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ENCORE Christine Dart on Navigating Marketing in Gaming and Beyond
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Episode Summary
On this episode of the Player Driven, Greg sits down with Christine Dart, the global head of marketing at Helpshift and a driving force behind the podcast itself. Christine shares her journey from aerospace engineering to marketing leadership, how she successfully bridges B2B and B2C strategies, and her knack for crafting initiatives that boost engagement and revenue.
Get ready to explore the multifaceted world of marketing, from building grassroots campaigns to running enterprise-level account-based marketing (ABM) strategies. Whether you’re a budding marketer or a seasoned pro, this episode is packed with actionable advice and industry insights.
Key Takeaways
1. Adapting Marketing to a Changing Landscape Christine highlights the rapidly evolving nature of marketing roles, from demand generation to customer marketing. She emphasizes the importance of staying ahead of trends and understanding how new strategies like ABM are reshaping the way companies engage their audience.
2. Lessons from a Non-Traditional Path Christine’s journey from aerospace engineering to marketing leadership underscores the power of adaptability. Her early entrepreneurial efforts, including running a ballroom dance business, taught her valuable lessons in grassroots marketing and creative problem-solving.
3. Leadership in Marketing As a marketing leader, Christine discusses the importance of aligning with company goals, understanding team dynamics, and hiring people whose strengths complement her own. Delegation, she says, is a critical skill for any leader who wants to maximize their team’s potential.
4. The Value of Networking and Mentorship Christine advises budding marketers to learn from others by reaching out to professionals, attending networking events, and joining industry groups. She shares her own experiences at events like the SPRYNG conference, where exchanging ideas with peers offered deeper insights than reading online articles.
5. Measuring Success with OKRs Christine explains how Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) help align individual and departmental goals with broader company objectives. She illustrates how clear metrics and collaboration across teams drive impactful marketing campaigns.
Timestamps
- [02:30] – Christine’s journey from aerospace engineering to marketing.
- [10:15] – The many roles in marketing: From product marketing to event marketing.
- [22:45] – The importance of delegation and hiring for strengths.
- [30:50] – How OKRs align teams and drive measurable success.
- [45:15] – Advice for indie studios starting with limited marketing budgets.
Featured Guest: Christine Dart
- Expertise: B2B marketing, customer engagement, and grassroots strategies.
- Background: Transitioned from aerospace engineering to marketing leadership, with experience in startups and enterprise organizations.
Memorable Quotes
- “Marketing is all about listening—to your customers, your team, and the market.”
- “Don’t be afraid to fail fast. Pivoting quickly is part of finding what works.”
- “OKRs help us align big-picture goals with the day-to-day work that drives results.”
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Community Engagement
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning player-driven community We are still in the process of updating some of our content from the old podcast to the player-driven podcast So today we will have an encore episode for you with Christine Dart where we talk about marketing in games It's a really fun episode. So take a listen to it and don't Be a stranger. Come visit us at playerdriven.io. We have a Discord community. We have an Instagram, TikTok, Facebook account. You can check us all out. Feel free to engage. Let us know what you want to hear because we're building content for you. So I hope everybody enjoys today's episode. We are looking forward to coming back in a couple of weeks with brand new player-driven content from across the board. So enjoy.
Introducing Christine Dart and Her Marketing Experience
00:00:38
Speaker
Today we're joined by Christine Dark, the global head of marketing at Helpshift and a marketing leader at Keywords Player Engagement. With a knack for transforming visions into measurable success, she's driven incredible growth across the video game industry and beyond, doubling revenues and tripling leads with her dynamic strategies.
00:00:55
Speaker
When she's not leading her rockstar team or innovating new marketing solutions, Christine also enjoys the outdoors from climbing mountains to kayaking rivers. Hailing from Nashville with time spent in Colorado and her roots originally in Connecticut, she brings a blend of creativity and strategic expertise to everything she does. Let's get into the game-changing world of marketing with Christine. Christine, thank you so much for joining me today. Is there anything you'd like to say about yourself?
00:01:18
Speaker
First of all, I want to say hi, everybody, and thank you so much, Greg, for having me on today. Not that I'm a stranger to the Player Engage podcast, behind the scenes anyway, and love having a chance to, you know, get a front row seat to everybody that, great interviews and just, I don't know, hearing your awesome hosting style. So I'm excited to get to be on this myself today. And I guess one other thing to add, you know, cause we kind of talked about So my background in marketing, um I do want to to add a layer that my marketing experience is very, very B2B focused. So just take that as you will um as we kind of go through this discussion. So there are some nuances between B2B and B2C marketing. But at the end of the day, marketing is marketing. And you know a lot of the kind of macro pieces are are the same throughout. So yeah, really excited to dive in.
00:02:13
Speaker
Yeah, I'm excited. And as Christine mentioned, she is kind of the the brainchild behind the Player Engaged podcast and helped enable everything to get set up and started and helping continue.
Understanding Marketing Roles and Career Paths
00:02:22
Speaker
it So so first off, I'm eternally grateful to her for that. But also, it's opened my eyes to this marketing world, which you know, when you live in a different saw when you live in a different position, I guess, right as a sales engineer, you don't understand what happens in marketing, you kind of think, Oh, it's easy, right? And then the same thing, if you're looking at it from a sales perspective, right, everyone thinks what everyone else is doing, ah you don't really truly take in the nuances that live in there. And the detail that goes in there, it's it gets much more in depth than just, hey, I'm in marketing. So ah with all that being said, right, and this next question is gonna be a loaded one. But
00:02:56
Speaker
you know, there's different types of marketing that I've learned about, right? Keeping it simple, right? There's influencer marketing, community management of social, social media marketing, right? Like, can you give us a high level kind of breakdown? And it doesn't need to go into everything, because I realize there are a lot, but like, what are the different roles that exist in marketing? And after that, I'll follow up, you don't have to go into it. But like, who are the people that excel at these types of positions? Because it's not always pure marketing in my mind.
