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Scaling Marketing at a Fast-Growing B2B SaaS Company: Ruth Zive
72 Plays3 years ago
How do you scale a marketing team at a hyper-growth company?
It’s definitely a nice problem to have. Who wouldn’t want to ride a rocket?
Managing growth is a major challenge for Ruth Zive, who has led marketing at Ada for nearly three years.
Earlier this year, the Toronto-based company raised $130 million.
Ruth, who has headed up marketing at Ada for nearly three years, says momentum and capital have allowed her to take a different approach to marketing,
“We have the wind in our sails and we are well-capitalized. So, now we can take a breath and be a lot more thoughtful and strategic about the future,” Ruth said on my podcast.
“In the past, we would make decisions from month to month. Now, we very deliberately planning for one or two years out.”
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Transcript
Bruce Seib's Journey at ADA
00:00:04
Speaker
Hi, it's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Spark. When a company begins to see hyper growth, it's exciting, but also arguably daunting. The pace accelerates, the organization dramatically changes, literally overnight. Bruce Seib has enjoyed a front row seat with ADA. Since joining the Toronto-based company nearly three years ago, ADA has raised $175 million and established itself as one of the leading chatbots for automating customer experiences.
00:00:33
Speaker
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. As I said off the top, you've been at ADA for nearly three years. What has been your journey as a marketer as the company has grown and changed?
Transition to ADA & Market Strategy
00:00:45
Speaker
You came into ADA after spending four years as the head of marketing at another enterprise software company, so you had experience with large organizations. It's a great question. I moved to ADA
00:00:58
Speaker
very much mindful of the fact that I was entering a fast-moving, super congested, confused, competitive market. I consciously wanted to be in that space and to flex my marketing muscles in a way that I hadn't in the past. In my prior role, the company was growing. It was very exciting. I learned a lot, but the market was a little bit sleepier and
00:01:24
Speaker
I kind of felt like I had done what I could do as a marketer to capture more market share. And so I came to Ada very aware of what was in front of me. And it's absolutely been a wild ride. And I think what's changed over the last three years to your question, like obviously we're bigger in terms of employees and customers and budgets and revenue.
00:01:49
Speaker
But I think, you know, at the beginning, we were very scrappy and opportunistic. We were kind of reacting to a lot of what an individual customer would say to us or what we were seeing with select competitors. And here we are three years later. The market is still very crowded. But I think, you know, we've got a lead. We've kind of emerged as one of the leaders in the space. We've got wind in our sales. We're well capitalized. And so we can now
00:02:15
Speaker
take a breath and be a lot more thoughtful and strategic about the future.
Strategic vs Reactive Planning
00:02:20
Speaker
If you know what I mean, like in the past, we would make decisions from month to month. Now we are very deliberately planning for one or two years out. And I think that's because we've done a good job building some foundational systems and processes that
00:02:37
Speaker
have rigor and they're dependable and predictable at this point. So we can now turn our attention to net new initiatives that really will power our growth further down the line in a more strategic way. So I think that's the shift that I'm most conscious of as a marketer.
00:02:53
Speaker
What's interesting to me is that when you came to Ada, it wasn't like the market had a few competitors. It was extremely competitive. There are chatbots all over the place. There are do-it-yourself chatbots, plugins, enterprise grade chatbots. Did you, I mean, did you revel in that challenge that you were renting a
00:03:13
Speaker
fiercely competitive marketplace? Was it daunting at all? Or was it something at this point in your career was like, bring it on. You know, I want to see how I can leverage my experience and expertise to really establish a marketing engine and position nada as the market leader.
00:03:29
Speaker
I would say all of the above and I'm also not sure what I was thinking. I had this awareness that I remember even before I was hired talking to Mike, our CEO, and saying, man, there are a lot of chatbots out there. Mike just always had this conviction in our product and our point of view that we were different and better.
