Is the Marketing Funnel Dead? ft. Chris Walker

WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.540 --> 00:00:02.740 Yeah, 2 00:00:05.440 --> 00:00:09.350 welcome back to be, to be growth. I'm Leslie Cruise with sweet fish media 3 00:00:09.360 --> 00:00:14.780 today. I am more than excited to have the one and only chris walker ceo at 4 00:00:14.780 --> 00:00:20.010 refined labs and the host of the state of demand gen podcast on to discuss all 5 00:00:20.010 --> 00:00:23.570 things demand generation with me, chris, thanks so much for joining me. Wesley 6 00:00:23.580 --> 00:00:29.120 happy to be here. Looking forward to diving in this topic is one that I know 7 00:00:29.120 --> 00:00:32.830 very well and I'm very passionate about. So looking forward to wherever you want 8 00:00:32.830 --> 00:00:36.980 to take the conversation awesome, Well you know, there are a million things we 9 00:00:36.980 --> 00:00:41.260 could get into today and I'm really excited to rack your brain. But I did 10 00:00:41.260 --> 00:00:45.660 want to start off by talking a little bit about your motto at refined labs 11 00:00:45.660 --> 00:00:49.330 and that's make demand, your competitive advantage. And can you tell 12 00:00:49.330 --> 00:00:52.170 me a little bit about kind of like where that came from and what that 13 00:00:52.170 --> 00:00:57.040 means to you? I wouldn't say that it's really our motto here, but it is on our 14 00:00:57.040 --> 00:01:01.590 website and the core of it is for the people listening that are trying to get 15 00:01:01.590 --> 00:01:08.110 into this is that it really can be. For a lot of companies 20 years ago, their 16 00:01:08.110 --> 00:01:11.860 competitive advantage would be a couple of different things. It would be 17 00:01:11.940 --> 00:01:16.150 Distribution, some type of distribution as in their sales team or a 18 00:01:16.150 --> 00:01:20.310 distribution network depending on what you're selling or your product like for 19 00:01:20.310 --> 00:01:26.110 B2B companies. That was the competitive advantage Because distribution provided 20 00:01:26.110 --> 00:01:30.160 in an advantage. And so companies that have very large sales teams with feet 21 00:01:30.160 --> 00:01:33.180 on the street that could get their product out into the market. That was 22 00:01:33.180 --> 00:01:38.460 the way to do it now. 20 or more years later, a lot of that world no longer 23 00:01:38.460 --> 00:01:42.960 exists. The way that people discover research purchase products is entirely 24 00:01:42.960 --> 00:01:47.980 different with the maturity of the Internet. And so this can be a true 25 00:01:47.980 --> 00:01:52.000 competitive advantage for companies. I think tons of companies are sleeping on 26 00:01:52.010 --> 00:01:55.940 the ability for marketing's ability to drive revenue for their business and 27 00:01:55.940 --> 00:01:59.600 still thinking that it really comes through with sales lens. And then 28 00:01:59.600 --> 00:02:03.100 lastly, the majority of companies are operating demand generation. Like it's 29 00:02:03.100 --> 00:02:08.060 2000 and seven, like it's 2000 and nine, like it's 2011 where you capture a 30 00:02:08.060 --> 00:02:12.830 bunch of email addresses and push them through marketing animation until they 31 00:02:12.830 --> 00:02:17.210 hit made up em que ele score to go to your SDR and those people don't want to 32 00:02:17.210 --> 00:02:20.820 talk to your SDR, which is why none of them become customers. And so there's 33 00:02:20.820 --> 00:02:25.440 just a huge opportunity for the ones that can take the information here and 34 00:02:25.440 --> 00:02:28.810 the information that a lot of smart people publish on the internet over the 35 00:02:28.810 --> 00:02:34.560 time that are being successful and go and try and do something new. Yeah. And 36 00:02:34.570 --> 00:02:39.850 for those listening, who might be confused or new to this topic, can you 37 00:02:39.850 --> 00:02:43.660 kind of go back to basics for just a second and can you describe the 38 00:02:43.660 --> 00:02:50.640 difference between demand gen and marketing as a whole? So the difference 39 00:02:50.640 --> 00:02:55.460 between demand gen and marketing as a whole, in my view is I split marketing 40 00:02:55.460 --> 00:03:01.440 into two core buckets. The first bucket of marketing could be upstream or 41 00:03:01.440 --> 00:03:07.030 strategy. So that would involve, who are we going to sell to? How are we 42 00:03:07.030 --> 00:03:10.160 going to position our product? What is it going to be priced at? How are we 43 00:03:10.160 --> 00:03:13.160 going to distribute it? Whether it's over self serve or through US 44 00:03:13.170 --> 00:03:17.030 enterprise sales, motion or through e commerce or through distribution? 