July 10, 2024 • 57 mins
Scaling Health Tech Marketing: A CMO's Playbook for Driving Efficient Growth
In this episode of Marcom Mode, host Kristin Jones talks with Alan Tam, a seasoned CMO in the health tech industry, about how marketing leaders can drive efficient growth for startups and scaleups. Alan shares his experience and insights from his roles as CMO at Reveleer and marketing leader for Actium Health and Luma Health.
As a veteran executive who has built and led high-performing teams at growth-oriented B2B health tech companies, Alan offers his proven strategies and advice on:
- Aligning marketing and sales to achieve revenue goals
- Measuring B2B marketing success and making data-driven decisions
- Efficiently scaling the marketing function and team as a company grows
- Implementing B2B marketing best practices to build a healthy pipeline
- Leveraging data, measurement, and experimentation to maximize impact
- Deciding what to keep in-house vs. outsource for optimal results
- And much more
Whether you're a Senior Marketing Director looking to step up into a VP or CMO role, or an executive aiming to lead your marketing organization through the challenges of today's "do more with less" environment, this conversation will provide you with actionable strategies and fresh perspectives to advance your career and increase your impact in the health tech marketing space.
Don't miss this opportunity to learn from a strategic, data-driven marketing leader with a track record of driving efficient growth. Subscribe to Marcom Mode and catch this insightful discussion with Alan Tam, packed with valuable advice for B2B marketers in the health tech industry.
#MarketingLeadership #HealthTechMarketing #CMOInsights #B2BMarketingStrategy #GrowthMarketing #EfficientGrowth #DataDrivenMarketing #DemandGeneration #EfficiencyInMarketing #MarcomMode #B2Bmarketing
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:11):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Marcom Mode, your podcast and webinar
series for marketing leaders who enjoy the challenge of driving growth for a
company but are overwhelmed by being expected to achieve the same or better
results with fewer resources.
With Marcom Mode, we bring you meaningful conversations with marketing and PR
leaders who can provide real-life examples of how to prioritize for success,
(00:37):
overcome common challenges, and build effective teams.
Of course, we also discuss what's working well in producing results while sharing
some best practices for generating three things that are most important to marketing
leaders, healthy pipeline, brand awareness, and of course, achieving revenue goals.
As always, I'm your host, Kristen Jones, and we're fortunate today because we
(00:59):
have a special guest, Alan Tam, who is the CMO at Actium Health,
a health IT company that's leading the way in and proactive patient engagement.
Now, Alan is an accomplished marketing leader. I've known him for a long time.
He has a deep skill set in product marketing, brand building,
and new business strategy for growth-oriented companies like Actium.
(01:20):
Welcome, Alan. We're lucky to have you. Thanks so much for joining.
Thanks, Kristen. Happy to be on this show. Really excited to start the conversation today.
Absolutely. Why don't we start by just having you take a minute it to tell us
about your current job and what you love most about your role in wine.
Sure, absolutely. So as you stated, I'm the chief marketing officer at a health
(01:43):
tech startup called Actium Health.
And my goal here when I joined the company was to really build out the marketing
team and function and then to scale it as the company continues to grow.
I'm really excited about this job because it's meaningful from the perspective
of being able to help patients and healthcare consumers get the care they need.
(02:08):
Today, we market to the non-clinical side of healthcare.
I think they are the unsung heroes, if you will, of healthcare when you talk about saving lives.
Typically, they're the providers, the actual physicians themselves.
But the non-clinical side of healthcare plays such a critical role in terms
(02:29):
of building those relationships with healthcare consumers, making sure that
they come in for the care that they need, and getting them in front of the providers.
As the healthcare industry continues to evolve and you look at value-based care,
a lot of what can be avoided can be achieved through wellness,
preventive services, and so forth.
(02:52):
So really, you know, marketing to my people, if you will, healthcare marketers,
a lot of the times, and helping them engage their audiences,
very similar to, you know, my job of engaging them.
So that's what I love most about my job. And it's just very meaningful that
I can talk to other marketers that are making a big impact in people's lives.
(03:18):
You know, as you were talking, I was thinking that's one of the things I love
about being on the agency side is that I'm always working with marketing fans, right?
I mean, my clients are marketing professionals.
And so there's always, you're always working with people who value marketing.
So that's always a plus when you're trying to get through the daily slog.
(03:41):
Absolutely. Now, as a marketing leader, of course, you know,
I'm sure we're all facing challenges in our, you know, in our roles,
especially in the economy right now.
But what are your biggest challenges as a marketing leader at Acme Impel?
And then, of course, you know, when you think about those challenges,
what's at stake if you don't find a solution?
Sure. I think with any marketer, regardless of the size of the organization
(04:04):
you're in, it's always budget prioritization, right?
Probably a little bit more true at a smaller startup like Actium Health,
but even amongst our clients, these are big hospital systems,
multi-billion dollar organizations.
They struggle with the same challenges of budget and prioritization.
You're always being pushed to do more with less, more with less.
(04:28):
And then as you continue to grow, How do you scale? And sometimes,
you know, your budgets are cut, but you're expected to do more.
So how do you achieve that balance?
And I think that is the biggest challenge for any marketer. The work in itself is fun.
(04:49):
It's not easy, but I think the rest of it is much easier to execute.
But as we take a step back, especially with a startup, how do we build the pipeline that we need?
Two, three, four quarters out. One of the key things that I always talk about,
(05:10):
whether I'm advising companies or interviewing or whatnot, marketing is a marathon. It's not a sprint.
I can make little impact to the current quarter. But if you're talking about
building a pipeline for next year, hell yeah.
That's what we're here for. And what's at stake is revenue and sustainability of the business.
(05:38):
I don't want to pat myself on the back, but I think marketers are the backbone.
You set things up so that sales and the rest of the organization can achieve those goals,
like bringing the right folks in, bringing the right audience in,
making sure that there is a healthy and large enough pipeline for sales to hit the revenue goal.
(06:04):
I'm not saying that That marketing is the most important function.
But oftentimes, this is what we're dealing with now in healthcare is marketing
is strictly viewed as a cost center rather than revenue generator.
And I think that idea and that concept needs to be switched.
(06:24):
Without marketing in a healthy pipeline, growth in revenue is not achievable
if you want to continue to grow at the pace that you need to grow to sustain the business.
Absolutely. So you talked about the challenge of budget cuts and having to do more with less.
Tackling that challenge right now, how are you trying to do more with less?
(06:47):
And how are you prioritizing your programs to achieve your healthy pipeline? line?
Right. So number one customer for marketing is sales, right?
So, you know, marketing is pretty classic. You have the funnel,
you have the sales organization.
When revenue is up to the right, no one complains about anything and everything
is happy despite all the inefficiencies, right?
(07:10):
So, you know, as I look at what we're doing, whether it's here at Actium Health or in my previous roles,
it's understanding the sales cycle and what is needed to help accelerate that
sales cycle all the way from top to bottom of that funnel.
(07:31):
And typically, if you track and measure everything, you kind of know where are
things taking the longest and what can you control as a marketer.
And this takes a lot of research, collaboration, communication, and understanding.
It's reading the market and understanding the market and your audience,
what their challenges are.
It's talking to your sales organization and just being in tune with what's working
(07:56):
for them and not and being agile enough to control that.
So, you know, as I look at the funnel, you have top, mid and bottom.
Is what's the slowest part? What part is most inefficient?
And that's kind of where I drive my investments is where can I help the most?
(08:18):
Where can the most impact be made?
And as you divvy up the funnel, it's also what type of content, what type of channels.
And it's going to be different. Every organization is a little bit different.
Every industry is a a little bit different.
But I think this goes to one of my core principles is everything in marketing
(08:39):
is data-driven and everything should be measured.
And as a startup, sometimes there's no data there and there's no baseline. That's okay.
You build a baseline. It doesn't take that long to build a baseline.
I think a quarter is sufficient to build a baseline.
And then there you have it. And you use that to continually improve and to measure what you're doing.
(09:05):
So that's kind of how I approach it in terms of budget prioritization.
What's working? Where's the greatest deficiency?
How can I accelerate revenue?
Very good. So currently, what are your top priorities for acting in health right
now out in terms of your KPIs?
(09:26):
What are you trying to achieve?
And you don't have to be specific about your KPIs, but on a broad level,
what are those KPIs and what does success look like in terms of achieving those priorities?
With any startup, it's always revenue. Without revenue, there's no growth.
(09:46):
My number one top-level metric, regardless of whether I'm at Actium Health or
anywhere else, it's pipeline.
Marketing is responsible for the entirety of the pipeline.
It should be responsible for the entirety of the pipeline. Everything that's
in the pipeline should be touched by marketing.
I'm not saying that all the leads that are generated and all the ops should
(10:07):
come directly inbound from marketing programs and marketing campaigns.
But even for leads and opportunities that don't come from marketing, there's a website.
There's data sheets and collateral and white papers.
All of those touch points are impacted and driven by marketing.
(10:30):
Marketing so you know revenue again
is the number one kpi and i
think that's the only kpi that really matters at the executive level and to
the board and to the street everything else when you talk about things like
click-through rates open rates that all maps up to that so that's my number
one priority at actium health and then again i break it down to the specific company and the
(10:57):
specific industry that I'm in to understand,
okay, how do I move the needle there?
And what we're selling at Actium Health, which is AI and it's a SaaS-based AI
product that helps healthcare identify their highest risk patients and drive them to care.
And with healthcare, I think they're behind in terms of technology adoption. option.
(11:23):
So one area of impact that I've been really focusing on is top of funnels,
education and awareness.
Few industries are as behind as healthcare. They're one of the,
I think, one of two industries that actually still use fax, for example.
And there are still a lot of billboards being used. There's still a lot of direct mail pieces.
