January 20, 2025 • 53 mins
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This episode dives into the dynamic realms of B2C and B2B marketing operations, highlighting their interconnectedness and the emotional versus rational appeals that differentiate them. Beth Horrigan shares her extensive career journey, emphasizing the importance of curiosity and collaboration across marketing sectors.
• Discussion around pivotal career moments in marketing
• Exploration of B2C emotional marketing vs. B2B rational marketing
• Insights on campaign management and cross-team collaboration
• Importance of technology and AI in marketing operations
• Commonalities from the 2024 State of the MoPro report
• Advocating for curiosity and knowledge-sharing across sectors
Link to Adam Grant's podcast episode can be found here.
Episode Brought to You By MO Pros
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by all
the MoPros out there.
I am your host.
Michael Hartman Joined todayone of my co-hosts, mike Rizzo.
Happy New Year-ish.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Happy four-year anniversary.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Four-year anniversary .
Speaker 2 (00:18):
yes, we're halfway through the month of the new
year of 2025, and are 100 in onthe fourth year of multiple or
not most fifth year.
My brain is in so many placesto them.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
We're starting year five now, right?
So?
We're starting year five yeah,and if I remember right, you get
a birthday that's happeningaround this time yep, yep,
that'll be tomorrow, tomorrowwell, by the time this gets out,
it'll be in the past, butthat's all right.
That's all right, that's allright.
Well, joining Mike and me todayto talk about the differences
(00:55):
between B2C and B2B marketingoperations is Beth Horrigan.
Beth has worked across a widerange of industries in her
career, most recently withFreefly Apparel, working in the
e-commerce operations group.
Prior to that, she worked ine-com operations and user
experience for Nespresso Nice.
Before that, she was a digitaltechnologist with Diageo,
(01:17):
supporting several brands, anddigital marketing manager with
the National Guard Bureau.
So, beth, thanks for joining ustoday.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Thanks for having me and happy anniversary.
Thank Beth.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
thanks for joining us today, thanks for having me and
happy anniversary, thank you,and have a good day.
Thanks, all of the above.
All of the above, all of theabove.
Yeah Well, we could totallyderail this and start talking
about coffee and espressomachines.
I'm refraining, I'm totallyrefraining.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I know, yeah, I think when Beth.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I'm totally refraining.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I know I'm looking at my pods over there that I'm not
making right now.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, I probably wasted like 15 minutes of our
30-minute call.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
when I first talked to Beth about doing this episode
, I didn't talk to her all daytoo.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, well, let's get started.
So you know, I did the I don'teven know like two, second, five
second rundown of your career.
So pretty much got everything,I'm sure.
But why we?
Before we get too far into the,our main topic, what could you
share a little more about yourcareer journey?
And then I know I personallylike to hear about you know, as
(02:21):
people look back on their career, um, you know, as people look
back on their career, pivotalmoments or people that made it
kind of made an outsized uhimpact on your career directory,
uh trajectory yeah, absolutely,I have had a very fun and
interesting career um workingacross a lot of different
(02:43):
industries, but I think one ofthe most pivotal moments,
probably the most pivotalmoment- is my first
Speaker 3 (02:52):
digital marketing agency, or my first digital
marketing job.
I studied marketing in collegeand my first job out of college
was with a small luxury outdoorliving spaces company.
I was the marketing coordinatorand I did everything from
emails, or rather mailers andpostcards we had a website to
(03:15):
landscape layout design totaking my boss's dog to physical
therapy so the wiring thingthat you could do it's a dog.
That didn't last very long.
One of my friends was workingat a digital agency and I got a
(03:37):
job there.
I fell in love with digitalmarketing almost right away
because I was so fascinated bythe ability to measure
everything right away, basically, and the ability then to make a
change based upon the insightsthat you were able to gather.
It sounds silly to say thattoday, but you know, that's what
I was putting, you know.
(03:57):
So we were just on the cusp ofit.
So, yeah, so I just fell inlove with it and again, um, that
was probably the most pivotalmoment, because I've never left
digital marketing, but I've done, you know, every job has been
in a different agency and it'sjust been um, a lot of fun.
(04:18):
And then, speaking about pivotalpeople, I think everybody on
this podcast and everybodylistening can say positive and
negative, because it's oldpeople that they've said in
their career.
