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4 Skills That Help You Stand Out & Level Up in Marketing
399 Plays1 year ago
We all want to be one of the rockstars in our marketing org. Someone who operates with confidence, and knows the next right step. The person who knows how best to work with everyone, who everyone wants to work with.
In this episode, Jess and Susan share the 4 skills they feel:
1) make you stand out from the rest of the marketing team, and
2) signal that you're ready to level up in your role — no matter where you sit in marketing.
That's Marketing, Baby is sponsored by the incredible people at ércule (ercule.co) and Teal (tealhq.com).
Can't get enough? Subscribe to Rants & Raves, the official That's Marketing, Baby newsletter: https://bit.ly/rants-and-raves-sign-up
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Transcript
Introduction to Co-hosts and Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to That's Marketing, Baby, the weekly show where two marketing besties talk all things marketing in the world of B2B and B2C. I'm your co-host, Susan Wenegrad, and I've spent over 20 years in marketing focusing on paid media and email marketing. And I'm Jess Cook, copywriter and creative director turned content marketer. Every week, we'll tackle a topic that's on our minds and hopefully yours too. Ready? Let's go.
Tools for Organic Growth by Air Cule
00:00:32
Speaker
Before we get started, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor, Air Cule. Air Cule is an agency focused solely on organic growth for B2B SaaS brands. I've worked with them before and I can tell you I've never felt so confident and in control of my content strategy, SEO, and analytics.
00:00:48
Speaker
They also have this great free tool, Automo, that translates Google Analytics into actual, usable data. Which pages are killing it, which ones are declining, and what you can do about it. Check them out and give Automo a whirl at ercule.co. And now, on with the show.
00:01:10
Speaker
Hi. Hello, listener. Hello, Susan. Hey, co-host. How are you? Great. How are you? Good. And welcome to everybody that is listening to this episode of That's Marketing, Baby. We are knee deep into fall and Q4 and all kinds of craziness. It is here, man. It is here.
00:01:31
Speaker
summer went. I have no idea. But we were talking earlier about kind of how heading into new years, a lot of people start thinking about their career and kind of regrouping after Q4.
Skills for Marketing Career Advancement
00:01:41
Speaker
And so we were thinking a good topic for today would be, drumroll, Jess, take it away. It would be the skills you have to nail down
00:01:51
Speaker
to level up in marketing. Exactly. Yeah. So what are the key things that A, help you move up, but I think B, also just make you stick out as a marketer? Yeah. What are the things that I don't see the vast majority of marketers do? That when I encounter it, I'm like, they're awesome. I love working with them. Yes. Totally. So you narrowed it down to four things that we feel are kind of those real
00:02:17
Speaker
game changers that just put you ahead of the pack. So Jess, would you like to take the first one? I would love to. Yeah. And I think to like, we get this question a lot too. Hey, I really want to move up and I'm on the demand gen side and I really want to like move up to the next level. Like what do I need to be doing?
00:02:35
Speaker
or I am a senior content marketer and I really want my next move to be head of content. Like how do I get there? And I think like these four are kind of all encompassing of just like all marketers, right? Like there is, and it's probably not all inclusive, but I think like this list is like in our experience, what we have felt has gotten us ahead and has yeah, differentiated us
Linking Unrelated Ideas in Marketing
00:02:58
Speaker
a bit. So the first one I like to call connecting the dots.
00:03:03
Speaker
And really what that means is like you are able to, whether it's in like content and stories or with personas and media and how you're targeting people, see things that are not clearly connected
00:03:19
Speaker
and understand how they could possibly go together, make a story stronger, make a campaign stronger. I think a really great example of this that I'm thinking of right now from our time at Marpipe Susan was you came to me one day and you were like, hey, listen, I think we could get more people to sign up for the newsletter if we packaged it a little bit differently.
00:03:39
Speaker
So if instead of like a newsletter, it became a thing where it's like, yes, you get the newsletter, but you're also going to get like exclusive content from us and like a once a month webinar. And so we packaged it much more than just like an email. And we did, we saw a really nice uptick in signups because people were like, Oh, for free, I'm just, I'm going to get more from these people who already create stuff I really like. And you know what side note to that?