(11:43):
And, you know, a lot of these health systems are just starting to implement
CRM technology today, which is like a technology that, you know,
came about, I think, started in the 1980s, right?
And they're still just now adopting that technology.
And so within healthcare there's a
significant need for education and awareness
(12:04):
what is possible and what healthcare needs to do in my opinion is not revolutionary
if they just look at any other industries they've already solved a lot of those
problems now true there's rules and regulations and and whatnot but the models
are there i'm not saying take the same model but
you customize it for what your particular needs are.
(12:26):
So I've been focusing a lot on education and awareness and helping healthcare
marketers understand the technology at play, especially because we are an AI company.
I'm sure that for those of you in the audience who are following AI technology
and Sam Altman in front of the Congress talking about AI and what's needed,
(12:47):
there's a lot of education that needs to
take place and it is about transparency
it is about understanding how the
technology works and i think the fear comes from not
understanding so this goes back to my area of focus to build the pipeline is
a lot of focusing on top of funnel around education and awareness and with that
(13:12):
how do you do that a lot of content helping people People explain and understand the technology.
What does it mean? What use cases? What you should be thinking about?
How does it work? And why is this important?
And this trickles down and drives a lot of the mid funnel content as well as
the bottom of funnel content as well.
(13:32):
I love that. We were talking about revenue being the ultimate goal, which it obviously is.
And I was listening to another podcast.
They talked about the three buckets that it should be a shared goal between marketing and sales.
And these are just general numbers. It would be specific by company.
(13:54):
But one-third should be marketing generated.
One-third should be outbound generated like a SDR or a BDR.
And then another third of that revenue should be relationships with the senior
salespeople or the executive team or the board of directors,
that type of relationship.
(14:16):
There's a lot of finger pointing in sales and marketing sometimes between like,
hey, I don't have enough leads or marketing didn't generate all the revenue
or sales doesn't have what it needs for marketing.
So I thought that was pretty interesting. And I wondered what your thoughts
were in terms of the other point that they made was that it's not a third, third, third.
(14:38):
It's a shared goal and that you should strive for those numbers.
But you're one team and you only do one quarter.
Someone will have two thirds or et cetera.
But I'm interested in your take on that, that dynamic of the split.
I'm really glad you brought that up because so many times in the past in my
career, it's like sales versus marketing or marketing versus another department
(15:02):
or sales versus another department.
And I think that's why...
I prefer startups and smaller companies. And you hit the nail on the head. It is one team.
It's one company. We live and die together.
And I go back to, you know, a lot of people use sports analogies for this, right?
(15:23):
And I use basketball for those of you in the audience that understand the game
of basketball. There's five players on the court.
And if you lose, it's not, oh, you know, the center didn't do his job and play
defense. Oh, the point guard didn't pass right, or this guard didn't make the
necessary number of baskets. It's not that.
(15:44):
It's you're a team. And even star players have off nights sometimes, and that's okay.
You pick up the slack and you continue to move forward as a team.
And so I think for me, that's why I always prefer smaller organizations where
it's focused less on the politics and finger pointing and focus more on the
goal and what can we do together.
(16:06):
And it's very similar to how I run and build my team. It's like,
I don't care if you messed up. I don't care what the problem is.
Come to me with the solution.
What are we going to do? What's done is done.
There's nothing that we can do about it. I was in the past. What's the solution moving forward?
And in terms of the splits that you shared i think
it's different by company by industry and whatnot
(16:28):
i've you know i've been lucky enough where the organizations i've been in marketing
has been responsible for generating the majority of the inbound uh leads and
also the revenue but again it's it's collaboration between sales between product
between the board between the executive team.
It's not a one person job, right?
(16:53):
It's, you know, especially in the sales organization was to say if sales fails,
the whole company fails, right product fails, you know, engineering fails to
deliver the whole company fails.
It's not it's a team and we each have our own unique area of special specialization.
And you have to work together. You got to do what you do best.
(17:14):
So I absolutely despise the versus and the finger pointing.
I think that's a very toxic environment, not only inter department,
but inter department as well.
And so that is one of my biggest pet peeves that I always try to address and
fix as quickly as possible. Because if you're not working together,
(17:35):
it's already challenging enough to run and build a business, right?
And if there's internal fighting, then I'd rather that energy be spent fighting
our competitors than your teammates. Right, absolutely.
So what problems get in the way? So the primary goal is building a pipeline
and achieving revenue goals.
(17:56):
So what problems generally get in the way of hitting those goals?
And perhaps you can provide an example of a problem that got in the way and
how you overcame it. Sure.
So, you know, budget is always the problem, but I think budget is the genesis of it.
And especially in the startup world, it's all about prioritization. Um.
(18:18):
You know, the fun and not so fun things about marketing typically is it's a very big department,
not necessarily from a personnel perspective, but from what marketing needs
to cover and what they need to address.
And something I always talk about is you go into any organization,
(18:41):
you ask, well, what is sales responsibility?
Well, sell at the revenue target. What is products responsibility?
Build and launch great products. What is marketing's responsibility?
It's like, oh, they do events. Oh, they do brand.
Oh, they generate leads. Oh, they build our website.
There's so much that marketing does, and especially at a smaller scale organization,
(19:04):
prioritization is key, right?
And especially when you have limited budget, you need to stay focused.
You need to understand what are the business objectives and making sure that
everything that you're doing ties to those business objectives.
You can't chase the shiny objects. Ooh, look, chat GPT, or oh,
(19:24):
here's this. Let's do that.
Understanding what is the biggest area of impact that is preventing you from
achieving your goal, which, you know, like bring it back to pipeline and revenue.
And to overcome this, it's all about measurement, right? It's marketing again.
It's everything is data-driven. The colors are not random.
(19:47):
The placement of the button is not random. It's not pulled out of the air because
Alan likes this color or likes a rounded button versus a more angular button.
Everything is tested and measured so we understand why
something is the way that it is and i
go back to it's okay if you don't have it measure it test it experiment
(20:08):
and that will help you prioritize
and understand where you can
make the biggest area of impact where are leads getting stuck
right so you know i'll share
with you examples of past is understanding
how the entire funnel moves what's the conversion rate
(20:28):
between you know an inbound lead to qualified lead
to sales qualified to op etc how much
time are folks spending in each of those
stages understanding that then you
can focus wow we're you know it's
taking way too long for folks to follow up on
these leads how can we shorten that time period what's
(20:49):
needed there is it you know more content is it
do we need to qualify the leads better before they come in why
is it you know understanding that can help you prioritize and
focus if the rest of the funnel is is a lot more efficient and so hopefully
you know that gives you a clear idea in terms of how i'm thinking about it is
(21:10):
again time to revenue where can i make the biggest impact the quickest.
And if you measure everything, then you know exactly where you should focus.
And sometimes it's this quarter, I'm going to focus on this piece.
And then you know what, you made a 20% improvement.
Great. Can we make another 20% next quarter?
(21:32):
Or is this good enough and let's focus on the other area? you
so to me it's pretty
straightforward from that perspective is just measurement and being able to
show and present that to your partners sales uh you know the board executive
team cs other you know product team this is what's working and this is what's
(21:54):
not and getting ideas from.
You know these your your internal partners i think are also very critical and
having that level of transparency here's how we're measuring stuff you know
and here's here are the results here is why i'm choosing to invest in this do
you guys agree here's the data behind it,
(22:15):
right so this goes back to your earlier uh
question about finger pointing it's like we're all
in this together i'm transparent i'm showing
you how i'm making my decisions you're involved in that process we
all agreed to align on this because we're trying to hit this goal
and if you don't agree that this is there
gonna we should focus on cool where should we focus
(22:37):
on and why and show me the data that
says we're gonna do that yeah i love that approach one of the things that you
mentioned is accelerating the sales funnel now we all know health care especially
in enterprise health care is a very long sales cycle and right now with the
economy and you know some of the financial problems healthcare is having right now,
(22:59):
that cycle is getting longer, like three to six months longer.
What has worked for you in terms of accelerating the funnel and accelerating those deals through?
I think it's you know content pieces i think moving people from the top to the
middle and even accelerating the middle has been something that we focused on.
(23:27):
The i think we've done a fantastic job currently on getting the champion finding
the right person and getting things to move forward.
There's other parts that we cannot control, which is like procurement, legal, security.
We just go into a...
(23:49):
It's funny. We just go into a inbox, right?
And the way that those departments that I've learned and have observed are working,
it's not by prioritization.
It's by first in, first out type of ordeal.
So you focus on what you can control, which is how quickly can I get the champion
to get the verbal, get the signature, ensure there's the rest of the procurement
(24:12):
process, and you control what you can control.
And you know obviously um getting
in ahead of time right getting into understanding when
physical planning happens understanding um
you know within health care one of the things that we're also experimenting
(24:32):
with are things like risk-based pricing and can we you know is that something
that can accelerate the opportunity um pilots um you know uh to kind of prove use cases proof
points and then automatically transition over to
to an agreement assuming we hit specific milestones um you know those are things
(24:55):
that we're experimenting with um but you know going back to what we can control
it's the continuation of proof points I think mid-funnel um case studies.
Right and evangelists of your
product and your services those go a
(25:17):
long way right health care oftentimes everything is
by referral it's a very small world everyone knows everyone in in health care
so you know how can we leverage our existing clients to you know evangelize
and to share our message because that's more powerful than anything that we can ever say and that has
(25:39):
typically helped a lot in terms of you know the top and
the mid funnels um and so that's been
one of the areas that we've specifically been focused on yeah the idea of you
know having your champion identifying your champion is really important the
other piece that i think you would agree with is that you know arming that champion
(26:02):
you know that champion has to sell things internally too.
So arming that champion with the content he or she needs to sell internally.
I was reading somewhere about they had a champion and they sent him an email
and he just forwarded it.
