June 26, 2019 • 34 mins
In this episode of the FINITE B2B marketing in technology podcast, we sit down with Oren Greenberg.
Oren is an experienced on demand chief marketing officer and growth marketer working with a number of growing tech scale ups & corporate innovation projects.
Our host Alex Price sits down with Oren to talk about everything from growth hacking to hiring the right marketing team to balancing data and performance marketing.
Visit finite.community to find out more about the FINITE community and join a future event.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, welcome back to the finite podcast today.
I'm really looking forward tositting down with Orrin
Greenberg.
Oren is a super talentedeffectively on demand.
Chief marketing officer, whogoes into all kinds of tech,
startups, scale-ups B2B andenterprise SAS.
He's got loads of experienceworking across a whole load of
(00:28):
different types of company.
He started out in animation andproduction, product management,
strong SEO foundations.
And he's one of those peoplethat whenever I see him, he's
just got his hand in all thelatest tools and technology.
And he's got a serious growthhackers mindset.
Like he's always thinking abouthow to achieve new levels of
growth.
(00:48):
So I'm looking forward to seeingdown Sam talking about, about
data creativity, how the twothings work together.
And yeah, I hope you enjoy theepisode.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
The finite community and podcasts are kindly
supported by nine three X, thedigital agency working
exclusively with ambitious fastgrowth B2B technology companies
visit[inaudible] agency to findout about how they partner with
marketing team and B2Btechnology companies to drive
digital growth.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Hey Aaron, thanks for joining me.
We're a pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
I'm looking forward to
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Interesting conversation.
We've got lots to talk aboutgrowth, hacking data, databases,
creativity, the skills of themodern marketer.
Yeah, there's a lot there, but Iguess as always, you want to
start with just a quick intro asto what you've been up to, what
you do now, how you got herewill be interesting stuff.
Oh, actually cycled on the lineto get here, which is pretty
(01:46):
cool.
They learn your electrical bikein Brussels the other day when
I'm exac I was playing aroundwith the scooters and that was a
lot of fun as well.
Nice.
And it's illegal here.
Um, so yeah, a little bit moreabout my, uh, professional
background, I suppose, but I,funny enough, I used to start as
a, started out as an animatorback in the day and then moved
on to wink bingo, which to pickit up, search marketing, SEO,
(02:10):
and PPC, and then moved on totouch local, which, uh, received
about 6 million from bulletin.
That was very interesting inbusiness.
Then I moved onto Wonga.
She was probably the moreinfamous of some of the brands
that I've worked with.
And probably one of the morecontroversial I headed up search
marketing there as well.
Are they still, I think oncompletely.
Yeah.
They've liquidated at times.
(02:30):
Wow.
That's how you look at it, butyeah.
Yes.
And then I moved to kind of amore independent advisory role.
And since then I've worked withlots of different footsie, two
fifties cannon Investec bank.
HomeServe then also differentfunded startups in the FinTech
space.
But now I work as a kind of ahybrid of advisor consultant and
I build little teams, littleNinja teams and growth teams, I
(02:53):
suppose, try and deliver resultsfor clients.
So, you know, building up thetech stack, bringing in
specialists, resources, workingsome fantastic agencies already
really great WordPress agency, Icould recommend to you.
Thank you very much.
No worries.
Yeah.
And that's pretty much what I donow.
So kind of, um, all the way fromthe very strategic as a non-exec
yeah.
Through the very tacticalmanaging specific channels for
clients with differentspecialists resource
Speaker 4 (03:14):
And lots of B2B tech experience, I know as well
ranging from, I guess, startups,SAS, some enterprise stuff too.
Maybe.
Um, whenever I see alwaysplaying with a new tool or piece
of marketing,
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I love my mother.
He knows only 7,200 of them toplay with.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Exactly.
Yeah.
It's enough to keep you busy.
So yeah, we've got a lot tocover, I guess we going to start
by talking about this somewhatinfamous phrase now of growth
hacking to term that this isquite widely used.
We were talking before weclicked record about how the
word growth in itself can meanquite a few different things
sometimes, but growth hacking's.
(03:54):
Yeah.
I guess sometimes it's got abetter stick from the community,
from LinkedIn, from the worldaround it.
I think it just means differentthings to different people, but
in terms of what it means to youand the kind of growth hacking
framework, talk me through it.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Yeah, sure.
So funny enough, I recently Iwas approached by Skillshare to
produce a course on growthhacking.
So obviously once theyapproached me, I was like, okay,
I should probably really learnwhat this is.
So I deep delve into it, um,really taught to lots of
different practitioners in thespace to understand it.
And then a lot more depth.
I feel like I've got prettydecent grasp of it now.
And I think the misconceptionaround that is because of the
(04:29):
word hacking, I think that'screated this skew and this
assumption that actually you'rehacking your way to growth.
So sort of dodgy or unscrupulousway, we're kind of breaking
every GDPR rule in the book.
But in reality, the concept ofgrowth was actually about rapid
scaling and that's where it hadshifted.
But fundamentally growth hackingis a, is a hybrid of a
philosophy and methodology, butalso structured.
(04:50):
It gives you some tools to tryand prioritize experimentation.
Yeah.
I think the core principle ofgrowth hacking, which is
interesting, which most peopledon't understand is a shift in
the team structure.
So if you look at mostbusinesses now, you know, you
look at engineering and then oneside of the building and one
department, you know, your datateam and they're in another one,
you'd talk to the product team.
Then another one that yourmarketing is in another one.
And then they kind of have thesegroup meetings, but what's
(05:10):
really shifted some of thesereally interesting businesses
like Pinterest and some of theseother really rapidly growing
ones like Uber, et cetera, isthere's actually one core team.
And there's a representativewhich each of those functions
and they're in this new createddepartment, which is driving
growth.
So it's actually a much moreholistic approach structurally
rather than this siloed approachthat was, is currently kind of
(05:30):
very common,
Speaker 4 (05:32):
The growth role.
I mean, we've seen growth, asyou say, describe an analyst
role I've seen now I've got afriend that's working in growth,
but actually that's pretty muchjust sales.
It's outbound sales.
I guess there's a whole load ofroles which broadly contribute
to the growth of the business,but mean such different things.
I guess, growth hacking camefrom like a very data-driven
(05:54):
performance marketing birth, Iguess, is that, is that to say
that she came in more
Speaker 3 (05:58):
From a product birth, so actually looked at how you
build a referral incentive intothe product.
Okay.
And I think the best example ofthat is like Dropbox, you know,
so rather than spending a lot ofmoney on media acquisition,
which is usually anunsustainable, your cost per
acquisition, your return oninvestment long-term how do you
actually get people to referDropbox to their friends?
And then your CPA is baked intothe product and you get these
(06:19):
viral group, they call it viralgrowth loops.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Interesting.
Okay.
So the growth role, I guessthese days, there's always going
to be some degree of data withinit.
I know that you spend a lot oftime and are working on a side
kind of project and product toreally help people hire the best
marketer for their businesses.
I think you also had some datawhich maybe you can run through
(06:43):
about data and data analysis anddata management skills being
kind of the most sought afterhard scale for marketers, I
guess, digital marketers, butmaybe marketers more generally,
what does the modern kind ofgrowth hacking skillset look
like?
Cause I think I still have a bitof a vision of a growth hacker
being like a 21 year old kid inthat bedroom, in the dark kind
(07:03):
of like just doing whatever theycan to bring in new clients or
sell things or whatever ittakes.
Obviously these days it's inbigger organizations, it's much
more established and there'ssome proper process behind it,
but what does it a growth teamlook like?
And what are the skillsetswithin it?
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Because there's two breeds of growth hacker.
There's a 21 year olds in thegarage and you can actually see
them quite prolific on LinkedInwith a status up as in the funny
videos.
And I actually speak to some ofthem.
I spoke to one of them the otherday and it's actually very
ambitious, but just a bit, um, abit clueless, a bit lost in the
commercial world.
And they kind of think about itmore like a 21 year old thinks
about Instagram and trying toget as many likes rather than
(07:40):
actually deep business Griff,like, you know, serious
movement.
And then you've got the originalgrowth hackers, which is, uh,
you know, uh, Andrew Chan and,um, arguably Neil Patel and some
of these guys like Sean Ellis.
And you can find a lot that, youknow, community like the growth
conference in the U S andthere's, you know, some of the
biggest minds and growth ofthem, they go to conferences and
the, you know, the, fromMailChimp to infusion soft to
(08:04):
other SAS B2B softwareproviders.
So yeah, growth is the growthteam, the growth hem hybrids
kind interesting ones.
So when I speak to a lot ofdifferent heads of growth and I
asked them, what's frustratingyou in your current workplace,
yeah.