True and so.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, I think that's funny.
You've asked that question of anumber of people.
I think you're the first personwho's brought up that sad fact.
But yes, absolutely true.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah, and I mean using that and making sure, ok,
if it was, like you know, a badmanager or whatever, the case is
that you just don't get intothat again and you know that can
change your trajectory of yourcareer as well.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, I mean, I know I learned from situations like
that the kind of leader I didnot want to be Exactly, exactly.
I'm sure Mike is Now.
Mike, you haven't run intoanything like that, have you?
You know, just like you knowpeople you'd rather not.
(05:19):
We don't need to name names,yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
No naming names.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
I won't.
I won't name names, butcertainly have, I think, just to
bring it sort of back towardssome of the normal or common
things that we hear in themarket.
Right like you fail, fail often, fail fast, like those kinds of
things, because you learn morefrom your failures, right like I
think you learn just as muchfrom situations too, uh, if not
(05:50):
more, right?
Speaker 1 (05:52):
um, I think it accelerates your ability to
understand what you value in acareer or a role, because
careers and jobs are twodifferent sort of things to talk
about, but it definitelyteaches you very quickly, right,
what you, what you want out of,uh, of your working
relationships okay yeah no doubtthat's interesting because so
(06:14):
literally earlier today I waslistening to a podcast episode
with adam grant if you know,you're familiar with him, is,
and it was about um if you know,you're familiar with him is,
and it was about um, essentiallylike how, uh, the pursuit of,
uh, culture fit can go wrong,right, and then you lose
diversity and stuff.
(06:34):
And I actually what I wasthinking about it because I've
been a big believer that culturefit was, was really important
when you look for things.
But then I thought about itafter listening to that, I think
really to me it's a values fit,right, the values align, as
opposed to culture, becauseculture is sort of, in my view,
like, either intentionally ornot, right, culture is the
(06:56):
manifestation of the real valuesof an organization and so the
signs on the wall don't reallymean a whole lot if the actual
behaviors that are reinforcedand celebrated are not aligned
with that.
So, um, totally random that Ihappened to listen, well, today,
and you brought that up, butit's been at the top of my mind
(07:16):
all day it's or the back of mymind all day today well, good so
um, you know, you've you'vedone a number of things, working
different places, differentindustries.
I think it's really interestingbecause you worked in, I guess
it's sort of a quasi-governmentorganization, along with
for-profit kinds of places aswell.
What are some of the lessonsthat you've learned along the
(07:40):
way as you kind of transitionfrom one to the other?
And, uh, maybe even a littlebit about I'm throwing you a
little bit of a curveball here alittle bit about, like, how did
you, as you were pursuing newventures, right, how did you
take those other lessons thatmay not be obvious to someone in
this new industry?
Like, how did you pitch you,market yourself, if you will.
(08:03):
And then, what other ways hasit helped you, you think, along
the way to help your career?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Great questions.
I've never, yeah, as we'vetalked about, I've worked in a
bunch of different industries.
I've never worked in the sameindustry.
Job over job, every job hasbeen a new industry and I never
really thought about it assomething that was a bad thing.
(08:34):
I, you know, I just found a jobthat I liked, job description
that I liked, and a company thatI thought was cool or
interesting and went for it.
And I think, um, marketingyourself, I think no matter
which industry you're in, thesame marketing principles apply
(08:57):
and it's the levers that youpull across those industries.
Um, for example, at thenational guard, I'm a contractor
there, um, and we were workingon their support programs, um,
and bringing you know awarenessto the support programs for
guardsmen and families, and wedidn't have an advertising
(09:17):
budget.
So I had just come from adigital agency where we had all
the advertising budget I meanwhat, what?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
would you, why would you need an advertising budget
for your captured audience right?
Speaker 3 (09:28):
for, yes, true, we were also getting out the word
about it.
A lot of people have the new um, not a new entity, but
essentially an umbrella overthese.
You know seven support programsthat we had had, and so we you
know email, website, social, andthen conferences like we went
(09:49):
to conferences all over and didkeynotes and demos, and you know
wearing boots and talking toguardsmen as they would walk by
saying, hey, do you have aminute?
Hey, you know the amount ofno's that I got.
