Using Neuroscience to Understand Your Customer
Esther-Mireya Tejeda, CMO at Anywhere Real Estate Inc., shares about tapping into the unconscious emotional makeup of consumers.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faiz on CEO of Cast Mein Studios.
And today I'm joined by special guest, Esther Mariah.
How are you?
I'm well Ian.
Thank you for having me on.
Excited to have you on the show.
Chat marketing, chat pipeline, chat anywhere in real estate,
and everything in between.
And today's episode is always brought to you by the great friends
at Qualified.
You can go to Qualified.com to learn more
about how you can have really fast conversations on your website
with your ideal customers.
Ian, let's get into it.
How did you start on marketing?
So that's actually quite a funny and non-direct story.
So I had no intention of going into marketing.
I actually thought I was going to go to law school
and took a gap year between undergrad
and getting ready for law school.
Went to work as an analyst on Wall Street.
And I worked for Standard and Poor's.
And it was a very financial service,
white shoe from kind of culture.
This is early 2000s to date myself.
And I realized very quickly, by very quickly,
I mean, probably the first day, that the culture
and the environment and just the tone of the whole place
was not for me.
And so every day I was running into my office,
I was living in Brooklyn at the time.
I was taking the train down to Wall Street.
I was wearing the typical financial service Wall Street
analyst's uniform of the trousers and the button downs
that are tucked in and pencil skirts in the whole nine yards.
And I could not have been more miserable.
And so I had this moment of epiphany on the train ride one day
where I said, I really feel like I'm in a costume.
And I really feel like I'm living someone else's life.
This is not remotely what I want to be doing.
And so to make a long story short,
I got into throwing events on the side
as a way to make additional money,
as a way to have a lot of fun.
I had a lot of friends, very social.
And I quickly realized I could monetize my social circle
by doing club promotions.
And so club promotions led to this other idea
of doing experiential marketing.
In other words, creating these events from scratch for brands
instead of doing them for clubs.
And so next thing you know, I am at OBLI,
taking on my first proper marketing job,
working for British American Tobacco as my first ever client.
And so the next 20 years has really come
from this inflection point of being on that train that morning
on my way down to Wall Street and realizing
I have to find something else to do with my life that
is more connected to who I am.
It's a person and is more, more connects the left side
of my brain, the right side of my brain.
And here we are.
And I'm so glad you did.
I couldn't imagine you in Wall Street.
[LAUGHTER]
The marketing needs you.
Yeah, so flash forward to today, tell us
what it means to be a CMO of anywhere.
So anywhere is the one of the leading residential real estate
companies in the US.
Many folks won't know us as anywhere
unless we happen to be in the business
of residential real estate.
But most people do know our global brands.
And those include Sotheby's International Realty,
Corcoran, Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Better Homes and Gardens,
ERA.
And we are also in the business of title and insurance
and mortgage and corporate relocation through cardis.
So it is a full service residential real estate
corporation that is really in the business of transforming
the way that we think about housing
and the way that the housing transaction works.
And finding ways to make that much more
simple for buyers and sellers, agents and brokers
with the smart and deliberate use of technology,
where that makes sense.
And having such a huge portfolio of brands
that everybody knows and loves, how does that change how
you think about marketing?
So marketing has evolved greatly in the past two decades
or so that I've been in the business.
I mean, as I mentioned, when I first started,
I was working on tobacco brands.
Then I went to work on one in spirit's brands
at Pranova Card on the agency side, Matiasgio.
And I was working on Johnny Walker and Stolivaca
and Smirnoff and Guinness and quite a few other big global
brands.
At that time, marketing was really about brand awareness,
engagement, brand health.
Lots of PR, right?
And being at the center of the conversation,
especially in these industries where above the line
advertising was really difficult to do because
of the regulations involved in the industry.
So really learning how to think about marketing
with a very scrappy mentality and how
to approach this engagement question and the brand awareness
question without breaking any rules, obviously staying legal
but also being really creative about the strategy.
And so over the years, we've seen as the industry
has evolved, as human beings in our behavior
have also evolved in response to the world around us evolving.