00:03:22
Speaker
Oh my gosh, there's so many and there's so many ways to slice and dice. And I feel like every day I'm learning about new roles and functions opening up within marketing that like I hear somebody say they're a whatever specialist. I'm like, what is that? like Go Google it. i'm like I think I'm supposed to know these things, but really it's just the the world changes so fast. So there's always kind of the hottest new trends, I guess, in marketing or just shifts in what's working and what's what's not, because I mean, everybody's probably been pummeled by some sort of marketing tactic at some point, whether you're, you know, getting a bunch of emails in your inbox or
00:03:59
Speaker
You know getting spammed with a bunch of messages on LinkedIn or something like that So it's like things that work for a while everybody kind of catches on to and then it gets saturated and then you know You kind of have to figure out the next technique before everybody starts tuning it out And that's the thing is people start tuning stuff out pretty fast So um you just have to be aware of the fatigue and change but to answer your question um at least some of the main functions that I work
Team Structure and External Collaborations at Helpshift
00:04:25
Speaker
with today. um I'll just start with my team as an example. And this is not going to be the makeup in every marketing department. Every marketing department is going to look so different. And different sized companies are going to have different you know types of roles. But we've got product marketing.
00:04:40
Speaker
since we are, you know, help shift as a product company. So that's really important. um We recently introduced a ah function for customer marketing. um And I'll explain what you know any of these are, if you want to dive deeper in. um We've got, you know, demand generation, but it's actually not as big of a focus for us as it used to be, just because our kind of business goals have changed. We have got social media marketing, which is always important because you need to have a presence. And that's kind of like the front row seat, people get to your company. at you know Now, Greg is working on the podcast, so that sits between a few departments for us and really is its own ah standalone thing. I wouldn't even call it its own like special job function, although it kind of is now.
00:05:27
Speaker
And before we, who are we missing? We've got event marketing is a huge one for us. So yeah, there's like all different facets and they each have very different skill sets. And we outsource a lot of things
Advice for Aspiring Marketers
00:05:40
Speaker
too. So, you know, we've got our parent company keyword studios. So we've got graph graphic design resources on that side. And then we externally leverage um ah SEO agency and a paid media agency. So paid advertising,
00:05:54
Speaker
And then we have a PR agency we use to so all totally different functions and like, ah different skill sets involved, but they all play together really nicely. It's funny, and a similar way, right? We were talking with some people who who create games, right? And they're designers, design artists, and all of a sudden, there were so many different makeups in the artist, right? There's 2D artists, 3D artists, there's environmental artists. And then it's like, you know, what every position is like this. ah And marketing is no different, right? Because you know,
00:06:21
Speaker
Yeah i've been doing some of the social media stuff with the podcast but like there's other parts of marketing i don't even wrap my head around right i mean and when we're doing stuff with the sales team are creating qualified leads right and i'm familiar with the terminology but it starts to kind of like boggle my mind how deep in the terminology in the marketing world gets but keeping it simple to begin with if you were coming out of school and you're interested in marketing in your own.
00:06:44
Speaker
mind Is there a best place to get started that gives you kind of visibility across the spectrum or is there it kind of like find your passion and follow your passion? I'm somebody who I would say I don't want to say I found my passion and followed my passion because it wasn't necessarily that but I did.
00:07:02
Speaker
go where opportunity led me. um I would say I was very much an opportunist in my marketing career. so my i mean So my background isn't marketing at all. My very first career that I had, um I was a mechanical designer. So I did like 3D solid work stuff in the aerospace industry. And I designed tools that were used in the manufacturing repair of aircraft parts. So like very far cry from what I do today. And I just, I was bored with it. And um When I was in high school, in college, I taught ballroom dancing, so I started a ballroom dance studio, or not a studio, but just like a business. It was just me, solopreneur, and I was teaching dance lessons. I actually like first started pitching my services on Craigslist.
00:07:45
Speaker
and um and Then I started hosting a weekly salsa night in Denver, and I had to learn how to like get people on the door to that. so That was like my first introduction to marketing. There's probably some other historic introductions too, but I just kind of never really knew what marketing that I was doing marketing back then.
00:08:04
Speaker
um until I kind of had my own business that I had to build up. And then eventually I kind of realized I liked marketing and um I really liked kind of the design side of it. So I i kind of got my foot in that way with like figuring out, okay, events seem to work and you know get you traction. um And you need nice flyers to help attract people to your events if they're like local, right? um And you need a website. And so those were kind of the first things I learned. So mind you, like I just
00:08:35
Speaker
was self-taught in marketing when i got started and then my first actual job that i took on was for a skateboarding company that well a skateboard manufacturing company like they manufactured skateboards and they were like yeah we we need somebody to do marketing like we don't know anything about marketing so have at it go figure it out so like I was very just scrappy and just tried and tested different things and you know I kind of just built my career up from there so for me it was very much like opportunity what was available so it was really figuring out like
00:09:06
Speaker
social media and just doing my own graphic design and doing my own websites and um or or building those for other people. So I eventually kind of started my own business doing that. um And eventually I found my way into marketing automation, which seemed to be a niche at the time that really wasn't tapped too much. So automation and operations to some degree. So that was actually where I started focusing for a while. But because of the types of experience I had had, I had really looked all the way across the board at, you know dabbled in all these different marketing practices. And so I was able to get a more generalist experience. so
00:09:46
Speaker
So, what I always recommend, back to your question, what I always recommend to people that are just kind of starting out is think about what you want to do in the future. If you know like are you somebody that's trying to go to a marketing leader type of position, like you know VP, head of C-suite, something like that, and how big of a company are you looking to go? like Are you looking to go corporate? Are you looking to go like Fortune 500? Are you looking to go startup? Because your path is going to be different depending on kind of what trajectory you want to go. like Do you want to be in technology?
