:19

I think we're going to probably do it at some point.

28:21

Like we have some integrations coming out

28:23

where people who we are selling to are like,

28:26

oh, you're like this company,

28:27

and we're like, no, actually, they're our customer.

28:29

We're their customer.

28:31

Like our tools align really well.

28:34

And so public content like that

28:35

is usually really useful as well.

28:37

- I love that.

28:38

All right, let's get to our final segment here.

28:39

Quick hits.

28:40

These are quick questions and quick answers,

28:42

just like how quickly qualified helps companies

28:44

generate pipeline faster, tap into your greatest essay,

28:47

your website to identify your most valuable visitors

28:49

and instantly start sales conversations.

28:52

Quick and easy, just like these questions.

28:54

We love qualified.

28:55

They've been with us since the very beginning

28:57

of demand-gen visionaries,

28:59

and they'll be with you forever too,

29:00

'cause they're the best.

29:01

Go to qualified.com to learn more Liam.

29:03

Are you ready?

29:04

Quick hits.

29:05

- Yeah, ready? Let's do it.

29:06

- Number one, do you have a hidden talent or skill

29:08

that's not on your resume?

29:09

- I'm pretty good skateboarding.

29:11

- What advice would you have for a first time head of demand-gen

29:14

is trying to figure out their strategy?

29:17

- Go talk to three to four different demand-gen people

29:21

in different industries and ask them what they did,

29:24

why they did them, how they were successful,

29:28

why they were successful,

29:30

and then go align with everybody else

29:31

in your organization as well.

29:33

- Liam, it's been absolutely awesome

29:34

having you on the show for our listeners.

29:37

Go to bionic.ai to learn more.

29:39

They have a bunch of sweet stuff on the website,

29:41

cool resources to check out some really cool videos.

29:44

I love the Bionic Uncensored videos.

29:46

They're really fun using whiteboards and stuff.

29:49

So yeah, go check out bionic.ai to learn more

29:51

about the company and check out their marketing.

29:53

Liam, any final thoughts, anything to plug?

29:55

- I have a podcast that I used to do.

29:57

You can go and listen to if you want,

29:58

but honestly, after the people listening,

30:00

if you haven't invested in a podcast,

30:02

I would second-guess yourself,

30:04

'cause I think it's probably one of the most

30:06

underutilized piece of content out there.

30:08

So yeah, and if you haven't checked out

30:10

Caspian Studios, go do that.

30:12

And if you haven't checked out Qualified,

30:13

I went to Qualified and chose them over a competitor

30:16

that a lot of other people use.

30:17

And there's a reason why, so you should go check them out.

30:19

- I love it.

30:20

Thanks for the plugs, Liam.

30:21

Have a great day.

30:23

- Thanks, Ian.

30:24

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