Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Why Saying No Can Save Your Marketing
331 Plays10 months ago
Deciding what your brand won't say, do, or touch with a 39-1/2-foot pole is just as strategic as what it will. It’s the fastest path to avoid wasting marketing dollars on irrelevant leads and unfocused projects and ensuring your content and media are optimized for your buyer's journey.
In this episode, Jess and Susan discuss the importance of knowing what your marketing team won’t be doing, what you’ll say no to, and how that will positively impact the results.
Takeaways:
- Putting guardrails around your content and media at the strategy level and beyond
- How to decide where to spend on media
- Learning to say no, so you can perform at your best
That's Marketing, Baby is produced by Sweet Fish Media. Book a call at sweetfishmedia.com.
Recommended
Transcript
Understanding the Buyer Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
You need a couple levels of content, maybe around the same topics, because you have to think about the buyer journey and like, how does it actually get to the person who holds the budget? How are people finding out about you? If you're doing something like LinkedIn that's expensive, I'm always like, your goal is to cast the net around the people you want and get them off the platform as quickly as possible. So if all you're doing is just turning through people that aren't even sure if the message is for them, you're completely wasting your money.
Meet the Hosts: Susan and Jess
00:00:30
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.
00:00:58
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of That's Marketing Baby. We're so glad to be in your ear holes today. I am Jess Cook, and I'm here with my amazing co-host, Susan Menegrad. Hello.
Choosing What Not to Market
00:01:15
Speaker
And we are here today to talk to you about something that's a really important part of strategy but often seems real like very overlooked when you're figuring out strategy you're you're trying to decide like overall marketing who we're gonna market to.
00:01:32
Speaker
where are we going to market to them? Like, what are we going to say? Right. But there's kind of the flip side of that, which is what are you, who are you not going to market to? Where are you not going to put your message? What are you not going to say? Right. And, and I think that often just kind of goes by the wayside until someone and comes to your marketing team and they're like, Hey, we need to start doing X. hu I moan as soon as I hear it. I think that's part of it. It's like, no one talks about what they're not going to do. Everyone's like, we're going to do this, this, and this. And then everyone, it's like that more is always better mentality. It's like, well, if we're going to do that, then we should be here and we should be there. And it's like, no, I mean, you really don't have to. And it's extra time. and
00:02:16
Speaker
um different formats and that stuff might not work for that audience. And yeah, it just kind of snowballs in there. Or we just don't have the the so the big and ah and big enough team to do it. Like we're still in growth mode. And and and as a marketer, you like know in your head, like why it's not right when someone comes to you, but it's not documented. It's not down on paper to be able to point to something and be like, here's why, sir, or ma'am, that we're not going to do that. um And so it it becomes kind of a scramble like, I can tell you why we shouldn't do that. But like, I don't have any thing official to kind of point to just to really say no. So now I've got to pick up this thing that really isn't going to have an impact right now. So we wanted to talk about that, like, one, why it's so important.
00:03:04
Speaker
to think about what you're not going to do, what you're not going to say, who you're not going to talk to, where you're not going to be as a brand, as a company, um in your kind of strategy-level decisions. And then what what are the types of things that you should exclude? What are the guardrails that you want to put around, both content and you know kind of media, like where you are actually going to invest? um media dollars that will help you kind of make those decisions. And we have so many that this is going to be a two-parter. I know. It's actually kind of funny. Yeah. We decided to make it a two-parter because we looked at the list. We're like, wow, there's a lot. I mean, this is actually a bigger topic than I think we realized at first because it was like there were some content topics. And then I started thinking, well, this is how we
Evaluating Unique Content Ideas
00:03:52
Speaker
would handle that media. And the next thing we knew were like, this needs to be two episodes.