00:10:16
Speaker
um Or if you're somebody where you're like, I don't necessarily want to be a marketing leader, but I enjoy marketing and I kind of you know want to be able to just produce work and execute work and that's what I love to do. So if you're somebody that is the latter, you might want to find a specialty that you really like. So there's tons of free information online and you can kind of dabble and you know hopefully if somebody is a student or something, they get a little experience in all of the categories, but I definitely recommend looking online.
00:10:44
Speaker
and seeing if there's a specialty that intrigues you. and you know Find people on LinkedIn, send them a message, and just say, hey, I see this what you do. you know I'm exploring career opportunities for myself. I'd i'd love to learn about what your day-to-day is like if you'd be open to hopping on a call with me and chatting.
00:11:04
Speaker
regardless of what you want to do, I think that's always a great place to start is just kind of chat with people that are in the role and see what their path was. And then for people that are interested in being a leader, if you can kind of get in with a startup early on, I think that's going to be your best. Just jump into the fire and get your hands dirty and start wearing all of the hats and learning all of the skills. So you just have to really want to do that though, because it'll be a lot of work. But if you're excited about it, it's fun.
00:11:31
Speaker
I want to kind of just kind of double down on a few of the points that you made there because I love a few of them and we can tie them back to the gaming world as well, right? ah The first is there are many different roles out there, right? And what type of learner are you? What type of ambition do you have? And there's no good or bad one here, right? Some people like yourself, you're a solopreneur. So I can't say that word, right? solo entrepreneur.
00:11:51
Speaker
um And I love that because that gets your hands dirty and a little bit of everything, right? Whether you're starting your own salsa studio or classes, right? Whether you want to start a car wash business, the lemonade stand, right? It doesn't matter, right? Learn how you can get your name out there. Learn how people react to, but some people aren't that ambitious that they want to go do that. So we take a look at, in my world, like the idea of a AAA studio, right? You can go work for a gaming studio, but you will be told to do what you do and you stay in your lane.
00:12:18
Speaker
There's nothing wrong with that because you could start to absorb everything from within that. ah You won't have the same breath as maybe someone else in that world, but you can start to learn what you like. And maybe you'll learn that, hey, I don't like this as much. I'm going to go somewhere else. And these AAA studios have that. Whereas if you go to an indie studio, you might be that solo entrepreneur again, where you're kind of working in all different aspects of it. And the final point that you made that I really love was the same thing we talked about on many of our episodes, which is networking, right?
00:12:42
Speaker
people don't bite if you ask them a question of what they do, what they love, what they don't love on how they do it. um we're We're talking to some friends in town now that are trying to open a cheese shop and as they go to the town next door, they have another shop just like that, ask what works, what doesn't work. And they're like, Oh, they're not going to answer my questions. Like, no, people love to talk about themselves. So the more you can say, Hey, what, why
Onboarding and Adapting to New Company Goals
00:13:02
Speaker
did you do this? Do you like this move, right? I think more people need to learn to network with these people, even if they don't know them, because people will be honest with them. If you have these questions, and you're trying to learn, people will help you understand and and guide you. And I think when it comes to the world of marketing, there is a lot there, right? It overwhelmed me the first time I looked at it, because I was looking at Salesforce, I was looking at all these other HubSpot stuff, I was just like, I don't even know where to start. So I love everything you said there. But if we kind of dabble down to what you love and what you don't love, right? Like, when you come to Helpshift, was it maybe three-ish years ago, I think?
00:13:35
Speaker
one even it's a little over two, a little over two years, right? ah You come to a company where we have some sort of established standards already. And you're coming in with, I assume and right sort of kind of creative freedom as long as you stay within limits. But like, how do you take a look at help shifts and determine What do I want to do here? What do I need to do here? How do I hire the right people? like I guess that part of the question is that there are roles that you've realized you don't like in marketing, and you want to hire people that you know are better than you. Which question do you want me to start with? Because there is a few. When you're coming to a new company at a high level marketing position, how do you make sure you, A, stay in and the lines, I guess, but also spark some creative freedom?
00:14:21
Speaker
Yeah. So you know you need to be in tune with the rest of leadership and you know your CEO and understand what the goals are because that's kind of the first and foremost priority is making sure that you're aligned, right? and ah especially if you're coming in as like you know a C-suite or you know VP or senior leader. If you feel like you off the bat aren't going to vibe with the CEO and you're not going to be aligned, like that might not be a job that you want to take because you're probably going to be like fighting each other all the time because you're going to have different visions on things. so I think that's probably actually even the first step is to make sure that you're aligned with
00:15:00
Speaker
the company goals. And then when you come in, you know if you're already familiar with what the company goals are, and you've hopefully asked some good questions about what have some of the challenges been and what's worked in the past, what hasn't, why did you change strategies? What were the previous strategies you you've run?