So making sure that if we're going to send an email that we think that the champion
(26:24):
is just going to forward,
write the email for the champion to send under his own name or her name and
help them, you know, have the talking points that they need internally to make the sell.
Absolutely. I think you make a great point. And there's a lot of examples that
are out there, especially with the example that comes to top of mind are often conferences.
(26:50):
You know, I know that Adobe conferences, they do a fantastic job of doing that
under, you know, if you go to whatever conferences they have, why should you attend?
And they actually have a template already ready in terms of that
you can start with literally to floor
to your boss in terms of hey i should attend this adobe conference the
(27:10):
letter's already written now now with chat gpt you
may not need that anymore um but you know
that's that's exactly right what you're saying is how can
you help anticipate and help your champion overcome
internal challenges that they're dealing with
yeah and they're already busy doing a million other things
you know if you can help them have the presentation in a box then
(27:32):
that they can just prep with you and then go and sell it internally that's really
useful absolutely um so tell us one thing that you know your job is to generate
revenue and build pipeline what's the one thing that you think has worked best
for you to produce results.
(27:54):
Yeah. So one thing that we experimented with and it's really taken off is actually
a podcast called Hello Healthcare.
That was born out of the fact that we're doing a lot of LinkedIn webinars,
which we didn't find very effective for many different reasons.
(28:14):
And we toyed with the idea, oh what if we did a podcast and that that has really
been fruitful um our podcast hello healthcare has been out for less than two
years it'll be two years in august and we've had over.
33 000 downloads and um
(28:37):
our average listens per episode
is over 700 hundred uh at the
moment and the reason why we started this podcast was
born out of you know when we had this idea when
we're doing webinars it was i would
say that still the first half of
the pandemic everyone's webinared out and no
(28:59):
one wants to be in front of the screen anymore and so what we did
with the podcast as well you know maybe the fact that
you know when you have to pay attention and watch something
you typically don't watch and pay attention but if i could listen and
work um it would be you know
something that people would be more open to or even
it's funny i've you know some of the folks i've talked to that listen to our
(29:20):
podcast oh i just i just uh listen to it when i when i cook um or you know for
those that do have to go to the office which is health care you know they listen
on it can uh on the commute which is what i typically do a lesson podcast on a commute.
It really took off and it was really necessary because when we started to build this out,
(29:44):
It was, our approach to podcasts was a little bit different.
And there were a lot of other healthcare podcasts that were out there,
but typically they're more conversational, very similar to this in nature.
And ours is conversational as well. But we really wanted to boil it down to
what are some of the key highlights.
And we focus on shorter podcasts. Typically, they're around 30 minutes, plus or minus.
(30:11):
And we focus on what do healthcare leaders want to know? What do they want to hear about?
And who do they want to hear this content from, these topics from?
And so we work with a lot of healthcare leaders.
It's for them, by them, if you will.
And it's been very fruitful. We focus on best practices. We focus on challenges.
(30:36):
We focus on very similar, a lot of the topics that we're talking about here,
but specifically around healthcare.
Care um so that's been
again amazing the growth has been like a
hockey stick um and um where
it's we work exclusively with uh h hpms as well as hcic where they're exclusive
(31:00):
podcasters we produce the podcast in conjunction with them we have on-site recordings
that provide video component um as well as a audio component.
And that's been very great for us from the perspective of not only top of funnel demand gen,
but also directly with the leaders that I have the opportunity to speak with
(31:25):
as well and understanding what are their challenges and are there areas that we can help with.
And that's kind of how I position it. And then the last thing I'll talk to talk
about on Hello Healthcare is.
There's so many stories. There's so many amazing things that folks are doing.
I want to build a platform for that community to showcase and talk about how they're innovating.
(31:53):
Because more of healthcare needs to do that.
And when you go to conferences, especially in the midst of the pandemic,
one, there's no conferences.
Two, even as we're ramping back up, I think we're getting close back to pre-pandemic levels.
But it's still very limited. that not everyone can travel to these conferences.
(32:13):
So what better way than to provide a platform like a podcast to get their stories
out and to share and to educate the rest of the market?
And the more educated the folks are, I think it's a greater opportunity for
everyone, including Actium Health.
And I'll just say that I have started listening to podcasts about two years
(32:38):
ago, And it was actually my kids
that got me into podcasts, listening to podcasts, because as we all know,
my kids are 20 and 17, and they've been listening to podcasts since like ninth grade.
And so they they
(33:00):
can as we all know they consume information very differently
than we did or we're
used to doing and they start sharing information with me via youtube they learn
so much on youtube they learn so much on their podcast they share their podcasts
with me and so on our road trips we would listen to their podcasts and i'm like
(33:22):
oh this is pretty entertaining.
And so then I started listening to podcasts while I worked out.
And I agree. It's something that you can, um.
Consume while you're doing something else you
know so then for me one of the things is when i work out
in the morning i don't feel guilty if i get if it takes me an extra hour to
(33:43):
work out or you know if i miss an hour of work because i'm actually working
as i'm listening to a marketing or sales related podcast so i'm like hey this
counts right yeah so i think that's great that the podcast is doing so well?
And do you feel that it's contributing to revenue and pipeline gains?
(34:05):
Yes, absolutely. So a lot of our opportunities actually come from the guests themselves.
But the beauty of the podcast is it generates a lot of content, right?
It's not the podcast, just the audio podcast. There's a video element as well.
There's also the transcript, which also then turns into blogs and then there's
(34:28):
also syndication and so it's the content that keeps on giving and that transcript
and that content helps with seo so it's it's it's uh.
It's like a swiss army right it's it's one thing that actually keeps on giving and giving in terms
of content pieces and different types of distribution channel it's been phenomenal
(34:52):
not only in in terms of our our audience but also on linkedin it's generated a great engagement,
like i said the seo component and all the additional blogs and content pieces
that we've been able to create uh from uh from from these uh interviews and
(35:16):
conversations that has led to,
us building a healthy pipeline it's like the quickest way i think to the dm the decision maker,
uh especially when the guests are interested um and it's that's the direct you
know i'm like i'm like a sdr in that sense and finding these folks to talk to
(35:38):
and seeing if they're interested and
what their challenges are and talking about how we can help and they become
interested and then here we go, let's go.
So I think it's been extremely successful.
One of the most successful things that I've done and have experimented with
is my first podcast venture.
(35:59):
And I think it's paid off in spades in terms of being able to build a pipeline.
Point any best
practices if you were going to give advice to another person who's trying to
be or moving into a role as a vice president of marketing or a cmo at a high
(36:20):
growth company what three pieces of advice or best practices would you share,
One, measure everything, right? Data-driven, that's my number one thing is measure everything.
You have to understand the impact of everything that you're doing.
You have to be able to back up everything that you're doing and show.
(36:41):
Don't tell what's working, show what's working, what's not. And people won't
question you because it's in the data there.
So that's advice number one. Vice number two, especially as you're moving up
in the corporate ladder or moving up in marketing or any leadership,
(37:02):
is be a student of marketing.
The one thing I also really enjoy about marketing is that it's not stagnant.
It's evolving so fast. You're a student of marketing.
You're not a marketing expert. And so having that mindset, I think,
(37:22):
comes a long way in terms of being a good leader,
building the right team, and just also being a good executive,
being a student of marketing.
And then the third piece of advice I would say is, I'm a very frugal marketer.
(37:44):
It goes back to marketing as a cost center. It's like, don't overinvest,
don't overspend. And really understand where your dollars are making the most impact.
Be more conservative because not everyone understands marketing, even your boss.
(38:04):
So stretch those dollars and just be more conservative.
And that, I think, helps tremendously in terms of being able to focus and prioritize
on the right things that make the most impact.
Giving you, you know, greater longevity as well.
(38:26):
I think the word of the day right now is efficient growth.
So that's something that a lot of marketing leaders are talking about.
It used to be grow at all costs, but now everyone's really focused on growing
efficiently and making sure that, like you said,
they're evaluating which programs are working and doubling down on those and
(38:48):
cutting the ones that aren't.
Absolutely. I think that's true of everything, especially state of the economy, the evolution of AI.
And if we talk about Actium Health and what we do, it is that.
It's find your highest risk patients, get those patients in first.
(39:10):
And this resonates tremendously with me and why I'm here at the company.
It's, what if I had a technology that told me, Alan, these are the leads that
have budget ready to spend now. They want to buy now.
You should probably contact these leads first versus these other leads.
Their fiscal is not starting until end of year, blah, blah, blah. Yeah.
(39:34):
These are the things you should focus on now, right? It's like,
why wouldn't I want to do that?
I love that you're talking about the company you're working with is focused
on using AI in marketing.
I mean, they're ahead of the game of any of, probably all of us marketers.
But I would be curious what your thoughts for marketing B2B tech is and how
(39:57):
AI is going to transform that.
And if you and your team are using AI right now in your daily work.
Yeah, I think AI is going to be awesome.
I'm a huge embracer of technology, but it's also the Wild West right now in the world of AI.
It's understanding of, we've all experimented, I'm sure, with ChatGPT and OpenAI
(40:20):
and all these other AI technologies. I think it's a great starting point.
I think it helps marketers from a, not just marketers, I think business and
B2B business just operate more efficiently.
I think where the technology is today, based on what we've played with it,
and we have used it, it's a starting point.
It's not a final delivery mechanism right i'm not a content producer or content writer by heart,
(40:51):
and i'm sure compared to you i have
significantly more writer's blocks right but ai technology like chat gpt is
a great helper for you know helping me overcome those writer blocks right it
generates a framework or some ideas oh yes okay that's a good good point and
that's a good area to focus on,
(41:12):
but it's not going to create the content that i that i want and for those of
us that had played around with it especially depending on the type of content
pieces you're trying to generate it's not.
Unique there's no soul in terms of what it creates and there's no context and
what people don't understand about AI, and this is what Sam Altman talks about,
(41:35):
is where's the data coming from?