45 00:03:17.030 --> 00:03:24.050 Whatever competitive analysis like that is marketing strategy typically that 46 00:03:24.050 --> 00:03:28.220 will fall under product marketing for companies. And even so product 47 00:03:28.220 --> 00:03:32.500 marketing doesn't cover the entire set of what I just mentioned. So that would 48 00:03:32.500 --> 00:03:36.690 be the strategic side and then I look at the rest which would be called 49 00:03:36.700 --> 00:03:41.420 downstream or tactical um, in a traditional marketing model, I think 50 00:03:41.420 --> 00:03:45.840 that's all demand gen, companies tend to break demand gen into brand and try 51 00:03:45.840 --> 00:03:49.950 to break that into brand and demand, gen brand demand gender, the same thing 52 00:03:50.740 --> 00:03:54.330 in my view, when executed properly, they achieve the same outcomes and 53 00:03:54.330 --> 00:03:58.950 they're executed in the same sorts of ways. And so, um, I just think about it 54 00:03:58.950 --> 00:04:02.470 as we have a product and we need to figure out how to get people to know 55 00:04:02.470 --> 00:04:05.470 about it for people to understand the problems that it solves for people to 56 00:04:05.470 --> 00:04:08.720 understand our Brandon have affinity to it and for when they have a problem 57 00:04:08.720 --> 00:04:13.320 that we can solve that they consider us first. And so that is what I look at 58 00:04:13.320 --> 00:04:18.110 and demand gen. Now what a lot of companies I think would be beneficial 59 00:04:18.110 --> 00:04:20.920 for them to understand. The distinction is the difference between legion and 60 00:04:20.920 --> 00:04:27.360 demand gen Which when I go back to the 2007 2009 2011 model, that's lead gen. 61 00:04:27.840 --> 00:04:31.900 That is let's collect email addresses because zoom info wasn't abundant and 62 00:04:31.900 --> 00:04:35.800 we needed contact information for our sales student. That's what it was. And 63 00:04:35.800 --> 00:04:40.570 so companies continue to still run legion, which is let's get, you know, 64 00:04:40.570 --> 00:04:46.970 contact information to do sales versus demand gen, which is what communicate 65 00:04:46.970 --> 00:04:52.400 directly with buyers and create a desire for them to want to use our 66 00:04:52.400 --> 00:04:57.040 product. And so it's very different. There's no nothing that I said in that 67 00:04:57.040 --> 00:05:01.450 statement had anything to do with collecting leads leads as an output of 68 00:05:01.450 --> 00:05:04.960 proper demand generation. It doesn't involve, it's not part of the execution. 69 00:05:05.340 --> 00:05:08.270 Yeah. And you actually talked about this in one of your most recent podcast 70 00:05:08.270 --> 00:05:13.830 episodes and that was kind of moving away from legion activities to focus 71 00:05:13.830 --> 00:05:18.290 more on brand and why would you say that's important? And something that B 72 00:05:18.290 --> 00:05:22.370 to B companies specifically start ups and scale ups should be practicing and 73 00:05:22.370 --> 00:05:27.910 focusing on? Because The way that people buy things is fundamentally 74 00:05:27.910 --> 00:05:31.660 different than it was when that model had a lot of success. Now the 75 00:05:31.660 --> 00:05:35.320 difference and people have seen these stats everywhere that you know, buyers 76 00:05:35.320 --> 00:05:39.530 are 80 done when they start talking to sales and all of those different things 77 00:05:39.530 --> 00:05:43.690 that people are saying. So that's real like it's real that buyers don't want 78 00:05:43.690 --> 00:05:47.590 to talk to your sales are up until they actually want to buy stuff. But most 79 00:05:47.590 --> 00:05:51.200 marketing strategies still get built on a way of, let's get someone when 80 00:05:51.200 --> 00:05:55.380 they're 0% of the way done buying, when they're 10% of the way done buying and 81 00:05:55.380 --> 00:05:59.240 then forced them into a demo with our sales team or cold, call them and try 82 00:05:59.240 --> 00:06:04.620 and get them into a meeting, which is entirely misaligned with how people buy 83 00:06:04.620 --> 00:06:08.050 things today, how buyers want to buy, which is why it continues to decline in 84 00:06:08.050 --> 00:06:13.460 effectiveness. And so the reason that companies need to do it is because 85 00:06:13.740 --> 00:06:17.180 buyers have a lot of control and you need to adjust your marketing. You need 86 00:06:17.180 --> 00:06:20.950 to adjust your go to market strategy entirely around how people want to buy 87 00:06:20.950 --> 00:06:24.990 things if you want to be successful in the future. And kind of switching gears 88 00:06:24.990 --> 00:06:28.750 a little bit here. When you're looking at the funnel, can you talk about where 89 00:06:28.750 --> 00:06:33.360 demand jin fits in that funnel? Or do you even consider? Do you even use the 90 00:06:33.360 --> 00:06:37.600 funnel anymore? Is that even a topic? You, I don't really think about it like 91 00:06:37.600 --> 00:06:41.110 a funnel because I just don't