00:04:06
Speaker
But I think the reason I felt comfortable doing that was because I learned so much about repurposing content from you. Because it was easy to say we could take this topic and do it a bunch of different ways for people. Whereas I think a few years ago, I would have been like, oh my gosh, it's four times the work. But it didn't feel that way. You guys were working with you. I'm like, it wouldn't be four times the work. It would be maybe 20% more work if we packaged it up a few different ways. I love that. It was just kind of funny how that works. You know what I mean? But I was like, you're giving me credit. But I'm like, I don't think I would have
00:04:36
Speaker
We just make each other better. We do. We totally do. But I think that came out of this idea that we already knew we had this stuff. It didn't all connect, but we felt like if we just positioned it in a way that felt like a really nice give to people, we felt like we could get more eyeballs, more signups, and then eventually more demos because that was a really big source of demos for us.
00:04:58
Speaker
That feels really, really important on the content side in my head. And maybe you have a really specific media example, Susan. But sometimes you'll hear somebody in a meeting mention something. And a week earlier, you heard a customer say something in the same vein or talk about the same problem.
00:05:17
Speaker
And you're like, Oh, there's something here. Like I'm going to dig into that a little bit further. So now I'm going to go out. I'm going to do some like some third party research. I'm going to see what the publications are saying about this. I'm going to lean into my SMEs and be like, Hey, I'm kind of hearing these rumblings about this. What do you think? Oh yeah, that's, I've heard a couple people talk about that lately. Right. And so when you can kind of spot those
00:05:37
Speaker
I don't even know what I would call them, but just little inklings that you can tell they go together. Once you're able to get enough information, that is a huge skill. And that makes you stand out because you are now connecting with the people who are going to help you build that story. And they're like, oh yeah, you're right. Yes, there is a story there. And so they're seeing you as someone who can do that. And that makes a big difference.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's also for people that are specialists in one area, but they want to move up more into strategy and upper management. Those are the skills that really good leaders and visionaries have. They're very good at being able to pull back and see the larger landscape and make those connections. And it takes practice. It's not something that you're usually innately know how to do. It's from doing a lot of different jobs over a lot of different years.
00:06:23
Speaker
or with different business types, you start to see the similarities and how that stuff works. Because to your point, you'll find that no matter what businesses you're in, you will have those connections that will come up and you'll be like, Oh yeah. I mean, there are examples from when I was in retail all the way to when I've been in B2B SaaS that they feel very similar. You know, it's like, they're not ragingly different. And you realize that the longer you're in the workforce,
00:06:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think that the people that are able to draw the really good connections, that was always what I learned most from bosses I had and executives in C-suite that were really good at what they did. They were just able to do that. It was like a muscle that they had honed, right? They just immediately, they didn't even have to think about it. They're like, totally. Well, if we do that, then we'll do that. But I could tell they'd learned it at some point.
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That was what set them apart. Like most of the people that were the practitioners that never really moved up, they were very deep in that one thing, which is totally fine, because we need those people. But the ones that were like, but I want to move up and do larger scale strategy, that was the skill they usually had to develop.
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah, I totally echo that we're like, I learned it from a boss I had who was just fantastic at this. Hey, okay. And then she would always start with like how she came up with an idea of like the genesis of the insight, right? So she'd be like, I was in this meeting and I heard this SME mentioned this one thing. And then on Slack, I saw somebody from the product team mentioned this other thing. It's like they go together. And so I'm going to like kind of probe there a bit, right? And I was like,
00:07:43
Speaker
Oh yeah, that's how it's done. It made so much sense once you do that. You see somebody do it. So yeah, look for those opportunities. Look for those little kind of seemingly disparate things that when pulled together really start to create something great.
