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Embracing Demand Gen Amid Challenging Economic Times
98 Plays2 years ago
As B2B SaaS sales become more challenging, demand gen can be an important way for companies to attract, educate, encourage, and nurture prospects.
In this episode of Marketing Spark, Chris Roche talks about the benefits of demand gen and how companies can get started or ramp up their efforts.
We also talk about how B2B SaaS brands can leverage LinkedIn and experiment with TikTok.
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Transcript
Introduction to DemandGen vs Outbound Marketing
00:00:07
Speaker
In the marketing world, DemandGen and Outbound Marketing are yin and yang. They attract evangelists, specialists, advocates, and practitioners who fervently wave the flag for one side or the other. At a high level, DemandGen is about leads coming to you after discovering and engaging with your marketing and sales content and campaigns.
00:00:28
Speaker
And outbound is when sales try to spark conversation with leads. It's often about pushing the message to as many people as possible and hoping that some of it resonates.
Impact of Economic Slowdown on Marketing Strategies
00:00:39
Speaker
So what's the better approach and how could they be impacted by slower economic growth? To answer these questions, I'm excited to be talking with Christopher Roche. He's the CEO of Catalyst Consulting, a revenue and pipeline growth-focused marketing agency. Welcome to MarketingSpark.
00:00:56
Speaker
Hey, thank you for having me. Looking forward to diving into this with you. Okay, so first question, how did I do with my definition of demand gen and outbound marketing? On a scale of one to 10, how would you grade me? No, that was a solid definition on it. It's really, I think the key difference to understand is that outbound is really sales and demand gen falls into marketing and what a lot of B2B companies are doing right now with the lead gen approach is really a subsection of sales. So you have a lot of marketers that in my opinion are really
00:01:26
Speaker
more concentrated on kind of sales activities on creating these lead creating opportunities that then enter that MQL hamster wheel and ultimately pass on to that sales team. So there is a very clear difference between cold outbound and demand generation. But there is also a way to leverage demand generation to be able to create a strong inbound approach, which ultimately makes your sales team's life a lot easier.
Strategic Marketing Investments During Economic Downturns
00:01:48
Speaker
Off the top, I mean, one of the 800 pound elephants in the room is the economic slowdown.
00:01:55
Speaker
and how consumer behavior has abruptly changed. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that people were spending, budgets were healthy, everybody's having a good time, growth was very strong, and now it's the complete reverse, budgets are shrinking, growth is slowing down. How do you think, or how do you see the landscape for demand gen and outbound marketing changing? Are you already seeing the impact of slower economic growth?
00:02:23
Speaker
Yeah, this current economic downturn is going to play a very interesting factor in what happens in the next 12 to 18 months with marketing, teams and marketing approaches. With my clients, we really specialize in demand generation and demand capture channels. We're seeing the benefits of this slowdown already and the fact that we've seen some CPMs drop by even 30% so far. So for us,
00:02:46
Speaker
With the demand generation strategy we're not looking at what deals it's going to result in in one month in three months time that's really where we focus on the demand capture and even just the existing pipeline and how we're moving people through when we're creating these demand generation approaches we're looking out twelve to eighteen months and what we're seeing is a lot of companies are hesitant to invest right now.
00:03:07
Speaker
So marketing is the first thing that you can reduce the budget from, which means there's less competition. So we're in a really strong position now to be able to continue to invest. And we're actually increasing budgets during this, entering this recession because of the fact that we're able to get stronger results now, knowing that into 12 to 18 months time, we're going to be able to reap the rewards of that once people are now able to buy a new software, have the permission from CEO to go and invest into new software, and that buying cycle becomes open again.
00:03:36
Speaker
It's an interesting perspective, and I think it's one that a lot of people have the tough time accepting these days is the idea that you can stand up rather than stand down when it comes to marketing. Because the gut reaction when people experience an economic slowdown is to make rash decisions to slam on the brakes. And the reality is that many entrepreneurs have never seen a recession, let alone an economic slowdown.
00:04:02
Speaker
Do you think you are being bold or are you being realistic in the fact that you've decided to push forward with marketing, which I personally think is the smarter approach. I think there's going to be companies that will have windows of opportunity that they've never seen before and others will sort of sit on the sidelines. What is your thinking in terms of your mindset when it comes to getting more aggressive with marketing?