It's this perfect kind of trifecta of change
that has been going on for the past two decades, really,
since the beginning of the digital transformation
of our lives of society.
And so what we see now in marketing
is it's gone from this really heavy focus on awareness
and advertising, experiential, et cetera,
to now be a really technical, digital first business
and discipline that requires pretty significant understanding
of data and analytics and much deeper and much more
precise understanding of consumers or customers
in order to get to the end result, which is ultimately
and has always been about driving business growth.
All right, let's get to our first segment, the trust tree,
where we go and feel honest and trusted
and you can share the deepest, darkest marketing secrets.
Obviously, a lot of different brands,
a lot of different customer types.
Who are your customers?
How do you think about your customers?
I think that's a great question and that's something
that is actually evolving in the trajectory
of the company and the business.
I think first and foremost, our customers
have always been agents, brokers, franchisee owners
and affiliates, folks that are licensing our brands,
agents that we're recruiting into the network, brokers
that we're recruiting into our network across all of the brands.
What we're now understanding and I think really doubling down
on is that buyers and sellers are also our customers,
even though it is a B2B to C model.
And so in order to continue to be successful and to future proof
our business and to transform the industry, truly,
we have to start centering that customer consumer buyer
seller experience and evolving that to meet the expectations
of consumers in today's day and age, which are very, very
different from the expectations of consumers even five years
ago, let alone 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago.
And so there's a pretty large gap right now in the industry
that anywhere as the leader is in a really unique position
to be able to solve, which is how do we then
think very differently about how the average buyer
and how the average seller approaches a housing transaction,
how they become educated on the housing transaction,
how they engage with a broker or an agent
to list their home or to buy a home.
And then what does that process from being under contract
to actually closing on a home look like?
And in what ways can we make that less complicated,
less stressful, and less disparate, which
is the feedback about the process today
that we're hearing loud and clear from consumers.
So we need to solve that and think about the business
of housing really holistically and all of those people
that I mentioned that are involved in the transaction
are all our customers in some way, shape or form.
Yeah, it's such a fascinating company,
but also such a fascinating problem
to solve because real estate is so multifactorial, buying a home
comes down to things that are so macro, things that
are outside of anyone's control, then down
to things that are so incredibly micro.
Like, hey, are you on the sunny side of the street
or the shady side of the street?
Or things like, is this the right walkway that I want to have?
Or where does there is the possibility to expand or to grow?
There's so many different things there.
And I think that you nailed it is just there's
so much uncertainty with the process.
And back in the day, you just did whatever your real estate
agent told you to do.
You're actually raising a couple of really interesting points.
And I love this conversation because it really gets to the core
of what it is that we're trying to solve.
Number one is my belief that a lot of the decision-making
from a buyer and seller perspective that happens
on housing is emotional and largely unconscious.
And I think the decisions that we see people
make around what house they buy, what house they don't buy,
are largely post rationalized decisions
to make their gut reaction to the house make sense
after the fact.
And so to be really successful marketers in real estate,
you have to first truly understand
that a lot of the motivation in the customer journey
and the consumer journey comes from deep inside.
And it comes not from the rational thinking mind,
but somewhere inside their emotional makeup
and what I like to call their heart set.
I mean, how many times have we seen,
have we experienced, have we witnessed,
have we heard of a family coming into a home
that they're viewing for purchase?
And they have this magical moment where they imagine
their family, their kids, having breakfast
at this breakfast club playing in this perfect backyard
and they fall in love with the house
and hear this whole thing around falling in love
with the house.
And that is a completely emotional thing that has happened
and then that family will go back and rationalize
how do they make that purchase make sense.
It might be out of the zip code that they want.
It might be a little bit more expensive than their budget.
It might not actually be the school district
that they wanna be in,
but they have fallen in love with the house.
And so they're gonna make that make sense for them
in some way, shape or armor.
We see those type of choices happen over and over again,
which really leads to my hypothesis
that a lot of the decision making that happens
in real estate and other industries,
really, I think across the board,
have more to do with the consumer heart set
than it has to do with the consumer's mindset.