00:07:58
Speaker
Yeah. That's number one. That was number
Aligning Marketing with Sales Strategies
00:08:01
Speaker
one. So mine for number two is understanding what the actual sales pitch is for the thing that you're marketing. And it sounds like it would be simple because you're like, well, I'm making all these marketing materials, but there is
00:08:16
Speaker
something to be said for sitting in sales pitches and just watching what happens. And this was something that I really learned back in my days when I was in programmatic. I worked with, there were a few salespeople, but there was one salesperson in particular that was just amazing. I mean, there was nothing about it that felt salesy. He barely spoke. He always got the clients to, or potential clients to speak. And like they talked themselves into it by the end and he barely said anything. It was amazing to watch. But I learned a lot about
00:08:45
Speaker
How they sold it to themselves i guess is the best way to put it right it was like he wasn't there going through each selling point or doing anything like that he asked the right questions and the answers were very telling and the more.
00:08:59
Speaker
sales pitches I sat in on the more similarities I started to see. And a lot of times they were things that we wouldn't necessarily think to talk about in marketing because we're looking at it from an outsider's perspective, right? Whereas with them, this is their business. They're selling whatever they're selling every day and they have all these other marketing challenges, fulfillment challenges, margin challenges, all of these things that
00:09:19
Speaker
we don't really think about from our perspective just because as marketers, we're like, what do we think is the best way to position this and sell it? But you learn a lot by hearing it from the actual humans. And they tend to divulge a lot more in sales pitches, especially if you're with a good salesperson that gets them talking. You will learn far more than trying to guess what to put in your content or what ad to run or what did the metrics say. You will learn so much more being with a skilled salesperson who can just draw that stuff out of someone in a 30 minute call.
00:09:47
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think that there are so many companies where, and it seems to be more so at the larger ones, like at the startups, I feel like there's a lot more communication between marketing and sales. Yeah. It really starts to break down, especially if it's, if it's a large sales center, right? Like there's, you know, a hundred salespeople, you're not going to be able to listen to all of them. And I don't feel like it's really encouraged. Like it doesn't usually occur to the C-suite to have those two groups kind of watch what the other one does. And it creates a lot of friction. Like there's just a lot of,
00:10:16
Speaker
That's where I see a lot of the battles about, well, you know, marketing doesn't send us good leads and marketing's like, sales doesn't close anything. I send them, but there's just like this brick wall between the two of like, but why is that? Like no matter, you know, it could be a little bit of both who knows, but if you're not meeting in the middle to figure out where that disconnect is, you'll never find it. You'll never find it. And it's, I think even like there were times when you and I worked together, we would listen to sales pitches and we're like, Oh, like they seemed confused about,
00:10:44
Speaker
what this actually did. And so we realized from marketing perspective, like the sales person's getting caught holding the bag with someone that scheduled a demo, but they don't understand, they thought they understood what the product was, but it's not. And so we knew like, okay, there's something in our messaging or in the creative or something that's either communicating this or it's not clear enough. So let us know, like there's something we have to do differently, but we never would have noticed that all we were saw was like, Oh, Hey, we got demos getting
00:11:09
Speaker
Yay! Everyone celebrate and then nothing would come of it because we didn't understand where they were getting lost and they were never qualified to begin with, but we wouldn't have known that. Yeah. I think part of it too is you have to know what does someone need to know before they get in the room with your sales team.
00:11:25
Speaker
Yeah, what do they need to know about what the product does about who is the best fit for this product about how long it might take to actually onboard you like all of the things that they will need to know to be like, yes, this is good. So they don't get in the room and they're like, Oh, this isn't what I thought it was or
00:11:45
Speaker
sales has to spend half of the time explaining those things when they could be actually in the product, showing them, showing the value, showing the differentiation. So I always like to think of it as just like you are setting sales up for success. And in order to do that, you have to know what the pitch is so you can prep your prospect for the pitch.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yep. Totally agree. That's the other reason why whenever places are resistant to saying anything about price, I'm like, you have to manage expectations somehow. Yeah. And sometimes it's enterprise level stuff. It's like it is a custom quote, but then it's like, okay, then give your criteria for what makes a good fit, right? Like for enterprise level companies or companies that do X amount per month, like it doesn't have to be about your price, but do some kind of qualifiers so that if it's like an SMB that searches for something,
00:12:31
Speaker
but you're a $10,000 a month enterprise software product, they somehow get from the language you're using that you're not for them. It's not a good fit. I have had that exact problem happen as a buyer. I won't say who it is, but went to the website thinking I'd heard about these guys. I'm like, oh, this could be really interesting. Looking at all their content and what does the product do and schedule a demo. And got an email from an SDR that was like, just so you know, this is enterprise software.