00:04:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the knee-jerk reaction is to reduce marketing spend. And like I say, it's the easiest thing to reduce straight off the bat if you're looking at how you can be more conservative. The difference and the perception and the perspective that I have is that during COVID in 2020, in March 2020,
00:04:41
Speaker
when a lot of companies stopped investing in marketing and everybody shut down, the company I was working with then, we increased our spending marketing. We went fully virtual. We went 100% remote with that. We were investing in these social channels, and that was our most explosive year for growth, and we hit revenues that we weren't expected to hit for two, three years out.
00:04:58
Speaker
because of the fact that we invest in the right time. And this for me is a very similar opportunity if you can invest in marketing in the right way. The interesting thing is a lot of companies right now invest in more B2B companies investing more in this lead gen approach, which we talked about a little bit earlier kind of touching on the fact that they're just trying to create opportunities to pass on to the sales team.
The Importance of Educating the Market
00:05:17
Speaker
If nobody's buying right now and only ever
00:05:19
Speaker
two to 3% of your markets in this buying mode at any given point. So if people are reluctant to purchase or invest in new software and you're not able to sell as much in the next 12 month window, what you can do instead is shift that focus on creating demand so that in 12 to 18 months, when these companies now open up that buying opportunity, they already are brand aware, they're solution aware, and you've been able to hit them with educational content over the last 12 months and have those relationships already formed to ultimately increase the conversion rate then once we ideally exit out of this recession.
00:05:49
Speaker
A couple of points that I wanted to follow up on. One is that your statement that in early 2020, I experienced it personally, having lost my job as the head of marketing for a FinTech company, that marketing spending disappeared. It evaporated overnight, literally. People were spooked and the first thing to cut. Marketing is always an easy thing to get rid of. I mean, it's not seen as a lead gen tool. It's more seen as an expense by many companies.
00:06:18
Speaker
Don't you think that a lot of companies should have learned their lesson when they look back at how they behaved in early 20 and what happened subsequently when the market started to come back and they had to play catch up. Don't you think that many of these companies understand that if you back down to dramatically it's going to cost you in the long run. Did a lot of companies not learn their lessons.
00:06:41
Speaker
I think it's different from a company learning their lesson and a head of marketing at a company learning the lesson. And that's where you have larger ships. It's more difficult to turn. It's more difficult to pivot. And for a lot of these companies that have overinflated sales teams that have these enormous overhead, it's very difficult to make those changes. And what we're talking about here is switching to demand generation, which is a much more cost-effective strategy at lowering that customer acquisition cost when you're talking more
00:07:06
Speaker
B2B companies with ACVs of $10,000 plus. That's where demand generation can be very, very effective. But just because you're head of marketing understands that and wants to make that switch doesn't mean that they're always in a position to be able to first of all, relay that effectively to their CEO, to their board, to whoever it is to get that permission to do that. And then secondly, be able to justify that with historical metrics and say, hey, this is what we saw when we did this in 2020. We saw we had a downturn. Let's avoid that and invest that here. Because if they're not able to explain that effectively, they're not going
00:07:36
Speaker
and they get the buy-in from that leadership. A word that came to mind when you were talking about building Demand Gen and looking out 12 to 18 months when people are ready to buy again, more and more people are ready to buy software is patience. Is that an accurate depiction of the approach that companies should be taking? So you make the investment in Demand Gen, you're out there driving brand awareness, demonstrating the value of your product,
00:08:03
Speaker
whether it's software or hardware and then when the market comes back or more buyers write themselves you'll be well positioned to take advantage of that is patience the right word. Marketing is a long term game you have to view marketing with a long term lens you have to be success metrics over a twelve to eighteen month period window and period if you're looking at how we can close deals in the next six weeks.
00:08:27
Speaker
Marketing isn't the answer for that. You're looking more at really outbound sales for that. And that's where, again, it's the short term versus the long term that you have to balance as to which is going to ultimately benefit you. When you talk about ways to reach your entire audience over a prolonged period of time, that's where demand generation can be very, very effective.
00:08:42
Speaker
But you have to understand that there is only a very small percent of your market who's ever going to be in buying mode. So when we talk about 2% to 3%, that's going to reduce over the next 12 months. We may be talking about 1%, less than 1% of your entire market who's actively buying right now. So are you going to focus all of your attention on trying to compete with that 1% or how you can educate the 99% so that when it opens up, then again, you have that brand awareness.