The AI is only as good as the data, assuming your algorithms is built correctly.
So your data sources have to be true. The data sources have to be what you need them to be.
(41:55):
And it's not. It's not today. day right um but i think it's a great starting
point i think in b2b you're going to see more of that i think people are fascinated
but it's not really it's cool but we've been using ai for,
quite some time right siri alexa all
these other technologies ways ways is
(42:17):
a great example i was commuting the other day and for
those of you that are not familiar with ways it's like uh it's like google maps
actually google bought ways and it's a socially driven traffic app right and
it redirects you based on traffic and oftentimes most of us that use it blindly follow the,
(42:40):
redirects around traffic and that's all based on data but there are times where i know that,
i think it was yesterday where it's like yeah you're showing red burgundy now
but i know by By the time I get there and I know which lanes to take,
it will actually be faster than if you took me off the highway and I want to be stuck behind lights.
(43:02):
And by the time I got there, I also saw the off-ramp was super backed up.
So again, where's the data source coming from? data sources coming from all
those devices and tracking times on those devices and not understanding context
and all these other intricacies that us as humans have the,
ability to decipher and i think context is going to be the biggest challenge for ai,
(43:31):
i'm not sure how quickly it'll get there um but i i don't know if that's something that AI can solve.
Right. Well, I'm a fan of ways too. We like to mark the police officers and
roadside hazards and things like that.
(43:51):
A couple of ways that I used AI in my day-to-day work is I created a new profile
picture for myself for LinkedIn.
I was like, okay, do I want to get all dressed up and schlep out and do a photo shoot and all of that?
And I said, how about I spend $40 and upload 25 photos?
(44:14):
And I got, I don't know, I think 90 shots back. And of the 90,
there was like one or two that I'm like, okay, these would be,
these look like me enough.
I mean, are they perfect? No, but they look like me enough that I could use it as a profile photo.
And I didn't have to buy a new outfit because it created clothes for me.
Now, would have I picked that outfit? Absolutely not.
(44:38):
But it's good enough for the photo. So I've done that.
And then the other thing that I found useful, and you might try it like this,
is like uploading an audio, like the podcast, uploading audio,
and then it'll summarize it and give you some like hot quotes.
So it's good, like notes, you know, like speaker notes in your podcast or episode notes.
(45:03):
So that's been efficient for me. I mean, obviously I have to look at it,
make sure it's accurate, but they've been pretty accurate.
Written so those are two ways that i
found useful and of course you know
when you're writing something one of our clients can
only say something so many different ways and
you're like oh my gosh this is almost the same fresh release i've written five
(45:24):
times so wait how can i say this differently so that's been helpful to come
up and it's never worked out that i can put in a paragraph and have how to rewrite
the paragraph and the paragraph's perfect.
It's never been that, but I've been like, oh, those are some good words I could
use to edit this paragraph.
(45:44):
So that's been useful. I think the other thing I've tried is like, obviously.
I've tried using it to write blogs. And what I've learned as I've experimented
with it, is it gives you actually fascinating insight in terms of what is out
there on the web and what's missing, right? You try to refine it, it refines.
(46:06):
That's not quite what I want to say. No, that's not quite what I want to say.
It's like, I want it to say something around this.
And no matter how you try to tweak it, it's just the data's not out there, right?
So if you're building new technologies and you're coming up with something new,
again, where's the data source, right? The data source is the World Wide Web.
And so it's always, at least from my experience so far, the content is always generic.
(46:34):
It's not unique. There's no soul. There's no voice.
And oftentimes, if you're trying to write content that differentiates you from
everyone that's out there.
It can't do that right it just it just doesn't know
because it doesn't have that data right it doesn't have the data that you have
to to create that content um so i think that's a deficiency but in terms of
(46:58):
i think what what you said um a framework a starting point i think it's fantastic
right if i'm trying to like uh you know i want to create a blog that talks about,
abc um it may give you some a good framework in terms of oh yeah i want to talk
about these kind three key topic areas or whatnot but i would say it gets you
(47:19):
at best maybe 20 of the way there right.
So I got to tell you, so we do lots of road trips and on one of our research
on our road trip from bringing my son home from college, he was playing with chat G.E.T.
And he would put in funny prompts and I wouldn't know what the prompts were.
(47:42):
Right. So he would put in this prompt and then he'd have me read it in like
an entertaining voice, whatever the whatever was generated. incinerated.
The first thing he did was pretend you're President Biden and give me a speech,
about cheese, you know, and so I'm reading, but I don't know it's about cheese,
(48:02):
right? I don't know that was the prompt.
And so then I start reading it and I'm like, did you tell him to have a speech about cheese?
You know, and he's like, yeah, so it was really funny. And then he tried to
do it for president trump you know and he's like now pretend that you're president trump and,
say something you know give a speech about cheese and throw in random things
(48:26):
about the wall building the wall okay and so i didn't know again what the prompt
was right but i it was onto the cheese by now you know and so now i'm reading
it and it's completely different in the that Donald Trump voice,
you know, and his mannerisms. Yes.
All these things that are great about cheese, you know, an American cheese is
(48:50):
the best because it's American.
And then it says, but you know, what's not amazing, you know,
and then it goes into this whole diatribe about immigration,
you know, and I was just. Freaking hilarious.
And I was like, okay, so.
I just bring that up because, A, I thought it was fun to experiment that way.
(49:11):
But I also, my son says that the way that he and his friends are experimenting
is doing funny things like this.
Or trying to trick, like, they'll say, what's 2 plus 2?
And then it'll say 5. And they'll, no, it's not, it's 4.
And they'll, oh, I'm sorry, no, my workers show it, 2 plus 2 equals 5.
(49:34):
No, you're wrong, it's 4. so they're trying and then eventually they'll use
the chatbot enough that they'll the chatbot would be oh you're right it is for
you know so they're trying to train it with bad information,
that is interesting yeah so how do you decipher that right so i mean the web
(49:54):
out there there's good and bad information right yeah it's hard enough for us as humans oftentimes to
decipher that so how is ai gonna decipher that you know i you know the first
thought that comes to mind is you know there is nutritional information as an
example right there's just.
Yeah everything that's that's out there it's like what is ai gonna tell you
(50:16):
right right i think i did my math wrong there two plus two is four and they'd
say it's no it's five whatever i think i right but you know you've got to just
yeah i thought that's interesting that you know we're And they are using it
some for their school work.
And of course, I'm telling my son, be careful, because they can tell when something's
AI generated, you can't just be having it right on your feet, you know.
(50:39):
So it's been an interesting conversation between not only professionals,
but also a younger generation. Right. All right.
So we talked about team building.
So tell me about how you build out a team.
One of your objectives was to build out a marketing team. So how do you build a successful team?
(50:59):
And tell me a little bit about how your team's structured in terms of in-house,
outsourced, et cetera. Yeah.
Sure. So these, you know, I do team building based on three things,
I guess, three principles for me. One is trust and empowerment.
This goes back to my philosophy of student of marketing, which is,
(51:20):
I always tell my teams, if I'm not the dumbest person in the room,
then I've hired the wrong people.
Right? And I truly believe that. It's like, I want experts. I brought you on
board because I expect you to know more than me.
Right if i know more than you it's like well why do i need to hire you so trust
and empowerment empowering my teams and believing in them and um being a coach
(51:43):
uh to help them be successful.
Second principle is collaboration right this
goes to goes back to what we said earlier it's not versus it's
always we're working together we're one team so
if you don't have that concept you're out um and
then the third piece is the culture and that really focuses around
work ethic this is something that's the hardest piece to find especially when
(52:11):
you're trying to hire folks is the work ethic piece um it's just nowadays i
feel like it's really hard to find people who are,
hard working i don't know why i mean
i have my speculations but those are that's that's
that's a soft skill that's harder to find but that's
(52:32):
how i build my team is based on those three principles trust empowerment collaboration
and then culture as it relates to work ethic um in terms of how i structure
the teams um in-house versus up outsource it really depends on the organization
i'm at and what I'm trying to do in general.
I try to find talent that is complementary to myself and to other folks that are on my team.
(53:00):
I think other things that I think about when I'm building a team is coverage
and succession planning.
In case someone leaves, in case someone gets hit by a bus, I want to make sure
we're covered at least temporarily. early, right?
So, you know, the department and the company doesn't go to craft.
(53:21):
And then in terms of in-house versus outsource, it's what am I trying to achieve?
Right and that depends on the company and in
the industry in general um how
i think about it is i want anything that's martech related
the stack demand gen martech i'd like
(53:41):
to have in the house i mean these are just working with the it folks managing
reporting running things it's just much more efficient and easy and i think
from a privacy security issue it's just in-house is easier I think operations
is another piece that I typically do in-house.
(54:02):
And then a lot of the content, I like to do as much of it in-house as possible,
especially from the initial generation side.
Just because if you have a more complex technical product engagement with the
product team, the engineering team,
(54:23):
it's just easier to get that off the ground internally, at least initially,
than having that outsourced.
So I think from an agency perspective, content agencies like yourself are really
helpful if they're in the same industry.
But to produce something from scratch on a brand new technology into a market,
(54:49):
I think is, again, time to market is going to be slower through an agency from that perspective.
But once you have a baseline of content, then an agency can really help expand
that tremendously and scale that.
(55:09):
I think the genesis of it, having it internally is super helpful.
So Martech, kind of operate Martech slash demand gen ops, and at least initial
content in house or typically, if I'm building from scratch,
which I've done, those are the typically the things I want to start in house.
(55:29):
And then agencies would be PR, design, things like that.
Very good. All right. Well, these have been some really great insights.
I know we're right up on the hour, so I want to be conscious of your time.
It's been a great conversation, Alan, as usual.
(55:50):
And I think, I know I learned a lot and I think everyone listening will hopefully
have learned a lot as well.