00:13:01
Speaker
and I was not at an enterprise company. And it's like, well, in my session minutes on your website, how would I know that? So it was just like a, man, that's such a, what a waste of my time. And now it's kind of soured that for me a little bit. So yeah, very important.
Budgeting and Metrics in Marketing
00:13:17
Speaker
They're not hanging out with their salespeople enough, whoever they are. They are not. You hear that whoever you are, she's not going to name names because she's too nice, but your website sucks for managing expectations. Put the word enterprise somewhere if you are enterprise.
00:13:30
Speaker
Okay, so that was number two. Number two, number three. Okay, something that I think really was enlightening for me was when I really started to understand budgeting and metrics. So this is number three, budgeting and metrics. So I'll start with budgeting. There was a really long time where I was so afraid of owning budget. I was terrified.
00:13:51
Speaker
I was like, oh my God, they're making me responsible. I know, I know. But I was a content person who literally has never done this. I was like, oh my gosh, they're gonna entrust me with all this money. And like, I don't even, like, what do I spend it on? Like, what do I even spend it on? I don't even know what to do with it. Like, it was so stressful to me. And, you know, every quarter you would have to like report on like, you know, middle of the quarter, you're like, we're fun. My boss is like, what are you doing? And I was like, um, I am, I'm only spending $1,000.
00:14:22
Speaker
And I think that was the most terrifying thing was like, I had to use it or I would lose it, but I did not know what to do with it. And I will never forget this. This sticks with me to this day. My manager said, do not think of your budget as like money you have to spend. Think of your budget as money that is going to allow you to hit your goals
00:14:47
Speaker
and get the things done that need to get done to hit your goals. Once she framed it for me like that, I was like, oh, I know exactly what to spend it on. I would like to hire someone to write these four blog posts, so I don't have to, that are going to help us hit that number of blog posts we said we were going to do.
00:15:04
Speaker
I would really like to hire someone to write this landing page copy. I can create a brief, but like I would like someone to go and do that. It was a lot of like, I'll do the strategy, but then I can pay someone to do the execution so that I can keep moving and I can scale. Yeah. And that was super helpful to me to understand this isn't just hurry, like this money is burning a hole in your pocket, get rid of it. It was use it as a tool to accomplish the things you need to accomplish this quarter. Yeah, with less stress.
00:15:29
Speaker
with way less stress. And so yeah, I think that's, that's a big one. If you can look at budget as like, it is a little scary at first, right? Like to feel like you are responsible for that. But if you can look at it as, no, this is a tool just like any piece of software is a tool to like help me hit my goals this quarter.
00:15:46
Speaker
Yep. That was a big one for me. How about budget? Before I move on to metrics, budgeting on the media side, I know is like, that's a whole other world. Talk to me about that a little bit and what that looks like in order to get the understanding where you feel confident enough to like, hey, I think I'm ready for the next level.
00:16:02
Speaker
I think for me and from what I see with a lot of junior media managers that I work with is feeling comfortable managing expectations that what you say may change. A lot of times companies are like, here's the budget. How are we going to allocate it on these platforms? And it can be scary when you're younger because you're like, well, I don't know. If we start spending on Facebook and it's not doing well, what if we have to move it to Google?
00:16:29
Speaker
having the comfort level of saying, I don't know, is tough for younger buyers. They feel like they're being asked to definitively say, this is how this should be spent. And the reality is, especially right now, now more than ever, these platforms are way less predictable than they used to be. So you need to really feel comfortable saying, look, here is my intended spend and forecast for the next however many months they're asking for.
00:16:55
Speaker
But you have to be comfortable saying, it's very likely this will change. Because they always want to forecast. And especially, gosh, when companies ask for a forecast of like, we want to invest this, what's our return going to be? Sometimes you have no idea because it's a new product, right?