00:15:17
Speaker
you can kind of start to get an understanding of what the pitfalls were and why. you know You should understand what was the market like at that time too because something that didn't work you know a few years ago might work tomorrow because the market's changed or the needs of the market have changed. so I would say first understanding um a baseline of where you're at and like where the company has been at since before you joined.
00:15:43
Speaker
And then you know if you're walking into a team that's already there, that already exists, you have to get to know everybody and their personalities and what they're strong at. and you know like connect with them as human beings, because that's how you're going to get to understand like, all right, maybe somebody has been kind of pigeonholed into this particular role, but their strengths are actually over here. And so you always want to be able to try to play to people's strengths. And maybe that just means that you actually change how roles are assigned within your department first. So for me, like, I'd rather start with the team I have and figure out, you know, how can we make sure everybody's sitting in a good situation where they're
00:16:23
Speaker
both happy and productive um and figure out if there's any coaching that's needed and you know where there's maybe some skill gaps and you can either fill that in with coaching and training, you can fill that in with hiring or you could fill that in with outsourcing from an agency and and kind of figuring that out. So I would say that was the approach that I took when I came to Helpshift. And then sometimes over time, you realize that there's definitely some gaps you need to ah hire for that, or you might need to restructure a little bit more aggressively and and kind of change your your team. But you know by the time you've been at least there for a few months, you might have an idea of like what you you really need to get things off the ground. You said a few things there that I think are, again, just worth
00:17:06
Speaker
restating, right? the One is one of the ones I think is most important that interviews for companies go both ways, right? You think you're the one being interviewed, but at the same time, if it's not a fit, if you don't vibe with the leadership or your co work, your potential co workers at a company, right, even if it's the greatest sounding job in the world,
00:17:24
Speaker
It's not going to be fun, right? You need to be able to get along with your coworkers. Even in a day where most people may work remote, you still are responsible for a helping someone else deliver a project or them helping you. So so if there's no vibing going on, it may not be the best fit. ah The second one is I liked some of the ah questions that you said, like what works, what hasn't worked, kind of these baseline metrics.
The Art of Delegation in Marketing Leadership
00:17:45
Speaker
So you have an understanding going in. it The more you're educated about the role you're about to take on, why why things may have not worked as they should have in the past,
00:17:53
Speaker
you don't want to make the same mistakes twice. um And then coaching, I think, you know, as an employee, right, when someone new as a manager comes in and says, Hey, I love what you're doing, but maybe you want some help here. I as an employee love that because it just shows that the manager is taking the time to see what I'm doing, how I'm working, and they're making a recommendation. it And Again, as an employee, that's just something that is important to me because it means that the manager whoever's coming in has my best interest in and and I can trust them. So I really love all those points that you made. And ah the second part of that question, which I'm going to kind of alter a little bit is is when you identify kind of who is on your team and what they specialize in. My question to you, Christine, would be what do you love about marketing and what don't you love about marketing? And is that someone you wanted to hire for right away in that role of something you don't love because you know, you can have someone
00:18:41
Speaker
better, for lack of better words, to come in that doesn't. Yeah, I mean, delegation is always important, right? And whether you're a really small business owner and, you know, like, let's not even talk about marketing, let's just talk about your you running the business and you need to figure out like how to get everything done in a day. And I think the common example I always hear is like,
00:19:03
Speaker
if you really hate doing taxes and accounting, like hire a bookkeeper and a CPA because like you can outsource that stuff and then you can focus on what you are passionate about and what matters to run your business. so You can think about that in terms of marketing too as a marketing leader. and For me today, like the priority is really making sure my team has everything they need and making sure they're equipped with, you know whether it's resources or whether it's ideas and decision making or editing their work or you know making sure we're on the the right track for something. um Are we monitoring the you know appropriate KPIs?
00:19:44
Speaker
For me, that's where I need to be spending my time is looking at kind of the longer term picture and making sure that we're kind of all working together to get towards that same picture. um And, you know, everybody's got kind of their piece of the pie that they're, they need to be focused on and and make sure it's, it's done well. So it's kind of overseeing. So like, yes, absolutely delegate and figure out like who has what strings and enjoys doing certain things and hire that person.
00:20:12
Speaker
um So they can get you where you need to go rather than you know, trying to something we don't talk about a lot when people are newer into management is how difficult it is to like actually delegate before you're used to it because it's scary because you're so used to kind of being in control and being responsible for everything that you're like, oh my god, if I don't do it, like it's not going to get done right or um they're not going to see the vision I have in my head and or it's going to take me longer to tell somebody else how to do it and then like go edit their work and fix their work than it is for me to just do it myself so people are afraid to let go of the reins. But that's why when you're interviewing people and deciding who needs to come in somewhere, even if you're interviewing and choosing an agency to support you, you really want to you know make sure that you feel comfortable with their experience, experience their ideas, their passion even, um so that you can feel comfortable letting go of the reins. And what's going to happen is because
00:21:08
Speaker
It's somebody that just gets to focus on that one thing. like They're probably going to be doing it with some passion and produce something better than you actually could have produced because they've got the mental bandwidth for it, whereas you're like trying to focus on 2,000 other different things. And then you know what you do is just not going to be probably even the quality that you hoped. That's fine. yeah That was going to be my next question. and I'm glad you kind of went into that. It is me personally. I don't think I'm a good delegator. And I'd love to become a better delegator.