So again, I appreciate you being on the show and would love to do it again sometime,
maybe even go more into metrics.
To everyone listening, thank you for checking out Marcom mode and our podcast and webinar series.
And make sure you subscribe. We're on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
(56:13):
or wherever you listen to your podcasts, you can find us. We're on YouTube as well.
But before you take off, Alan, what's the best way for people to connect with you?
Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. And I really enjoy our conversation.
People can find me on LinkedIn.
You can insert my LinkedIn profile on the show notes if you'd like,
(56:34):
Kristen. I think it's slash and the Allen Tam on LinkedIn.
And I'm always happy to meet and speak with other marketers or business folks. Awesome.
And thanks to everyone for listening. Until next time, remember one of my favorite
marketing tips, listen to your customers, not your competitors,
(56:54):
and you will build great things.
So go get it. Thank you.
Music.
Music.
(00:11):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Marcom Mode, your podcast and webinar
series for marketing leaders who enjoy the challenge of driving growth for a
company but are overwhelmed by being expected to achieve the same or better
results with fewer resources.
With Marcom Mode, we bring you meaningful conversations with marketing and PR
leaders who can provide real-life examples of how to prioritize for success,
(00:37):
overcome common challenges, and build effective teams.
Of course, we also discuss what's working well in producing results while sharing
some best practices for generating three things that are most important to marketing
leaders, healthy pipeline, brand awareness, and of course, achieving revenue goals.
As always, I'm your host, Kristen Jones, and we're fortunate today because we
(00:59):
have a special guest, Alan Tam, who is the CMO at Actium Health,
a health IT company that's leading the way in and proactive patient engagement.
Now, Alan is an accomplished marketing leader. I've known him for a long time.
He has a deep skill set in product marketing, brand building,
and new business strategy for growth-oriented companies like Actium.
(01:20):
Welcome, Alan. We're lucky to have you. Thanks so much for joining.
Thanks, Kristen. Happy to be on this show. Really excited to start the conversation today.
Absolutely. Why don't we start by just having you take a minute it to tell us
about your current job and what you love most about your role in wine.
Sure, absolutely. So as you stated, I'm the chief marketing officer at a health
(01:43):
tech startup called Actium Health.
And my goal here when I joined the company was to really build out the marketing
team and function and then to scale it as the company continues to grow.
I'm really excited about this job because it's meaningful from the perspective
of being able to help patients and healthcare consumers get the care they need.
(02:08):
Today, we market to the non-clinical side of healthcare.
I think they are the unsung heroes, if you will, of healthcare when you talk about saving lives.
Typically, they're the providers, the actual physicians themselves.
But the non-clinical side of healthcare plays such a critical role in terms
(02:29):
of building those relationships with healthcare consumers, making sure that
they come in for the care that they need, and getting them in front of the providers.
As the healthcare industry continues to evolve and you look at value-based care,
a lot of what can be avoided can be achieved through wellness,
preventive services, and so forth.
(02:52):
So really, you know, marketing to my people, if you will, healthcare marketers,
a lot of the times, and helping them engage their audiences,
very similar to, you know, my job of engaging them.
So that's what I love most about my job. And it's just very meaningful that
I can talk to other marketers that are making a big impact in people's lives.
(03:18):
You know, as you were talking, I was thinking that's one of the things I love
about being on the agency side is that I'm always working with marketing fans, right?
I mean, my clients are marketing professionals.
And so there's always, you're always working with people who value marketing.
So that's always a plus when you're trying to get through the daily slog.
(03:41):
Absolutely. Now, as a marketing leader, of course, you know,
I'm sure we're all facing challenges in our, you know, in our roles,
especially in the economy right now.
But what are your biggest challenges as a marketing leader at Acme Impel?
And then, of course, you know, when you think about those challenges,
what's at stake if you don't find a solution?
Sure. I think with any marketer, regardless of the size of the organization
(04:04):
you're in, it's always budget prioritization, right?
Probably a little bit more true at a smaller startup like Actium Health,
but even amongst our clients, these are big hospital systems,
multi-billion dollar organizations.
They struggle with the same challenges of budget and prioritization.
You're always being pushed to do more with less, more with less.
(04:28):
And then as you continue to grow, How do you scale? And sometimes,
you know, your budgets are cut, but you're expected to do more.
So how do you achieve that balance?
And I think that is the biggest challenge for any marketer. The work in itself is fun.
(04:49):
It's not easy, but I think the rest of it is much easier to execute.
But as we take a step back, especially with a startup, how do we build the pipeline that we need?
Two, three, four quarters out. One of the key things that I always talk about,
(05:10):
whether I'm advising companies or interviewing or whatnot, marketing is a marathon. It's not a sprint.
I can make little impact to the current quarter. But if you're talking about
building a pipeline for next year, hell yeah.
That's what we're here for. And what's at stake is revenue and sustainability of the business.
(05:38):
I don't want to pat myself on the back, but I think marketers are the backbone.
You set things up so that sales and the rest of the organization can achieve those goals,
like bringing the right folks in, bringing the right audience in,
making sure that there is a healthy and large enough pipeline for sales to hit the revenue goal.
(06:04):
I'm not saying that That marketing is the most important function.
But oftentimes, this is what we're dealing with now in healthcare is marketing
is strictly viewed as a cost center rather than revenue generator.
And I think that idea and that concept needs to be switched.
(06:24):
Without marketing in a healthy pipeline, growth in revenue is not achievable
if you want to continue to grow at the pace that you need to grow to sustain the business.
Absolutely. So you talked about the challenge of budget cuts and having to do more with less.
Tackling that challenge right now, how are you trying to do more with less?
(06:47):
And how are you prioritizing your programs to achieve your healthy pipeline? line?
Right. So number one customer for marketing is sales, right?
So, you know, marketing is pretty classic. You have the funnel,
you have the sales organization.
When revenue is up to the right, no one complains about anything and everything
is happy despite all the inefficiencies, right?
(07:10):
So, you know, as I look at what we're doing, whether it's here at Actium Health or in my previous roles,
it's understanding the sales cycle and what is needed to help accelerate that
sales cycle all the way from top to bottom of that funnel.
(07:31):
And typically, if you track and measure everything, you kind of know where are
things taking the longest and what can you control as a marketer.
And this takes a lot of research, collaboration, communication, and understanding.
It's reading the market and understanding the market and your audience,
what their challenges are.
It's talking to your sales organization and just being in tune with what's working
(07:56):
for them and not and being agile enough to control that.
So, you know, as I look at the funnel, you have top, mid and bottom.
Is what's the slowest part? What part is most inefficient?
And that's kind of where I drive my investments is where can I help the most?
(08:18):
Where can the most impact be made?
And as you divvy up the funnel, it's also what type of content, what type of channels.
And it's going to be different. Every organization is a little bit different.
Every industry is a a little bit different.
But I think this goes to one of my core principles is everything in marketing
(08:39):
is data-driven and everything should be measured.
And as a startup, sometimes there's no data there and there's no baseline. That's okay.
You build a baseline. It doesn't take that long to build a baseline.
I think a quarter is sufficient to build a baseline.
And then there you have it. And you use that to continually improve and to measure what you're doing.
(09:05):
So that's kind of how I approach it in terms of budget prioritization.
What's working? Where's the greatest deficiency?
How can I accelerate revenue?
Very good. So currently, what are your top priorities for acting in health right
now out in terms of your KPIs?
(09:26):
What are you trying to achieve?
And you don't have to be specific about your KPIs, but on a broad level,
what are those KPIs and what does success look like in terms of achieving those priorities?
With any startup, it's always revenue. Without revenue, there's no growth.
(09:46):
My number one top-level metric, regardless of whether I'm at Actium Health or
anywhere else, it's pipeline.
Marketing is responsible for the entirety of the pipeline.
It should be responsible for the entirety of the pipeline. Everything that's
in the pipeline should be touched by marketing.
I'm not saying that all the leads that are generated and all the ops should
(10:07):
come directly inbound from marketing programs and marketing campaigns.
But even for leads and opportunities that don't come from marketing, there's a website.
There's data sheets and collateral and white papers.
All of those touch points are impacted and driven by marketing.
(10:30):
Marketing so you know revenue again
is the number one kpi and i
think that's the only kpi that really matters at the executive level and to
the board and to the street everything else when you talk about things like
click-through rates open rates that all maps up to that so that's my number
one priority at actium health and then again i break it down to the specific company and the
(10:57):
specific industry that I'm in to understand,
okay, how do I move the needle there?
And what we're selling at Actium Health, which is AI and it's a SaaS-based AI
product that helps healthcare identify their highest risk patients and drive them to care.
And with healthcare, I think they're behind in terms of technology adoption. option.
(11:23):
So one area of impact that I've been really focusing on is top of funnels,
education and awareness.
Few industries are as behind as healthcare. They're one of the,
I think, one of two industries that actually still use fax, for example.
And there are still a lot of billboards being used. There's still a lot of direct mail pieces.
(11:43):
And, you know, a lot of these health systems are just starting to implement
CRM technology today, which is like a technology that, you know,
came about, I think, started in the 1980s, right?
And they're still just now adopting that technology.
And so within healthcare there's a
significant need for education and awareness
(12:04):
what is possible and what healthcare needs to do in my opinion is not revolutionary
if they just look at any other industries they've already solved a lot of those
problems now true there's rules and regulations and and whatnot but the models
are there i'm not saying take the same model but
you customize it for what your particular needs are.
(12:26):
So I've been focusing a lot on education and awareness and helping healthcare
marketers understand the technology at play, especially because we are an AI company.
I'm sure that for those of you in the audience who are following AI technology
and Sam Altman in front of the Congress talking about AI and what's needed,
(12:47):
there's a lot of education that needs to
take place and it is about transparency
it is about understanding how the
technology works and i think the fear comes from not
understanding so this goes back to my area of focus to build the pipeline is
a lot of focusing on top of funnel around education and awareness and with that
(13:12):
how do you do that a lot of content helping people People explain and understand the technology.