think that it's a good, I see it being 92 00:06:41.110 --> 00:06:45.330 misused a lot in places like, oh, this person must be in the mid funnel, so 93 00:06:45.330 --> 00:06:49.590 let's give them a case study and it's like, come on, like people, especially 94 00:06:49.590 --> 00:06:53.290 in multi stakeholder, complex buying decisions, you like, you're never going 95 00:06:53.290 --> 00:06:56.440 to know when it's not straightforward. And so I just think that like it drives 96 00:06:56.440 --> 00:06:59.880 a lot of the wrong behaviors as if there's like some little funnel that 97 00:06:59.880 --> 00:07:03.600 someone cycles through and then they pop out the bottom and buy stuff. And 98 00:07:03.600 --> 00:07:07.320 so anyway, if you were thinking about it like a funnel, because most people 99 00:07:07.320 --> 00:07:11.020 do demanding, covers the whole thing from when they've never heard of you 100 00:07:11.020 --> 00:07:14.910 before until they become a customer. Like that's what it's what it is. So 101 00:07:14.910 --> 00:07:18.080 like I think a lot of companies, especially larger ones, make the 102 00:07:18.080 --> 00:07:22.570 mistake of segmenting the funnel in different groups, which one has a very 103 00:07:22.570 --> 00:07:27.740 disjointed experience. And to you have one person relying on the beginning and 104 00:07:27.740 --> 00:07:31.690 no accountability to what happens at the end, which is why you end up with a 105 00:07:31.690 --> 00:07:35.980 lot of marketers that toss leads over the fence to sales that don't want to 106 00:07:35.980 --> 00:07:39.360 talk to them. And that's how the sales and marketing alignment challenges 107 00:07:39.360 --> 00:07:46.310 continue to continue to happen. And so starting in 2016, I began to look at 108 00:07:46.320 --> 00:07:52.040 mainly the sales funnel to quantify the success of my marketing. And so 109 00:07:52.040 --> 00:07:54.860 obviously I'm looking at websites source, I'm looking at marketing source 110 00:07:54.860 --> 00:07:57.660 stuff, but I'm looking at it all the way to revenue because it gives you a 111 00:07:57.660 --> 00:08:01.250 ton of insights on the way back up about how people are getting to you 112 00:08:01.250 --> 00:08:04.820 that actually buy stuff. What channels they're coming from, what conversion 113 00:08:04.820 --> 00:08:08.010 that they have. How long are the sales cycles? What does the customer 114 00:08:08.010 --> 00:08:11.680 acquisition costs relative to other things that you're doing? And so it can 115 00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:15.400 tell you to shut off a lot of marketing people did that analysis. They would 116 00:08:15.400 --> 00:08:18.130 shut off a lot of their marketing because they would realize how bad it's 117 00:08:18.130 --> 00:08:21.980 working and it would also illuminate some really interesting opportunities 118 00:08:21.980 --> 00:08:25.780 for them to focus on. One thing that's been really interesting to me during my 119 00:08:25.780 --> 00:08:30.760 research is kind of the barrier between sales and marketing where as far as 120 00:08:30.760 --> 00:08:34.960 demanding is concerned. So can you talk a little bit about that and ways to 121 00:08:34.960 --> 00:08:38.770 combat that kind of, there's kind of like a head butting between sales and 122 00:08:38.770 --> 00:08:42.440 marketing. I'm not passionate about this topic at all because the solution 123 00:08:42.440 --> 00:08:47.210 is incredibly simple. There's no wall, There is no there the clashing is 124 00:08:47.210 --> 00:08:50.470 happening because of how the organization sets up their revenue 125 00:08:50.470 --> 00:08:54.210 model. That's it. It's very simple to change this, Change your mindset, 126 00:08:54.210 --> 00:08:56.850 change your metrics, change your execution the whole thing fixed itself 127 00:08:57.340 --> 00:09:00.530 when marketing is delivering high intent leads to their sales team that 128 00:09:00.530 --> 00:09:03.610 the sales team wants to talk to and those people become customers. There's 129 00:09:03.610 --> 00:09:08.250 no alignment issues. Pretty simple. But the way the companies set up their 130 00:09:08.250 --> 00:09:13.190 model, they force marketers to generate a high volume of shitty leads and then 131 00:09:13.190 --> 00:09:16.410 those shitty leads get passed to sales and obviously sales doesn't want to 132 00:09:16.410 --> 00:09:20.150 talk to them because they're bad and then that's how it happened. So for 133 00:09:20.150 --> 00:09:23.300 some reason they think that a C. R. O. Is going to solve this thing. But it's 134 00:09:23.300 --> 00:09:26.360 really that simple. Just, you need to change, you need to change the way that 135 00:09:26.360 --> 00:09:28.890 you think about marketing, then you have to change what marketing actually 136 00:09:28.890 --> 00:09:34.840 does. And so I interact with a lot