They talked about this siloabout how growth isn't full
funnel.
They want to have more ownershipover the product.
They want to be more integratedinto engineering.
(08:24):
And I think that creates thisdouble edge sword because now
you're developing new skills andnew attitudes and you need new
knowledge.
That goes a lot deeper than justmarketing, but then you also
have to stay on top ofmarketing, which is incredibly
challenging, especially as theMarTech landscape continues to
proliferate as this constantfeature changes in different
channels.
Like LinkedIn now has this newlook alike audience or targeting
is improving that you have tostay on top of that.
(08:45):
You have to experiment with that.
There's this constant conflictabout how it pulls growth into
these different areas in thebusiness.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Yeah.
Interesting.
So what's the current kind ofstate of play versus how do you
see it progressing?
Like, is there someorganizations that are had
compared to others and they'vegot growth teams?
What should, you know, the siloshave been broken down, maybe not
completely, but are well ontheir way.
And you know, those kinds ofstructures you've just described
exist, but I guess a lot of theclients that we work with, we
see those silos quite evidently.
(09:15):
And I think it's only with acertain type of person kind of
at the top or leadership teamthat these things can be broken
down.
Like it's almost like there'sone, there's one key hire or
there's a kind of a championwithin, that's kind of
pioneering a new way of thinkingabout how these teams are
structured.
Yeah.
I mean, what, how do you thinkit will pan out over the years
(09:35):
ahead?
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, so I think it's a very slow progressive boiling.
And I think as the temperatureincreases and the performance
pressure increases, thesebusinesses need to find new,
innovative ways to findsolutions and strategies.
And I am a lot of CMOs I speakto and lots of heads of growth.
I speak to, they're frustratedabout these items about the
cultural shift that needs tohappen.
And in larger organizations,definitely the more mature ones
and whether the businesses I wasworking in, they had 13
(09:57):
different CRMs and then 13different CRMs.
Yeah.
So how, um, how does the head ofgrowth, how does a person owns
marketing even have clear enoughdata to attribute success on
marketing qualified leads?
And then how is that evolving?
But so the thinking, if youthink about SAS specifically,
B2B, that thinking is evolvingfrom marketing qualified leads,
(10:18):
sales qualified leads towardssomething called PQL is product
qualified leads.
So how do I get more free trialsin the product?
And then how do I try and getthem to be a paying customer?
Right?
So it's evolving in terms of thephilosophical view of product
marketing.
And then you've got thiscultural forces inside these
businesses and these differentsilos with lots of different
people in growth.
They're finding verychallenging.
I think the UK is definitelylagging behind in terms of the,
(10:40):
the cultural adaptation and whatit had for us.
Yeah.
The us is leading by far, but Ithink so I think cultural is one
issue, but I think there's amassive shortage of China in the
UK.
So one of the biggest issuesCMOs have, this is like a, for
sure, it's recently done by thelight.
And they found that the biggestpain point for CMOs is finding
good talent.
So in a way you kind of, you'vegot this, these existing people
(11:00):
who are owning it, and they'resaying, I'm frustrated with the
culture.
I'm frustrated.
They don't have the right tools.
I'm frustrated that I'm notempowered.
Then you've got the CMO saying,I can't find good people.
And it's quite interestingbecause they're both true.
It's a slide.
This is a very fragmentedlandscape.
There isn't a clear answers anddifferent companies that like
light years ahead.
And some companies are stillstruggling even with basic
digital transformation andthey're 10, 15 years behind
(11:22):
other businesses.
So it's a very fragmentedbecause different businesses
have different legacies in termsof software, uh, legal
implication.
Some of them are veryconstricted because FCA
regulated and FinTech, right.
And then you can really see thiswith like, you know, HSBC 4,500
cake internal systems versusMonzo is not kicking off with
too many new customers.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Yeah.
Jealousy.
So tell me a bit more about theframework you use to, with, with
your product.
That's helping people hire thatmarketer.
You just talked about how thebiggest challenge for CMOs is
talent and hiring the rightpeople.
I find it pretty tough too, interms of what does a good, but
what does the right marketerlook like?
And particularly, I guess ifyou're in a fast growing
technology business that needchanges with time.
(12:04):
The research we talked aboutbefore was really interesting in
terms of, I think it was 93% ofpeople felt that strong, soft
skills were just as important ashard skills.
And then all the soft skillswere coming and what it was, it
was on the Econsultancy report,but it was very much like
lateral thinking, emotionalintelligence, things that, yeah,
Banno relevance to like how wellyou can handle it, SQL dump of
(12:25):
data or something with yourframework and how you approach
kind of finding the rightperson.
What's the balance of, of skillsoft scale.
And just more broadly, like howdo you, how do you approach the
process?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
It was very, very interesting.
The clients are very consistentand that they're expecting
candidates to have a lot moreskills than any human being can
actually have or needs to beamazing at data.
And he needs to be a greatcopywriter and he needs to be
amazing at creating jobdescriptions.
Exactly.
So it's really challenging tofirst educate the client on
what's possible and then tryingto prototype different
(12:57):
marketeers with a differentskill sets.
You know, the creative markethere, the performance market
here, the brand builder, the PRknows this there's different
types and everyone's a hybrid.
There is no such thing assomeone who just does one thing,
the key is finding the skillsets that that client really
needs to have, that the bestcandidate fits into the salary
range, the appetite in terms ofgrowth, you know, are they going
to be managing a team of, theyalready manage a team and
(13:18):
they're going to get bold.
But yeah, the soft skills isvery difficult to crack.
And a lot of it's about culturalfit.
There's a lot of interestingbiases that happen a lot of the
businesses behind closed doors,which is very interesting.
And some of the feedback that Iget, you know, stuff that you
would never publicly seeavailable, but very curious,
what I'm specifically focused onis the quantification of
technical skills, right.
(13:39):
Which is very hard to do.
And what I have essentially doneis I've compiled lots of
different tests that allow toevaluate candidate by also use
different personality tests totry and understand what is the
qualitative aspect of a person,but trying to give it some sort
of quantification in ascientific methodology rather
than the existing bias thatexists in businesses today.
It was very interesting.
I mean, it's still very much ina black box phase and still in
(14:02):
beta and I'm running it withsome clients I've been
interviewing a lot of differentcandidates now, and I'm
constantly refining the type ofquestions that I need to be
asking to get real insight.
They have something that'sactually really meaningful,
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Pretty cool that the insights are going to have a
long time from that.
Yeah.
It's going to be so much dataeven for you to just have trends
and insights about the state ofthe market and in different
regions and openly andeverything else.
Okay, cool.
I think now's a good time topivot slightly towards, you
know, we've, we've been talkingabout the skillsets needed in
(14:33):
modern day marketing, how growthhacking, I guess, is yeah.
Heavily rooted in data andperformance.
I guess one of the biggestdebates that I seem to have most
frequently with people and thatwe see pop up on campaign and
the drama.
And it's just one of thosethings that's talked about.
Um, and there's always someonewriting some kind of thought
(14:54):
leadership piece on, on how tosolve it or how to get more
balanced on it.
But that's this balance betweendata and creativity is two
different things.
Two different entities, I guessI see it often in our own
clients when we know that if wego back to a client with an
idea, if the idea is underpinnedby a spreadsheet where the
(15:15):
expected return on an investmentof some kind, they're much more
confident about walking into aboardroom or getting sign off or
unlocking budget with that thanthey are with just some
creative, big bang idea that yescould change the world, but how
can anybody prove that in anyway?
And so I guess, inevitably weexist in a time where the
spreadsheet always beats.
(15:35):
The creative idea person withthe spreadsheet is always going
to win in the boardroom.
So I guess by proxy, I'm kind ofhaving a bit of a stab at the
boardroom, maybe in the C-suiteand saying, well, maybe they
obviously just don't getmarketing to some extent, but
who can blame them?
Like if we weren't, if we, if wewere there and we weren't a
marketer, then maybe I'd belooking for a spreadsheet that
(15:57):
makes, makes me feel confident.
My money is safe as well.
Right.
What's your perspective on howdo you see the two working
together and when you're workingwith clients and other things
that go hand in hand, are youmore have any way to one way or
the other?
Speaker 3 (16:07):
I think it's very interesting.
Um, I think it's two pieces ofresearch that have really
impacted my thinking on this.
One of them is a research piecefrom the IPM.
One of them's from McKinsey, theMcKinsey, they did this study
and they looked at thesedifferent types of marketeers
who are, and they called themintegrators.
People who use creativity ondata to get a result.
And so there was a significantimprovement in the results that
they drive when they integratedata and creativity,
(16:29):
philosophically speaking, butalso in terms of resources,
instructionally.