What does it mean? What use cases? What you should be thinking about?
How does it work? And why is this important?
And this trickles down and drives a lot of the mid funnel content as well as
the bottom of funnel content as well.
(13:32):
I love that. We were talking about revenue being the ultimate goal, which it obviously is.
And I was listening to another podcast.
They talked about the three buckets that it should be a shared goal between marketing and sales.
And these are just general numbers. It would be specific by company.
(13:54):
But one-third should be marketing generated.
One-third should be outbound generated like a SDR or a BDR.
And then another third of that revenue should be relationships with the senior
salespeople or the executive team or the board of directors,
that type of relationship.
(14:16):
There's a lot of finger pointing in sales and marketing sometimes between like,
hey, I don't have enough leads or marketing didn't generate all the revenue
or sales doesn't have what it needs for marketing.
So I thought that was pretty interesting. And I wondered what your thoughts
were in terms of the other point that they made was that it's not a third, third, third.
(14:38):
It's a shared goal and that you should strive for those numbers.
But you're one team and you only do one quarter.
Someone will have two thirds or et cetera.
But I'm interested in your take on that, that dynamic of the split.
I'm really glad you brought that up because so many times in the past in my
career, it's like sales versus marketing or marketing versus another department
(15:02):
or sales versus another department.
And I think that's why...
I prefer startups and smaller companies. And you hit the nail on the head. It is one team.
It's one company. We live and die together.
And I go back to, you know, a lot of people use sports analogies for this, right?
(15:23):
And I use basketball for those of you in the audience that understand the game
of basketball. There's five players on the court.
And if you lose, it's not, oh, you know, the center didn't do his job and play
defense. Oh, the point guard didn't pass right, or this guard didn't make the
necessary number of baskets. It's not that.
(15:44):
It's you're a team. And even star players have off nights sometimes, and that's okay.
You pick up the slack and you continue to move forward as a team.
And so I think for me, that's why I always prefer smaller organizations where
it's focused less on the politics and finger pointing and focus more on the
goal and what can we do together.
(16:06):
And it's very similar to how I run and build my team. It's like,
I don't care if you messed up. I don't care what the problem is.
Come to me with the solution.
What are we going to do? What's done is done.
There's nothing that we can do about it. I was in the past. What's the solution moving forward?
And in terms of the splits that you shared i think
it's different by company by industry and whatnot
(16:28):
i've you know i've been lucky enough where the organizations i've been in marketing
has been responsible for generating the majority of the inbound uh leads and
also the revenue but again it's it's collaboration between sales between product
between the board between the executive team.
It's not a one person job, right?
(16:53):
It's, you know, especially in the sales organization was to say if sales fails,
the whole company fails, right product fails, you know, engineering fails to
deliver the whole company fails.
It's not it's a team and we each have our own unique area of special specialization.
And you have to work together. You got to do what you do best.
(17:14):
So I absolutely despise the versus and the finger pointing.
I think that's a very toxic environment, not only inter department,
but inter department as well.
And so that is one of my biggest pet peeves that I always try to address and
fix as quickly as possible. Because if you're not working together,
(17:35):
it's already challenging enough to run and build a business, right?
And if there's internal fighting, then I'd rather that energy be spent fighting
our competitors than your teammates. Right, absolutely.
So what problems get in the way? So the primary goal is building a pipeline
and achieving revenue goals.
(17:56):
So what problems generally get in the way of hitting those goals?
And perhaps you can provide an example of a problem that got in the way and
how you overcame it. Sure.
So, you know, budget is always the problem, but I think budget is the genesis of it.
And especially in the startup world, it's all about prioritization. Um.
(18:18):
You know, the fun and not so fun things about marketing typically is it's a very big department,
not necessarily from a personnel perspective, but from what marketing needs
to cover and what they need to address.
And something I always talk about is you go into any organization,
(18:41):
you ask, well, what is sales responsibility?
Well, sell at the revenue target. What is products responsibility?
Build and launch great products. What is marketing's responsibility?
It's like, oh, they do events. Oh, they do brand.
Oh, they generate leads. Oh, they build our website.
There's so much that marketing does, and especially at a smaller scale organization,
(19:04):
prioritization is key, right?
And especially when you have limited budget, you need to stay focused.
You need to understand what are the business objectives and making sure that
everything that you're doing ties to those business objectives.
You can't chase the shiny objects. Ooh, look, chat GPT, or oh,
(19:24):
here's this. Let's do that.
Understanding what is the biggest area of impact that is preventing you from
achieving your goal, which, you know, like bring it back to pipeline and revenue.
And to overcome this, it's all about measurement, right? It's marketing again.
It's everything is data-driven. The colors are not random.
(19:47):
The placement of the button is not random. It's not pulled out of the air because
Alan likes this color or likes a rounded button versus a more angular button.
Everything is tested and measured so we understand why
something is the way that it is and i
go back to it's okay if you don't have it measure it test it experiment
(20:08):
and that will help you prioritize
and understand where you can
make the biggest area of impact where are leads getting stuck
right so you know i'll share
with you examples of past is understanding
how the entire funnel moves what's the conversion rate
(20:28):
between you know an inbound lead to qualified lead
to sales qualified to op etc how much
time are folks spending in each of those
stages understanding that then you
can focus wow we're you know it's
taking way too long for folks to follow up on
these leads how can we shorten that time period what's
(20:49):
needed there is it you know more content is it
do we need to qualify the leads better before they come in why
is it you know understanding that can help you prioritize and
focus if the rest of the funnel is is a lot more efficient and so hopefully
you know that gives you a clear idea in terms of how i'm thinking about it is
(21:10):
again time to revenue where can i make the biggest impact the quickest.
And if you measure everything, then you know exactly where you should focus.
And sometimes it's this quarter, I'm going to focus on this piece.
And then you know what, you made a 20% improvement.
Great. Can we make another 20% next quarter?
(21:32):
Or is this good enough and let's focus on the other area? you
so to me it's pretty
straightforward from that perspective is just measurement and being able to
show and present that to your partners sales uh you know the board executive
team cs other you know product team this is what's working and this is what's
(21:54):
not and getting ideas from.
You know these your your internal partners i think are also very critical and
having that level of transparency here's how we're measuring stuff you know
and here's here are the results here is why i'm choosing to invest in this do
you guys agree here's the data behind it,
(22:15):
right so this goes back to your earlier uh
question about finger pointing it's like we're all
in this together i'm transparent i'm showing
you how i'm making my decisions you're involved in that process we
all agreed to align on this because we're trying to hit this goal
and if you don't agree that this is there
gonna we should focus on cool where should we focus
(22:37):
on and why and show me the data that
says we're gonna do that yeah i love that approach one of the things that you
mentioned is accelerating the sales funnel now we all know health care especially
in enterprise health care is a very long sales cycle and right now with the
economy and you know some of the financial problems healthcare is having right now,
(22:59):
that cycle is getting longer, like three to six months longer.
What has worked for you in terms of accelerating the funnel and accelerating those deals through?
I think it's you know content pieces i think moving people from the top to the
middle and even accelerating the middle has been something that we focused on.
(23:27):
The i think we've done a fantastic job currently on getting the champion finding
the right person and getting things to move forward.
There's other parts that we cannot control, which is like procurement, legal, security.
We just go into a...
(23:49):
It's funny. We just go into a inbox, right?
And the way that those departments that I've learned and have observed are working,
it's not by prioritization.
It's by first in, first out type of ordeal.
So you focus on what you can control, which is how quickly can I get the champion
to get the verbal, get the signature, ensure there's the rest of the procurement
(24:12):
process, and you control what you can control.
And you know obviously um getting
in ahead of time right getting into understanding when
physical planning happens understanding um
you know within health care one of the things that we're also experimenting
(24:32):
with are things like risk-based pricing and can we you know is that something
that can accelerate the opportunity um pilots um you know uh to kind of prove use cases proof
points and then automatically transition over to
to an agreement assuming we hit specific milestones um you know those are things
(24:55):
that we're experimenting with um but you know going back to what we can control
it's the continuation of proof points I think mid-funnel um case studies.
Right and evangelists of your
product and your services those go a
(25:17):
long way right health care oftentimes everything is
by referral it's a very small world everyone knows everyone in in health care
so you know how can we leverage our existing clients to you know evangelize
and to share our message because that's more powerful than anything that we can ever say and that has
(25:39):
typically helped a lot in terms of you know the top and
the mid funnels um and so that's been
one of the areas that we've specifically been focused on yeah the idea of you
know having your champion identifying your champion is really important the
other piece that i think you would agree with is that you know arming that champion
(26:02):
you know that champion has to sell things internally too.
So arming that champion with the content he or she needs to sell internally.
I was reading somewhere about they had a champion and they sent him an email
and he just forwarded it.
So making sure that if we're going to send an email that we think that the champion
(26:24):
is just going to forward,
write the email for the champion to send under his own name or her name and
help them, you know, have the talking points that they need internally to make the sell.
Absolutely. I think you make a great point. And there's a lot of examples that
are out there, especially with the example that comes to top of mind are often conferences.
(26:50):
You know, I know that Adobe conferences, they do a fantastic job of doing that
under, you know, if you go to whatever conferences they have, why should you attend?
And they actually have a template already ready in terms of that
you can start with literally to floor
to your boss in terms of hey i should attend this adobe conference the
(27:10):
letter's already written now now with chat gpt you
may not need that anymore um but you know
that's that's exactly right what you're saying is how can
you help anticipate and help your champion overcome
internal challenges that they're dealing with
yeah and they're already busy doing a million other things
you know if you can help them have the presentation in a box then
(27:32):
that they can just prep with you and then go and sell it internally that's really
useful absolutely um so tell us one thing that you know your job is to generate
revenue and build pipeline what's the one thing that you think has worked best
for you to produce results.