Challenges in Email Marketing and Shifting Strategies
00:09:07
Speaker
We'll get into your approach to demand gen, because I'm really curious about how you're executing for clients and the approach that you're taking and the advice that you're giving them. But one question I did want to ask you is in terms of outbound, particularly around email marketing. What I've seen from working with clients is that outbound
00:09:26
Speaker
In theory, generate short-term results. So if you're panicking about softer sales right now, the default might be to ramp up your email marketing to get those campaigns going so you can generate interest in your product. But what I'm seeing is that outbound campaigns aren't resonating right now, is that many companies are using the same technique, pulling the same levers and inboxes for prospects are getting pounded. And a lot of that is being ignored. There's no engagement. There's certainly no conversations happening.
00:09:56
Speaker
My clients are back down on email marketing and they're trying to figure out now, what do we do now? What are your thoughts about email marketing, which has been a huge growth engine for the last five, 10 years?
00:10:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think it's 2022 and a lot of people are immune to email marketing in a way to reach out to them. The same way if you LinkedIn cold message me, it's not going to resonate the same that it would 10 years ago. There is this ability now and this immunity that buyers have built up to the fact that they know this is an automated sequence. They know they're getting involved. They know this is HubSpot MailChimp, whatever that email provider is. So they understand what's going on. And quite often, that's going to ultimately do more harm than good because you're going to have now that negative brand
00:10:37
Speaker
connotation of the fact that you are outbound to people that aren't in buying mode. And the best advice I would give to anyone that's looking at how to basically shift perspective or what to do right now is put yourselves in the shoes of the buyer. If we're entering this economic downturn and you're not in a position to buy, don't hound them with the fact that then you can try and justify and somehow convince them to buy right now or have a SDR call them once a week for the next 12 months, when instead you can focus on a much less
00:11:04
Speaker
touchpoint-focused campaign where you can educate them, you can entertain them, you can justify how the products or service works in a way that to your potential buyer feels natural and organic because it's being consumed in news feeds, in LinkedIn news feed, in Facebook news feed, in video streams, whatever that is, put it in a way that it can be natively consumed so that you're not having to constantly drive people to a website, to a landing page, download something, which again, it is not the way that modern buyers, especially in B2B, buy.
00:11:35
Speaker
There's a juxtaposition that I'm thinking about as you talk. One is the idea of patience, but the other side of the coin is that we live in an instant gratification world. As marketers, we're expected to perform miracles literally overnight and companies have all kinds of data to determine whether we're doing the job or not.
00:11:57
Speaker
So if we turn our sites to demand gen and we look at it as a long term proposition, how do you measure the success of demand gen in the short term? When you've got the CEO or the chief revenue officer or the head of sales is looking at you, the marketer and saying, okay, we buy into this demand gen strategy, but what's going on? Where are my leads?
00:12:17
Speaker
where my sales can't wait a long time before i see some traction so how do you balance the realities of demand jen and the benefits of demand jen with the idea that people want instant gratification the best way to convince the ceo to
00:12:32
Speaker
move from Legion to demand Gen is to review the historical data over the past 12 months and show what that baseline is because then you have something to be measured against the issue that I see with a lot of companies and when I'm consulting with CMOs who want to make the jump but just simply don't know how to get the buy in it's there is this anecdotal
00:12:51
Speaker
data of what a customer acquisition cost is without any hard evidence. And when you actually break down the funnel and you look at what the return is of going to that showcase, what the event is going to that convention, investing in Google Ads, and you look at the lead gen approach that you've been
00:13:08
Speaker
Investing in very heavily for the past year really for a lot of companies 10 years break it down over a 12-month period and see what the true customer acquisition cost is and then to talk about how you can start to shift certain elements of that budget and it doesn't have to be a hundred percent switch you can start to break off small percent of the budget to be able to test some more of these demand generation approaches so for instance a lot of companies that
00:13:28
Speaker
come to me are heavily over-investing in Google Ads in the fact that there's only a small segment that's actually ever resulting in new business and they are maybe spending 50% more than they should be, should break off that budget, justify how that's not resulting in any profit or revenue for the company and close one and then shift that budget to more of the demand
00:13:47
Speaker
generation techniques to which the metrics that we're looking for here are really going to be consumption. Can we see an increase in hand raises? Are we seeing the right people interacting with the content that we're pushing, primarily on channels like LinkedIn? Are we seeing your ICP engaging with it? And then from an anecdotal standpoint, when you're having conversations, ask your SDRs and your account executives to have those conversations with leads and potential buyers that are coming in.