So I think that a hybridapproach is really the ideal
approach rather than thinking,Oh, we should only do this.
If it's data back then we shouldonly do this.
If it's that creative idea,that's big bang, big splash.
Yeah.
Now this really ties into brandbuilding versus direct response,
right?
So brand building is really along-term approach where you're
(16:51):
trying to really get sentiment.
And you're trying to primepeople to be familiar with a
brand, and you're not gonnaexpect a short term, immediate
return on investment, but mostfounders of businesses, I speak
to understand the importance ofbrand, but they don't know what
it means really.
And they don't know how toquantify it.
So they really have a hard time.
So that's why they always leantowards direct response or
(17:11):
short-term ROI, but then they'reconflicted about brand building.
So I think there's a recommendedratio, which ties into the
second piece of research that Icame across from the IPA, which
suggested that you invest 60%into brand and the 40% into
direct response.
I think that's a really nice,healthy split in terms of your
thinking of your budget andresource allocation to try and
to get the best of both of thoseworlds.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Interesting.
I guess considering IPA maybehas more traditional like
advertising type routes then Iguess just considering the
source of the data, are theymore biased towards rating
agencies and membership base
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Kind of thing?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So I think this is a third partythat actually came up with this
okay.
That they had been promoting.
And I think it is quite rigorousand there's a science behind it
and the numbers of respondentsand when they looked at the
performance analysis.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
Interesting.
Okay, cool.
I think natural sites, and thisis really interesting in that.
I mean, what's the averagetenure of a CMO now is like, I
think the numbers are so muchrecently like two and a half
years, three years or so.
Yeah.
How can, how can a seniormarketer be thinking about like
long-term, brand-building whenthey're not even staying in
their job for five years,ultimately they're still able to
(18:20):
walk into a room and go like ourlatest campaign where we just,
many people have LinkedIn adsand capsulated email addresses
generated this level of ROI andthis was our cost per
acquisition or whatever,whatever the numbers are.
That's just hard, hard databehind it.
So you said like it doesn'tnecessarily have to be that a
big creative idea is underpinnedby data, but I guess these days,
(18:42):
like, is there any scope for acreative idea that doesn't have
some kind of indication ofimpact that's backed up by
quantifiable amount underneathit?
I just can't see that gettingsigned off or budget behind that
.
And
Speaker 3 (18:57):
No, I don't, I don't see that either, even if it's
soft metrics for measurement,which has of like, um,
engagement on social, butideally, yeah, there's some sort
of return on investment or somesort of quantifiable metric.
The problem is the marketingneeds to have access to the full
funnel in terms of measurement.
And a lot of the times that'sthe biggest challenge of
marketing has happened is notonly understanding that, you
know, how does attributionsreally work multitouch
(19:17):
attribution?
And then how is my marketingautomation set up properly?
They even have the trackingavailable in the product, a
sales actually even updatingthis CRM and the attributing it
correctly.
So you to you've got these eighttechnological challenges and
it's not really the technology.
The technology is an enabler.
It's really the educationalsilos and the lack of commercial
incentive across the differentteams and always aligned.
(19:38):
I was telling someone the otherday and they had them that a BDR
SDR who was working on to themand they, the boss just wasn't
winning to resolve this issuethat the sales rep had was
having with the SDL who's meantto generate the leads for him.
So his performance just had amassive debt because of his
personal relationship thatwasn't technology based.
That was in a real challenge.
It was a very interpersonal tiesinto the soft skills that we're
(20:00):
mentioning are there.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
And I think people in processor, art can be much
bigger as things look out thanjust purely technology, right?
Like I think that's something wecome across often is like, I
think I've actually had maybethree calls in the last two
months with prospective clientswho are using Pardot for
marketing automation.
And actually all they're doingis sending emails with it.
And like, it's just an expensiveMailChimp at that point.
(20:23):
Like it's not, there's no reasonor need to be using, but I want
you to dig into why that is.
It's actually just because theydon't have the people or the
process to be able to use it.
There's, there's been no properconfiguration of it.
There's no one to actuallysupport them in using it moving
forwards and that person or thatteam don't have the hard skills
to actually use Pardot as apiece of software.
(20:44):
Um, so they've probably spentyears battling for sign off to,
you know, thousands of pounds amonth of spend to be able to
support that product.
And actually all they're doingnow is going out emails.
It's kind of shocking in places.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I think that's one issue.
Another issue that I see with,uh, expensive marketing
automation is there's not enoughtraffic.
So if you think about thebenefit of progressive profiling
on HubSpot, we look at Marketoand Pardot, it's lead scoring
and it's huge volume.
And the truth is they don'treally have the traffic by whom
they, they don't reallyunderstand the marketing
automation benefits and they,they just, people are really
(21:18):
eager to get a result andjustifiably, you know, their
career is dependent on that.
And the problem is on the somany tremendous, um, forces in
the day-to-day of trying to keepup to date with what's going on
in the environment with older,the changes in the technology
and the channels, but then theinternal politics that they need
to navigate and then trying toalways justify their role and
the value that they'redelivering.
(21:38):
That they're very time poor andbeing time poor.
It's very difficult to have theenergy and the time, and
sometimes the lack of resourcesto really deep delve, into
figuring out what the best techstack solution is for that stage
of the business's evolution.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
You talked about attribution, attribution models,
I think in the B2B space, it'smore difficult arguably than
we'd see in terms of often thelength involved of the customer
journey and how many potentialtouch points there are across.
I know for our clients, likeanywhere from maybe a couple of
months at the shortest throughto sometimes years of this very
gentle interaction andnurturing.
(22:11):
And do you think that drivessome of this short-sightedness
and this short-sighted outlookof kind of, let's just focus on
the data, improve our numbersand look one month ahead, rather
than looking at what your netpromoter score will be in three
years time, or how will youknow, what your market
visibility of your brand is, andin three years time.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
So I think there's two different components here.
The first is the average B2Bsales cycle is actually only 82
days, just three months and thelifetime cookie and gas, like
six to nine months, especiallyin terms of attribution for the
majority of B2B businesses,isn't really an issue it's just
perceived as one saying that Iliterally had a conversation
yesterday where the guy wastelling me, you know, what the
sales cycle is six and a halfyears.
(22:54):
Absolutely.
Matt.
All right, bye.
How do you even, how do youattribute that it's very
complicated to do that, right?
So I'm saying those cases, it'snot that they don't exist.
They definitely do exist.
They're just less usual ratherthan the average kind of person.
I assume that sense.
Surprise, hardcore enterprise,huge deal sizes, very
complicated sales, multiplestakeholders.
(23:14):
Yeah.
That's the first component it'sthat this attribution complexity
isn't applicable to the majorityof B2B businesses on average,
but it is to some that's thefirst.
And then the second is I thinkthis kind of the
misunderstanding of attributionand how much data you need for
attribution to be meaningful,but then it's the dependence on
(23:35):
the further down the funnel andB2B, which doesn't exist in B to
C, which is the sales team.
If the sales team on updatingthe CRM effectively, and there
isn't real measurement, youknow, some clients, they don't
the sales calls.
So the marketing don't have theinsight on how to produce the
right landing pages and creativebecause they're not really
dealing with the real painpoints.
They're just dealing with theperception of what the
interpreting the clients theyhave.
(23:56):
And there's a, there's a kind ofthe silo between sales and
marketing.
And that's where there's this,um, you know, the new CRO term
has come in and the waymarketing ops and sales ops have
merged into rev ops on that, theCRO role.
So it's kind of going throughthis evolution of trying to
break down those silos.
It's just very interesting tosee how that's happening as
marketing owns more of thatfunnel.
And then sales are kind of beingsuites down and then sales are
(24:16):
kind of kicking up a fuss withthis new CRO title, which now is
encompassing and owning all ofmarketing as well.
And in a way that makes sensebecause marketing and sales is
about driving revenues aboutdriving real growth in the
business, right?
Speaker 4 (24:28):
Yeah.
So rev ops was something that wetalked about our last final
event seems to be really like, Ifelt like there's a real energy
around rev ops as a term at themoment.
And yeah, I think we're seeingmore and more chief revenue
officer roles popping up.
And yeah, it's something that wedefinitely need to explore in a
bit more detail because I thinkit's a bit like how Google, I
think they use the UX role toover kind of overshadow all of
(24:51):
that kind of design andtechnology, everything.
And that, that, that belief isthat it's all about the user and
therefore put your X as theumbrella over everything and
everything else sits quitenicely underneath it.
And you break down those silos.
And so as you say, if you focuson revenue as a, as a top level
objective, then actually salesand marketing fall into
alignment potentially quitenicely.