Um was incredible.
But then, moving to um diazio,we had advertising budgets and
(10:12):
things like that, but because ofthe laws in our country, some
of which I think are still fromprohibition that we haven't
gotten rid of, you couldn't selldirect on a brand website.
You couldn't sell alcohol directon brand website.
You couldn't sell alcoholdirect on a brand website.
And so the lever that we had topull was the conversion,
basically is how do you getpeople aware of my functionality
(10:36):
?
Essentially and that was thedriver that was like our
conversion of people going tothat part of the city, finding a
retailer, finding a bar orrestaurant, whatever the case is
, and so just pulling thedifferent levers and crafting a
message for your audience.
You know legally what you couldand couldn't do, and I think
(10:58):
it's the same when you go fromone industry to the other.
You can use examples of thingsthat you've done, problems that
you've solved, and you know forme now, I've worked in like five
different industries and soit's an easier, it's an easy
play or an easier conversationversus going from digital agency
(11:21):
and hospitality industry to themilitaries, to, you know,
luxury spirits.
But as you build that, itbecomes very clear that you
can't do it and you have againthe same principles apply, just
the levers that you pull will bedifferent.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
I think it's interesting and I know we're
going to talk a little bit aboutsome of the similarities and
differences between B2B and B2Coperations.
But that story you just toldabout Diageo and the limits on
what you could do in terms ofI'll call it your call to action
, right?
(12:06):
lot of b2b companies have whenit goes from advertising to, you
know, sale?
Yes, exactly.
How do you tie back what youdid as a marketer to some sort
of end result, which ultimatelyis you want people to the diageo
example is and you want peopleto go to a retailer and buy the
products, and so you've got thissort of bridge that you have to
get.
You know you have to buildbetween that activity, the, the
buyer activity and the activityyou did as a marketer.
(12:28):
So I mean, is it?
I'm curious, is this?
Now I'm really throwing acurveball like how is that?
How is that something that youlike?
How is that typically solved inthat beat is I guess it's kind
of not direct to consumers, sobut it's b2c model, like how do
you, how do you, how did youmeasure that?
Speaker 3 (12:52):
one of my colleagues actually built a dashboard so we
could live time, get what, andso each brand site that we had
was individual, but the where tobuy site or the map for the
where to buy app in a centralrepository and put it into all
(13:15):
of those, all of the brands thatDiageo owned.
So like John Walker, don Julio,kettle, wands, murdona, captain
Morgan, all Greats, guinness,and so we were able to track
which of those brands peoplewere looking for, where in the
country people were looking forthem, and so if we were doing a
(13:36):
campaign and sent out an emailor something like that, we could
start to track within thatdashboard of where people were
searching track within thatdashboard of where people were
searching.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Oh, okay, so it was a little bit about like surge in
activity and something that wasyou believe was sort of a step
in the path to purchase.
Is that a fair way of saying it?
Okay, absolutely.
Yeah, I mean that's a.
Well, mike, you were in the adtech space.
I mean, did you deal with thatwhen you were in that space,
like as well?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
yeah, a little bit.
Um, I was on the ad tech sidefor more like the, the
technology that helped deployall of the sort of retargeting
and the inventory that wasbought across.
Like, my first start wasinventory, otherwise empty
(14:30):
spaces.
Right, for those of us that aremartech nerds, it's your iframe
for better sorts.
Right, there's an iframe thatsits on a website.
Someone purchases the rights tobe able to, like, serve an ad
into it and then there's ourthese RTB, real-time bidding
activities that happen, um, andthat ad network is is spread
across.
You know the cookies and allthe things right to be able to
(14:53):
retarget people, um, so I waskind of in that space.
You know, I think back, whatever, however, whatever, however
many is probably that was over adecade ago.
Um, I think I always questionedlike how accurate is this Cause
(15:16):
?
Like you know you, you putthese like, when I went from the
ad trafficker to the accountmanager side, there's the like,
um, you know, just like, ifyou're running Google ads, for
those of you that I'veexperienced you're sort of like
figuring out which target, demosand stuff you want to go after.
I've always questioned like,okay, it says, like you know,
male, female, 30 to 50 car buyerright and it was like its own
(15:39):
proprietary, like um system, I'mlike really.