00:21:38
Speaker
Were you a delegator to begin with knowing you were a solo entrepreneur? And I imagine you liked that hands on everything. Like, yeah, how did you get into the mindset of Hey, I need to start delegating work? Was it just stressed? My Previous job that I had before help shift, I think is where I started learning how to do that and realizing it needed to be done. So I was working for a boutique consulting firm. like We really wanted to provide exceptional work to clients and um we were essentially overhauling their ah
00:22:10
Speaker
but all things revenue. So marketing, sales, and customer success, um marketing operations, RevOps. So I was in charge of kind of the marketing side of of that for our clients. you know The more clients you have assigned to you, the harder it gets to deliver exceptional work to everybody. So initially, you know yeah I grew with this company, so like they were very small when I started, and then I think we had tripled in size in like a year's time or something like that. and so like Very quickly, like we started you know taking on so much work that we were all kind of bogged down. We were like, okay, we have to hire more people that are going to be like supporting the project and be the executors.
00:22:50
Speaker
we, you know, I had some people that were brought on to my team. And that was, they were very, very junior level. So it was kind of like having, you know, a fractional VP, and then having like some junior level people supporting us underneath. And so that actually was what was that thing that people are scared of a delegating where it's like, Oh my gosh, I'm just gonna have to spend all my time like editing and fixing work. And like I might as well just do it myself at this point. um And so it was a learning process for me. And I would say the biggest thing I learned is like if you're trying to hire in a way that's saving your your company money, saving yourself some money by like going for like the smallest end of the budget that you can, so basically somebody that's brand new, you have to be prepared to have the time to help support those people. Because like one, it's not fair to them. And two, like you're going to be doing yourself a disservice because it's gonna it you're just like not truly able to delegate like you really have to coach. so I would say that was probably a mistake that we made you know being kind of ah a smaller company and just trying to like figure out how do we keep up with the you know amount of work that we're able to take on right now.
00:23:59
Speaker
you know, what I found is the solution for that if you can afford it is to be able to hire somebody with more experience if you're trying to like fully actually just give up certain aspects of the work. um Otherwise, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with hiring people that are new because I think everybody needs experience and like I love working with people that are new in their career and being able to, you know,
00:24:22
Speaker
mentor and help them grow and like see their potential unlock. And they I always have things I learned from them too. ah You just need to like make sure you're allowing yourself the bandwidth and space to support that, because at least for a certain amount of time. Because like if you're hiring somebody that just does not have the experience in something, like they are going to need the coaching. And yeah, I don't know. It should just be fair to both parties.
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, even when you have a new hire, that's part of your company, onboarding is still typically three to six months until they're fully comfortable with it. And now you're hiring an outside agency to come in and help it be split between different ways. I think it kind of comes down to you get what you pay for. And again, if you're willing to coach, it's okay, right? You can help coach young people and get them to kind of see what you're trying to do. But if you're just trying to outsource, you like I need you to take care of this and be done with it, right? Like, you're gonna have to spend a little more money to get there.
00:25:11
Speaker
Let's jump into our rapid fire around, which I think eventually I'll stop explaining well you your questions to you here ah and just answer them right off your cuff. Good to go. Good to go. Cool. What did you have for breakfast today? I haven't eaten breakfast yet. No coffee? I did have some coffee, yeah, and some water. We'll count coffee as breakfast then. If you were going to go to a bar, what is the drink you will be ordering?
00:25:37
Speaker
Um, so everybody hates this answer because I won't give you a straight answer. It depends on my mood. It depends on the bar. It depends on the wine selection or the cocktail selection or the beer selection. Um, yeah. So I, I kind of like all of the things and I just like them to be done well. I, Christina, nice drink. That's all you need. No, no cheap wine. there you go Um,
00:26:04
Speaker
What is your favorite or I guess what video game are you playing right now? If any nations of darkness I've been playing it for like a year and I feel like it's time to find something new I was Just kind of like using it as a learning experience because I kept getting ads for it And I wanted to see what it was and then I got addicted to it and then now I'm just kind of I'm actually starting to get bored of it Well, if you come visit the blog post at player engaged, I'll come afterwards, you can see k Christine playing get off my lawn at GDC. Oh, yeah. Randy brandy game people love seeing that video. but um Finally, the last question is what is your dream vacation?
00:26:46
Speaker
Honestly, that just have like a year sabbatical and kind of hop around without an itinerary and just, yeah, like all over. Yeah, backpack the world.
00:26:59
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I also have a couple of bucket list items. So I really like, I would really like to see the Northern Lights. Um, and I would like to hike in
Utilizing OKRs in Marketing Strategy
00:27:09
Speaker
Patagonia. Those are, those are two big ones. Yeah. Northern Lights. Go up to what, Norway? Isn't that where you, uh, you see that? Uh, Finnish Lapland. There you go. All right. That's it. You're off the hot seat.
00:27:21
Speaker
ah Easy peasy. I want to go back to delegation and this is more of a cheeky question for you. But I also want to talk about OKRs because OKRs are something that we do at Helpshift and a lot of companies also do it. ah I think it's a Google framework. um And it's often said that the marketing teams OKRs are kind of the the best OKRs in the company and the ones that we should be modeling after. And I know Brandon, who also helps with the podcast, ah is a big lover of OKRs and helps you with them. So I was hoping you can talk about what OKRs are at a high level and how that's a driving motivator potentially for your team.