00:03:50
Speaker
And he convinced me, and so I was a little bit blind by his enthusiasm and optimism. I think Gartner says, by the way, that there are over 2,000 chatbot vendors on the market. So, you know, really, really noisy. I think, for sure, the challenge was appealing to me. I knew that there was going to be some consolidation, that the cream was going to rise to the top. I also, very quickly, in my tenure at ADA,
00:04:18
Speaker
Realize that we are so much more than a chatbot the word chatbot is very like Emotionally charged and people have this idea of what it is and I think even in the last three years That's changed. You know Ada is really an automation layer that underpins all interactions between a brand and
00:04:40
Speaker
and the people who care about that brand. That was always our vision and that's really how we're being used by our clients today. That idea of an FAQ bot that you download from a website and stick on your website in order to answer questions, that's not the path forward and I think Ada realized that a long time ago and we're really leading that charge today.
00:05:05
Speaker
One of the things that I wanted to ask you about is the relationship between the CEO and the CMO. The lifespan of a CMO is slowly shrinking and my
00:05:19
Speaker
position is that one of the key success is establishing a partnership with the CEO. That you know exactly what the rules of engagement are, you know how marketing will evolve, and you will make mistakes along the way, along with being successful. Was that something that you and Mike talked about before you made the move into ADA? That you were going to enter this fast growing, high potential company, but understand that
00:05:45
Speaker
there was things you're gonna do and there were ways that you were gonna work together to make it happen.
CEO Support in Marketing
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know if we had that conversation in that way. It was really important to me that the CEO of the company where I worked was bought into the importance of marketing. And so we talked about budget and headcount because to me that's a very practical reflection of the measure of importance. Like if the CEO wasn't willing to make investments in marketing, that's I think a pretty good sign that they don't see it as a priority.
00:06:19
Speaker
or, you know, as a critical growth vector. And Mike absolutely, he was very clear that when I joined, I had a lot of latitude to build a team and to build the programs that were necessary. So that was a check. You know, I think we were very much aligned in that regard. You know, Mike is a
00:06:41
Speaker
an extremely passionate CEO and so he feels invested in all parts of the organization and he's opinionated about certain aspects of marketing and I think we have healthy debate along those lines and I think that every CMO and CEO should have that that the CEO
00:06:57
Speaker
if he or she cares, which they should, it's inevitable that there will be debates and disagreements about the way things should work. But on the flip side, you also don't want to be micromanaged. And like I said, I had a lot of freedom and autonomy to make the decisions, to build out the marketing team. I felt a great deal of support for Mike along those lines. He's definitely a sounding board. There are certainly parts of
00:07:25
Speaker
the marketing strategy where I feel I want him more involved and I pull him in in those cases, there are some times where he feels he should be more involved and I respect that.
00:07:37
Speaker
But I don't feel micromanaged. So I think it's that balance that's really important between us, especially in a fast growing company. What I did know and we did talk about is that I wasn't going to crowdsource our marketing strategy. You know, marketing is one of those parts of the business where everybody tends to have an opinion. We needed to move fast and I couldn't, there was no way I was going to crowdsource every graphic on the website or the
00:08:02
Speaker
you know, the writing of every blog post, like we needed to have some freedom to, uh, to move fast. And Mike gave me that freedom. Earlier this year, ADA raised $130 million U.S., which turned it into a unicorn. Tough question, but what does that mean for you and marketing at ADA? How does it change the rules of engagement and the type of marketing that ADA can do?
00:08:28
Speaker
Similar to your first question, I think that on the other side of this raise, we feel an enormous amount of responsibility to use these resources to build a generational company that
00:08:43
Speaker
fundamentally changes the way that people and brands interact. It's no longer just about, how do we get to that next revenue number? How do I hit my pipeline target? Don't get me wrong, that's always in my head. But we're now thinking one, two, three years out, what does Ada look like?
00:09:04
Speaker
What are we doing for our clients? What problems are we solving in the market? We haven't had the luxury of being able to do that in the past, and now we do. And I feel the weight of that responsibility, I'm excited to move forward with that responsibility in mind.