of sales experience B two B. Sas sales 137 00:09:34.840 --> 00:09:38.920 leaders that now say that marketing is more important than sales. It's very 138 00:09:38.920 --> 00:09:42.520 interesting to see how sales leaders have adjusted that thought process as 139 00:09:42.520 --> 00:09:46.920 I've been watching them over the past 5 to 7 years Because I saw this seven, I 140 00:09:46.920 --> 00:09:50.020 saw this seven years ago and it took them a while to figure it out. But it 141 00:09:50.030 --> 00:09:53.760 ultimately impacts their success because buyers continue to need 142 00:09:53.760 --> 00:09:58.360 marketing more in order to make buying decisions and marketing still stuck 143 00:09:58.370 --> 00:10:02.060 running lead gen and passing shitty leads to sales. So it's really that 144 00:10:02.060 --> 00:10:06.760 simple to me. We've gone into 25 companies and done this process and 145 00:10:07.140 --> 00:10:10.070 There's not a lot of alignment challenges when you're putting 60 of 146 00:10:10.070 --> 00:10:13.940 the pipeline in and that pipeline closes at a better rate than outbound. 147 00:10:13.940 --> 00:10:19.740 So the solution is to fix marketing. Yeah. And you know, marketing is 148 00:10:19.740 --> 00:10:23.180 constantly evolving. And even in the past two years alone, a lot of people 149 00:10:23.180 --> 00:10:27.210 point to the pandemic and say, oh the pandemic has changed so much. And where 150 00:10:27.210 --> 00:10:33.820 do you think demand gen is headed in the future? So, first off the pandemic 151 00:10:33.830 --> 00:10:37.940 only accelerated things that should have already happened, like the 152 00:10:37.940 --> 00:10:41.680 companies that needed the pandemic to force them to figure out how to do 153 00:10:41.680 --> 00:10:46.420 digital content advertising. Like that type of execution is sad because they 154 00:10:46.420 --> 00:10:51.020 should have had that stuff figured out a long time before that. And so that's 155 00:10:51.020 --> 00:10:54.760 the first step whether because they just relied on sales and events and 156 00:10:54.760 --> 00:10:57.530 things were going fine and they were able to raise enough money and bah bah 157 00:10:57.530 --> 00:11:01.870 bah bah bah that they didn't actually look and say, What are the other 158 00:11:01.870 --> 00:11:04.710 opportunities in marketing that we're not exploring right now? How about we 159 00:11:04.710 --> 00:11:10.990 challenge what we're doing today in 2017 and look at how do we have other 160 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:14.210 sources of revenue outside of spending millions of dollars on trade shows 161 00:11:14.210 --> 00:11:17.700 every year? And a lot of companies didn't do that. And so they're kind of 162 00:11:17.700 --> 00:11:22.190 like, that's the problem for a lot of those businesses where is demanding and 163 00:11:22.190 --> 00:11:27.530 going, I don't, I don't necessarily like talking about this topic because I 164 00:11:27.530 --> 00:11:30.770 would much rather talk about where demand gen is right now and where 165 00:11:30.770 --> 00:11:35.800 demand gen is right now is focusing on a whining you're marketing to buyers 166 00:11:35.810 --> 00:11:39.460 marketing in places where people actually pay attention like Organic 167 00:11:39.460 --> 00:11:44.690 social and a podcast and using paid ads on facebook and Youtube and sometimes 168 00:11:44.690 --> 00:11:49.790 google and creating content that people want, not content. That moves someone 169 00:11:49.790 --> 00:11:53.640 into a funnel to buy your product and distributing that effectively. And a 170 00:11:53.640 --> 00:11:57.110 lot of those things that I just mentioned, marketing teams can't do 171 00:11:57.110 --> 00:12:00.840 because they're difficult to measure based on their attribution software or 172 00:12:00.840 --> 00:12:06.000 whatever else they decide to use to quantify our ally and so we shouldn't 173 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:08.160 be talking about where it's going because most companies aren't where 174 00:12:08.160 --> 00:12:11.740 they should be right now. And so those are some of the things I'd be happy to 175 00:12:11.740 --> 00:12:14.310 talk to your attribution have a very clear point of view on it. The things 176 00:12:14.310 --> 00:12:18.220 that I I see emerging right now, we do. We've been doing a lot of it for the 177 00:12:18.220 --> 00:12:21.340 past. Like I've been doing it as a B two B marketers since 2000 and 14. A 178 00:12:21.340 --> 00:12:25.240 lot of that linked in published their study about it yesterday, that more 179 00:12:25.240 --> 00:12:28.720 marketers will be doing. And it's like the idea of using quote unquote 180 00:12:28.730 --> 00:12:33.660 influencers and B two B to create awareness, create content with, build 181 00:12:33.660 --> 00:12:36.680 relationships with because they