00:28:01
Speaker
Yeah, so OKR stands for objectives and key results. And it sounds like a very corporate term, um but we have been using them at HelpShift even when we were a startup. So it doesn't have to just be a corporate thing. And they're actually very useful. And really, what it is is a tool to have company alignment across and down to make sure that we're all looking at the larger company goals but being able to break them down in a way that's meaningful to each of our departments and um independent positions in the company because when you take, um you know, usually like these large company goals are going to be something like,
00:28:46
Speaker
achieving a certain amount of revenue or they're like just really large milestones. So somebody that's a social media marketer or somebody that's like a talent recruiter or somebody that's a graphic designer might see those and be like, okay, so How am I like like taking my role of like focusing on this thing and contributing to this like big piece of the puzzle that I you know can influence in some way but like I can't take that on as my sole responsibility it just kinda.
00:29:22
Speaker
things can get lost in translation or you start thinking about all of your to-dos like, okay, like I know that my boss said that I need to get this, this, this, and that done this quarter. um So like how does that align with this company goal? So OKRs allow us to kind of like cascade down into smaller and smaller chunks so we can see actually where our influence is fitting into that puzzle. So for the marketing department, for example,
00:29:48
Speaker
We will take a look at the company OKRs for the quarter and the year together. And we'll have a discussion as a team about like what are the things that you know we've already talked about that we know we need to do. We also, I will say as a department, we look at this like from the year level too. So we already have kind of like a roadmap that we planned out for 2024 back in the fall. And so we just make sure like that we're all aligned on our individual parts on how we're going to help contribute that. And plus, you know, as a department, we're like, even though we each have our own responsibilities, they all overlap and work with each other ah to a really great degree. So, you know, everybody kind of gets in a group and communicates on like, okay, you and I are going to like, work on this. And um here's what we're going to measure to determine whether we're actually helping to influence this company OKR. And I should
00:30:42
Speaker
break down the difference between an objective and a result to a key result. I didn't do that yet. So the objective is it's more of a um direction that you want to head. So you might say that like, hey, um this quarter we plan to provide greater transparency into what the marketing department is doing. And so that's the objective. But then how do you measure that?
00:31:09
Speaker
um your your key results are the measurement and that can be something that's numerical like a percentage or a dollar amount or a number of something but it can also be a binary yes or no this was completed so something like hey, we're going to provide greater transparency. How do you measure that? Well, maybe there's not really a number that we can use, but we can create a dashboard in Salesforce or we can have some sort of a PowerPoint deck that goes out at the end of every month or at the end of a quarter with highlights from some of the activities that we did and what the results were from those activities. so
00:31:47
Speaker
That is a way that we can align as a department how each of us are going to make sure that we have that piece of the puzzle that's showing visibility. Let's maybe use a more tangible OKR. How about something like winning a certain amount of pipeline? and so Say that's the company goal.
00:32:07
Speaker
is that like, hey, we want X number of dollars in the pipeline for Q3. And so from a marketing department, we might think about like, okay, we think we can reasonably influence this much of the pipeline. So you know maybe it's like,
00:32:23
Speaker
25% of whatever that number was, or 50%. And so we'll like pick whatever that dollar amount is and say, we're going to influence this. ah well We'll see this much money in the pipeline that was influenced by marketing activities. And that's the department level that we're looking at. And that's how we're going to measure it. And so then we'll kind of go down through um each individual and figure out how each individual is going to, like what they're going to focus on in order to achieve that key result.
00:32:51
Speaker
What I like about this is that, and I've been talking about this recently online, is that you know as we progress in our careers, it becomes harder to measure what we do in a day. And I always reference that I started off as a support agent, and we'd talk about how many tickets we close. But then all of a sudden, when you start managing, you start overseeing groups of people, your metrics and your
The Importance of Soft Skills and Staying Updated in Marketing
00:33:09
Speaker
your target changes. and it's hard become There becomes days where it's like, what did I do today? I didn't accomplish anything. ah And with OKRs, you can start to visually Visually show, hey, here is the mountain we're trying to climb. And this is how high we can get it. And this is how high we can go we we can progress towards it. And I think it's a great way to show how you can make an impact on the greater goals of the company. And I think it just is a good driver for people because, again, it's visual. You can see it. Yeah, absolutely. I got a couple more questions here for you. And the first one would be, as a marketer, what skill do you think you tap into most often that you've learned in school that that you would recommend people who are looking into marketing?
00:33:46
Speaker
that I've learned in school. ah something I guess you can learn it anywhere, right? Yeah. um I think soft skills are really important. um I think a lot of marketing is about listening. And so I feel I noticed that I'm quiet a lot of times. And when I go to meetings with my peers, so the other members of our senior leadership. And I feel like I'm often a very quiet person in there. And I used to kind of question myself and be like, am I not bringing enough to the table? Am I not being transparent enough? And then, you know, I've realized through self-reflection that it's like, no, i I just like to really sit and listen so I can have an idea what's going on.
00:34:33
Speaker
and then make decisions based on that information. And I think that's an important characteristic of people that work in marketing because our main job is to be in tune with the market, um to understand the market, the people that make up the market, so the people we're selling to, right? um What their needs are, what their wants are, what trends are happening, that's either impacting them or that they're getting on board with or wanting um and then being aware of how we can you know reach them with the right message. And so I think to succeed in marketing, that's probably the biggest soft skill that you could ever have. um Technical skills really depends on, I think, what your focus is.