00:14:13
Speaker
When they say, hey, how did you hear about us? Oh, I see your LinkedIn posts all the time. I see all the videos that you're having on this, this and this. You start to see and get that feedback very early on that this is being seen by the right audience. And then it's about understanding that this is a six to nine month investment of educating that potential
Long-term vs Instant Results in DemandGen
00:14:30
Speaker
buyer to when they actually enter that buying mode and from a CEO it can be very difficult to understand that this is a long-term lens and from a marketer is vital to be able to explain that these are the metrics looking for right now. Over three months we'll see an increase in organic traffic, we'll see an increase in direct traffic, we'll start to see people citing different LinkedIn videos, different content that we're producing and then we'll start to see that customer acquisition cost lower and ultimately the sales cycle shorten.
00:14:57
Speaker
Assuming that the head of marketing is able to convince other people within the C-suite that demand generation is the way to go,
00:15:06
Speaker
it's the most effective way to attract and engage prospects, even during difficult economic times. And the leadership team says, okay, we buy in, we understand that this is probably the best way forward. How do you get started? Like, what are the steps for a company, especially ones that hasn't used demand gen to get going so that they can
00:15:31
Speaker
see that something good is happening, that even if it's going to take a long time to come to fruition, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Where do you start? What are the first steps? Yeah. The first step I will do for launching any demand generation campaign is to figure out the size of the audience that you want to be targeting over that 12 month period. This is really your ICP, your idea customer profile. From here,
00:15:53
Speaker
Don't overinflate your ICP. Focus on really who is your best possible customers that are going to come in. Understand what that audience is. Very simple way once you have an understanding of what those demographics are, the size of the company, the job titles, and whatever other kind of demographics of who you're trying to sell to, put that into LinkedIn and see the size of that audience. From here, you can roughly assume there's about a 40% adoption from the size of the audience to who's actually going to be on LinkedIn in A.
00:16:20
Speaker
frequent manner where you can hit them to the point where demand generation is going to work. So if we have 100,000 people on LinkedIn, realistically there's 40,000 people that you can then be targeting on a consistent basis. From there, you can understand what frequency you want to hit that audience with and how that budget is going to then be used towards targeting that. So for instance, if you want to hit them, and I recommend between three to five times per month on a frequency of three to five with different types of content, from there,
00:16:46
Speaker
understand what your budget is. If your budget is significantly larger than it would require really to hit them three to five times, at that point you can increase the audience. You can look at
Creating Platform-Specific Content
00:16:55
Speaker
different channels. If you have a five million audience that you sized up in LinkedIn with a $20,000 a month budget, you need to be more specific with who the ICP is. So again, it's about understanding the frequency of how often you can hit that target audience and how precise you want to be, and then build up and adjust the budget from there.
00:17:11
Speaker
Once you start to produce that content, most of the content that I'm producing for clients and when I'm working with clients is all content that can be consumed natively within the newsfeed. And we're really specialized in LinkedIn and Google Ads to start off with. We have our demand capture channel and our demand generation channel. So with LinkedIn, we're very heavily focused on carousels. We're focused on videos. We're focused on case studies that will turn into videos and carousels in ways that can be
00:17:37
Speaker
consumed and help educate your potential buyer without them ever having to leave the platform. Because not only is that a more cost-effective way of distributing the campaign in terms of the objectives and a lower CPM cost, but also the ability to actually hit your intended audience goes through the roof rather than having to have, you know, 97% of people not click through to the landing page, 5% then actually download the white paper, whatever that is.
00:17:59
Speaker
focus on how you can hit the largest audience consistently over and over again and then start to educate and build in new content every four to six weeks so that they're constantly being taken on this journey throughout that demand generation.
00:18:13
Speaker
A bit of a marketing one-on-one question. You mentioned, you repeatedly mentioned content when you're talking about demand gen. Is content at the core of demand gen, value-added, insightful, prescriptive content that educates, engages, encourages, enlightens? Is that the core? And if it is, what are the keys to getting companies to embrace a content-driven marketing strategy where a lot of companies maybe haven't had to do it before because demand has been so strong?