00:09:23
Speaker
You know, I'm thinking whereas a year ago I was thinking about like, how do I optimize my SEO and how much more money should I spend on pay per click and what events do we want to be doing to hit the pipeline number?
00:09:35
Speaker
Now I'm more so thinking about what brand equity do I have and what is the brand that I'm building and how much of the market have we penetrated and how do we take on more and how do we differentiate in a more strategic way? And are we leaving money on the table with our pricing and packaging? I feel like it's a level up now, the stuff that I'm thinking about.
Critical Marketing Roles & Hiring
00:09:58
Speaker
Thankfully, having raised that money, we're now well capitalized to make investments accordingly.
00:10:05
Speaker
My marketing leadership team is very much focused now on how do we build the team that we need and invest in the programs that we need to take on those longer term initiatives that are really going to secure Ada's place in this market as the leader. When it comes to how you allocate and invest your marketing dollars, one of the big questions is how do you scale a B2B SaaS marketing team? How do you determine the roles that are needed
00:10:34
Speaker
You know, what is your approach to hiring? Do you look for all stars and or people with a lot of potential and what's the role of experience and expertise and personality play when putting together an effective and cohesive marketing team? I recognize that's a lot of questions. That's a lot to unpack there, but I am really curious about how you are growing your team so that you can be effective, successful, cohesive, collaborative, and really support the growth of the company and where you're going.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question, a big question. I feel like people management and building the team is at least half of my job at Ada. It's the part of my job that I love the most. It depends a lot on the company and the nature of the market and the product that you're selling. Are you SMB oriented or enterprise oriented? But in a B2B SaaS marketing organization, there are four functions as I see it.
00:11:32
Speaker
The first is product marketing. They do market analysis and then take the product to market. They share their point of view about the product and the market with the next group in marketing, which is brand. Those are usually writers, designers, and they're creating all of your public facing assets. They share those assets with the next group in marketing, which is your demand team. They own your distribution channels like email, social, pay-per-click, SEO, events.
00:12:00
Speaker
Demand surfaces, demand in the form of leads. Those get handed over to the last group in marketing, which is the BDR team. These are business development reps chasing the leads and also outbounding accounts to try to get qualified meetings booked for sales. Sometimes BDRs sit in the sales organization.
00:12:19
Speaker
But I have a strong opinion they should sit in marketing. I think it forces better alignment between marketing and sales. So I think of all of that along a continuum. And depending on the nature of your company and the challenges at hand, I would hire in a particular order. At ADA, demand was my first priority. So how do I surface demand as quickly as possible?
00:12:43
Speaker
And I would hire a couple of generalists who really understand how channels work. I would say that the next priority would be BDR, especially if you're more of a mid-market or enterprise facing organization.
00:12:56
Speaker
Then I would hire product marketing and I actually would leave brand to the end. That, that would be my hiring sequence. Uh, and that's what I did at ADA. There was real urgency to grow our pipeline coverage in the first year or two that I joined and demand and BDR was going to do that most swiftly. I also think that you can outsource a little bit, especially for brand and that kind of can fill that gap in the short term.
00:13:22
Speaker
To the second part of your question around skill versus personality, experience versus potential, you're always hiring for skill and attitude or skill and style, you might say.
00:13:38
Speaker
You need a certain foundational measure of skill in all of those four buckets when you hire, but I will hire attitude
In-house vs Outsourced Talent
00:13:46
Speaker
over skill every day of the week, especially for a fast-growing SaaS startup environment. You need somebody that's curious and coachable and hungry to prove something and can move fast. Those soft skills, those softer qualities are so much more important in my opinion.
00:14:08
Speaker
Skill, like I said, certain foundational elements of skill, but I think attitude and style is much more important in your hiring. One more thing I'll say, as you grow beyond like once you've got your kind of baseline core team,
00:14:24
Speaker
It's less so about the individuals you hire and more so about the system that you're building. So are you really creating an infrastructure that if somebody leaves, which they always will in a fast growing startup environment, like there's always some degree of turnover. Do you still have that system in place that things won't fall apart if somebody leaves?