00:17:10
Speaker
So I'm very big on like you avoid a lot of issues if you manage expectations up front, manage them in writing. And so when I will send a forecast, I'll say, look, this is what I think we should start out with. This is probably going to change as we get data because we can make better decisions once we see what's happening.
00:17:28
Speaker
I just feel like with younger media buyers, they feel like it makes them look less in control when they say that. You know what I mean? Which I get. It's because you're insecure and you don't know and you have bosses asking you like, hey, we need to have this forecast. It feels like it's going to be this definitive end all, be all answer to what this thing is. You want to look competent. You want to be like, yeah, you hired me and you made the right choice. That's the thing.
00:17:51
Speaker
And I don't have a lot of successes yet to back up that reassurance. So it's like, I got to look like I know what I'm doing all the time. Exactly. So it's less intimidation about having the money. It's more like they feel like they have to be able to definitively say, this is how it's going to be spent. And that's how it's going to go for six months. And the reality of it is that as you launch, you're going to learn a lot.
00:18:12
Speaker
where you can spend that money better. So what I always tell them is I'm just like, tell them like this is how I intend to start, but we're going to get data that's going to make us a lot smarter about how we should actually do this as we go. So do not take this as gospel. Do not take this as like, this is what it's going to look like in six months. Like I, a lot of times it's just a box checking thing that companies do. And I don't, I think that's also lost in translation. Like they feel like, Oh my God, I'm locked into this plan. And a lot of times it's like they're making the plan to appease an executive who just wants to have some idea of what's happening, right? Which I get, but
00:18:42
Speaker
they don't understand the nuances of why this stuff might change. And quite frankly, they're probably not even going to remember what the original plan was at that point. Yeah. So I feel like there's a lot, a lot of hesitancy with that. And especially I see that happening more and more lately because Google is so much less predictable than it used to be because of, well, you know, I could do a whole episode on the changes that are happening, but that's kind of the other pieces that I think it makes buyers even more insecure. And I'm like, don't,
00:19:07
Speaker
hide the fact that things are unpredictable. You have to tell them, and it's not you blaming Google. It's the reality. I've been in Google ads since 2007, and I'm still having to adapt and figure out ways to make things work in campaigns. It's just not as cut and dry as it used to be. So that makes the whole budgeting thing even scarier for people. That's usually what I encounter more so.
Teal: Career Tool for Marketers
00:19:31
Speaker
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00:19:53
Speaker
It even uses AI to rephrase your experience and achievements, so they really pop. Even better, it's free to get started at tealhq.com. All right, back to the show. Yeah, and it takes a while to understand that nuance, right? Yes. Like, it is really unpredictable. Yeah. So, you know, I think when you are first starting out, like. You don't want to feel young. You don't want to look young. Yeah. When you're first starting out, I think it's like, just when in doubt, like, ask.
00:20:22
Speaker
Hey, this is what I think I want to do here. Does that feel right to you? Yeah. And it's okay if you're wrong. It's going to be a lot better that you asked and you were wrong than if you just went off and did it and you were wrong. Yeah, 100%. Especially good bosses know you're self-aware enough.
00:20:40
Speaker
to say this is what I'm thinking, but like, or I mean, just even say like, I'm nervous because I don't want to feel like we're held to this plan. Just let them know that. I mean, a lot of their job is going to be the one to communicate up like this is probably not going to be finite. Yeah, this will probably change. Yeah. So it's actually good if you let
00:20:56
Speaker
your boss in on that thinking pattern so that their expectations are managed and then they can manage it from above, right? Yes. Beautiful. Metrics. I'll go quick through this because we spent a lot of time on budgeting, but I think metrics, especially on the content side, are a little gray. They're a little tough because attribution is really hard, but I think just the thing that helped me was to really understand the business goals.
00:21:22
Speaker
And I figured that out just through asking, well, what are we trying to do? What is our goal for this year, this quarter? And then aligned with that, OK, if the goal is demos booked or the goal is pipeline, there are certain metrics that kind of early indicator of that's going well or a signal that that's going well.