00:18:43
Speaker
Yeah, content is a key component of any demand generation campaign that we're running. The good news is that most of the companies that I see have this content already. It's just not formatted or it's not in a way that's readily consumed. So most companies have case studies. Most companies have blog articles where they talk about different benefits. Most companies have
00:19:04
Speaker
even podcast interviews, they have long interviews or long videos that they have on their websites. A lot of this content has been created. It just needs to be repurposed in a way that can really be consumed through these platforms themselves. Again, going back to that consumption within the newsfeed. So the first step I'm taking with any client when we onboard is looking through, right, what is it you've been running as your ad so far? What kind of lead magnets have you been running? What kind of content have you been producing on a regular basis? And how can we then
00:19:31
Speaker
pivot this content into a way that's going to be meaningful and actually be distributed in a more cost effective way across your audience. If you have no content and you don't know where to start, start looking through your website, start looking at talking with your sales team, talk with potential buyers, see what's resonating with them and produce content around the most
00:19:49
Speaker
the most important features of your product that are resonating with your potential audience. Why are people buying your product? Start to understand that and produce content around that. Then you can start to break off into why this is going to benefit, the case studies of the success that you've had, and then ultimately get into more product specific demos, 60 second demos and things like that.
00:20:11
Speaker
The other thing that you mentioned quite often is LinkedIn. For the last two years, I've been an evangelist for LinkedIn, having jumped on it hard two years ago. Personally, I've seen amazing results and I've been watching lots of companies leverage LinkedIn to drive brand awareness, thought leadership, the generation. But I sense that there's a bit of a sea change happening with LinkedIn. And I think it has to do with the fact that during COVID, we all spent a lot of time at home. We all were able to,
00:20:40
Speaker
We had control of our own personal destinies and that we could spend a lot of time on LinkedIn commenting and watching videos. But as people returned to work, the LinkedIn landscape seemed to be shifting a little bit. Now I could be wrong and you'll probably tell me that I am wrong, but what's your take on LinkedIn now versus LinkedIn a year ago and how should companies be approaching it differently?
Organic Reach and Brand Building on LinkedIn
00:21:06
Speaker
I think the organic reach on LinkedIn is definitely down in the last 12 months. So the ability to...
00:21:12
Speaker
post a video and have 10,000 views on a video, it's non-existent now. It just doesn't happen really unless you have a very large following. That being said, similar to how you mentioned, I invest a ton of time into LinkedIn. I produce video content. I post daily. And for me, it's where 90% of my business comes from. So no matter how busy I am, and I work from home now, my entire team is remote, but no matter where I would be,
00:21:37
Speaker
I will always invest the time into LinkedIn because I get a return out of it. And therefore, for me, it's a no brainer to spend an hour a day posting a video, commenting, interacting, engaging, responding to messages, comments, whatever that is, because of the enormous value that I get out of that platform. But that's only because I've been investing in it for 12 months. In the first three months,
00:21:55
Speaker
I had no real tangible value other than the fact that people were now starting to learn about Catalyst and people were starting to understand the approach that I take, the unique approach that we take with demand generation. But in that first three months, we didn't have a client that referenced LinkedIn as a way that they found out about Catalyst. Now, 90% of inbound requests mention LinkedIn or TikTok from the videos that we're producing. So again, if you're looking at starting investing in LinkedIn, definitely it's like any marketing, it's a long-term lens that you have to view it through. And for me,
00:22:25
Speaker
It's really a nine months investment to where you're really going to start seeing any kind of tangible ROI for the effort that you put into it. So if you're not willing to do it for nine months, I would just not bother and just save the time and really focus on other components of your day-to-day right now. But if you are willing to do that, now is still a phenomenal time to be able to invest into the platform. There are still a ton of benefits from being able to network and find like-minded individuals. And for those that have success,
00:22:51
Speaker
it's worth putting the time into. And I don't think we're going to see those have a strong ROI from LinkedIn stopping investing in the platform anytime soon. I totally agree with you. And I think one of the things to point out with LinkedIn is that only less than 5% of the people on LinkedIn actually create content or engage in things like comments. So I personally, I think there's lots of runway left. And as you say, it's, it is a long-term investment and you do have to be consistent in terms of the value that you're adding and your engagement with the platform.