(25:12):
I think something that I see inthat, like a frustration I've
found is often we're talking toquite experienced and quite
senior marketing people, butthey're just in organizations
that marketing isn't viewed assomething that can be invested
in maybe in the way that theywere expecting before they took
that job.
Or there's not that much roomfor creative solutions, a tool,
(25:34):
I think it's even worse in theB2B technology space and that
all of these businesses are runby typically quite technical
people with technicalbackgrounds and they like
numbers, right?
Yeah.
The irony is they're in the B2Bspace.
It's even more ripe for creativeto cut through, right?
Like the emotional side ofmarketing just doesn't come up
that much.
There's always something thatwe're trying to drive clients to
(25:55):
invest in a bit more and talkabout a bit more and tell that
story.
And Simon center is kind of whyrather than just the, the how
and the, what of what they do.
Is it just something we have toaccept that might come with time
that CEO's might change?
And eventually they might be aCEO who used to be the CMO and
actually that company juststrides ahead in terms of
marketing, because you know,they know that they're happy to
(26:16):
allocate a decent budget tomarketing and give them the
freedom to make creativedecisions.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Quite interesting.
Yeah, because with the B2C,usually you've only got one
person who's buying when theyhave an emotional connection,
that's going to have a increasedpropensity for probability.
That's why brand-building isvery significant.
And then B2B, you have multiplestakeholders and actually
engaging them on an emotionallevel is very challenging.
You know, if you have six orseven different decision-makers,
(26:42):
especially the power of a story
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Told in the right way is one that maybe not everybody
will connect with, but it givesyou some sense of motion.
It gives you something thatsomewhere in the deep strings of
people's minds, it just pulls onenough that actually all of that
logical thinking isn't reallyengaged with the tool, because I
think so many of the classes wework with have incredible
backstories of how they'veeither built their business or
(27:06):
how they've come across theirsolution, the challenges and
pain points that have actuallygone on their website.
And all you see is like, this isour solution, has the product
sheet.
It's all about how it works andwhat it does and how it
integrates.
And it's all about the tax backsand any, any sense of like we're
out to really change the worldis kind of gets lost that
emotional side of like, come onthis journey.
(27:27):
This is what we believe isn'treally pushed much at all.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
I think the values, sorry, has value in B2B.
I think it is a much morefunctional purchase.
And I think the way a brandbuilding B2B is shifting from B
B to C in that if you look atcompanies like drift, which is
one of the fastest growingbusinesses in the world, this is
our chat bots.
And all of them marketing as aB2B business is really about
people and about LinkedIn videoand about content and really
(27:51):
bringing the personnel.
And I think, yeah, and I thinkthat's where B2B is kind of
shifting where B2C is much moreabout, you know, the brand and
how it fits into your lifestyle.
And as part of your identity,when B2B, the brand building is
not about, this is who you'regoing to be working with, and
this is where we're goingtogether on this journey.
And we're kind of building thefeatures, but I think it's much
more feature heavy and a littlemore value driven, and it's
actually more logical.
(28:12):
It isn't as emotional, there's adecision making process.
So the context of how brandbuilding happens in B2B, I think
is actually quite different.
And that's quite important topoint out now, how is it
shifting there's a businesses?
I think as marketing shifts tohave stronger, more effective
measurement.
And I think through thiseducational journey that the
C-suite is going through,they'll start to understand the
value of the CMO, but sayingthat you can see the challenges
(28:34):
CMOs have with this complexityof the tech stack and having to
rely on a very complicatedinternal supply chain to try and
drive an effective result.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Yeah, it sounds sort of cool.
I sometimes do this as like alack of, I guess, understanding
of what the marketing role is inthe C-suite, but then sometimes
I think it's just like a generalrisk adversity that runs across
like entire organizations.
Like people don't want to theNACA.
I was just looking for the TomGoodwin quote that I mentioned
earlier.
He shared on LinkedIn the otherday.
(29:05):
I think my biggestdisappointment in auto life is
the degree to which the world isrun on the absolute inability to
take any form of tiny risk.
I'm amazed at how hard peoplework and yet how reluctant they
are to stick their neck out.
The tiniest amount, the wholeworld seems to revolve around
risk reduction, blamemanagement, excuses, prepared.
It's absolutely baffling to me,fear cripples the chances of
(29:25):
anything interesting happeningit's like people are afraid to
live or accomplish anything.
I mean, pretty, pretty extremewords, but I like I'd met.
I liked it.
Like I, I gave him a like onLinkedIn that resonated with me.
Like it felt like particularly alot of our bigger clients and to
just kind of pin it based onsize, but like, you know, I'm
sure you've been inorganizations like this too,
(29:47):
where people are just preparingtheir next move for themselves,
regardless of whether it's inthe C-suite at all.
And so it's like, well, whydon't we just do what we did
last week?
Cause that worked or, I mean,that campaign we did six months
ago, we got quite good resultfrom that.
So why not like copy and pasteand no one's really gambling on
anything.
And if it doesn't work, we canjust go, Oh, we just did what we
did before.
And it worked fine that time andshrug our shoulders
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Risk aversion is definitely one of the biggest
limiting factors for growth inmost businesses.
And it's very hard forbusinesses to navigate this
complexity.
And the complexity is actuallynot cultural it's biological.
So we have a natural negativitybias where our effect of a
negative experience in us isthree times greater than the
positive experience.
So technically you need fourpositive experiences, the
(30:31):
outweigh negative one.
So you need three just to break,even on the negative experience
they needed one more just tohelp
Speaker 4 (30:38):
You say it's not cultural, but do you think
culture can go part of the wayof at least making it okay to
fail?
And you know, the, the kind oftypical, I guess, very in trend
at the moment in terms ofleadership and management, but
like creating environments wherepeople can do stuff and they can
get it wrong and they can talkabout it and they can learn from
it and they can, they can moveforward.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I think that's a problem that there's a duality
where companies are publiclysaying move fast and break
things.
Yeah.
But internally you actually seethere's a risk aversion that
happens and the person has tostake their career literally on
saying, I believe this is goingto happen.
(31:17):
That's why people are soparticular with them bringing in
the vendors or providers.
And that's why, you know, I wassigned to CMO the other day and
they did a pitch and theyinvited nine agencies.
And in my conversation with theCMO, I said to him, you know,
it's weird because the wayyou're picking up the undertone
of what you're saying, it soundslike you've already made your
decision on which of the nineyou're going to work with.
And he says, yeah, he says,yeah, of course I've already
worked with them before.
So I'm like, why are you wastingso much time and energy and
(31:40):
resource?
Of course you do.
And if I can imagine the othereight agencies and he goes,
maybe I can learn something sointeresting.
And he had already made up hismind,
Speaker 4 (31:50):
You're talking to the wrong guy for this one.
Yeah.
I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah.
I mean, it's very frustratingwhen you're on the seller side,
not the buyer side, but it'svery interesting.
Think about it from the buyer'sside for a second.
And this guy's under tremendousperformance pressure to deliver
result and growth on the PNL tothe C-suite.
He was on the tremendousperformance pressure from
investors or shareholders.
And at the end of the it's aboutthe numbers, about the peanuts,
where the financial financialdirector, where they have so
much sway, that's the riskaversion is an issue.
(32:15):
I think there is an importantculture shift that is, you know,
people do want change and theydo want to take risk.
And it's really interesting.
How do you see it?
Do you see it as a risk or doyou see it as an opportunity?
And the truth is it's birth.
Every opportunity has acomponent of risk.
And how does this shift happen?
I think the shift actuallyironically happens when they
realize that the fear is sostifling that their competition
(32:40):
is out doing them.
And the fear of not takingaction is greater than the fear
of taking action.
And that's when companies startto get mobility.
So ironically, you use fear asthe tool and there's actually a
psychological bias towards loss,which is greater than gain and
that as well as you just have touse a mental human juristics and
(33:00):
work with humans, biology, ifyou keep resisting human
biology, you're fighting, in myopinion, a losing battle.
The key is how to be effectiveabout getting the result that
you want.
Yeah.
Wise words.
I mean, it's kind of sad, but Ican see why it's not sound
there's.
The sadness is a judgment of theway things are.
You see it's the way things are.
It's not sad.
It's the way it is.
So you either adapt to the waythat it is or you just as the
(33:22):
suffering in your little bubble.
Yeah.
Well, on that, uh, optimisticfinish.
It's time to wrap up theconversation.
It's been a pleasure.
I think we could probably sitand talk for hours.
So I'm going to watch the clock.
Maybe we can record anotherepisode on something else
another day, but in themeantime, a big thank you for
joining me.
I such a pleasure as always
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Bye-bye thanks for listening.