00:21:41
Speaker
And you won't know those right away either. So like those are the kinds of things you have to be like, okay, well, what would I need? Like, what should I measure in order to really like know that that's happening, right? That is very okay to ask early on. And then what you'll find is like, you'll start to really like, again, it will just become muscle memory. Like you will know these KPIs ladder back to this kind of a goal. And you can do that with any kind of goal. You will really, really figure that out.
00:22:05
Speaker
you'll get to a point like me where you're just making up metrics. You're just like, Hey, I came up with this thing called the repurposing multiplier because I wanted to show ROI on repurposing. Like you'll get to a point where it's like this feels, you know, because attribution is so hard, sometimes you have to kind of dig things up that feel like a little different or strange or like, no one's really talked about this before, but it's really important to our business that we are, you know, repurposing is a big cost saver.
00:22:32
Speaker
and we're like, very, very conservative with our with our funding. So like, you know, I mean, it's kind of things like that, where it's like, I know we're trying to be conservative with our funding. And so that is a big metric for us. But that took time for me to understand that, like, those two things go together, business goals, metrics, and like, which kind of tie which metrics tie to which goals.
00:22:51
Speaker
So this actually leads seamlessly into our fourth point. Beautiful. Yes, it does. And then I'm going to go slide right into the fourth because this is something that I see media buyers really, really struggle with. And it's two things. So from a metrics perspective, see, we kind of have the opposite problem in the media world.
Focusing on Leadership Metrics
00:23:12
Speaker
There are metrics for
00:23:13
Speaker
friggin' everything. I mean, there are like, I mean, in Google, it's like, you can see what percentage of the click share you've gotten, which percentage of the impression share, I mean, just so many numbers, like all the numbers, right? So I think that there's some overwhelm with that stuff. I see a lot of media buyers get very into the weeds on things. And it's important to be detail oriented as a media buyer, but this also goes back to like understanding the business goals.
00:23:41
Speaker
I see so many media buyers get really hung up on metrics or what Google did or didn't match a certain way. And I always kind of have to remind them like, okay, so if you spent time on that fixing it, how much more is that going to improve the results that tie back to the business goals? And a lot of times it's so marginal, but they don't think about it that way because
00:24:03
Speaker
They're in the platform all day and they're trying to get the platform to do what they want. And it's easy to get obsessed with that. I've been guilty where I'm like, why am I doing this? This is not going to have any demonstrative effect. I have to let this go. I think that because there are so many metrics, it's easy for media buyers to start hyperfixating on what's in the platform and what they want it to be.
00:24:24
Speaker
but they don't really necessarily stop and think, does this actually make enough of a difference to the return on spend or to our CPA or whatever the goal is that I should actually spend time doing this. So they can be very poor time managers when it comes to that. And this leads right into number four, which is the other thing that I find a lot of buyers struggle with, which is understanding what leadership cares about. Yeah.
00:24:44
Speaker
This is where I feel like as a manager, director, VP, this is where I feel like I have to have a really heavy screen, right? It's like I understand everything that a media person will throw at me, but there is definitely a humongous disconnect between the level of detail that media buyers will go into, which I understand why they do, especially right now, because things are unpredictable. They want to try and explain like this is why the results are like that.
00:25:12
Speaker
You know, it is important that they understand why they're doing that. The thing is it gets so technical and because there are so many metrics, it starts getting very difficult for anyone in a leadership position that doesn't do this full time a to follow and be to not just wind up more confused.
00:25:29
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I've worked with teams where they're like, we tried to explain this, you know, to the CMO and now they're trying to micromanage everything we do. And I'm like, yes, cause they don't understand. Like there is such a thing as giving too much information and it's not that you're trying to hide anything. It's just that you're going to create more questions than you answer if you're not careful.
00:25:46
Speaker
So this is one of the things where I've seen it the reverse too, where like leadership just gets very curious about things that don't tie back to the business goals. Like I've seen a lot of them get hung up on like quality score. Does it matter? Yeah. But I mean, this is, that's not a metric to optimize to, right? So this is also where
00:26:04
Speaker
gently reminding them, look, this is the goal of your media. So these are the things we have to look at. We'll worry about the little things that add up to getting those numbers. But bottom line, here are the things. And I've always said, I will answer any question. I am an open book, but I try very hard to
00:26:21
Speaker
just present the things that are going to matter to them most. And then if they want to dig deeper on anything, we can do that. But I always tell people, you are better off. Start at the 20,000 foot view and then let them ask the questions of what they want to know. Because then it's a guided discussion. Otherwise you have just barfed up like 50 slides of data and they're just like, so are we doing well or are we not? And agencies are very guilty of that too.