00:35:20
Speaker
But as far as being a marketing leader, honestly, like being able to set goals, like, okay, ours is really important, being able to make a plan and execute on the plan, but also recognizing when, wherein, if you should pivot on something that you've put into place. you You brought a good point and kind of, um what was I going to ask? I had it's such a good question. Now it's just but left my mind. You're talking about the soft skills and talking to people. So my question is, you know,
00:35:49
Speaker
again, another thing I realized about myself is that as I started kind of moving up in my career, like I i stopped reading as much about technology and understanding what's happening. And I still do, but like, I used to spend all day reading like what's going on in the world ah with you talking about kind of algorithms changing online marketing, changing, like it's kind of like cyclical, you get the same thing that comes over and over again. But like, how do you Christine kind of stay in tune with what's happening in the market these days? Is there you spend time during the day, I guess,
00:36:18
Speaker
Just leave your question as is. By market, do we mean like video games and customer engagement market or marketing world? Well, I went to a conference a couple weeks ago, which was really great. And there were this conference is interesting. So it it was a very social feel to it was small boutique. And there were a lot of um roundtables that they had set up with very specific topics So you could kind of look at the topics and see what was most interesting to you and then go talk with people at that table about that topic for like an hour. And um so the event was called Spring, spelled S-P-R-Y-N-G by winter, which is all spelled with a Y.
00:37:04
Speaker
the I becomes a Y. And um they just really did a great job kind of facilitating that and having moderate moderators at each table that helps get people kind of talking about what their challenges were. And they also did a great job with um the types of people that they like the mix of people that came to this event. So it was very much all like VPs of marketing,
00:37:25
Speaker
CMOs, heads of marketing, a mixture of different sized companies. So it was a great way to understand like, Hey, what's working for you guys? What tools are you guys using? Like what strategies are not working for you anymore?
00:37:38
Speaker
And then kind of having that discussion. And so I would say that was better than anything I could go read online anywhere or like any news I could kind of digest because you're looking at the whole picture rather than just a
Current Challenges and Trends in B2B Marketing
00:37:51
Speaker
piece of the puzzle. So you might hear a piece of the puzzle like, Oh, like, you know, influencer marketing and user generated content ads are like,
00:37:59
Speaker
super hot right now, and like that's what's working. and you know But that's just like one piece of the puzzle, and it works for certain types of businesses. Whereas this was kind of hearing more of ah an overarching... ah Oh, and they were pretty much all B2B companies too, which was also you know helpful with their similar strategies in place. So it was kind of good to hear that some of the challenges that I had been facing were pretty ubiquitous you know across all marketers, um and that you know hear how people were pivoting and what things were working for them.
00:38:29
Speaker
um just to kind of make some predictions on where things are going with ah marketing techniques. So, I guess, talk honestly, networking and talking to people is probably the the way I usually do it. There's a couple of networking groups I'm part of online too, or there's like Slack channels, you can go in and ask people questions or, you know, see what people are up to these days. Can you talk to high level? You don't have to go into detail here, but what what are some of those challenges when it comes to B2B marketing that maybe we don't realize Yeah. So I would say there's you know going back to when we were talking about roles and functions, there's definitely some shifts in the responsibilities of marketing departments. So um something that I thought was maybe a little bit unique to us is so we have business development under the hood of marketing at HelpShift. And um it used to be under sales. And and then we kind of
00:39:27
Speaker
did away with the program, then reopened it under marketing. And like I hadn't worked for a company before that had you know BDRs under marketing. They were always under sales, and just in my past. And so I thought it was kind of a unique thing that we did. And then at this conference, just a couple of weeks ago, I found out like everybody was managing BDR teams. So I'm like, oh, like everybody's doing this now. I didn't realize like that was such a big shift. where you know And I think it has to do with account-based marketing being so popular now where we have, especially for B2B companies, where like sales and marketing really need to be working handin hand in hand and marketing needs to have a lot of ownership over any kind of new business generation. So a lot of marketing teams are like managing
00:40:13
Speaker
bdr teams now The other thing that I've noticed that's getting really popular is customer marketing. So I mentioned we kind of opened up that function about a year ago, and that's something that's been working really, really well for us is just being able to, one, like get to know our customers better and build better relationships with them, but also finding ways to be mutually mutually beneficial. like What kind of opportunities can we present to our customers to come on Player Engage podcast, for example, and like you know be able to talk about the hard work they've done with their team um and you know put a spotlight on the hard work they've done. It's it's fun when everything works together, as you were mentioning, it as the sales engineer in me, right? We have new white papers coming out that that your team's working on with our customers. And some of the metrics in there are just so exciting to be able to share online. It's things you can tell stories about. And I think
00:41:08
Speaker
marketing is creating these great content for our team. And then it's our job to build a story around it to tell it to the right prospect. And then as you mentioned, you're working closer with our our enterprise account teams now as well to build kind of account based marketing to them very, very specific. And I think it's really cool stuff. It really shows that like,
00:41:26
Speaker
we're gonna we're goingnna take a look at our top of our funnel or I guess the top of our funnel, the most important customers and say, hey, how can we better connect with them? Because it is a giant puzzle and understanding what connects with who and I think it's really cool stuff that you guys are working on. Yeah, thank you. i I'm gonna change up the question here ah this time and then saying,
00:41:45
Speaker
If i'm starting my own indy studio and it's me and my body and we're really great developers creating the coolest game ever but we are so terrible at marketing what would your recommendation be at hiring for marketing is there specific role that would help in indy studio the most is it just the the solopreneur.