We are super busy at finitebuilding the best community
possible for marketers workingin the B2B technology sector to
connect, share, and learn alongwith our podcast.
We host a series of events herein London.
So make sure you had tofinite.community to subscribe
and keep up to date withupcoming events.
Hello, welcome back to the finite podcast today.
I'm really looking forward tositting down with Orrin
Greenberg.
Oren is a super talentedeffectively on demand.
Chief marketing officer, whogoes into all kinds of tech,
startups, scale-ups B2B andenterprise SAS.
He's got loads of experienceworking across a whole load of
(00:28):
different types of company.
He started out in animation andproduction, product management,
strong SEO foundations.
And he's one of those peoplethat whenever I see him, he's
just got his hand in all thelatest tools and technology.
And he's got a serious growthhackers mindset.
Like he's always thinking abouthow to achieve new levels of
growth.
(00:48):
So I'm looking forward to seeingdown Sam talking about, about
data creativity, how the twothings work together.
And yeah, I hope you enjoy theepisode.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
The finite community and podcasts are kindly
supported by nine three X, thedigital agency working
exclusively with ambitious fastgrowth B2B technology companies
visit[inaudible] agency to findout about how they partner with
marketing team and B2Btechnology companies to drive
digital growth.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Hey Aaron, thanks for joining me.
We're a pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
I'm looking forward to
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Interesting conversation.
We've got lots to talk aboutgrowth, hacking data, databases,
creativity, the skills of themodern marketer.
Yeah, there's a lot there, but Iguess as always, you want to
start with just a quick intro asto what you've been up to, what
you do now, how you got herewill be interesting stuff.
Oh, actually cycled on the lineto get here, which is pretty
(01:46):
cool.
They learn your electrical bikein Brussels the other day when
I'm exac I was playing aroundwith the scooters and that was a
lot of fun as well.
Nice.
And it's illegal here.
Um, so yeah, a little bit moreabout my, uh, professional
background, I suppose, but I,funny enough, I used to start as
a, started out as an animatorback in the day and then moved
on to wink bingo, which to pickit up, search marketing, SEO,
(02:10):
and PPC, and then moved on totouch local, which, uh, received
about 6 million from bulletin.
That was very interesting inbusiness.
Then I moved onto Wonga.
She was probably the moreinfamous of some of the brands
that I've worked with.
And probably one of the morecontroversial I headed up search
marketing there as well.
Are they still, I think oncompletely.
Yeah.
They've liquidated at times.
(02:30):
Wow.
That's how you look at it, butyeah.
Yes.
And then I moved to kind of amore independent advisory role.
And since then I've worked withlots of different footsie, two
fifties cannon Investec bank.
HomeServe then also differentfunded startups in the FinTech
space.
But now I work as a kind of ahybrid of advisor consultant and
I build little teams, littleNinja teams and growth teams, I
(02:53):
suppose, try and deliver resultsfor clients.
So, you know, building up thetech stack, bringing in
specialists, resources, workingsome fantastic agencies already
really great WordPress agency, Icould recommend to you.
Thank you very much.
No worries.
Yeah.
And that's pretty much what I donow.
So kind of, um, all the way fromthe very strategic as a non-exec
yeah.
Through the very tacticalmanaging specific channels for
clients with differentspecialists resource
Speaker 4 (03:14):
And lots of B2B tech experience, I know as well
ranging from, I guess, startups,SAS, some enterprise stuff too.
Maybe.
Um, whenever I see alwaysplaying with a new tool or piece
of marketing,
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I love my mother.
He knows only 7,200 of them toplay with.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Exactly.
Yeah.
It's enough to keep you busy.
So yeah, we've got a lot tocover, I guess we going to start
by talking about this somewhatinfamous phrase now of growth
hacking to term that this isquite widely used.
We were talking before weclicked record about how the
word growth in itself can meanquite a few different things
sometimes, but growth hacking's.
(03:54):
Yeah.
I guess sometimes it's got abetter stick from the community,
from LinkedIn, from the worldaround it.
I think it just means differentthings to different people, but
in terms of what it means to youand the kind of growth hacking
framework, talk me through it.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Yeah, sure.
So funny enough, I recently Iwas approached by Skillshare to
produce a course on growthhacking.
So obviously once theyapproached me, I was like, okay,
I should probably really learnwhat this is.
So I deep delve into it, um,really taught to lots of
different practitioners in thespace to understand it.
And then a lot more depth.
I feel like I've got prettydecent grasp of it now.
And I think the misconceptionaround that is because of the
(04:29):
word hacking, I think that'screated this skew and this
assumption that actually you'rehacking your way to growth.
So sort of dodgy or unscrupulousway, we're kind of breaking
every GDPR rule in the book.
But in reality, the concept ofgrowth was actually about rapid
scaling and that's where it hadshifted.
But fundamentally growth hackingis a, is a hybrid of a
philosophy and methodology, butalso structured.
(04:50):
It gives you some tools to tryand prioritize experimentation.
Yeah.
I think the core principle ofgrowth hacking, which is
interesting, which most peopledon't understand is a shift in
the team structure.
So if you look at mostbusinesses now, you know, you
look at engineering and then oneside of the building and one
department, you know, your datateam and they're in another one,
you'd talk to the product team.
Then another one that yourmarketing is in another one.
And then they kind of have thesegroup meetings, but what's
(05:10):
really shifted some of thesereally interesting businesses
like Pinterest and some of theseother really rapidly growing
ones like Uber, et cetera, isthere's actually one core team.
And there's a representativewhich each of those functions
and they're in this new createddepartment, which is driving
growth.
So it's actually a much moreholistic approach structurally
rather than this siloed approachthat was, is currently kind of
(05:30):
very common,
Speaker 4 (05:32):
The growth role.
I mean, we've seen growth, asyou say, describe an analyst
role I've seen now I've got afriend that's working in growth,
but actually that's pretty muchjust sales.
It's outbound sales.
I guess there's a whole load ofroles which broadly contribute
to the growth of the business,but mean such different things.
I guess, growth hacking camefrom like a very data-driven
(05:54):
performance marketing birth, Iguess, is that, is that to say
that she came in more
Speaker 3 (05:58):
From a product birth, so actually looked at how you
build a referral incentive intothe product.
Okay.
And I think the best example ofthat is like Dropbox, you know,
so rather than spending a lot ofmoney on media acquisition,
which is usually anunsustainable, your cost per
acquisition, your return oninvestment long-term how do you
actually get people to referDropbox to their friends?
And then your CPA is baked intothe product and you get these
(06:19):
viral group, they call it viralgrowth loops.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Interesting.
Okay.
So the growth role, I guessthese days, there's always going
to be some degree of data withinit.
I know that you spend a lot oftime and are working on a side
kind of project and product toreally help people hire the best
marketer for their businesses.
I think you also had some datawhich maybe you can run through
(06:43):
about data and data analysis anddata management skills being
kind of the most sought afterhard scale for marketers, I
guess, digital marketers, butmaybe marketers more generally,
what does the modern kind ofgrowth hacking skillset look
like?
Cause I think I still have a bitof a vision of a growth hacker
being like a 21 year old kid inthat bedroom, in the dark kind
(07:03):
of like just doing whatever theycan to bring in new clients or
sell things or whatever ittakes.
Obviously these days it's inbigger organizations, it's much
more established and there'ssome proper process behind it,
but what does it a growth teamlook like?
And what are the skillsetswithin it?
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Because there's two breeds of growth hacker.
There's a 21 year olds in thegarage and you can actually see
them quite prolific on LinkedInwith a status up as in the funny
videos.
And I actually speak to some ofthem.
I spoke to one of them the otherday and it's actually very
ambitious, but just a bit, um, abit clueless, a bit lost in the
commercial world.
And they kind of think about itmore like a 21 year old thinks
about Instagram and trying toget as many likes rather than
(07:40):
actually deep business Griff,like, you know, serious
movement.
And then you've got the originalgrowth hackers, which is, uh,
you know, uh, Andrew Chan and,um, arguably Neil Patel and some
of these guys like Sean Ellis.
And you can find a lot that, youknow, community like the growth
conference in the U S andthere's, you know, some of the
biggest minds and growth ofthem, they go to conferences and
the, you know, the, fromMailChimp to infusion soft to
(08:04):
other SAS B2B softwareproviders.
So yeah, growth is the growthteam, the growth hem hybrids
kind interesting ones.
So when I speak to a lot ofdifferent heads of growth and I
asked them, what's frustratingyou in your current workplace,
yeah.
They talked about this siloabout how growth isn't full
funnel.
They want to have more ownershipover the product.
They want to be more integratedinto engineering.