Although we like to believe ourselves as people
and as consumers as being primarily rational,
we don't really see that coming to life
when we look at consumer behavior overall.
The other point that you mean that I wanna just touch on
quickly is around who's the expert, right?
It used to be the case, not just in housing,
but in anything, buying a car,
buying a new refrigerator,
buying a pair of sneakers,
that when you went into,
I'm gonna date myself, nobody beats the whiz,
to buy a refrigerator in 1997.
The expert on refrigerators was the person
that nobody beats the whiz who was gonna talk to you
about the whirlpool versus the Samsung
versus the Frigidaire,
and was gonna educate you on what is better
for your particular set of needs, et cetera.
We are now in a completely different set of circumstances
for consumers because so much information
is available on the internet
that now the consumer believes themselves to be the expert
and wants to do all of that education
and quote unquote research online independently
and in a way that they believe is unbiased,
and I'm putting that in huge air quotes
because we don't really know that it's unbiased,
but that's the consumer perception.
So that by the time they get to best buy in 2023
to buy their refrigerator,
they already have narrowed it down to two or three options
and they're really there to make this quick decision
and they're not really looking at the salesperson
as the datekeeper of all of the trusted information.
They're really looking at the salesperson
as a transactional partner
to help them get across the finish line.
And that is a completely different set
of customer expectations that we have ever dealt
with as marketers and salespeople and businesspeople
in the past.
And so the entire business of marketing has to shift
to understand that that shifted consumer behavior
means the way we approach consumers must also evolve,
the way that we engage consumers must evolve,
the experience must evolve,
and what actually happens at actual point of sale
has to evolve because the consumer's coming
into the experience with a very different mindset.
- Yeah, I love it.
I couldn't agree more.
I bought out like a year, a half ago almost.
And like fortunately our agent,
shut out, it was, it is like, is the best.
And it was because she could see the things
that we couldn't see, which is,
hey, I've told this story, I thought it was poor.
But when, okay, when you walk in the home,
you're gonna wanna look at this,
and then you're gonna wanna put your bag here,
and then you're gonna want,
and then you have a five to two and a half year old.
It was one at the time.
You're gonna wanna be able to walk over,
put your kid here and make dinner while he's here,
and not wanna have it be over here.
So this house is great, or hey,
this house looks really good stage like this,
but it isn't gonna live like this at all.
And all of your crap is gonna be on the dining room table
all the time in the middle of your house,
and it's gonna drive you crazy.
And just like those, those sort of next level things,
I think it just speaks to that in any sales situation,
the person who is more informed is better off.
And as marketers, we need to inform our customers,
which is much information that they can make those decisions,
and our sellers, so that we can have them make decisions as well.
That's right, and I think the name of the game
is the appropriate level of education
that puts the consumer in the driver's seat,
so that when you go into a house
and you have this fabulous agent
who's helping you to understand the experience
of living in that home, right?
You feel so empowered, and you are really getting the tools
and the information and the guidance that you need,
so that you become the expert,
and you're able to make the right decision for yourself
and your family.
And what we're trying to introduce
through this transformation work at anywhere
is that, plus, all of the different ways
that technology, tools, products, services, apps, et cetera,
can support that journey,
so that when you do finally pick the house that you want,
the process of getting from the contract to the close
is just much more seamless.
I know you've been through this recently,
so I know you know what I'm talking about,
the process of getting the housing inspection done,
and then getting title insurance on the house,
and then going to get an appraiser
to come and take a look at the house
and trying to negotiate all of these things
at the same time as one individual entity,
with some support, obviously, from your agent,
who are really the backbone of this industry,
but wanting to also feel like you know what's going on,
and you're ultimately project managing this yourself
as the buyer or largely as the seller,
and so how can technology make that process less cumbersome
and less heavy for the buyer and the seller,
and there's a lot of opportunity to make that a reality,
and those are the things that we are actively exploring
as a business, which I happen to be super excited about.