00:14:47
Speaker
The other thing that you mentioned that is interesting is the role of third parties, freelancers and contractors within larger companies like ADA from a marketing perspective. When and where do you leverage external resources and what are the process to identify and vet the right partners?
00:15:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard because I think that, and you know this, and we've known each other longer than six years, by the way, but like I used to do freelancing and consulting. I had a marketing agency, and I think that there's real value in working with those types of professionals, but nobody is gonna care about your brand the same way as somebody that's internal to your team. I just think it's really hard to keep your interests
00:15:32
Speaker
Focused entire you can't like a freelancer isn't going to have just you in mind when they're doing their work or scheduling their day Because they're likely working with multiple brands
00:15:42
Speaker
That said, you know, I've outsourced writing, design, web development, PR. I've outsourced SEO and pay-per-click. I've even outsourced BD work. And I think it's a great risk mitigation strategy to fill gaps as you grow. I always maintain a bench of writers and designers because the work is going to, it's not going to be as, it's lumpy sometimes. So it's a great way to smooth out some of those lumps.
00:16:12
Speaker
I think that once a function becomes important enough that you're thinking about it every day, that you're throwing enough money at it that it represents a salary, there's value in bringing the talent in-house. So at the beginning, we outsourced, we had one internal writer and we outsourced a lot, and one internal designer, and we outsourced a lot of the brand stuff. Now I'm very focused on building out my brand team.
00:16:38
Speaker
It's an interesting ecosystem for a lot of B2B SaaS companies because there is a lot of talk around teams being very strategic and then using external resources for tactical execution. And it feels like a bit of a balancing act about how much tactical expertise you need in-house versus what you can outsource. And I think a lot of companies, especially as they look to re-staff after retrenching last year from a marketing perspective,
00:17:06
Speaker
are gonna have some hard choices or some interesting choices to make about how they structure their marketing teams.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that. Like I said, I think that outside resources, especially on the front line executing, can help to smooth some of those lumps. But there are a lot of great writers out there. They're not going to really understand Ada the way that somebody internal to Ada understands Ada. They're not going to be able to write a blog post on the fly inside of a few hours in an afternoon
00:17:37
Speaker
Nor would it be appropriate for me to ask them to do that, even as a freelancer. You know, I can't have an expectation that they'll be able to deliver against those tight timelines. So I see advantages to both scenarios. And I try to I try to establish a sense of balance where I always have a bunch of freelancers available. Should I need them? But slowly, I'm bringing more and more of the talent in house.
Creating a Marketing Budget
00:18:01
Speaker
Here's another big question. What is it like to create a marketing budget within a fast growing company? I can only imagine that raising a lot of money can make budgeting more complex and multifaceted.
00:18:13
Speaker
Yeah, we have a great finance team at ADA and they hold us accountable and we meet with them weekly and really scrutinize the impact of our spend. So everything on my marketing team tracks back to revenue, to pipeline, to acquisition costs. And we hold ourselves accountable to that. Now some of the investments are maybe not as directly connected. You invest in brand, you can't necessarily
00:18:39
Speaker
See you know with a dotted line exactly how that spend has resulted in revenue growth But if the revenue isn't growing alongside of that spend There's a problem and I try to establish measures that at a minimum are leading indicators of revenue or pipeline growth So for brand for instance this year we're tracking branded keyword clicks which I feel are a leading indicator of growing brand equity and
00:19:07
Speaker
Growing brand equity i believe has a massive influence on pipeline growth so we track those things and hold ourselves accountable and i think that managing budgets at scale require that level of measurable scrutiny and there has to be a rhythm with the finance team between marketing often is the biggest non headcount spend inside of a b2b sass organization and there has to be a real
00:19:34
Speaker
accountability there and I think everybody on my team understands that and like I said, we take time almost every week to go through it, review it, really understand operationally the impact of what we're spending.
00:19:48
Speaker
Understand when it comes to budgeting, quantifying the performance of marketing, but there's been a lot of talk recently about the balance between. Quantifying marketing and things that you can't quantify the impact of brand or the impact of positioning, for example, and I'm wondering where you stand in terms of.