(08:24):
And I think that creates thisdouble edge sword because now
you're developing new skills andnew attitudes and you need new
knowledge.
That goes a lot deeper than justmarketing, but then you also
have to stay on top ofmarketing, which is incredibly
challenging, especially as theMarTech landscape continues to
proliferate as this constantfeature changes in different
channels.
Like LinkedIn now has this newlook alike audience or targeting
is improving that you have tostay on top of that.
(08:45):
You have to experiment with that.
There's this constant conflictabout how it pulls growth into
these different areas in thebusiness.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Yeah.
Interesting.
So what's the current kind ofstate of play versus how do you
see it progressing?
Like, is there someorganizations that are had
compared to others and they'vegot growth teams?
What should, you know, the siloshave been broken down, maybe not
completely, but are well ontheir way.
And you know, those kinds ofstructures you've just described
exist, but I guess a lot of theclients that we work with, we
see those silos quite evidently.
(09:15):
And I think it's only with acertain type of person kind of
at the top or leadership teamthat these things can be broken
down.
Like it's almost like there'sone, there's one key hire or
there's a kind of a championwithin, that's kind of
pioneering a new way of thinkingabout how these teams are
structured.
Yeah.
I mean, what, how do you thinkit will pan out over the years
(09:35):
ahead?
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, so I think it's a very slow progressive boiling.
And I think as the temperatureincreases and the performance
pressure increases, thesebusinesses need to find new,
innovative ways to findsolutions and strategies.
And I am a lot of CMOs I speakto and lots of heads of growth.
I speak to, they're frustratedabout these items about the
cultural shift that needs tohappen.
And in larger organizations,definitely the more mature ones
and whether the businesses I wasworking in, they had 13
(09:57):
different CRMs and then 13different CRMs.
Yeah.
So how, um, how does the head ofgrowth, how does a person owns
marketing even have clear enoughdata to attribute success on
marketing qualified leads?
And then how is that evolving?
But so the thinking, if youthink about SAS specifically,
B2B, that thinking is evolvingfrom marketing qualified leads,
(10:18):
sales qualified leads towardssomething called PQL is product
qualified leads.
So how do I get more free trialsin the product?
And then how do I try and getthem to be a paying customer?
Right?
So it's evolving in terms of thephilosophical view of product
marketing.
And then you've got thiscultural forces inside these
businesses and these differentsilos with lots of different
people in growth.
They're finding verychallenging.
I think the UK is definitelylagging behind in terms of the,
(10:40):
the cultural adaptation and whatit had for us.
Yeah.
The us is leading by far, but Ithink so I think cultural is one
issue, but I think there's amassive shortage of China in the
UK.
So one of the biggest issuesCMOs have, this is like a, for
sure, it's recently done by thelight.
And they found that the biggestpain point for CMOs is finding
good talent.
So in a way you kind of, you'vegot this, these existing people
(11:00):
who are owning it, and they'resaying, I'm frustrated with the
culture.
I'm frustrated.
They don't have the right tools.
I'm frustrated that I'm notempowered.
Then you've got the CMO saying,I can't find good people.
And it's quite interestingbecause they're both true.
It's a slide.
This is a very fragmentedlandscape.
There isn't a clear answers anddifferent companies that like
light years ahead.
And some companies are stillstruggling even with basic
digital transformation andthey're 10, 15 years behind
(11:22):
other businesses.
So it's a very fragmentedbecause different businesses
have different legacies in termsof software, uh, legal
implication.
Some of them are veryconstricted because FCA
regulated and FinTech, right.
And then you can really see thiswith like, you know, HSBC 4,500
cake internal systems versusMonzo is not kicking off with
too many new customers.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Yeah.
Jealousy.
So tell me a bit more about theframework you use to, with, with
your product.
That's helping people hire thatmarketer.
You just talked about how thebiggest challenge for CMOs is
talent and hiring the rightpeople.
I find it pretty tough too, interms of what does a good, but
what does the right marketerlook like?
And particularly, I guess ifyou're in a fast growing
technology business that needchanges with time.
(12:04):
The research we talked aboutbefore was really interesting in
terms of, I think it was 93% ofpeople felt that strong, soft
skills were just as important ashard skills.
And then all the soft skillswere coming and what it was, it
was on the Econsultancy report,but it was very much like
lateral thinking, emotionalintelligence, things that, yeah,
Banno relevance to like how wellyou can handle it, SQL dump of
(12:25):
data or something with yourframework and how you approach
kind of finding the rightperson.
What's the balance of, of skillsoft scale.
And just more broadly, like howdo you, how do you approach the
process?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
It was very, very interesting.
The clients are very consistentand that they're expecting
candidates to have a lot moreskills than any human being can
actually have or needs to beamazing at data.
And he needs to be a greatcopywriter and he needs to be
amazing at creating jobdescriptions.
Exactly.
So it's really challenging tofirst educate the client on
what's possible and then tryingto prototype different
(12:57):
marketeers with a differentskill sets.
You know, the creative markethere, the performance market
here, the brand builder, the PRknows this there's different
types and everyone's a hybrid.
There is no such thing assomeone who just does one thing,
the key is finding the skillsets that that client really
needs to have, that the bestcandidate fits into the salary
range, the appetite in terms ofgrowth, you know, are they going
to be managing a team of, theyalready manage a team and
(13:18):
they're going to get bold.
But yeah, the soft skills isvery difficult to crack.
And a lot of it's about culturalfit.
There's a lot of interestingbiases that happen a lot of the
businesses behind closed doors,which is very interesting.
And some of the feedback that Iget, you know, stuff that you
would never publicly seeavailable, but very curious,
what I'm specifically focused onis the quantification of
technical skills, right.
(13:39):
Which is very hard to do.
And what I have essentially doneis I've compiled lots of
different tests that allow toevaluate candidate by also use
different personality tests totry and understand what is the
qualitative aspect of a person,but trying to give it some sort
of quantification in ascientific methodology rather
than the existing bias thatexists in businesses today.
It was very interesting.
I mean, it's still very much ina black box phase and still in
(14:02):
beta and I'm running it withsome clients I've been
interviewing a lot of differentcandidates now, and I'm
constantly refining the type ofquestions that I need to be
asking to get real insight.
They have something that'sactually really meaningful,
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Pretty cool that the insights are going to have a
long time from that.
Yeah.
It's going to be so much dataeven for you to just have trends
and insights about the state ofthe market and in different
regions and openly andeverything else.
Okay, cool.
I think now's a good time topivot slightly towards, you
know, we've, we've been talkingabout the skillsets needed in
(14:33):
modern day marketing, how growthhacking, I guess, is yeah.
Heavily rooted in data andperformance.
I guess one of the biggestdebates that I seem to have most
frequently with people and thatwe see pop up on campaign and
the drama.
And it's just one of thosethings that's talked about.
Um, and there's always someonewriting some kind of thought
(14:54):
leadership piece on, on how tosolve it or how to get more
balanced on it.
But that's this balance betweendata and creativity is two
different things.
Two different entities, I guessI see it often in our own
clients when we know that if wego back to a client with an
idea, if the idea is underpinnedby a spreadsheet where the
(15:15):
expected return on an investmentof some kind, they're much more
confident about walking into aboardroom or getting sign off or
unlocking budget with that thanthey are with just some
creative, big bang idea that yescould change the world, but how
can anybody prove that in anyway?
And so I guess, inevitably weexist in a time where the
spreadsheet always beats.
(15:35):
The creative idea person withthe spreadsheet is always going
to win in the boardroom.
So I guess by proxy, I'm kind ofhaving a bit of a stab at the
boardroom, maybe in the C-suiteand saying, well, maybe they
obviously just don't getmarketing to some extent, but
who can blame them?
Like if we weren't, if we, if wewere there and we weren't a
marketer, then maybe I'd belooking for a spreadsheet that
(15:57):
makes, makes me feel confident.
My money is safe as well.
Right.
What's your perspective on howdo you see the two working
together and when you're workingwith clients and other things
that go hand in hand, are youmore have any way to one way or
the other?
Speaker 3 (16:07):
I think it's very interesting.
Um, I think it's two pieces ofresearch that have really
impacted my thinking on this.
One of them is a research piecefrom the IPM.
One of them's from McKinsey, theMcKinsey, they did this study
and they looked at thesedifferent types of marketeers
who are, and they called themintegrators.
People who use creativity ondata to get a result.
And so there was a significantimprovement in the results that
they drive when they integratedata and creativity,
(16:29):
philosophically speaking, butalso in terms of resources,
instructionally.
So I think that a hybridapproach is really the ideal
approach rather than thinking,Oh, we should only do this.
If it's data back then we shouldonly do this.
If it's that creative idea,that's big bang, big splash.