The PaaS is actually working.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
You seem like you're surprised that you just had to
say it was a decade ago, mike,yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Well, it was over a decade ago, I just don't
remember exactly how long.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
It's changed.
When I went into the mobile adtech side of things, that got
even more convoluted.
Targeting got even morespecific at that point, right
For the most part, and what'sfascinating is that there's many
layers there, right, likesometimes you're serving ads
through a game that's a freemiumproduct versus web anyway.
(16:27):
So wild, wild world, but yeah,so a little bit, a little bit of
that came into my world too,but yeah, yes, okay, was there
anything we didn't, beth, thatyou wanted to touch on there?
Speaker 3 (16:49):
I don't know, I think , oh, I think one of the things
that I didn't want to mentionthat once I got to Nespresso and
you know that was directconsumer e-commerce you could
sell directly.
That is when I really startedlike that's when the operations
(17:12):
part of my career startedbecause we did have, you know,
we have an email team, we had asocial team.
We had, you know, sales team.
We had all teams and the mainpoint, you know, sales team we
had, we had all teams and, asthe main point, you know,
managing the website, and that'swhere all of our not all of our
sales, but the majority of thesales were coming through.
(17:33):
You work with a lot ofdifferent people to make sure
that what's going on this day isone accurate, two useful, um,
three, seamless for the customerto get from point A to point B
and then convert, and you knowthat involves every single
department, and so I thinkthat's really, again, that's
(17:59):
really where my operationexperience started to thrive, I
would say.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Gotcha, I love this I've been saying for so long.
Mike was up there clapping hishands for our listeners
Literally clapping as you weresaying that for our listeners.
The reason I love this is andI'll sort of try to ask you a
little bit more about this, bethbut I've been saying for a long
(18:28):
time, and I'm sure I'm not theonly one, right, but when I have
the chance I get to say, uh,b2c has been doing marketing
operations for a lot longer thanB2B has.
Uh, they just don't call itthat, right, like generally
speaking.
They sort of refer to it as allthe other names that you're
that you're naming off RightLife cycle marketers, marketing
automation, email marketers,website managers, all this other
(18:59):
stuff.
Why do you say marketingoperations isn't like a title or
like a common point ofdiscussion in that world?
Is it just because it's likeevolved from the landscape?
I don't know.
What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
I don't know, this may be a silly response, but I
think separation is too.
I I don't think it's boring,but I think people think that
the word operation is boring andso it's not as creative.
(19:37):
As marketer or website manager,you know it doesn't have that
kind of marketing, creativeappeal, but it's.
I mean, you're coordinatingacross departments to make sure
that things happen and so you'remaking sure things operate
effectively and therefore, youwill end operations.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Yeah, my word of the day is germane I do it is
germane to.
I already said that when theysay that because I used it
earlier somehow, um, but I feellike it is germane to.
I already said that I only saythat because I used it earlier
somehow, but I feel like it'sgermane to your ability to go to
market.
Modern marketing can't happenwithout MarTech and marketing
operations, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
When I think about, my first step into the marketing
realm was at a.
It was my one and really myonly B2C experience.
It was really my only B2Cexperience and I think my role
was in database marketing, whichtoday would be probably called
something different, but it hada heavy bent towards IT and I
(20:40):
think in large organizationsthat's maybe part of it too.
It's not seen as a marketingthing, it's more of a technology
thing only, although I don'tagree with that.
But do you think there's aperception Agreed?
So yeah, just as a total aside,I know I've been helping my
(21:02):
mother-in-law dealing with anot-to-be-named cable company
who could really use somebodylike you help them with their
fucking website.
I'm sorry, yeah, um it's been alovely.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
It is incredible.
It is incredible.
Another one of the cool thingsthat I did in this breath,
though, was um, user userexperience, ufui.
I didn't do the design myself,but I managed a lot of that and
Vespresso, owned by Netflix, hasobviously different markets
(21:37):
Obviously the US market, right,et cetera and so we had to work
with HQ headquarters over inSwitzerland a lot, and so I
worked with that team, theglobal team, because we just
used a template basically acrossall the different countries,
and it was incredible to see howhard we make it for people
(22:03):
sometimes to buy things thatwe're trying to sell them, and
it's not hard to change it, butI think a lot of these companies
have these legacy, potentiallyproprietary platforms that
they're using that get in theway of so much potential yeah,
(22:32):
and, and you know, can't agreemore.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Ironically, hartman, I was live chatting with my
cable company just the other dayand maybe the same one.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
I'm just saying that's the good thing.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
I mean, this is literally three days ago, my
wife's with it.