(27:54):
Yeah. So one thing that we experimented with and it's really taken off is actually
a podcast called Hello Healthcare.
That was born out of the fact that we're doing a lot of LinkedIn webinars,
which we didn't find very effective for many different reasons.
(28:14):
And we toyed with the idea, oh what if we did a podcast and that that has really
been fruitful um our podcast hello healthcare has been out for less than two
years it'll be two years in august and we've had over.
33 000 downloads and um
(28:37):
our average listens per episode
is over 700 hundred uh at the
moment and the reason why we started this podcast was
born out of you know when we had this idea when
we're doing webinars it was i would
say that still the first half of
the pandemic everyone's webinared out and no
(28:59):
one wants to be in front of the screen anymore and so what we did
with the podcast as well you know maybe the fact that
you know when you have to pay attention and watch something
you typically don't watch and pay attention but if i could listen and
work um it would be you know
something that people would be more open to or even
it's funny i've you know some of the folks i've talked to that listen to our
(29:20):
podcast oh i just i just uh listen to it when i when i cook um or you know for
those that do have to go to the office which is health care you know they listen
on it can uh on the commute which is what i typically do a lesson podcast on a commute.
It really took off and it was really necessary because when we started to build this out,
(29:44):
It was, our approach to podcasts was a little bit different.
And there were a lot of other healthcare podcasts that were out there,
but typically they're more conversational, very similar to this in nature.
And ours is conversational as well. But we really wanted to boil it down to
what are some of the key highlights.
And we focus on shorter podcasts. Typically, they're around 30 minutes, plus or minus.
(30:11):
And we focus on what do healthcare leaders want to know? What do they want to hear about?
And who do they want to hear this content from, these topics from?
And so we work with a lot of healthcare leaders.
It's for them, by them, if you will.
And it's been very fruitful. We focus on best practices. We focus on challenges.
(30:36):
We focus on very similar, a lot of the topics that we're talking about here,
but specifically around healthcare.
Care um so that's been
again amazing the growth has been like a
hockey stick um and um where
it's we work exclusively with uh h hpms as well as hcic where they're exclusive
(31:00):
podcasters we produce the podcast in conjunction with them we have on-site recordings
that provide video component um as well as a audio component.
And that's been very great for us from the perspective of not only top of funnel demand gen,
but also directly with the leaders that I have the opportunity to speak with
(31:25):
as well and understanding what are their challenges and are there areas that we can help with.
And that's kind of how I position it. And then the last thing I'll talk to talk
about on Hello Healthcare is.
There's so many stories. There's so many amazing things that folks are doing.
I want to build a platform for that community to showcase and talk about how they're innovating.
(31:53):
Because more of healthcare needs to do that.
And when you go to conferences, especially in the midst of the pandemic,
one, there's no conferences.
Two, even as we're ramping back up, I think we're getting close back to pre-pandemic levels.
But it's still very limited. that not everyone can travel to these conferences.
(32:13):
So what better way than to provide a platform like a podcast to get their stories
out and to share and to educate the rest of the market?
And the more educated the folks are, I think it's a greater opportunity for
everyone, including Actium Health.
And I'll just say that I have started listening to podcasts about two years
(32:38):
ago, And it was actually my kids
that got me into podcasts, listening to podcasts, because as we all know,
my kids are 20 and 17, and they've been listening to podcasts since like ninth grade.
And so they they
(33:00):
can as we all know they consume information very differently
than we did or we're
used to doing and they start sharing information with me via youtube they learn
so much on youtube they learn so much on their podcast they share their podcasts
with me and so on our road trips we would listen to their podcasts and i'm like
(33:22):
oh this is pretty entertaining.
And so then I started listening to podcasts while I worked out.
And I agree. It's something that you can, um.
Consume while you're doing something else you
know so then for me one of the things is when i work out
in the morning i don't feel guilty if i get if it takes me an extra hour to
(33:43):
work out or you know if i miss an hour of work because i'm actually working
as i'm listening to a marketing or sales related podcast so i'm like hey this
counts right yeah so i think that's great that the podcast is doing so well?
And do you feel that it's contributing to revenue and pipeline gains?
(34:05):
Yes, absolutely. So a lot of our opportunities actually come from the guests themselves.
But the beauty of the podcast is it generates a lot of content, right?
It's not the podcast, just the audio podcast. There's a video element as well.
There's also the transcript, which also then turns into blogs and then there's
(34:28):
also syndication and so it's the content that keeps on giving and that transcript
and that content helps with seo so it's it's it's uh.
It's like a swiss army right it's it's one thing that actually keeps on giving and giving in terms
of content pieces and different types of distribution channel it's been phenomenal
(34:52):
not only in in terms of our our audience but also on linkedin it's generated a great engagement,
like i said the seo component and all the additional blogs and content pieces
that we've been able to create uh from uh from from these uh interviews and
(35:16):
conversations that has led to,
us building a healthy pipeline it's like the quickest way i think to the dm the decision maker,
uh especially when the guests are interested um and it's that's the direct you
know i'm like i'm like a sdr in that sense and finding these folks to talk to
(35:38):
and seeing if they're interested and
what their challenges are and talking about how we can help and they become
interested and then here we go, let's go.
So I think it's been extremely successful.
One of the most successful things that I've done and have experimented with
is my first podcast venture.
(35:59):
And I think it's paid off in spades in terms of being able to build a pipeline.
Point any best
practices if you were going to give advice to another person who's trying to
be or moving into a role as a vice president of marketing or a cmo at a high
(36:20):
growth company what three pieces of advice or best practices would you share,
One, measure everything, right? Data-driven, that's my number one thing is measure everything.
You have to understand the impact of everything that you're doing.
You have to be able to back up everything that you're doing and show.
(36:41):
Don't tell what's working, show what's working, what's not. And people won't
question you because it's in the data there.
So that's advice number one. Vice number two, especially as you're moving up
in the corporate ladder or moving up in marketing or any leadership,
(37:02):
is be a student of marketing.
The one thing I also really enjoy about marketing is that it's not stagnant.
It's evolving so fast. You're a student of marketing.
You're not a marketing expert. And so having that mindset, I think,
(37:22):
comes a long way in terms of being a good leader,
building the right team, and just also being a good executive,
being a student of marketing.
And then the third piece of advice I would say is, I'm a very frugal marketer.
(37:44):
It goes back to marketing as a cost center. It's like, don't overinvest,
don't overspend. And really understand where your dollars are making the most impact.
Be more conservative because not everyone understands marketing, even your boss.
(38:04):
So stretch those dollars and just be more conservative.
And that, I think, helps tremendously in terms of being able to focus and prioritize
on the right things that make the most impact.
Giving you, you know, greater longevity as well.
(38:26):
I think the word of the day right now is efficient growth.
So that's something that a lot of marketing leaders are talking about.
It used to be grow at all costs, but now everyone's really focused on growing
efficiently and making sure that, like you said,
they're evaluating which programs are working and doubling down on those and
(38:48):
cutting the ones that aren't.
Absolutely. I think that's true of everything, especially state of the economy, the evolution of AI.
And if we talk about Actium Health and what we do, it is that.
It's find your highest risk patients, get those patients in first.
(39:10):
And this resonates tremendously with me and why I'm here at the company.
It's, what if I had a technology that told me, Alan, these are the leads that
have budget ready to spend now. They want to buy now.
You should probably contact these leads first versus these other leads.
Their fiscal is not starting until end of year, blah, blah, blah. Yeah.
(39:34):
These are the things you should focus on now, right? It's like,
why wouldn't I want to do that?
I love that you're talking about the company you're working with is focused
on using AI in marketing.
I mean, they're ahead of the game of any of, probably all of us marketers.
But I would be curious what your thoughts for marketing B2B tech is and how
(39:57):
AI is going to transform that.
And if you and your team are using AI right now in your daily work.
Yeah, I think AI is going to be awesome.
I'm a huge embracer of technology, but it's also the Wild West right now in the world of AI.
It's understanding of, we've all experimented, I'm sure, with ChatGPT and OpenAI
(40:20):
and all these other AI technologies. I think it's a great starting point.
I think it helps marketers from a, not just marketers, I think business and
B2B business just operate more efficiently.
I think where the technology is today, based on what we've played with it,
and we have used it, it's a starting point.
It's not a final delivery mechanism right i'm not a content producer or content writer by heart,
(40:51):
and i'm sure compared to you i have
significantly more writer's blocks right but ai technology like chat gpt is
a great helper for you know helping me overcome those writer blocks right it
generates a framework or some ideas oh yes okay that's a good good point and
that's a good area to focus on,
(41:12):
but it's not going to create the content that i that i want and for those of
us that had played around with it especially depending on the type of content
pieces you're trying to generate it's not.
Unique there's no soul in terms of what it creates and there's no context and
what people don't understand about AI, and this is what Sam Altman talks about,
(41:35):
is where's the data coming from?
The AI is only as good as the data, assuming your algorithms is built correctly.
So your data sources have to be true. The data sources have to be what you need them to be.
(41:55):
And it's not. It's not today. day right um but i think it's a great starting
point i think in b2b you're going to see more of that i think people are fascinated
but it's not really it's cool but we've been using ai for,
quite some time right siri alexa all
these other technologies ways ways is
(42:17):
a great example i was commuting the other day and for
those of you that are not familiar with ways it's like uh it's like google maps
actually google bought ways and it's a socially driven traffic app right and
it redirects you based on traffic and oftentimes most of us that use it blindly follow the,
(42:40):
redirects around traffic and that's all based on data but there are times where i know that,
i think it was yesterday where it's like yeah you're showing red burgundy now
but i know by By the time I get there and I know which lanes to take,
it will actually be faster than if you took me off the highway and I want to be stuck behind lights.