Yeah.
Now this really ties into brandbuilding versus direct response,
right?
So brand building is really along-term approach where you're
(16:51):
trying to really get sentiment.
And you're trying to primepeople to be familiar with a
brand, and you're not gonnaexpect a short term, immediate
return on investment, but mostfounders of businesses, I speak
to understand the importance ofbrand, but they don't know what
it means really.
And they don't know how toquantify it.
So they really have a hard time.
So that's why they always leantowards direct response or
(17:11):
short-term ROI, but then they'reconflicted about brand building.
So I think there's a recommendedratio, which ties into the
second piece of research that Icame across from the IPA, which
suggested that you invest 60%into brand and the 40% into
direct response.
I think that's a really nice,healthy split in terms of your
thinking of your budget andresource allocation to try and
to get the best of both of thoseworlds.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Interesting.
I guess considering IPA maybehas more traditional like
advertising type routes then Iguess just considering the
source of the data, are theymore biased towards rating
agencies and membership base
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Kind of thing?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So I think this is a third partythat actually came up with this
okay.
That they had been promoting.
And I think it is quite rigorousand there's a science behind it
and the numbers of respondentsand when they looked at the
performance analysis.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
Interesting.
Okay, cool.
I think natural sites, and thisis really interesting in that.
I mean, what's the averagetenure of a CMO now is like, I
think the numbers are so muchrecently like two and a half
years, three years or so.
Yeah.
How can, how can a seniormarketer be thinking about like
long-term, brand-building whenthey're not even staying in
their job for five years,ultimately they're still able to
(18:20):
walk into a room and go like ourlatest campaign where we just,
many people have LinkedIn adsand capsulated email addresses
generated this level of ROI andthis was our cost per
acquisition or whatever,whatever the numbers are.
That's just hard, hard databehind it.
So you said like it doesn'tnecessarily have to be that a
big creative idea is underpinnedby data, but I guess these days,
(18:42):
like, is there any scope for acreative idea that doesn't have
some kind of indication ofimpact that's backed up by
quantifiable amount underneathit?
I just can't see that gettingsigned off or budget behind that
.
And
Speaker 3 (18:57):
No, I don't, I don't see that either, even if it's
soft metrics for measurement,which has of like, um,
engagement on social, butideally, yeah, there's some sort
of return on investment or somesort of quantifiable metric.
The problem is the marketingneeds to have access to the full
funnel in terms of measurement.
And a lot of the times that'sthe biggest challenge of
marketing has happened is notonly understanding that, you
know, how does attributionsreally work multitouch
(19:17):
attribution?
And then how is my marketingautomation set up properly?
They even have the trackingavailable in the product, a
sales actually even updatingthis CRM and the attributing it
correctly.
So you to you've got these eighttechnological challenges and
it's not really the technology.
The technology is an enabler.
It's really the educationalsilos and the lack of commercial
incentive across the differentteams and always aligned.
(19:38):
I was telling someone the otherday and they had them that a BDR
SDR who was working on to themand they, the boss just wasn't
winning to resolve this issuethat the sales rep had was
having with the SDL who's meantto generate the leads for him.
So his performance just had amassive debt because of his
personal relationship thatwasn't technology based.
That was in a real challenge.
It was a very interpersonal tiesinto the soft skills that we're
(20:00):
mentioning are there.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
And I think people in processor, art can be much
bigger as things look out thanjust purely technology, right?
Like I think that's something wecome across often is like, I
think I've actually had maybethree calls in the last two
months with prospective clientswho are using Pardot for
marketing automation.
And actually all they're doingis sending emails with it.
And like, it's just an expensiveMailChimp at that point.
(20:23):
Like it's not, there's no reasonor need to be using, but I want
you to dig into why that is.
It's actually just because theydon't have the people or the
process to be able to use it.
There's, there's been no properconfiguration of it.
There's no one to actuallysupport them in using it moving
forwards and that person or thatteam don't have the hard skills
to actually use Pardot as apiece of software.
(20:44):
Um, so they've probably spentyears battling for sign off to,
you know, thousands of pounds amonth of spend to be able to
support that product.
And actually all they're doingnow is going out emails.
It's kind of shocking in places.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I think that's one issue.
Another issue that I see with,uh, expensive marketing
automation is there's not enoughtraffic.
So if you think about thebenefit of progressive profiling
on HubSpot, we look at Marketoand Pardot, it's lead scoring
and it's huge volume.
And the truth is they don'treally have the traffic by whom
they, they don't reallyunderstand the marketing
automation benefits and they,they just, people are really
(21:18):
eager to get a result andjustifiably, you know, their
career is dependent on that.
And the problem is on the somany tremendous, um, forces in
the day-to-day of trying to keepup to date with what's going on
in the environment with older,the changes in the technology
and the channels, but then theinternal politics that they need
to navigate and then trying toalways justify their role and
the value that they'redelivering.
(21:38):
That they're very time poor andbeing time poor.
It's very difficult to have theenergy and the time, and
sometimes the lack of resourcesto really deep delve, into
figuring out what the best techstack solution is for that stage
of the business's evolution.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
You talked about attribution, attribution models,
I think in the B2B space, it'smore difficult arguably than
we'd see in terms of often thelength involved of the customer
journey and how many potentialtouch points there are across.
I know for our clients, likeanywhere from maybe a couple of
months at the shortest throughto sometimes years of this very
gentle interaction andnurturing.
(22:11):
And do you think that drivessome of this short-sightedness
and this short-sighted outlookof kind of, let's just focus on
the data, improve our numbersand look one month ahead, rather
than looking at what your netpromoter score will be in three
years time, or how will youknow, what your market
visibility of your brand is, andin three years time.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
So I think there's two different components here.
The first is the average B2Bsales cycle is actually only 82
days, just three months and thelifetime cookie and gas, like
six to nine months, especiallyin terms of attribution for the
majority of B2B businesses,isn't really an issue it's just
perceived as one saying that Iliterally had a conversation
yesterday where the guy wastelling me, you know, what the
sales cycle is six and a halfyears.
(22:54):
Absolutely.
Matt.
All right, bye.
How do you even, how do youattribute that it's very
complicated to do that, right?
So I'm saying those cases, it'snot that they don't exist.
They definitely do exist.
They're just less usual ratherthan the average kind of person.
I assume that sense.
Surprise, hardcore enterprise,huge deal sizes, very
complicated sales, multiplestakeholders.
(23:14):
Yeah.
That's the first component it'sthat this attribution complexity
isn't applicable to the majorityof B2B businesses on average,
but it is to some that's thefirst.
And then the second is I thinkthis kind of the
misunderstanding of attributionand how much data you need for
attribution to be meaningful,but then it's the dependence on
(23:35):
the further down the funnel andB2B, which doesn't exist in B to
C, which is the sales team.
If the sales team on updatingthe CRM effectively, and there
isn't real measurement, youknow, some clients, they don't
the sales calls.
So the marketing don't have theinsight on how to produce the
right landing pages and creativebecause they're not really
dealing with the real painpoints.
They're just dealing with theperception of what the
interpreting the clients theyhave.
(23:56):
And there's a, there's a kind ofthe silo between sales and
marketing.
And that's where there's this,um, you know, the new CRO term
has come in and the waymarketing ops and sales ops have
merged into rev ops on that, theCRO role.
So it's kind of going throughthis evolution of trying to
break down those silos.
It's just very interesting tosee how that's happening as
marketing owns more of thatfunnel.
And then sales are kind of beingsuites down and then sales are
(24:16):
kind of kicking up a fuss withthis new CRO title, which now is
encompassing and owning all ofmarketing as well.
And in a way that makes sensebecause marketing and sales is
about driving revenues aboutdriving real growth in the
business, right?
Speaker 4 (24:28):
Yeah.
So rev ops was something that wetalked about our last final
event seems to be really like, Ifelt like there's a real energy
around rev ops as a term at themoment.
And yeah, I think we're seeingmore and more chief revenue
officer roles popping up.
And yeah, it's something that wedefinitely need to explore in a
bit more detail because I thinkit's a bit like how Google, I
think they use the UX role toover kind of overshadow all of
(24:51):
that kind of design andtechnology, everything.
And that, that, that belief isthat it's all about the user and
therefore put your X as theumbrella over everything and
everything else sits quitenicely underneath it.
And you break down those silos.
And so as you say, if you focuson revenue as a, as a top level
objective, then actually salesand marketing fall into
alignment potentially quitenicely.
(25:12):
I think something that I see inthat, like a frustration I've
found is often we're talking toquite experienced and quite
senior marketing people, butthey're just in organizations
that marketing isn't viewed assomething that can be invested
in maybe in the way that theywere expecting before they took
that job.