00:23:20
Speaker
One of the things I wanted to talk to you about is the idea of attribution. As someone who's more on the brand side of the house, you know, data has been one of these things where I've looked at and said, man, people, there's an over-reliance on data, on metrics, on KPIs, on Northstar goals, and all the geeky data stuff that people talk about.
Challenges in Marketing Attribution
00:23:41
Speaker
And a lot of companies, their marketing and sales has been driven by data.
00:23:45
Speaker
But we're entering a stage in which attribution is becoming increasingly challenging. If you listen to someone like Chris Walker, who talks about the realities of attribution and how it really is a very difficult, volatile landscape. And two of the things that he talks about, and I'm interested in getting your perspective, is the impact of dark social and dark web, where there's all these conversations happening. There's a lot of engagement happening. There's a lot of activity happening.
00:24:14
Speaker
We don't know about it as marketers. We can't see it. We can't measure it. It's invisible in many ways to us. And it does make our lives more difficult than it does. It doesn't, to be perfectly honest, many CEOs look at their marketers and go, what are you doing? If, you know, there's a lot of things going that, that, that the dashboard's not displaying. So what are your thoughts on A, attribution and B, how companies can navigate this dark web, dark social world?
00:24:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think with attribution is getting more and more difficult. Like you mentioned, everything with tracking is becoming more and more difficult. It's very easy to ultimately find attribution with a demand capture channel. It's usually last click conversion. Google Ads put it into HubSpot. It's very simple to have that kind of attribution. When you look at really the dark
00:25:00
Speaker
social components and for those that aren't really aware of what dark social is, basically that refers to the fact that I post on LinkedIn. I post a video on there and you take that video and you text that to a friend that's a CEO of a company that I have no idea how to track that. That CEO then refers it to somebody in their accelerator and then the accelerator reaches out to me and says, hey, we'd love to talk about how you could work with our clients. There is no way for me to track that chain of events afterwards. However,
00:25:26
Speaker
It's happening on anything like ninety percent of all interactions fall into more of that dark social category rather than what you see with who's liking your post on linkedin and just to kind of double back on we talked about when you want to start investing in linkedin one of the i think that the most difficult things to get over is the fact that you may not have the engagement of.
00:25:48
Speaker
a hundred people like you post, a thousand people like you post. We talk about Chris Walker with his content. He has hundreds of people every single day that are interacting with his content. For me, I'm lucky if I have a hundred people like a post, 50 people, 20 people is what I'm really going for in terms of interactions. That being said,
00:26:08
Speaker
A lot of my business has come from people who have never like to post on linkedin who have been reached out and direct message and they're referred to as more of these workers and there is an enormous. Component of people who are consuming content on a daily basis on content that i'm producing i have no idea until they reach out and for me the best way to get through that attribution is the self reported attribution.
00:26:30
Speaker
It's something that I do with all of my clients. It's a free text entry. It can literally be one line of text. Just how did you hear about us? Don't have a drop down. Don't have the ability to pick anything or multiple choice or anything like that because people are lazy and they just pick the first one. But just ask people how they heard about you and you will be surprised at the level of detail that people will go into to be able to tell you when they request a demo or they schedule a consultation with you.
00:26:54
Speaker
Hey, I saw the interview you did with Mark. I saw the podcast that you did with this. I watched that video where you talked about this on TikTok. Whatever it is, you'll start to get that feedback. And over time, what you can start to do is build up that self-reported attribution and manually attribute that to channels. So for instance, anytime anybody is quoting a podcast, I can attribute that to podcasts.
00:27:12
Speaker
or LinkedIn or TikTok videos, whatever that channel is, you can start to attribute where the opportunities are coming from. So over time, you can start to see which channels are gonna be most effective for you. And especially when you're doing demand generation at scale, if you are having getting into the CEO founders brand, if you are having your CEO go on podcasts and create a ton of content, it's very difficult to track that in day one as to what the return on investment is. And if you are a marketer and your CEO is asking for the ROI of demand generation after 14 days,
00:27:42
Speaker
you have a very steep hill to climb on the education of why you're investing in marketing the way that you do. So in that respect, start looking at implementing that self-reported attribution so you can start to see which channels are ultimately creating the most opportunities.