00:42:01
Speaker
that's ah It's a tough one because I think it depends on a few factors. like Obviously, budget matters. I'm assuming we're going on a low budget, but you don't know because sometimes people are like, no, like I know I need to invest in marketing, so I'm willing to invest in somebody
Marketing Advice for Indie Studios
00:42:15
Speaker
really great. um and If you can invest in somebody really great, like i would I would find somebody that's got startup experience that's successfully led marketing initiatives at a startup because they're going to kind of understand how to wear all those different hats and you know they'll probably have a vision for what will work and what doesn't. um and I would also present the caveat of expect some failure um because like any mean any startup, any new indie studio
00:42:46
Speaker
anything like that. like You're going to have to try and fail a little bit to see what's going to work for you for marketing, especially when you're working with a marketing team of one and a small budget. And like most of what you do probably has to be pretty grassroots and you know free besides time. So just like allow some flexibility in that. Don't expect miracles to come out of like a small budget. But that being said, like a team of one can still get you pretty far and at least get you to the next stage. Just have some grace with yourselves, your own goals, and whoever you hired to your marketing to just know that like there's probably going to need to be some failure and that's okay as long as you're learning from it. and
00:43:30
Speaker
you know, figuring out like figuring out if you need to like reverse direction um and like, you know, pull your funding from something and try something new quickly rather than like just continually failing over and over. It's our sales slogan to fail fast, right? If you see something's not gonna work, don't be afraid to cut your losses now because it's just gonna cost you more money to try and recoup what happens. Yep, and time.
00:43:55
Speaker
and time. That is valuable. So Christina, I have one last question for you. As a Helpshift employee, and we've been acquired by keywords a little over a year ago, we've seen a lot of cool marketing initiatives that you've helped lead the company into, and some more exciting things to come. ah When you take a look at your your keywords in Helpshift career, is there something that you've helped create here at the company that that just truly excites you or things that you would put on that resume to say, hey, this was such a cool thing that we've done?
00:44:22
Speaker
Yeah, honestly, the most recent thing I think is just the but ABM program that we've been, well, All right, maybe the customer marketing program has been the most exciting. It's hard to choose, because I feel like we've got so many exciting initiatives going on right now. But our customer marketing program has been, so elements of it existed before we officially started calling it customer marketing. And some of it was owned by customer success. Some of it was owned by marketing. Some of it was like a joint effort. And so now it's really making
00:45:00
Speaker
not just a joint effort between customer success and marketing, but also customer success sales and marketing and account management, which is kind of like another function that we've propped up a at Keywords Player Engagement. And um I just love seeing like us help to create evangelists of help shift um that, you know, don't just care about our product, but also care about like what we're doing. And sorry, I keep saying help shift. And it really the story is like, this is like the post acquisition thing, right? It's Keyword Studios now, right? um And so just seeing like, how much they also care about the things we care about. And
00:45:40
Speaker
the types of thought leadership that we want to bring to the industry and you know the evolutions that we see in the industry that are coming that we're, as a technology company, know like helping to advance and that we're excited about and like to see our customers also kind of like getting out there on panels and speaking about the same kinds of things. um To me, that is really exciting to just kind of see this mechanism of not just us internally, cross-departmentally working together well, but also like our customers working in conjunction
The Strategic Role of Marketing Across Industries
00:46:13
Speaker
with us. And yeah, I don't know. I just think it's really cool.
00:46:16
Speaker
Yeah, it is. And again, as a sales engineer, I mean, it's exciting to see these these companies speak up and say good things and all the specific ah specific marketing we will do towards them. I think it's really making an impact on on how we operate. And I think it's great. um With that, Christine, I think I'm out of questions. We got to learn a lot. We learned about interviewing, how it goes both ways, learning about metrics, learning about the different types of marketing in there, um different roles that exist.
00:46:45
Speaker
ah I learned a lot and I appreciate your time today. Before we end the interview though, is there anything you'd like to say? Is it goodbye or? I just want to thank you all for listening. I know this is probably kind of a different topic today than usual, um less video game focused for sure, but still marketing is something that we all... you know interface with, whether we're the consumer seeing marketing um and knowing how we're being marketed to, or whether you know we're the business owners or you know leaders of a company that need to figure out our marketing strategy. So really appreciate you all listening. And I'm just really glad that Greg didn't ask me about my Myspace Top 8, because before this interview, he sent me the link to my old Myspace profile and started asking me that question. I was like, oh no, this is going to be on the podcast.
00:47:35
Speaker
ah see we We will have Christine's Myspace, along with all her other links that she may not know exists are out there, available on our Player Engage website. That's playerengage dot.com. I was gonna leave the Myspace off, but then she told me the podcast wasn't her favorite thing she was doing. So now we're just gonna throw everything out there.
00:47:53
Speaker
not because author be I think no matter what marketing plays a role, no matter what vertical you're in, what industry you're in, there is marketing going on. And I think just for people to understand what is happening it is ah insightful in itself. So so I think this is a great
Conclusion and Takeaways
00:48:09
Speaker
learning experience. So I appreciate your time, Christine. As I mentioned, I'll mention again, we'll have ah the keywords and help shift a website on our player engage blog podcasts as well everywhere. I will share it on social media. Again, Christine, really appreciate you taking the time to come out today. And I hope you have a great rest of your day. Yeah, you too, Greg. Talk to you later.