For us to be successful at driving revenue and growth
through marketing, we have to take a 360 degree approach
to our strategy and understand with serious granularity
how all of those different parts of the whole
create the entire funnel, right?
And so it is B to B, and it is B to C,
and only by thinking about those things
in a very integrated way,
can we drive the results that we wanna drive for the business?
If I'm only to focus on B to B, and I'm recruiting agents,
and I'm selling franchises, and I'm recruiting brokers,
but I'm not supporting the process
of actually selling a home to a consumer,
they are not being set up to succeed,
and by then, I mean agents and brokers, right,
the books that we're recruiting.
If I only focus on B to C,
I'd say a completely different business model,
because anywhere itself doesn't sell the home,
our agents and our brokers are selling the home.
And so we need to have all of these things
working in a very beautiful choreography
that is strategic, that is sound,
and that ultimately focuses on a single thing,
which is driving growth from all of the different
economic touch points in our business
to get to the bottom line, which is more housing,
more successfully closed housing transactions,
more franchise sales, happier agents,
more engaged brokers, and consumers that are reporting
on a housing experience that is positive
and that they would recommend to their neighbor,
to their friend, or to their family.
- All right, any other thoughts on sort of marketing
strategy or how you go to market to your customers?
- So the interesting thing that we're doing now,
that I think is the next frontier for all marketing,
regardless of industry, is emographics.
And so this is something that I have been grappling with
and unpacking and building brick by brick,
because it's something that really doesn't exist yet,
and I think it should.
And so what I mean by that is historically,
as marketers, we first really looked at demographics.
That was the way that we understood customers,
that's how we segmented, that is how we targeted
to whatever extent we were targeting at that point
in our marketing journey.
And then we moved on to what at that point was
the cutting edge, which was psychographics,
and then we started building personas,
build based on psychographic mindset cues, right?
Things people like, things people do,
things people don't do.
This is a person that is like this,
this is a person that is not like that.
And we would craft these personas that would become,
again, our segmentation vehicle for targeting
and what we consider to be precise marketing at the time.
What we were asking, when we were looking at demographics
and psychographics is the what of people.
What is this person, what does this person do,
where does this person live, what, what, what, what, what.
We have always thought that we're asking why,
but the question that we're asking
and the way that we're segmenting actually
doesn't tell us anything about the why.
It tells us all about the what.
And so the next layer of it.
Yeah, so the next layer of this is,
let's be serious as marketers about our endeavor
to understand the why.
This is what we've been talking about,
certainly as long as I've been in the business.
Why is that person the way that he or she is?
Why does that person like this versus that?
Why does that person spend this many hours
watching this type of content versus another type of content?
And what I have been doing is doubling down
on that question through neuroscience research.
And we have been really trying to get
to the unconscious emotional makeup of consumers
that set up their predisposition to like or dislike
and to behave or not behave in particular ways.
So I call that the layer below
the things that we are already measuring.
And it's based on this premise that over 95%
of our human behavior is actually rooted
and driven by unconscious emotions
that we're not even aware of.
So it's not stuff that I as a consumer
would be able to articulate in a focus group.
It's not things that I would be able to
as a consumer articulate in a survey.
And so it is our job as marketers
if we think about ourselves as business psychologists, right?
To get further down and deeper into that mindset,
to get to the heart set to understand those things.
And that's really what this is about.
And so in creating these emographic personas
which is what I'm doing through neural, like I mentioned,
I'm trying to get to why people operate,
how they operate, why people think and like what they like.
And then marrying that data with the psychographic data
and with the demographic data,
this combination of things becomes this kind of much more
sophisticated trifecta of information
that gives me a much clearer picture
of who my customers are.
And now with that deeper understanding,
more precise segmentation that really takes
into account the emotional state of people.
And I don't mean this like mumbo jumbo,
you know fuzzy, warm feelings.
I really mean like, this isn't an anxious person.
This is a person that is deeply insecure
and needs these kinds of drivers to feel secure
and that's gonna be an important part
of our messaging strategy.