ultimately have a lot of awareness, 182 00:12:36.680 --> 00:12:39.360 they have trust in credibility with their audience and they have a lot of 183 00:12:39.360 --> 00:12:43.650 attention that businesses don't have. And so that's something that I've been 184 00:12:43.650 --> 00:12:48.270 using successfully for a very long time and think more companies will do it. 185 00:12:48.270 --> 00:12:51.280 And the challenge with every single marketing, whether it's a podcast, 186 00:12:51.280 --> 00:12:54.290 whether it's organic social, whether it's ads, whether its influence or 187 00:12:54.290 --> 00:12:58.350 whether it's events. The problem that companies need to understand is that 188 00:12:58.740 --> 00:13:02.800 the success of your marketing execution in any channel comes down to your 189 00:13:02.800 --> 00:13:08.670 intent. And most companies I see have the wrong intent, which is I want to do 190 00:13:08.670 --> 00:13:13.990 whatever I can to get someone into my sales team as opposed to I want to do 191 00:13:13.990 --> 00:13:18.020 whatever I can to help this person, which then creates awareness and 192 00:13:18.020 --> 00:13:21.780 consideration for our product. That perfectly leads me into my next 193 00:13:21.780 --> 00:13:25.370 question here. And actually you touched on it in one of your more recent 194 00:13:25.370 --> 00:13:30.470 podcast episodes, can you talk a bit about kind of the difference between 195 00:13:30.470 --> 00:13:35.270 sales lead and product lead marketing and why a company would want to make 196 00:13:35.270 --> 00:13:40.020 the switch? What the benefit that might be. So the difference between sales 197 00:13:40.020 --> 00:13:43.410 lead and product lead and I think it's an important distinction because most 198 00:13:43.410 --> 00:13:47.870 companies, uh a lot of not most companies, a lot of companies have both 199 00:13:47.870 --> 00:13:52.070 running in parallel. And so historically companies would sell their 200 00:13:52.070 --> 00:13:56.020 product through a sales team because of technology barriers because of how 201 00:13:56.020 --> 00:13:59.930 people bought stuff for, you know, it was too complex and the pricing was 202 00:13:59.930 --> 00:14:03.960 complicated for a variety of reasons. Companies chose to sell their B two B 203 00:14:03.960 --> 00:14:10.520 software through a sales rep and to wean into how people want to buy things 204 00:14:10.520 --> 00:14:14.560 now. And to make the buyer experience more frictionless and frankly to make 205 00:14:14.560 --> 00:14:18.600 it more profitable for the companies that make this transition have moved 206 00:14:18.600 --> 00:14:22.280 into a self serve model that's similar to like find something in e commerce, 207 00:14:22.280 --> 00:14:27.930 but it's a software saS subscription that you sign up for. And so the self 208 00:14:27.930 --> 00:14:33.590 service eliminates the sales headcount, which then eliminates a lot of expenses 209 00:14:33.590 --> 00:14:38.040 associated with selling through a sales rep. So for lower, it started with 210 00:14:38.040 --> 00:14:41.560 lower dollar value products where it didn't make sense to sell something 211 00:14:41.570 --> 00:14:44.850 through a sales rep, right? Because you have to pay them commissions, you have 212 00:14:44.850 --> 00:14:47.700 to do marketing to get to the leads. They have to, they're gonna only win a 213 00:14:47.700 --> 00:14:52.230 couple, You still have to pay them a salary. Like for I tend to think that 214 00:14:52.230 --> 00:14:56.740 right now companies that sell a product that's less than $10,000 a year really 215 00:14:56.740 --> 00:15:00.640 need to think about how to do a product lead offering because it's it's getting 216 00:15:00.650 --> 00:15:04.020 harder and harder and more and more expensive to acquire customers for your 217 00:15:04.020 --> 00:15:07.310 product. And over time if you can't raise enough money, it's just not gonna 218 00:15:07.310 --> 00:15:11.410 work. So that's something that I think about. I see companies that have a 219 00:15:11.420 --> 00:15:15.910 $3000 a year software product to spend a ton of money on marketing that have 220 00:15:15.920 --> 00:15:19.170 sdrs running predictable revenue and pay sales teams that have customer 221 00:15:19.170 --> 00:15:22.960 acquisition cost pay box that are five years just frankly because they're able 222 00:15:22.960 --> 00:15:26.510 to raise enough money. And so the product line offering makes a lot of 223 00:15:26.510 --> 00:15:29.860 sense for a lot of different reasons economic, financially, economically, 224 00:15:29.860 --> 00:15:34.500 but also it's an it's an initial acquisition model and it better aligns 225 00:15:34.500 --> 00:15:38.300 with how a lot of people want to buy stuff. But when we get back to it, most 226 00:15:38.300 --> 00:15:43.870 companies run both in parallel. So you have an entry point