(43:02):
And by the time I got there, I also saw the off-ramp was super backed up.
So again, where's the data source coming from? data sources coming from all
those devices and tracking times on those devices and not understanding context
and all these other intricacies that us as humans have the,
ability to decipher and i think context is going to be the biggest challenge for ai,
(43:31):
i'm not sure how quickly it'll get there um but i i don't know if that's something that AI can solve.
Right. Well, I'm a fan of ways too. We like to mark the police officers and
roadside hazards and things like that.
(43:51):
A couple of ways that I used AI in my day-to-day work is I created a new profile
picture for myself for LinkedIn.
I was like, okay, do I want to get all dressed up and schlep out and do a photo shoot and all of that?
And I said, how about I spend $40 and upload 25 photos?
(44:14):
And I got, I don't know, I think 90 shots back. And of the 90,
there was like one or two that I'm like, okay, these would be,
these look like me enough.
I mean, are they perfect? No, but they look like me enough that I could use it as a profile photo.
And I didn't have to buy a new outfit because it created clothes for me.
Now, would have I picked that outfit? Absolutely not.
(44:38):
But it's good enough for the photo. So I've done that.
And then the other thing that I found useful, and you might try it like this,
is like uploading an audio, like the podcast, uploading audio,
and then it'll summarize it and give you some like hot quotes.
So it's good, like notes, you know, like speaker notes in your podcast or episode notes.
(45:03):
So that's been efficient for me. I mean, obviously I have to look at it,
make sure it's accurate, but they've been pretty accurate.
Written so those are two ways that i
found useful and of course you know
when you're writing something one of our clients can
only say something so many different ways and
you're like oh my gosh this is almost the same fresh release i've written five
(45:24):
times so wait how can i say this differently so that's been helpful to come
up and it's never worked out that i can put in a paragraph and have how to rewrite
the paragraph and the paragraph's perfect.
It's never been that, but I've been like, oh, those are some good words I could
use to edit this paragraph.
(45:44):
So that's been useful. I think the other thing I've tried is like, obviously.
I've tried using it to write blogs. And what I've learned as I've experimented
with it, is it gives you actually fascinating insight in terms of what is out
there on the web and what's missing, right? You try to refine it, it refines.
(46:06):
That's not quite what I want to say. No, that's not quite what I want to say.
It's like, I want it to say something around this.
And no matter how you try to tweak it, it's just the data's not out there, right?
So if you're building new technologies and you're coming up with something new,
again, where's the data source, right? The data source is the World Wide Web.
And so it's always, at least from my experience so far, the content is always generic.
(46:34):
It's not unique. There's no soul. There's no voice.
And oftentimes, if you're trying to write content that differentiates you from
everyone that's out there.
It can't do that right it just it just doesn't know
because it doesn't have that data right it doesn't have the data that you have
to to create that content um so i think that's a deficiency but in terms of
(46:58):
i think what what you said um a framework a starting point i think it's fantastic
right if i'm trying to like uh you know i want to create a blog that talks about,
abc um it may give you some a good framework in terms of oh yeah i want to talk
about these kind three key topic areas or whatnot but i would say it gets you
(47:19):
at best maybe 20 of the way there right.
So I got to tell you, so we do lots of road trips and on one of our research
on our road trip from bringing my son home from college, he was playing with chat G.E.T.
And he would put in funny prompts and I wouldn't know what the prompts were.
(47:42):
Right. So he would put in this prompt and then he'd have me read it in like
an entertaining voice, whatever the whatever was generated. incinerated.
The first thing he did was pretend you're President Biden and give me a speech,
about cheese, you know, and so I'm reading, but I don't know it's about cheese,
(48:02):
right? I don't know that was the prompt.
And so then I start reading it and I'm like, did you tell him to have a speech about cheese?
You know, and he's like, yeah, so it was really funny. And then he tried to
do it for president trump you know and he's like now pretend that you're president trump and,
say something you know give a speech about cheese and throw in random things
(48:26):
about the wall building the wall okay and so i didn't know again what the prompt
was right but i it was onto the cheese by now you know and so now i'm reading
it and it's completely different in the that Donald Trump voice,
you know, and his mannerisms. Yes.
All these things that are great about cheese, you know, an American cheese is
(48:50):
the best because it's American.
And then it says, but you know, what's not amazing, you know,
and then it goes into this whole diatribe about immigration,
you know, and I was just. Freaking hilarious.
And I was like, okay, so.
I just bring that up because, A, I thought it was fun to experiment that way.
(49:11):
But I also, my son says that the way that he and his friends are experimenting
is doing funny things like this.
Or trying to trick, like, they'll say, what's 2 plus 2?
And then it'll say 5. And they'll, no, it's not, it's 4.
And they'll, oh, I'm sorry, no, my workers show it, 2 plus 2 equals 5.
(49:34):
No, you're wrong, it's 4. so they're trying and then eventually they'll use
the chatbot enough that they'll the chatbot would be oh you're right it is for
you know so they're trying to train it with bad information,
that is interesting yeah so how do you decipher that right so i mean the web
(49:54):
out there there's good and bad information right yeah it's hard enough for us as humans oftentimes to
decipher that so how is ai gonna decipher that you know i you know the first
thought that comes to mind is you know there is nutritional information as an
example right there's just.
Yeah everything that's that's out there it's like what is ai gonna tell you
(50:16):
right right i think i did my math wrong there two plus two is four and they'd
say it's no it's five whatever i think i right but you know you've got to just
yeah i thought that's interesting that you know we're And they are using it
some for their school work.
And of course, I'm telling my son, be careful, because they can tell when something's
AI generated, you can't just be having it right on your feet, you know.
(50:39):
So it's been an interesting conversation between not only professionals,
but also a younger generation. Right. All right.
So we talked about team building.
So tell me about how you build out a team.
One of your objectives was to build out a marketing team. So how do you build a successful team?
(50:59):
And tell me a little bit about how your team's structured in terms of in-house,
outsourced, et cetera. Yeah.
Sure. So these, you know, I do team building based on three things,
I guess, three principles for me. One is trust and empowerment.
This goes back to my philosophy of student of marketing, which is,
(51:20):
I always tell my teams, if I'm not the dumbest person in the room,
then I've hired the wrong people.
Right? And I truly believe that. It's like, I want experts. I brought you on
board because I expect you to know more than me.
Right if i know more than you it's like well why do i need to hire you so trust
and empowerment empowering my teams and believing in them and um being a coach
(51:43):
uh to help them be successful.
Second principle is collaboration right this
goes to goes back to what we said earlier it's not versus it's
always we're working together we're one team so
if you don't have that concept you're out um and
then the third piece is the culture and that really focuses around
work ethic this is something that's the hardest piece to find especially when
(52:11):
you're trying to hire folks is the work ethic piece um it's just nowadays i
feel like it's really hard to find people who are,
hard working i don't know why i mean
i have my speculations but those are that's that's
that's a soft skill that's harder to find but that's
(52:32):
how i build my team is based on those three principles trust empowerment collaboration
and then culture as it relates to work ethic um in terms of how i structure
the teams um in-house versus up outsource it really depends on the organization
i'm at and what I'm trying to do in general.
I try to find talent that is complementary to myself and to other folks that are on my team.
(53:00):
I think other things that I think about when I'm building a team is coverage
and succession planning.
In case someone leaves, in case someone gets hit by a bus, I want to make sure
we're covered at least temporarily. early, right?
So, you know, the department and the company doesn't go to craft.
(53:21):
And then in terms of in-house versus outsource, it's what am I trying to achieve?
Right and that depends on the company and in
the industry in general um how
i think about it is i want anything that's martech related
the stack demand gen martech i'd like
(53:41):
to have in the house i mean these are just working with the it folks managing
reporting running things it's just much more efficient and easy and i think
from a privacy security issue it's just in-house is easier I think operations
is another piece that I typically do in-house.
(54:02):
And then a lot of the content, I like to do as much of it in-house as possible,
especially from the initial generation side.
Just because if you have a more complex technical product engagement with the
product team, the engineering team,
(54:23):
it's just easier to get that off the ground internally, at least initially,
than having that outsourced.
So I think from an agency perspective, content agencies like yourself are really
helpful if they're in the same industry.
But to produce something from scratch on a brand new technology into a market,
(54:49):
I think is, again, time to market is going to be slower through an agency from that perspective.
But once you have a baseline of content, then an agency can really help expand
that tremendously and scale that.
(55:09):
I think the genesis of it, having it internally is super helpful.
So Martech, kind of operate Martech slash demand gen ops, and at least initial
content in house or typically, if I'm building from scratch,
which I've done, those are the typically the things I want to start in house.
(55:29):
And then agencies would be PR, design, things like that.
Very good. All right. Well, these have been some really great insights.
I know we're right up on the hour, so I want to be conscious of your time.
It's been a great conversation, Alan, as usual.
(55:50):
And I think, I know I learned a lot and I think everyone listening will hopefully
have learned a lot as well.
So again, I appreciate you being on the show and would love to do it again sometime,
maybe even go more into metrics.
To everyone listening, thank you for checking out Marcom mode and our podcast and webinar series.
And make sure you subscribe. We're on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
(56:13):
or wherever you listen to your podcasts, you can find us. We're on YouTube as well.
But before you take off, Alan, what's the best way for people to connect with you?
Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. And I really enjoy our conversation.
People can find me on LinkedIn.
You can insert my LinkedIn profile on the show notes if you'd like,
(56:34):
Kristen. I think it's slash and the Allen Tam on LinkedIn.
And I'm always happy to meet and speak with other marketers or business folks. Awesome.
And thanks to everyone for listening. Until next time, remember one of my favorite
marketing tips, listen to your customers, not your competitors,
(56:54):
and you will build great things.
So go get it. Thank you.
Music.
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