I mean, will you leave theperson alone?
Like, for once, the answer isyes.
This is ridiculous, and so thethe what.
Where I'm going with this,though, beth, is, like you know,
here you are talking about likesort of top of funnel
pre-conversion, why this is sodifficult, and then sort of like
(23:09):
, broadly speaking, the reasonwhy marketing operations and rev
ops categorically if you wantto go so far as to call it that
is so germane to everything, isthat I'm going to stop using
that for all the listeners.
I promise that'll be the lasttime today, and the is that my
experience was sort of theopposite.
(23:30):
So here it is, inside of mycustomer portal.
I can go explore new options,and it's telling me oh, there's
this price, yet I'm beingcharged $20 more a month for the
thing that is literallyadvertised as a thing that I can
sign up for.
Still, I was like, at least, atleast in my logged in
environment, don't show me themarketing one, show me the one
(23:52):
that I'm not allowed to haveanymore, which is the one that
I'm paying for.
In reality, I was just givingthe.
I was trying to be somewhatpolite, but I was trying to
illustrate the point with thecustomer person Like, hey, your
website says somethingcompletely different.
Right, I'm being charged.
I felt bad for this person.
When you think about therelevance category.
How do they know that?
(24:13):
Right, like, can theyimpersonate me Like I don't know
, but this stuff, matt like.
So I guess, for the listeners,right when I've said in the past
and and you know, beth,hopefully you agree with this
(24:35):
you have such an incredibleopportunity to look across the
customer journey and the techstack that that supports every
aspect of that, because in mostcases, you have access to most
of those tools and most otherpeople don't.
And this is your opportunity tolike, use your curiosity to go
like, figure out, like, when youhave a personal experience like
this, if you're chatting withyour cable company and you work
at one of the cable companiesand you're listening to this, go
(24:56):
log in and assist.
It's really so.
Maybe this is a problem I justexperienced myself.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
I should go see if we had that problem I don't want
to take this too far, deb, butthis is exactly why I hate,
really hate, the term internalcustomers, because my guess is
there's some sort of teamsinternally who are committed to
serving their internal customerswell, what they don't say, but
(25:25):
what happens often is that meansthat they're optimizing for
people inside the company, notfor actual customers, and and
then you have people have acustomer, actual customer
experiences that are shitty,yeah, and I think that's a big
miss, like that's one of thosethings.
So when when I hear things likeyou know we value our internal
(25:47):
customers, I'm like I don't care, we don't need them.
I mean, I understand thesentiment, but I always
Absolutely.
Yeah, Like, ultimately we allhave our jobs at these companies
because actual customers arepaying us for some sort of
service that they get value outof or, in Mike's case,
apparently that they're stuckwith.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yes, primarily on this, which is what I'm dealing
with.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
No matter now, but an upside there, okay, well, let's
.
So.
I didn't want I was almostready to go into this anyway
with these things, but one ofthe things I think we've danced
around a little bit here is thisnotion that there's probably
more commonality between B2B andB2C marketing and marketing
operations than there isdifferences.
(26:35):
And I think what triggered youending up here on this is that
you, I think, had read the 2024State of the MoPro report and I
think you were struck, as moreof a B2c person with some
exposure to b2b, you know howmany of the things that were top
of mind for b2b marketing opsfolks were also things that b2c
(26:58):
people were dealing with.
So maybe talk a little bitabout you know what were some of
those things that stood out toyou and why, and if you've got
examples of like what thatreally looks like in a bdc side,
I would love to hear those aswell absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
when I first, I read the report a couple of times.
Um, it's really interesting,which is why I read it a couple
of times, but I kept having toremind myself that it was B2B
people that were responding tothis Because, like you just said
, there are so many similaritiesbetween the two and there was
(27:40):
one section where I think peoplewho were taking the survey that
went into the study they couldwrite in responses of things
that are, you know, requirementsof their jobs or whatever the
case is, and I'd have a wholelist.