for a user and then 227 00:15:43.870 --> 00:15:47.100 you're going to have a sales led motion once that user hits a certain stage or 228 00:15:47.100 --> 00:15:51.270 whether they have certain demographic criteria to go and activate an outbound 229 00:15:51.270 --> 00:15:54.600 motion to try and sell to that account or trying to expand to that account or 230 00:15:54.600 --> 00:16:00.070 whatever those things. Maybe so most people can sort of like use it as a, as 231 00:16:00.070 --> 00:16:05.340 a semi like a different way to do lead gen. Yeah, sure. And for anyone 232 00:16:05.340 --> 00:16:09.210 listening, who is kind of a beginner in the marketing space and might be 233 00:16:09.210 --> 00:16:13.040 interested in a career in demand generation. What steps would you 234 00:16:13.040 --> 00:16:17.190 recommend to becoming, let's say a director of demand generation, you know, 235 00:16:17.190 --> 00:16:22.860 maybe books to read classes, courses people follow in the space etcetera. So 236 00:16:23.340 --> 00:16:28.250 recommendation number one is to understand marketing fundamentals. I am 237 00:16:28.260 --> 00:16:32.130 blown away by how many marketers that work can be to be Sask, don't 238 00:16:32.130 --> 00:16:36.940 understand marketing fundamentals and so understand those like pragmatic 239 00:16:36.940 --> 00:16:41.220 Marketing is a great one. There's tons of marketing books like you're not 240 00:16:41.220 --> 00:16:44.560 going to go there and read that book and become a director of demand gen, 241 00:16:44.560 --> 00:16:48.970 but you need the foundation like people move so far into tactics and have never 242 00:16:48.970 --> 00:16:52.250 actually looked at what building a marketing strategy is about. Who are we 243 00:16:52.250 --> 00:16:55.850 communicating with? How are we going to segment them? Why is the segmentation 244 00:16:55.850 --> 00:17:00.850 important? Why is micro segmentation even better in today's world? And so 245 00:17:00.860 --> 00:17:04.990 figuring that stuff out first I think would be a huge recommendation. The 246 00:17:04.990 --> 00:17:10.130 next one would be to figure out the right people to listen to and I'm not 247 00:17:10.130 --> 00:17:12.440 here to toot my own horn, you can listen to my content, but there's 248 00:17:12.440 --> 00:17:15.930 plenty of people that have good content out there to listen to. But I would 249 00:17:15.930 --> 00:17:19.319 recommend just picking a couple of them and make making sure that they're good 250 00:17:19.319 --> 00:17:22.530 and they actually are practitioners and they do the work, not just talking 251 00:17:22.530 --> 00:17:27.470 theory. So that's step to figure out who you're listening to. Step three 252 00:17:27.480 --> 00:17:31.240 would be if you're inside of a business, go and talk to customers and prospects. 253 00:17:31.250 --> 00:17:35.300 Again, fascinated how few marketers actually interact with their customers 254 00:17:35.300 --> 00:17:39.470 and prospects. They listen to gong calls are they get play telephone game 255 00:17:39.470 --> 00:17:43.530 with their sales team or whatever. But they never actually talk to their 256 00:17:43.530 --> 00:17:47.310 prospects, understand why those prospects, what what's going on in 257 00:17:47.310 --> 00:17:50.940 their lives, understand that, talked to influencers in the space, understand 258 00:17:50.940 --> 00:17:54.240 what they're seeing and where things are going and who they're watching and 259 00:17:54.240 --> 00:17:57.900 what people are doing. And then to customers to understand how those 260 00:17:57.900 --> 00:18:01.300 customers feel like. You can start to triangulate the difference between when 261 00:18:01.300 --> 00:18:04.660 a customer perceives and what a prospect perceives and then it's your 262 00:18:04.660 --> 00:18:07.700 job as a marketer to close the gap for people that don't use your product 263 00:18:07.700 --> 00:18:12.140 right now. So as a marketer, you need to be in the market. So that's step 264 00:18:12.140 --> 00:18:18.680 three step for what I would recommend is to start a e commerce company and 265 00:18:18.680 --> 00:18:24.750 sell a commodity product, shoes, blanket, t shirts, something like that, 266 00:18:24.750 --> 00:18:28.310 where you can literally just buy a product private label it, and then try 267 00:18:28.310 --> 00:18:30.790 and figure out how to sell it and you're gonna, and when you're selling a 268 00:18:30.790 --> 00:18:34.280 commodity, those things get sold through marketing and brand, So you're 269 00:18:34.280 --> 00:18:36.850 going to figure out how to do or if it's cheap, you're gonna have to figure 270 00:18:36.850 --> 00:18:39.600 out how to do organic social, it's a little bit more expensive. You can try 271 00:18:39.600 --> 00:18:42.940 and figure out how to acquire that customer for $18 on instagram story 272 00:18:42.940 --> 