00:03:56
Speaker
It's too much. We have kind of three buckets for how we want to talk through this. So the first one is that just, just idea wise, like the idea of it, or the um kind of concept of the, the content is not novel, niche, broad, or unique enough. So let's let's talk through a little bit of that. So novel meaning like, It's already been said a hundred times by other competitors, by others in the space, right? Like it just doesn't need to be regurgitated again. I had this all happen a lot too in paid media where it's like,
00:04:39
Speaker
They'll want to say something like, the best such and such. And I'm like, no one is out there saying they're the worst. So this means nothing. Even when it just comes to things like headlines, you have to have something that is juxtapositioned with what they're normally going to see. No one's ever going to be like, we're the worst thing out there. There was the one back in the, I think it was the 80s and 90s. It was, I think it was Avis was number two and they were like, we're number two and that's still pretty great. And I was like, see that's, that was great. Cause they're not like, we're the number one, blah, blah, blah. Everyone says that. Right? So it's like the second you could do something that doesn't say that to your point, it's like, if it's going to say what's already been said.
00:05:19
Speaker
Just don't bother, say save
Targeting the Right Audience
00:05:21
Speaker
yourself. No, if you can say it differently, if you bring a new point of view to the discussion, great. But, you know, ah if it's already been said and there's somebody out there saying it, like just link to that thing. You don't need to write a piece on it, right? mom It's not niche enough or broad enough. um So I think content wise, it's like, You really have to think about just like who your audience is. I think this is the hardest part for people, I'll be honest. I think it's it's really, they either go like super product manager specific, where it's just like, unless it's someone that's opening up that software and using it, they don't care. Or it's like they go so broad that it's like those B2B SaaS pages you see where you're like, I still have no idea what they do.
00:06:11
Speaker
It's, you're having to find that spot and it's really hard for me. I mean, I'm not a, you know, full-time content person, but I find it challenging. Yeah. And I think too, I'm sure this happens with media where it's like, we could go, you know, I could talk about this on ad age, but it's like, that's a really big, very expensive audience. And like, maybe there's just a subset of them somewhere else that we could talk to you that is right. I see miss mismatch between that a lot where everyone just kind of automatically assumes that they need to do it on LinkedIn or they need to do it on Facebook or something. and you're kind of like this actually Either A, the targeting isn't going to get specific enough or we'd be delivering it to the right people. like You can kind of have both problems where it's like, this is so specific that the cost is going to be insane and the platform's going to even have a hard time delivering it because it's it's way too specific.
00:07:03
Speaker
Or it's like, it's so broad. I'm like, you're going to be building a retargeting pool full of people that are not your desired customers because it's so broad. They think it applies to them. And then they go to the site and they're like, nope, this sucks. And they leave.
Creating Expert-Level Content
00:07:15
Speaker
So that's the other thing is to be careful of is like your media dollars, especially if you're doing something like like LinkedIn, that's expensive. I'm always like, your goal is to cast the net around the people you want and get them off the platform as quickly as possible. So if all you're doing is just turning through people that aren't even sure if the message is for them, you're completely wasting your money. Yeah, absolutely. There's a Goldilocks zone for all of these things, right? Like there is a there is a definite sweet spot for like, you know, okay, best running shoes. I mean, there's a billion articles out there like that. Running World alone probably has 700 of them.
00:07:52
Speaker
you know, best running shoes for, um, Midwest runners that over pronate, uh, how many of those are there? I don't know. Right. So like, I don't know the, and and there's no, I mean, we're not going to come up with the right answer here because it's definitely based on like in in a very specific, uh, kind of company's audience and like where you reside there, but you, you have to kind of know where that is so that you can say no to the wrong things. And then the last one that kind of fits in this bucket is it's not something ah your company is uniquely positioned to address. And I, I really love this one because I think this is, this is what thought leadership is all about, right? This is if, if your company
00:08:41
Speaker
you know, is in the IT space and there's something happening kind of tangential to it. Like, does it make sense for you to comment on that? Maybe, but maybe not. Like you really have to think about um why you would have credibility and um a voice that people would want to hear in that debate or or whatever it is. And this is where like pillars come in. So this is when you're thinking of content pillars, like these are the things we have
00:09:13
Speaker
all of the credibility and knowledge in the world to address. And maybe there are some peripheral things we're like, yeah, we could, but it might kind of take us away from the the core of what we need to talk about. So we're not going to touch on those things intentionally. I think it also that you do run the risk is if you keep trying to do that, you start running up against the fact that's not a novel idea. Because if you're not an expert in it, you're not going to say anything that other people aren't already saying. Like if it's just going to be a surface level commentary on something, which no matter how hard you try, it's probably likely to be that way. If it's not something you're in every day, you're just going to wind up being the not novel idea. And you spent all that time writing a quote unquote thought leadership piece. And it's like, there's not a
Tailoring Content for Different Audiences
00:09:52
Speaker
unique thought in it.