00:20:08
Speaker
just because everything can be measured should it be measured and the role of everything have attribution for everything. I mean, as a marketer, do you accept the fact that there's things that you can't measure and quantify?
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah, I struggle with this because people talk about marketing being part art, part science, and I am much more comfortable on the science side of marketing. I love that digital marketing is so measurable, but I absolutely recognize and accept that there's a lot about
00:20:42
Speaker
marketing that is more art. I don't agree, though, that it's necessarily not measurable. I think that there's a fine line between like measure and accountability. And, you know, you have to always be measuring something to gauge whether or not the investment is delivering what you expected it to deliver. So while something like positioning or brand
00:21:08
Speaker
Or competitive Intel may not be measurable in terms of the mqls that it delivers or the clicks that it gets for you or the amount of pipeline that it generates in a very linear direct way.
00:21:23
Speaker
There are things that you can measure to gauge the impact of those investments. And if those measures are growing alongside of pipeline and revenue growth, then I feel good about making continuing to make or even grow those investments. You know, the branded keyword clicks is a good example.
00:21:40
Speaker
Competitive Intel, we invest a lot in research of our competitive landscape. We try to measure what is our win rate inside of competitive deals? To what extent of product marketing resource has been pulled into those deals? Are they using the competitive assets that we created? So we try to create measures or introduce measures that are at least indirectly related to our pipeline and revenue growth. So I think everything is measurable to some extent.
00:22:07
Speaker
One final question on the quantified part of marketing.
Gated vs Ungated Content
00:22:13
Speaker
There's a lot of talk these days about gated versus ungated content. For many years, B2B SaaS marketers have used emails as a key metric for MQLs. The fact that if I put an ebook out there or an infographic or some kind of worksheet and I collect an email address,
00:22:32
Speaker
that counts as marketing success and i'm wondering which side of the fence do you fall on when it comes to gated vs ungated content and what is the balance between trying to get some content and allowing some kind to essentially be free yeah i think i probably
00:22:51
Speaker
fall somewhere in the middle on that one? First of all, I don't think that MQLs are a measure of success. MQLs are a leading indicator, but you could have a thousand MQLs in a week that convert at an abysmal rate to pipeline.
00:23:09
Speaker
or to closed one business. Is that success? No, you could have 100 MQLs that close at a rate of 40%, convert at a rate of 40% to pipeline with a close rate of 40%. And that's incredible. So I had a marketing mentor who once said to me, the perfect marketing business is the one that generates 100 MQLs that 100% convert to pipeline and 100% go closed one. Wouldn't that be wonderful?
00:23:38
Speaker
I don't think that putting all of your eggs in the MQL basket is a mistake. You have to understand the full funnel right down to closed one.
00:23:48
Speaker
AB testing gated versus ungated at different points of the sales cycle is really how you optimize that funnel. You have to know what are customers looking for at each stage? How do you open up those conversations more effectively? How do you evaluate multi-touch attribution, not just first touch or last touch? You have to really, especially if you're selling into a larger organization, we have at ADA,
00:24:14
Speaker
The average sales cycle has a dozen touch points at least on average, um, with marketing assets. So does that mean that the original email that we captured through a pay-per-click ad is really what resulted in the win? Probably not. Like all of the touch points matter. We try to offer both gated and ungated. I think deeper down the funnel, the more important ungated is case things like case studies or demos or, you know, to make those more available.
00:24:43
Speaker
But, you know, there's still, I would never ungate everything. Well, thank you so much for having me. I always love talking about marketing, especially with somebody that's, you know, been in the trenches with me for a while. Ada, check us out at ada.cx and look for me on LinkedIn, Ruth Zive. Maybe you can put my URL. I'm always happy to connect with folks and pick up conversations there. I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you. Thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark.
00:25:12
Speaker
If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. If you'd like to learn more about how I help B2B SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic advisor and coach, send an email to mark at marketingspark.co. I'll talk to you next time.