Or this is a person that is operating on fear.
Or this is a person that is operating on aspiration, right?
And so how we go to market those different people
is really, really different.
That plus psychographics plus demographics
allows us to get much, much closer to the core
of our customer behavior, which in turn means
we could be much more precise and deliberate
in how we market to those folks
and where we spend our money
and how we craft our content and our messaging
and our creative and how we can drive the business outcomes
that were ultimately tasked with driving.
- And let's get to that money spending right now.
Let's go to our next segment, the playbook
where you opened up the playbook and talk about the tactics
that helped you win.
What are your three channels or tactics
that are your uncuttable budget?
- Oh God, this is a hard question.
So I think that, like I mentioned before,
I think marketing is about choreography
and it is about really smart integration.
So when you lose something,
when you take something out,
the whole system suffers in some way, shape, or form.
But if I were to pick the three things
that I would build as my foundational pieces
for any marketing strategy,
it would number one,
buy and large, be research and insights.
You can't build anything without having the research
and insights to drive the decisions
that you're making, the strategies that you're building
and to understand the ecosystem
that you're entering into as a marketer
and as a business leader.
So that's number one.
The second thing I would absolutely invest in
is strategic planning.
So taking those insights and creating thoughtful
and deep perspectives on how to grow the business.
And so strategic planning is a thing.
I think the industry, marketing industry
suffers from a little bit.
I see a lot of focus on go to market,
a lot of focus on campaigns,
a lot of focus on just doing action items
and getting things out there
and turning channels on and off
and pressing all the letters for delivery.
But none of that works without having a strategic plan
first and foremost and having the insights
that are driving that plan, even behind that.
So those are two things.
And then the third thing is measurement and analytics.
I think marketing has still a long way to go
in terms of the branding of itself
as a growth driver and a revenue generator.
And part of the reason for that
is that we've historically looked at
or been thought of as cost centers
because we have lacked as a discipline
the ability to measure and to have ROI analysis
that really ties our work to the business strategy.
And so that as the third thing that is an absolute must
for me is critical because it is us
the permission as marketers to continue to do what we're doing
and to have a seat at the table
and to be part of the larger business strategy conversation
without having those analytics that support that connection.
We really go back to being an arts and crafts function
and a cost center for the average CEO
and the average executive suite,
which is where we do not want to be as marketers.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
What's something that you don't see working that you're
that you're not going to be investing in or something
that's I know you don't want to cut out.
But the most cuttable thing.
Well, I'll go back to the insights.
I think the most cuttable thing is go to market campaigns
and strategy where I don't have a clear understanding
of what is the strategic hypothesis behind what we're doing.
Right. And so having to have that diligence
is just paramount to having successful work
and also again, being able to connect the work
back to the business agenda.
And so I think a lot of times where marketing struggles
is maintaining that connectivity to the business agenda
being very active in the business of going to market
and executing short term campaigns with short term goals
that ultimately are not lettering up
to the overall needs of the business
and instead are trying to hit on immediate quarter
by quarter micro goals.
And it's very hard once you get into that universe
to get out of that.
And so if we could all as marketers avoid that trap
and just always keep our eye on the prize
and be looking at the macro business problem
that we're here to solve, we would all be better off
for it as a discipline.
And two, I think we would just be hugely much, much more
successful delivering the results that our CFOs
and our CEOs expect and want to see.
What about that experimental budget,
the little extra 10% that you have tucked away
for something crazy?
What do you want to spend it on next year?
What are you thinking about?
Debating that you want to spend it on for your experiments
for next year?
More research.
More research.
One of the things I'm introducing now for 2024
is user testing for marketing, deliverables.
I know we all do testing.
User testing is very common in product.
User testing is very common in UX and UI.
But we should be taking that same exact approach
to our creative.
And I don't just mean A/B testing and things of that nature.
But let's use our tasks against real people.
How are they experiencing our campaigns?
How are they experiencing our websites?
How are they experiencing our mobile apps?
How are they in real time experiencing even something
like their agent experience, their broker experience?