00:09:53
Speaker
I don't really know what to call this bucket, but they all felt very like intertwined, like you just said it, right? Yeah. It felt like when you're zeroing in on the topics, that those are kind of the things you run into, you know? Okay, the next one. It's not a fit for your audience. There's a lot of subjectivity in this, and this is why it's really important to like bring this up at strategy level because someone will come to you and say, I think we need to be talking about this, or I think we really need to dive into this industry vertical. right
00:10:25
Speaker
This is something I run up against a lot. um and and you know That's something at the strategy level you have to say, listen, we're a small team, we're at kind of this level of growth, and we are going to really focus on being horizontal. We're going to talk about the topics that are universally understood no matter the industry. And then let's say three years down the road, we grow, we get to a point where we know like, hey, these two industry verticals, like they come to us more often than any others. They're successful on our product more often than any others. Like, yes, let's let's really focus on those two industries.
00:11:06
Speaker
but like right now talking specifically to the industry is not a fit for a horizontal audience right so that that to me is a really nice example for for content what do you think about that for for media especially in b2b there's usually the case where you have like the practitioners of who's going to use the thing and then you have the decision level makers who just want to understand how it's going to optimize like speed or efficiency. You know what I mean? so it's like It'll be something super specific that shows this really amazing thing that it it can do, but I'm like, that doesn't mean anything to a CTO. right are like The person that does have to be like, oh my God, that would save me so much time. But you're your CIO or your CTO is not going to understand that. They're going to just see a video with a demo of of a thing. you know it's like they don't They're not going to be able to draw the conclusions.
00:11:53
Speaker
So on the media side, sometimes it's like, I'll see them produce a piece and it's not that it's bad, but I'm like, okay, this is not normally what we would run. Like in the previous, like if, if you've been running like industry surveys and like very top level, you know, C-suite stuff. And then all of a sudden someone's like, Hey, here's this, you know, demo video of how you know, you do this thing and how it saves all this time. And I'm like, that makes sense. But you have to, if you're going to show that, you still need to have copy, at least in the ad itself that summarizes it so that they would even want to watch it to understand how it works. You have to build in other stuff that's that you may not be used to doing for that audience, because it's a different type of content. And I find a lot of times people don't really
00:12:36
Speaker
necessarily distinguish between those two things, right? They're just kind of, let's run it to CXOs and directors and managers. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. These people all do different things. yeah like They don't all care about the same thing the same way. And it's not to say that you can't use that content, but you do have to package it really differently. So understanding like how many versions of this are we going to have? Is this it? That's probably going to make you say, OK, no, we're not going to run this to the CXO people. But this might make a lot of sense for managers, practitioners, technical leads, like there's probably people it's right for and it doesn't mean you can't run it to those people, but it has to be kind of a healthy balance of like, is this for like a decision maker who's 30,000 foot and is not going to get it in three seconds when they glance at it? Or is this for someone that's like, they could watch this all day because they're a practitioner and they're interested in it? That's what I run into a lot on the media side is when there's
00:13:24
Speaker
a piece of content and it's, it's great, but they're just, they want to run it to the same people they always have. And I'm like, let's not do that. Cause this is not going to make
Engaging Stakeholders in Decision-Making
00:13:31
Speaker
any sense for them. They don't care. Hey, I want to take a quick second to tell you about our friends at Sweetfish content marketers. Just a friendly reminder. Your job is not to hook the 3% of your audience who are ready to buy. It's to peak the interest of the 97% of your audience who are not ready to buy yet with compelling stories. Interesting points of view and practical advice that helps them be better at their jobs. And that is where Sweetfish comes in. Sweetfish is a podcasting agency that can help you power a modern top of funnel content flywheel, all to grow that 97% piece of pie into the largest queue of future buyers possible. How do I know all of this? Sweetfish is the official podcasting agency of That's Marketing Baby. So we're big fans over here.