00:26:46
Speaker
had place to send me their agency decks and I'm like, well, no wonder they want to leave. They have no idea if this is even doing well. And sadly, some of the times the agencies are doing great, but it's like none of that comes forth because they give them so much information. Yeah. That they're just like, there's no bottom line. I don't know what's happening. So being understanding about what leadership cares about, even if you're not the person that has to deliver it to them. Yes. I was just going to say this.
00:27:08
Speaker
Yeah. It's like you got to make sure that whatever you roll up and whatever you're reporting on, highlight those numbers. Like even if you're required to fill out some ridiculously large spreadsheet, just highlight the numbers so that it's easy for people to find what it is they're going to be looking forward to report out on. Totally. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I was just going to say that. So like, yeah, if you're not the person in the room with leadership, that's okay. Like someday you'll get there, but your job is to make your boss look really good when they go in there to deliver that news.
00:27:35
Speaker
And sometimes it just comes down to asking, what do they care about? Even in my smaller company right now, the CRO comes directly to me and is like, I need these numbers pulled. The way she frames it is like, I need numbers pulled about X. And I'm like, great. I can do that for you. What do you care about?
00:27:54
Speaker
I don't want to give her everything because one, it's a waste of my time, two, it's a waste of her time. And she doesn't need it. She needs the three things for the board meeting or the investor meeting or whatever it is. They're working with product to create this new thing and she just needs to show them proof that this feature is really needed. And they're not always great about telling you what those things are. They move fast. They only have so much time. And so sometimes you just have to be like,
00:28:20
Speaker
great, what do you need? Exactly. And sometimes you just have to know that. For the most part, CEOs care about revenue. That C level, they care about revenues. Show what it is that will get them feeling very comfortable with what you're doing in a way that speaks to what motivates them. I've had a
00:28:42
Speaker
founder before who was like very into like the look of the brand, right? And so like I knew that and so there were things that I knew wouldn't pass muster and things that I knew he like loved in terms of design and I was like once I figured that out then I could share with him like okay, this is where we're at, right? I knew once something was to a point that I could share with him. So it's not always metrics. It's you know, it can be a number of things, but I think you have to understand what
00:29:10
Speaker
your boss and their boss care about. And then when it's your time to kind of deliver information to those groups of folks, like make sure you're very honed in on what that is and deliver the information that ladders to that. I think the other thing that I don't see enough people do that really helps to ground the discussion is make sure when you're reporting out on stuff, include the historic metrics because, and this I encounter in media all of the
00:29:39
Speaker
Like revenue will be down, demo requests will be down, and they'll panic, right? So they'll reach out and they'll be like, what if we spent more on search? What if we did this? What if we did that? And like on my end, search might be outperforming year over year. So you need to help them understand because they're not going to look at every little single piece of marketing that is rolling up into the results they're getting. They go to the thing that they think is going to work the fastest. And lucky me, that's usually media.
00:30:06
Speaker
So as you've, you've witnessed firsthand several times now, but helping to kind of couch, like if results went down and you're like, look, last year, this is where we were. Here's where we are now. Help them understand why that's the case, right? Like I had an econ client, they weren't on Amazon for the longest time and they finally were. And so year over year, we noticed that their brand ROAS was getting lower and lower.
00:30:31
Speaker
So i pulled in an auction insights report and did it by quarter and all of a sudden because they started selling on amazon amazon started buying media against their name they never told them not to so all of a sudden it was taking like fifteen to twenty percent of the impression share was with you look the past quarters they were even on the list cuz they weren't spending anything against their brand name.
00:30:49
Speaker
So there's things like that that like they seem like, well, what did you change with the media? I'm like, I changed nothing. Good sir. I changed nothing. Your buyer's dead. Like you're in a new channel that spends money on advertising and they spend a lot of it. Right. And I think the other piece too is like they really didn't.