00:18:47.150 adds like and that when you do those things and you use your own money, you 273 00:18:47.150 --> 00:18:52.110 actually care whether or not it works. And so I think a lot of B two B 274 00:18:52.110 --> 00:18:54.650 marketers don't have that experience either, so they just play around with 275 00:18:54.650 --> 00:18:58.670 monopoly money and collect leads or create metrics, like use your own money, 276 00:18:59.140 --> 00:19:02.670 Get invested. And when you buy $1,000 in ads, you're gonna find out very 277 00:19:02.670 --> 00:19:06.630 quickly whether what you're doing in marketing works or not. So that's step 278 00:19:06.630 --> 00:19:10.840 four and then step five. When you have all that foundation go and find a 279 00:19:10.840 --> 00:19:15.520 company where you can do those things and and do them in a lot of breath. And 280 00:19:15.520 --> 00:19:19.790 so a lot of marketers get pigeonholed into all. I'm just gonna be the google 281 00:19:19.790 --> 00:19:23.220 ads person. Like if you want to run demand gen, you need to understand the 282 00:19:23.220 --> 00:19:25.660 full suite, you need to understand how to create content. You need to 283 00:19:25.660 --> 00:19:29.070 understand how to work with a creative team. You need to understand organic 284 00:19:29.070 --> 00:19:32.910 social, need to understand marketing operations. You need to understand how 285 00:19:32.910 --> 00:19:36.380 to analyze pipeline data in Salesforce. You need to understand how to run ads 286 00:19:36.380 --> 00:19:39.000 in every platform. You need to understand the nuances of all those 287 00:19:39.000 --> 00:19:41.620 platforms. You need to understand how to do copyrighting. You need to 288 00:19:41.620 --> 00:19:44.100 understand how to talk to customers. You need to understand how to read a P. 289 00:19:44.100 --> 00:19:46.730 And L. You need to understand how to calculate customer acquisition costs. 290 00:19:46.730 --> 00:19:50.170 You need to understand what an SQL means. You need to understand how to 291 00:19:50.170 --> 00:19:54.230 work with your sales team. Like I could go on for the entire set of this 292 00:19:54.230 --> 00:19:58.590 podcast about all the stuff that you need to know in order to do this role 293 00:19:58.590 --> 00:20:02.780 really well. And so those are those are the initial recommendations and then 294 00:20:02.780 --> 00:20:05.800 the last one for people that are already there for the Director of 295 00:20:05.800 --> 00:20:10.880 demand gen that wants to become a, you know, as an executive. The next thing 296 00:20:10.880 --> 00:20:14.390 that you need to do is you need to get focused on all of the functions that 297 00:20:14.390 --> 00:20:18.430 are on the fringe of marketing. You need to understand how to work with 298 00:20:18.430 --> 00:20:20.780 product. You need to understand when they have requirements. You need to 299 00:20:20.780 --> 00:20:24.310 understand how much it costs to build stuff and on what timelines and how to 300 00:20:24.310 --> 00:20:26.870 launch a product and how to run betas and how to know whether or not it's 301 00:20:26.870 --> 00:20:30.100 going to work and how to price it in finance. You need to understand how to 302 00:20:30.100 --> 00:20:33.740 read a P and L. You need to understand how to talk to a CFO, you need to 303 00:20:33.750 --> 00:20:36.380 understand how to put together a business case to go and spend $1 304 00:20:36.380 --> 00:20:40.950 million dollars on this marketing campaign. You need to understand sales. 305 00:20:41.440 --> 00:20:45.040 You need to understand a day in the life of an SDR. I'm not talking. In 306 00:20:45.040 --> 00:20:50.590 theory, I I've done that. I went on field rides with sales reps for 90 days 307 00:20:50.600 --> 00:20:54.220 in some of the companies that I worked with to understand what that was like 308 00:20:54.220 --> 00:20:57.420 for them. And so you need to understand sales, you need to understand sales 309 00:20:57.420 --> 00:21:00.340 process, you need to understand how to message your product, you need to 310 00:21:00.340 --> 00:21:03.700 understand how to run a discovery call. You should know how to put together a 311 00:21:03.700 --> 00:21:07.850 proposal and so that's the next one and then the last one would be customer 312 00:21:07.850 --> 00:21:10.530 success. You need to understand how your products implemented, you need to 313 00:21:10.530 --> 00:21:15.700 understand the time to from initial implementation to time to value. You 314 00:21:15.700 --> 00:21:18.570 need to understand what are the steps that people need to get. You need to 315 00:21:18.570 --> 00:21:21.640 understand what stakeholders are involved in order to make that 316 00:21:21.640 --> 00:21:26.840 successful. So if you want to become an executive, you need to start thinking 317 00:21:26.840 --> 00:21:30.750 at the business level, not just the