00:14:16
Speaker
Book a call with them at sweetfishmedia dot.com today. So when the 97% are ready to buy, they buy from you. Okay, back to the show. A lot of times it's the admins, daily users, whatever that are bringing your solution to that higher up person, right? And you almost have to think about like what, okay, what, what kind of content is going to be a fit for, for both of those folks. So for example, um,
00:14:48
Speaker
I need very like 101, 201 level content for maybe these kind of admins, daily practitioners who are potentially out here searching on Google, right? They are the ones actively looking for a solution that's gonna make their daily life easier. But then on the other hand, I'm also going to need like very thought provoking credibility and trust building content for that higher up level, C level, director level person, to one you know once practitioner, their team member brings it to them, they're like, let me check these guys out. Okay, they're smart, right? So it's almost like you need a couple levels of content maybe around the same topics.
00:15:34
Speaker
um Because you have to think about, again, that the buyer journey and like how does it actually get to the person who holds the budget? How are people finding out about you? If it doesn't fit within those two, it's like, well, then then you know like let's put it aside. right like Let's like wait on that for a little while. um Maybe there's like three key job titles that you're going after with that kind of 101, 201, SEO related content. And there's, you know, C level VP ah are who you're targeting with more of that thought leadership. You have to think of that at the strategy level. So you're not, you know, creating this kind of ad hoc like, Oh, we need this for somebody over here. And we need this for somebody over here. Like the same story needs to be told at both of those elevations.
00:16:25
Speaker
you touched on a really good point where it's like, there's always this assumption. I mean, everyone wants to go out for the decision makers, like every single time. They're just, you know, it's always kind of like, okay, LinkedIn targeting, we want CXO, we want this, we want, and I'm like, they don't make those decisions in a vacuum. Like they ultimately decide the budget, but it's, I mean, the good managers anyway, it's not like they don't confer with their team or have them sit on the demos or get their feedback on like, would this work? What would the problems be? Like it's, it's, they ultimately have the say, but it's usually kind of like a hybrid community decision to bring on stuff like that, especially if it's going to be something... you know I deal so much with like marketing software and stuff. It touches multiple departments, so like it's not just the marketing person using it. and like You and I had had encountered this before when we worked together, but like the software touched both designers and marketing.
00:17:13
Speaker
There are multiple decision makers, sometimes of multiple departments that have to weigh in on that. But it's like so many places are just, they just want to go for like the VP level and up but and they don't, they only create content for one or the other, or they take the one piece of content and they're just like, this is what we have to run it to. And I'm like, but you're not building a foundation underneath that, right? It's like, it's going to wind up being, the other thing is too. It's also, there's also that dynamic where it's like if a C-suite person comes to the team and says, I want to try this thing. There's like immediate like, Oh God, because they know that they, they're not in it every day. And so they feel pressured to say, yes, they feel pressured to use this thing.
Aligning Strategies with Business Goals
00:17:53
Speaker
And so, you know, my thing has always kind of been, you need to show that you, that you built this for a reason, that you know, the situation that the actual practitioners are in, because you gain immediate trust with them, which makes it so much easier.