00:27:58
Speaker
Love the term LinkedIn lurkers, because there's an awful lot of them out there. And the one thing I will say about LinkedIn is that, and this is my personal viewpoint, is that impressions and likes and comments are important, but they're not the be all and end all. And one of the things you have to focus on when it comes to LinkedIn content is who's engaging with your content.
00:28:19
Speaker
are your ICPs or the people who actually buy your software or your hardware, those are the ones you want. So even if your audience is really small, even if your posts don't generate a lot of traction, as long as you're reaching the right people with the right content, then you're on the right path. And one of the things I will hit is I'll hit the analytics button when I'm in LinkedIn. And I'm looking for, in my case, and probably in your case too,
00:28:44
Speaker
founders, co-founders, CEOs, the head of marketing, the head of revenue. And if those people are engaging with my content, then I'm good to go. One final question as we head into the final, the second half of 2022.
00:28:59
Speaker
What is the marketing landscape look like? How do you envision our world, given that we're heading into summer? A lot of people are taking vacation. People are stepping back at the same time in terms of their marketing spend. I think there's a big reset or a big rethink happening because a lot of companies are trying to figure out, and there's a lot of uncertainty, how do we move forward? How do we move forward in the most efficient, smartest way?
00:29:24
Speaker
And I think that's going to take some time for people to actually figure out what the new path is. And how do you envision the marketing landscape unfolding over the last half of 2022 and early into 2023? Yeah, I think the marketing landscape for the
Opportunities in Economic Uncertainty
00:29:39
Speaker
remaining of
00:29:39
Speaker
2022 is rocky to be general with it. It's extremely rocky. There's a lot of uncertainty with what's going to happen with budgets. We've already seen tremendous amounts of layoffs at the moment with companies that just simply have overindulged on the size of the team that they need, and they're now having marketers, unfortunately, are a large percentage of those that are being laid off.
00:30:03
Speaker
That being said, with any kind of uncertainty, there is also a huge opportunity if you're able to implement a campaign in the correct way and with the correct strategy. And if you are looking at testing, now is a key opportunity to test because the competition is going to be down, the cost of entry, the barrier to entry is going to be less. And knowing that you're potentially entering this phase where
00:30:25
Speaker
buying cycles are going to be longer in the fact that people may not be purchasing software as frequently. People may be holding off on making any buying decisions for at least, again, nine to 12 months. There is a great opportunity to invest into demand generation today, whether that's something that you do and you already have set up and you want to continually invest and increase the amount that you're spending, or if it's the ability to actually start testing that right now. In terms of platforms, LinkedIn is still a tremendous opportunity for any paid
00:30:55
Speaker
B2B, there is just the ability to
00:30:57
Speaker
invest into targeting the right demographics on LinkedIn is far superior than any other channel right now. But in terms of organic, TikTok has been for the last six to 12 months a great opportunity of how you can test organic content, video content at a high frequency with a very low barriers to entry with that as well. And it's something that I'm working with a lot of my clients is let's test this for six months. I personally invest in TikTok. I'm publishing content on there two or three times a day with these short form videos and then repurposing that back to LinkedIn.
00:31:27
Speaker
From a strategy standpoint, if you have the capacity to test right now, LinkedIn could be a phenomenal opportunity for you as a CEO or a founder or a leadership position to be able to create that thought leadership and that domain authority by investing into LinkedIn today, which in nine months time will put you in a very strong position to continue to scale.
Where to Find Christopher Roche
00:31:46
Speaker
Well, this has been a fascinating conversation, and thank you for all the insight into DemandGen, LinkedIn, TikTok, and all things marketing. Where can people learn about you and Catalyst? Yeah, the best place to learn about me is LinkedIn and TikTok, honestly. Chris Roach on both of those. For Catalyst, if you want to head to our website, it's catalystconsulting.com.
00:32:05
Speaker
and I'm sure you can put links to all of those around the podcast as well. If you are interested in learning more about working with us or more of a strategy call, feel free to book a call on the website and we'll have either myself or someone from our team be able to run through with you what potential opportunities could be.
00:32:20
Speaker
Awesome. Well, thanks again for appearing on the podcast and thanks for everyone for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via Apple podcasts or your favorite podcast app. And of course, share via social media to learn more about how I help B2B SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic advisor and coach, send an email to mark at mark Evans.ca or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you soon.