marketing level. That's good. I love 318 00:21:30.750 --> 00:21:33.640 the advice about starting your own e commerce. That's something that a lot 319 00:21:33.640 --> 00:21:36.470 of people would never think of because you are playing with monopoly money 320 00:21:36.470 --> 00:21:39.320 like you mentioned and whenever it's your own money it starts to get really 321 00:21:39.320 --> 00:21:44.220 real. Yeah. And again, I don't talk. In theory, I built to e commerce companies 322 00:21:44.220 --> 00:21:48.450 when I was 23 again when I was 25 out of my bedroom, grew them to six figures 323 00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:54.340 And I have spent $1,000 on Amazon search ads and gotten no sales. And 324 00:21:54.350 --> 00:21:58.020 when you do that, you learn very quickly. And now I when my customers 325 00:21:58.020 --> 00:22:01.900 hand me $200,000 a month to spend on digital ads. I don't make those 326 00:22:01.900 --> 00:22:05.760 mistakes anymore. And it teaches you how to run a business. Like it's not 327 00:22:05.760 --> 00:22:09.050 just marketing, it teaches you how to build a P. M. L. How to understand cash 328 00:22:09.050 --> 00:22:14.020 flow, how to buy inventory, how to create a brand, how to get a logo 329 00:22:14.020 --> 00:22:17.630 designed how to figure out how to get a freelance photographer. Like there's a 330 00:22:17.630 --> 00:22:23.050 million things that you learn through doing that that are super valuable if 331 00:22:23.050 --> 00:22:26.610 you want to either grow in your career as someone that just works at a company 332 00:22:26.610 --> 00:22:30.210 or if you want to start your own business like that, it's the number one 333 00:22:30.210 --> 00:22:35.020 recommendation. That's great chris this has been so insightful and I genuinely 334 00:22:35.020 --> 00:22:38.460 appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. If there's anyone 335 00:22:38.460 --> 00:22:41.900 listening who is interested in learning from you, where can people find you 336 00:22:41.900 --> 00:22:46.330 online? So you can find me on linkedin chris walker, a post content and 337 00:22:46.330 --> 00:22:50.730 they're almost every day. And then I'll drop a little plug here for our podcast, 338 00:22:50.730 --> 00:22:54.210 the State of the Management podcast, getting tons of amazing feedback from 339 00:22:54.210 --> 00:23:00.300 people. We had our one year anniversary of our live Zoom show last two days ago 340 00:23:00.310 --> 00:23:03.910 and people shared success stories on there. Three people from different 341 00:23:03.910 --> 00:23:07.560 parts of different walks of life, shared stories about how they one of 342 00:23:07.560 --> 00:23:11.070 them almost going to cry where they, you know, Covid happened, they got 343 00:23:11.070 --> 00:23:14.130 their salary cut, they couldn't couldn't provide for their family, they 344 00:23:14.140 --> 00:23:17.030 took this information, they worked on it, they got a better job, they got 345 00:23:17.090 --> 00:23:21.210 100% salary increase and now they're doing great things and are super happy. 346 00:23:21.210 --> 00:23:25.070 And so there's tons of anyone that's listening to this, whether if you're a 347 00:23:25.080 --> 00:23:28.850 young marketer in your career or you feel stuck in your career or your CMO, 348 00:23:28.850 --> 00:23:33.560 there's there are opportunities everywhere. If you look for the right 349 00:23:33.560 --> 00:23:36.650 information and then take action on it. What I find is that a lot of people 350 00:23:36.650 --> 00:23:40.420 look for information consume it, it makes them feel good and then they take 351 00:23:40.420 --> 00:23:44.380 no action. And so I just want to celebrate the people that share those 352 00:23:44.380 --> 00:23:47.060 stories and a lot of other people that listen to the information and do take 353 00:23:47.060 --> 00:23:50.080 action and and have a lot of success and learn things and grow in their 354 00:23:50.080 --> 00:23:53.950 career. Some fantastic well, chris, thanks again for joining me here on GDP 355 00:23:53.950 --> 00:23:55.380 Growth. Thanks Leslie 356 00:23:56.940 --> 00:24:00.870 is the decision maker for your product or service at BBB Marketer. Are you 357 00:24:00.870 --> 00:24:05.050 looking to reach those buyers through the medium of podcasting? Consider 358 00:24:05.050 --> 00:24:10.300 becoming a co host of GDP Growth. This show is consistently ranked as a top 359 00:24:10.300 --> 00:24:14.450 100 podcast in the marketing category of apple podcasts, And the show gets 360 00:24:14.450 --> 00:24:20.010 more than 130 1000 downloads each month. We've already done the work of building 361 00:24:20.010 --> 00:24:24.040 the audience so you can focus on delivering incredible content to our 362 00:24:24.040 --> 00:24:28.460 listeners. If you're interested, email Logan at Sweet Fish Media dot com.