00:18:06
Speaker
to sell into the C-suite. I've been on so many calls, even sales calls where it's so uncomfortable because The VP really thinks this sounds great and even will start to see where this might become a problem. Like it might not meet all their needs, but the team doesn't say anything because they feel so pressured. I do see that a lot. I either see like mismatched content or, you know, they're not thinking about how they could take that piece of content and just package it slightly differently and then reach two different roles of the same company. There's not a lot of thought beyond just the original piece that's created and like targeted
00:18:38
Speaker
decision makers. That's that's usually the direction. The last thing we want to talk about was that something that's not tied to current business goals. This is always one of the things that I start to think about when someone comes to me and says, Hey, Jess, we need this thing for you know this very urgent reason. It's always got to be done like in the next two days. It's always one of those, right? And you have to kind of take a step back with that person and say like, okay, what is this for? What is the purpose? Who's the target? Like, what will it do for you, right? Like really get those details. And sometimes maybe it is aligned and you're like, great, yes, okay, this makes perfect sense. Let's move forward. But there are times more often than not where they come to you and they want something that just
00:19:26
Speaker
it It is such a small niche purpose or it it's aligned with some other business goal that like your company just is not and even in that stage yet, or it's not a brand awareness goal. And that is, you know, that is kind of where you are tasked with in in content marketing for, you know, this current fiscal year or whatever the case may be. But like really you have to dig into understand. what it is they're actually asking for. When someone comes to you and asks for a blog post, they're not really just asking for a blog post. They're asking for something that is going to help them hit potentially their goals, but you also have to understand if it aligns with like the goals that you are tasked with as well. I think it's really tough with media because
00:20:13
Speaker
There are always more asks. All the platforms are changing so much right now. And there's so much that could be tested, but no one's willing to increase their budget to do it. So you'll have people that'll come and be like, oh, we should be testing TikTok ads. And it's like, okay, well, that i mean these are our goals this is the budget we have so we run into the math problem on the media side where it's like these are the goals you told us we have to hit please be aware that if we test these things and they don't perform this is what it's gonna do to those metrics so.
00:20:45
Speaker
One of the things that I've i've had to get really really prolific in over my career is expectation management because there will be time where they're just like, let's do it anyway. And so I'm very big on kind of documenting like, look, if this does not work, this is what's likely to happen. This is what we have to look out for. And um because it doesn't, it either doesn't really tie to business goals or it's unlikely to help them. You know, it's like, it'll do something, but it's not what you were, what you're trying to do for the year. I do think that there's the reverse of that too where where it gets really hard on the media side is the longer term business goals are very hard to tie back.
00:21:22
Speaker
to your media outcomes. And that's something that I think if anybody hasn't listened to our episode about, what should I be measuring? We take you through what that should look like short term and long term, but this is an area where I see everybody fall down because they're like, well, our business goal is to get an MQL for this amount of money. And it's like, that's not really your business goal. Your business goals should grow to a certain amount of market share. It's to grow to a certain amount of revenue. And you don't get to like those short-term goals don't always add up to your long one, right? So it's like our short-term goal might be we want to generate X number of MQLs a month. But part of that happening without having to just keep feeding money to the machine is building that runway of brand awareness to MQL start coming in that you can't even attribute, right? Like that's, that's the dream when you kind of know your media is working, but no one will measure it that way. So you wind up having problems with the business goal piece because
00:22:14
Speaker
It'll be, I mean, this has happened to me so many times where you'll have been managing, you know, the, the media for a months and you're hitting the daily goals, you know, of like the cost per lead or whatever, but they're like, we're not growing market share. And it's like, right, because you're not measuring anything on the media side that's going to do that. Right. It's like, so you have to have that alignment of like, when someone comes and says, we want to do this thing, it's like, a, is it going to diminish your, the goals that you're trying to reach where like it's going to influx either. a lot of spend, it's going to reach audiences you don't want, like how is this going to disrupt, especially if things are going well. That's when you're just like, oh my God, please don't touch it. Please don't add anything into this machine. But there's kind of like, okay, it's not really tied to the business goals and or it's not going to have a good impact on them.
00:22:59
Speaker
And then there's just also. You're bringing me stuff saying that this should be for something like brand awareness, but it's like this is not something that would reach that business goal of brand awareness, right? So it's like you have to become really savvy about understanding what's going to do those things, both from not just like a cost. you know I mean, you can pretend to just be a day trader with media all you want, but there isn't an art to it as well. So it's like you have to take in kind of like, what is the content? Who's going to like it? You have to think like a marketer um and be able to say, this isn't going to meet the business needs and tie but you know the art and the science together. And that just ends kinds of being lacking a lot of times too. Not enough people say no. you know It's kind of like, we need to do TikTok. No, no odds are you don't have to do TikTok. Unless you're like a DTC brand, you're fine. Like don't complicate it for yourself.