00:31:05
Speaker
think through what that would mean. You know, it's like they, they're like, Oh, another distribution channel, the margins lower, but whatever. And I was like, it's not just that the margin winds up being lower for you. It's like the other thing you have to remember is they will bid and they don't care if they lose money on that keyword because they know that they're like the person's going to come by the thing you sell and they're going to buy their cat litter and they're going to buy a lawn bags and they're going to eat. It's like they have all these other higher margin items. Yeah.
00:31:32
Speaker
They know what their average value is. They know what's on sale. They are a machine when it comes to understanding how to extract value from the people that come to their site. They don't care if they break even on your brand keyword. They don't care that it costs more. They're used to competitors that are like, oh, they're not going to bother because it's going to cost them so much because they're not relevant.
00:31:54
Speaker
Amazon doesn't care. I mean, they don't care. They'll spend 20 bucks for the clicks and they were not used to that. So understanding like being able to give that historical context, it's a much larger problem than just our brand ROAS is going down. That's all they see, but it's like, let's take pull this out further and understand what's changed in the time period that you're trying to compare, right?
00:32:15
Speaker
You need a benchmark. Yeah. You got to know if it's, is that good? Is that bad?
Recap of Key Marketing Skills
00:32:20
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. And I just find there's a huge lack of context often in reporting. It's kind of like, here's this month's results. Here were last month's. And then that's it. And I'm like, that's not enough for someone that's not in this every day to understand. Should we be concerned that it went down? Is this normal? Does it do it every year in September? Like the units, they don't, they don't know. So that should, that context is hugely important. Yeah.
00:32:39
Speaker
Real quick acronym corner, ROAS. ROAS stands for return on ad spend. I didn't know that for a very long time. No, it's okay. We get going. We're like, we know this and we like throw it out, but I didn't know that for a long time. Yeah. It's an e-comm term more so than what you get. And some B2B you do, but more often than not it's e-comm. Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:58
Speaker
acronym corner that's gonna be a new thing i'm bringing it we didn't speak which we didn't have any analogies this time yeah hey but we had an acronym corner we did okay check a box okay cool we have to do one of at least one every episode yeah there's an analogy anything you wanted to add for the what leadership cares about on the content piece or do you feel like we kind of come by i think i think human there's a small human mind
00:33:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think everything you said is pretty universal in terms of like, you have to provide the context, you have to understand the metrics that they're most concerned with, and you have to give them some sort of like, some comparison point. And I think all of that is the same. It's the same for content.
00:33:37
Speaker
We're leaving it in. We're so leaving that in. We're leaving it in. Well, that was it for today. We kind of gave you guys how to level up as you head into the new year and things to think about when you're doing your annual reviews and things to focus on getting better about. Should I recap? Yeah. Should I recap real quick? Yeah. Yeah, let's recap. Number one, connecting the dots. Finding disparate things that when together are more powerful. Understanding the sales pitch, knowing
00:34:05
Speaker
what's going to happen when a prospect gets in the room with sales. So you know what your job is, what you need to tell them, educate them on, give them information about before they get there. Budgeting and metrics, understanding how to spend your money, that it's not as scary as it sounds, understanding how to look at all of that data and understand what it's telling you and be able to report on it. And then understanding what leadership cares about, being able to take all of that information that we just talked about and take kind of the most important nuggets or the nuggets that they
00:34:35
Speaker
really, really rely on to do their jobs and get that to them. You forgot point five, your gutters are clean and your daughter's cute. Also the other two things we learned today.
00:34:48
Speaker
My sprinklers are now empty. And my daughter's adorable. Well, thank you everybody for tuning in for this week. We will see you next week. And that's Marketing Baby. That's Marketing Baby. Bye-bye.
Podcast Subscription and Newsletter Promotion
00:35:01
Speaker
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00:35:13
Speaker
Ranson Raves is the official newsletter of That's Marketing Baby. Every week, Susan and I share one thing we love and loathe in the world of marketing. Get on the list at That'sMarketingBaby.com. Okay, bye!