How are our agents and brokers experiencing our products?
How are they experiencing the marketing
that they get from us?
We need to test that.
And we need to test that in a varying academic, rigorous way.
Because ultimately, everything that we're doing
is about meeting the needs of a user.
Whether the user is our agent customer, our broker customer,
our franchisee customer, or the buyer and seller customer,
it's all in service of that person.
So we need to be getting real time feedback
from whoever our customer is in that particular example
of that particular deliverable to continue
perfecting what it is that we're building.
And so if I had extra dollars coming down from the sky,
I would implement a full service user testing initiative
across all of my touch points and all of my customer experience
journeys and channels.
Your favorite campaign that you've run--
I will tell you my favorite campaign of all time
was Captain Morgan running for president in 2008.
And it was a really fun one.
And so we actually went out to the DNC,
the Democratic National Convention, and the RNC,
the Republican National Convention, with Captain Morgan.
And we got a petition signed to put him on the official ballot.
There was a ton of PR.
This was really at the beginning of social media,
so big MySpace.
So there was a lot of content coming up on MySpace.
And it became kind of a viral sensation.
Oh my god, it was great.
And that was, I think, one of the most fun and interesting
campaigns I have ever worked on and really also set the bar
for out-of-the-box thinking and tremendous creativity.
I love it.
That is so awesome.
That's cool that you were working on that.
That's fun.
Yeah, that was Diachio.
And it was, again, this goes back to being below the line.
You can't just run this sort of standard plays
like any CPG company would run or like McDonald's or Nike
or anybody else, because it's regulated in its wine and spirit.
So you, as a person who grew up in these highly regulated
industries, like I said, tobacco, wine and spirits,
first and foremost, the default setting
was what everyone else does doesn't work.
Nothing off the shelf is going to work here.
So you have to come into the conversation already
knowing that there is no playbook.
And we are building those trash.
And you have all of these challenges and obstacles
that are working against you, things
that you absolutely can't do, can't touch, can't even
contemplate.
And so with what you've got, what can you do?
And so that sprappiness has really
become like a foundational piece of who I am as a person
and also how I approach all of this work.
And that's why I've been in the business of transformation
work and coming into companies like anywhere
that are in the business of taking something, making it
better, or in other roles, taking things that don't exist
and building them or taking things that are on life support
and resuscitating them.
And it really all starts from that beginning experience
of being an outside of the box industry that
required flexible thinking.
You also built a sort of like an in-house creative agency.
Can you talk about that?
So when I came to anywhere, there's
already an in-house creative studio
that is part of the offering that we have for agents
and brokers.
And it's a way to give a value to our network of agents
and brokers, regardless of a brand who need marketing support
to market to their sphere of influence,
to get leads, all of those things.
And so what we've been doing in the studio in the past year
or so is evolving and transforming that to really become
a full service end-to-end digital marketing agency that
goes beyond creative and includes media buying and testing
and research.
And it's done in a way that is fully connected and digital
first, and that I can plug in in smart ways
to my own measurement and analytics system
so that as an additional added value,
eventually to agents and brokers,
we're not only able to give them best-in-class creative
and best-in-class marketing support,
but we're also able to give them analytical reports
and results on what this is doing for their business.
And at the end of the day, the business of residential real
estate, like many others, agents and brokers
are small business owners.
They want to know that where they're spending their money
is actually having an impact driving their business.
And so there's this unique opportunity for this agency,
this in-house agency that we're restructuring and rebuilding
to be that for agents and brokers
and provide that level of transparency
and I think marketing power that they need and that they want.
Yeah, that's really cool.
OK, get to our final segment here, The Dust Up.
This is where you talk about healthy tension,
but that's with your board or shell,
just into your competitor or anyone else in your career
that you've had a dust up with.
If you had a memorable dust up.
So I have.
And I've told this story, I think, once before in a public setting.
So I'll tell you here, Ian.
In my first role at Standard and Poor's,
where I mentioned earlier, I was an analyst,
I was pretty miserable.
It was just not the right life path for me.