Challenges in Strategic Alignment
00:23:42
Speaker
so That's my soapbox, right? I've been through this several times. e Yeah. Here's an example I have seen with this. um your Your company goal is new logos, Netlue logos. We're trying to bring in new customers, new, new, new, new, new, right? customer success comes to you and says, we need content that is going to support current customers through X, Y, and Z. Right? And you're like, I'm sure we do. That would be lovely. But
00:24:17
Speaker
That's not the goal right now. The business goal is to continue to grow, net new logos, and that is what all of my content efforts need to be focused on. Now, if we need to shift those goals, if like we are, okay, I have also been places where mid-quarter, it's like the churn. We've got to address this churn before we can where we can get net new logos, right? Up until now, yes, it was net new logos, but the churn is killing us and we've got to figure that out, right? And so, yes, great. Let's do that. There's just something to be said for really understanding what the current goal is as a marketer. Which which is hard when you're, let's say you're new, like you're just kind of following orders. You're like, my boss told me to do this, but someone comes to you and they're like, we need X. And you're like, but I think they're telling me to do Y. And so that's why it's really important to just understand the strategy. Like make sure you really understand it, especially if you're new and you know you're trying to really dig into you know a career as a marketer.
00:25:20
Speaker
um it will It will show in how you kind of bring yourself to the table and and that you know when to say no. Like that's a really big deal. I've been happy to see like so many lead gen places are really focusing more on making sure sales and marketing are working together. So it's not just like marketing has this you know cost per lead goal and sales have to close this many. it's like if They're so misaligned because if they're not talking, they can't row towards the same goal. um And I think that's the other thing that can be difficult is on the media side, everyone's just
00:25:53
Speaker
And some company seems to think it's just a piggy bank that they can like come and say, Hey, we need to throw money towards promoting this. Like I had done work for a place where they were going to be at, you know, they had a booth at some, um, some conference, some like really niche conference. And there was like a 30 email chain about spending money on paying to get people to the booth. And finally, the the VP of Marketing was like, why don't we just ask the person? Because I wasn't at the company. I was just you know an external contractor. And they're like, why don't we ask the person that actually knows? And I was like, no, I would never do that. And he was like, why didn't they? He's like, we could have saved. He's like, look at this email chain. It was all these people that didn't know anything about how any of this worked.
00:26:35
Speaker
or the budgets or the goals or anything, trying to come up with how this could work perfectly, how to target it. And at some point he got caught and he's like, why are you not talking to the person that actually runs the media who can tell you how likely this actually is, right? And so then it was like, when they finally asked him like, no, don't do that, you know? But it's just funny too, where it's like, when people wait too long to get the no. And its it's kind of like the whole, they're not telling you what outcome they want, they're trying to tell you how to do it.
Teaser for the Next Episode
00:26:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally agree. um So yeah, we're gonna do a part two of this one, which is gonna be, I think that's like really spicy. I'm kind of excited for that one. Part of it's asking the right questions for sure. Right questions to the right people. Yes, yeah, totally. So that should be a good one. That one's gonna be more about kind of like, okay, why you would say no to something ah for like brand integrity reasons.
00:27:31
Speaker
this was very much like audience and business reasons. And there's a whole other side to like why you need public perception, if you will. Yeah, exactly. Like why you need to build exclusions into your strategy. come Part two, brand, brand identity. So okay. Like we'll be back with more shortly. Thank you all. We will talk to you soon. That's Marketing Baby. That's Marketing Baby. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to That's Marketing Baby. If you dig what we're putting down, be sure to subscribe and share with your marketing besties. Cause you know, hot marketers don't gate keep. And if you're like, this is not enough. I need more. We got you. 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.
00:28:20
Speaker
Get on the list at thatsmarketingbaby dot.com. Okay, bye.