Or there's not that much roomfor creative solutions, a tool,
(25:34):
I think it's even worse in theB2B technology space and that
all of these businesses are runby typically quite technical
people with technicalbackgrounds and they like
numbers, right?
Yeah.
The irony is they're in the B2Bspace.
It's even more ripe for creativeto cut through, right?
Like the emotional side ofmarketing just doesn't come up
that much.
There's always something thatwe're trying to drive clients to
(25:55):
invest in a bit more and talkabout a bit more and tell that
story.
And Simon center is kind of whyrather than just the, the how
and the, what of what they do.
Is it just something we have toaccept that might come with time
that CEO's might change?
And eventually they might be aCEO who used to be the CMO and
actually that company juststrides ahead in terms of
marketing, because you know,they know that they're happy to
(26:16):
allocate a decent budget tomarketing and give them the
freedom to make creativedecisions.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Quite interesting.
Yeah, because with the B2C,usually you've only got one
person who's buying when theyhave an emotional connection,
that's going to have a increasedpropensity for probability.
That's why brand-building isvery significant.
And then B2B, you have multiplestakeholders and actually
engaging them on an emotionallevel is very challenging.
You know, if you have six orseven different decision-makers,
(26:42):
especially the power of a story
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Told in the right way is one that maybe not everybody
will connect with, but it givesyou some sense of motion.
It gives you something thatsomewhere in the deep strings of
people's minds, it just pulls onenough that actually all of that
logical thinking isn't reallyengaged with the tool, because I
think so many of the classes wework with have incredible
backstories of how they'veeither built their business or
(27:06):
how they've come across theirsolution, the challenges and
pain points that have actuallygone on their website.
And all you see is like, this isour solution, has the product
sheet.
It's all about how it works andwhat it does and how it
integrates.
And it's all about the tax backsand any, any sense of like we're
out to really change the worldis kind of gets lost that
emotional side of like, come onthis journey.
(27:27):
This is what we believe isn'treally pushed much at all.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
I think the values, sorry, has value in B2B.
I think it is a much morefunctional purchase.
And I think the way a brandbuilding B2B is shifting from B
B to C in that if you look atcompanies like drift, which is
one of the fastest growingbusinesses in the world, this is
our chat bots.
And all of them marketing as aB2B business is really about
people and about LinkedIn videoand about content and really
(27:51):
bringing the personnel.
And I think, yeah, and I thinkthat's where B2B is kind of
shifting where B2C is much moreabout, you know, the brand and
how it fits into your lifestyle.
And as part of your identity,when B2B, the brand building is
not about, this is who you'regoing to be working with, and
this is where we're goingtogether on this journey.
And we're kind of building thefeatures, but I think it's much
more feature heavy and a littlemore value driven, and it's
actually more logical.
(28:12):
It isn't as emotional, there's adecision making process.
So the context of how brandbuilding happens in B2B, I think
is actually quite different.
And that's quite important topoint out now, how is it
shifting there's a businesses?
I think as marketing shifts tohave stronger, more effective
measurement.
And I think through thiseducational journey that the
C-suite is going through,they'll start to understand the
value of the CMO, but sayingthat you can see the challenges
(28:34):
CMOs have with this complexityof the tech stack and having to
rely on a very complicatedinternal supply chain to try and
drive an effective result.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Yeah, it sounds sort of cool.
I sometimes do this as like alack of, I guess, understanding
of what the marketing role is inthe C-suite, but then sometimes
I think it's just like a generalrisk adversity that runs across
like entire organizations.
Like people don't want to theNACA.
I was just looking for the TomGoodwin quote that I mentioned
earlier.
He shared on LinkedIn the otherday.
(29:05):
I think my biggestdisappointment in auto life is
the degree to which the world isrun on the absolute inability to
take any form of tiny risk.
I'm amazed at how hard peoplework and yet how reluctant they
are to stick their neck out.
The tiniest amount, the wholeworld seems to revolve around
risk reduction, blamemanagement, excuses, prepared.
It's absolutely baffling to me,fear cripples the chances of
(29:25):
anything interesting happeningit's like people are afraid to
live or accomplish anything.
I mean, pretty, pretty extremewords, but I like I'd met.
I liked it.
Like I, I gave him a like onLinkedIn that resonated with me.
Like it felt like particularly alot of our bigger clients and to
just kind of pin it based onsize, but like, you know, I'm
sure you've been inorganizations like this too,
(29:47):
where people are just preparingtheir next move for themselves,
regardless of whether it's inthe C-suite at all.
And so it's like, well, whydon't we just do what we did
last week?
Cause that worked or, I mean,that campaign we did six months
ago, we got quite good resultfrom that.
So why not like copy and pasteand no one's really gambling on
anything.
And if it doesn't work, we canjust go, Oh, we just did what we
did before.
And it worked fine that time andshrug our shoulders
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Risk aversion is definitely one of the biggest
limiting factors for growth inmost businesses.
And it's very hard forbusinesses to navigate this
complexity.
And the complexity is actuallynot cultural it's biological.
So we have a natural negativitybias where our effect of a
negative experience in us isthree times greater than the
positive experience.
So technically you need fourpositive experiences, the
(30:31):
outweigh negative one.
So you need three just to break,even on the negative experience
they needed one more just tohelp
Speaker 4 (30:38):
You say it's not cultural, but do you think
culture can go part of the wayof at least making it okay to
fail?
And you know, the, the kind oftypical, I guess, very in trend
at the moment in terms ofleadership and management, but
like creating environments wherepeople can do stuff and they can
get it wrong and they can talkabout it and they can learn from
it and they can, they can moveforward.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I think that's a problem that there's a duality
where companies are publiclysaying move fast and break
things.
Yeah.
But internally you actually seethere's a risk aversion that
happens and the person has tostake their career literally on
saying, I believe this is goingto happen.
(31:17):
That's why people are soparticular with them bringing in
the vendors or providers.
And that's why, you know, I wassigned to CMO the other day and
they did a pitch and theyinvited nine agencies.
And in my conversation with theCMO, I said to him, you know,
it's weird because the wayyou're picking up the undertone
of what you're saying, it soundslike you've already made your
decision on which of the nineyou're going to work with.
And he says, yeah, he says,yeah, of course I've already
worked with them before.
So I'm like, why are you wastingso much time and energy and
(31:40):
resource?
Of course you do.
And if I can imagine the othereight agencies and he goes,
maybe I can learn something sointeresting.
And he had already made up hismind,
Speaker 4 (31:50):
You're talking to the wrong guy for this one.
Yeah.
I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah.
I mean, it's very frustratingwhen you're on the seller side,
not the buyer side, but it'svery interesting.
Think about it from the buyer'sside for a second.
And this guy's under tremendousperformance pressure to deliver
result and growth on the PNL tothe C-suite.
He was on the tremendousperformance pressure from
investors or shareholders.
And at the end of the it's aboutthe numbers, about the peanuts,
where the financial financialdirector, where they have so
much sway, that's the riskaversion is an issue.
(32:15):
I think there is an importantculture shift that is, you know,
people do want change and theydo want to take risk.
And it's really interesting.
How do you see it?
Do you see it as a risk or doyou see it as an opportunity?
And the truth is it's birth.
Every opportunity has acomponent of risk.
And how does this shift happen?
I think the shift actuallyironically happens when they
realize that the fear is sostifling that their competition
(32:40):
is out doing them.
And the fear of not takingaction is greater than the fear
of taking action.
And that's when companies startto get mobility.
So ironically, you use fear asthe tool and there's actually a
psychological bias towards loss,which is greater than gain and
that as well as you just have touse a mental human juristics and
(33:00):
work with humans, biology, ifyou keep resisting human
biology, you're fighting, in myopinion, a losing battle.
The key is how to be effectiveabout getting the result that
you want.
Yeah.
Wise words.
I mean, it's kind of sad, but Ican see why it's not sound
there's.
The sadness is a judgment of theway things are.
You see it's the way things are.
It's not sad.
It's the way it is.
So you either adapt to the waythat it is or you just as the
(33:22):
suffering in your little bubble.
Yeah.
Well, on that, uh, optimisticfinish.
It's time to wrap up theconversation.
It's been a pleasure.
I think we could probably sitand talk for hours.
So I'm going to watch the clock.
Maybe we can record anotherepisode on something else
another day, but in themeantime, a big thank you for
joining me.
I such a pleasure as always
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Bye-bye thanks for listening.
We are super busy at finitebuilding the best community
possible for marketers workingin the B2B technology sector to
connect, share, and learn alongwith our podcast.
We host a series of events herein London.
So make sure you had tofinite.community to subscribe
and keep up to date withupcoming events.
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