And I knew it.
And I think everyone else knew it.
But it was also really the beginning of email
in a business setting.
And so I did not really understand how email worked really
fully and there was a lot of room for error.
And so on a particular day, I was especially frustrated.
And my very good friend also worked with me on the same team
at S&P. And I thought I was sending her an email,
saying something to the effect of like,
I wish my boss would disappear off the face of the earth
and go plane traffic.
It was something really horrible and bad and terrible coming
out of the mind of a 22 year old that had just graduated
college and was really miserable at the job.
And so I actually wasn't emailing my friend.
I emailed it to my supervisor.
And so imagine it was like out of Ferris Bueller's Day
off like local comedy.
I mean, the hysteria that ensued when I realized that.
And then my friend and I are thinking about how are we
going to like, unsend it?
How are we going to get onto her computer and delete it?
What are we going to do?
It was pretty chaotic for the next several hours.
To make a long story short, we couldn't do anything about it.
It was sent.
She did see it.
And the next morning, I came and prepared because I just
knew that something terrible was going to happen.
And so I had this quite unpleasant conversation with HR.
And it ended up being the beginning of my separation
from that role, which interestingly was a relief
and also a blessing in disguise.
Like that was the feeling that I felt because it gave me
the freedom and the permission to leave this role that everyone
said was a great opportunity for me
and go pursue something else, which ultimately landed in--
which ultimately landed me in the business that I'm in now,
which I love and absolutely enjoy for the next 20
something years after that incident.
And so gifts come in weird packages sometimes.
And that came very strange dust-up package.
But I take it as a learning lesson.
It's a thing I share a lot when I mentor.
And it's just sometimes the universe has a plan for you.
And here we are talking about this 20 something years later.
That is crazy.
Every time the door closes the window opens, as I say.
That's right.
That is awesome.
Well, it has been absolutely wonderful chatting with you
today.
And there's sort of thoughts on final thoughts
here on marketing, on pipeline, or your work at anywhere.
Yeah.
So I think that the industry is at a point of inflection.
And the role of marketing is being defined and redefined
every day all of the time across industries.
You can do a poll right now, look at 10 different job
descriptions for a CMO, and you'll
see 10 really different jobs, right?
Described on the sheet.
There's no real consensus of what this function does,
or what this function is supposed to do, or any business.
And I think that starts from the CEOs, and boards,
and even marketers not having an agreement
on a point of view there.
And so given all of that uncertainty,
redefinition, reimagination, et cetera,
that is happening in real time, we
have this unique opportunity to turn marketing into what
it properly should be, which is a high power growth
engine that drives business forward
and reacts and responds in really smart ways
to the landscape, the ecosystem, the customer,
and the culture in which we're operating as industry.
And so the closer that we can get to understanding and thinking
of ourselves first as business leaders,
and then as functional marketing experts,
the further along we will get to making that connection
and that integration happen at the highest levels
of our organization.
The biggest challenge that I still think that we have,
and that I still think we need to address,
is taking this moment to redefine this role,
and making sure that what we're doing and what we do every day
thereafter is truly aligned with our CEOs and our CFOs
and are all in service of the overall business agenda
and the ROI goals of our organization, period full stop.
I love it.
I can't believe our time here is though.
And I could go on and on.
Thanks again for joining us.
It's been awesome.
Esther, you're just a wonderful marketer.
And thank you to you.
Thank you to our friends.
Qualified, we're going to be websiteed
into a pipeline generation machine.
Go to Qualified.com.
Get to our visitors, book more meetings,
drive more pipeline right on your website.
Go to Qualified.com to learn more.
Do you have any final thoughts, anything to plug?
Anything to plug?
No.
Final thoughts, yes.
To all of my marketing colleagues and friends and folks
aspiring to come into this business,
this is the moment.
See that, understand the business, learn business language,
and get a seat at the table.
Because once we are there, the impact
that we can have on revenue and growth
will be known, will be felt, and it will be huge
for this industry and for our discipline.
Awesome.
Thanks so much, and take care.
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