So it's like web management,project management, campaign
management, strategy, budget, AI, innovation, like all of those
(28:06):
things we're doing on B2B2, onthe B2B design as well.
You know, web management.
You've got to be able tocoordinate with, in addition to
developers and various thingslike that.
You've got to be able tocoordinate with the brand team
and the creative team to makesure that, again, what you're
putting up on the site iscorrect.
(28:27):
To make sure that, again, whatyou're putting up on the site is
correct.
You've got to coordinate withthe sales team to make sure that
the promos are correct, theproduct team for making sure
that all details about theproduct is correct.
I think, when you get intovendor and IT management too, we
have different platforms thatyou can use for managing a site
(28:48):
and so negotiating contracts andmaking sure that you have the
budget.
And then if you have two orthree different tools that
you're using, how do they allwork together?
We have to make sure that theyall can work together so that
we're not just spending money tospend money and then can't
actually use the thing.
You just pay the total rate.
(29:08):
And then I think this you know,AI innovation.
We've all been using AI for avery long time.
People haven't been calling itthat necessarily, but we have
been.
And but you know it's only goingto get more and more involved
and even within the ai model youhave to use a couple different
(29:35):
ones sometimes in order to getto a response.
So I think you know from a b2b,b2c pride, there's a lot of
similarities between what youknow y'all are working on and
what we are.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I could not agree more.
I keep advocating for more andmore B2C folks.
I mean honestly, like the wholeI don't want to say the whole
team but a good amount ofindividuals from Ford and Hyatt
and a number of other B2Ccompanies came to Mopsapalooza
this year and many of themwalked up to me and were like
(30:13):
love this, love everythingeverybody's talking about.
How do we get more B2C peoplehere?
Right, like we need to talkmore about this stuff
categorically and get more ofthese folks in the room.
And I'm like, yeah, let's do it, we need that and really
selfishly, and really selfishlyfor the sake of the, the
betterment of all of us in thecommunity, we need to learn from
(30:33):
the B2C folks who are dealingwith a really quite complex like
customer journeys and data set.
Their, their data models anddata sets are just larger.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
So the volume of data in the B2C world is like I
don't even know what the rightmultiple is, but it's greater
than 10x.
I think, In most instances.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yeah, so anyway, I couldn't agree more.
But to the point of all of thesethings that we're all trying to
wrap our arms around in thisrole call it market animation,
lifecycle marketer, marketingoperations, rev ops, whatever
(31:20):
Part of the reason we wanteverybody in here is to also say
, hey, let's put some guardrailsin place.
Let's, let's put some guardrailsin place, let's try to be
cautious of like, how much istoo much?
At what point do you need toappoint a specialist into a very
big part of the tech stack?
And and what is that sort ofthreshold and what are the
limitations?
(31:40):
And how do we make sure you getpaid for the value that you
bring to the organization andall that stuff?
Right?
So this is like, yes, we wanteverybody to learn from each
other, but simultaneously wewant to publish material, much
like we do in the marketing, thestate of the mo pro report to
to try to educate executiveleaders and other managers and
(32:04):
board members of like, uh, no,you cannot just throw everything
to this one magical unicornperson that, yes, can figure it
out, but like that's not fairright, absolutely, I was.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
I'm just gonna say that, so I will reiterate it.
But I will say agreed,wholeheart, yeah, I mean even
Flick.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
I think there's a real benefit to, even though
there are going to be nuancesand things that are different,
right, so maybe the specifictechnologies are different or
the specific needs for reportingand analytics are different.
I had that sort of epiphanythat there's an analog in the
B2B marketing analytics space oftrying to tie marketing
(32:52):
activity to call it revenue orbenefit to what you're dealing
with, where there's a similarchallenge that's happening in
the B2C world, particularly ifyou're not a to consumer, and
I'm like, well, maybe there'sideas that can be shared where,
okay, we figured this out, thisis how we do it in the B2C world
(33:14):
, when we're not direct toconsumer that maybe you can
apply to what you're doing in aB2B space and vice versa.
Right, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
And I think also that magical unicorn that you were
talking about, mike, if you areone of those people, you're
going to figure it out.
Even if you've never workedwith the Ford or you've never
heard of it, you can figure itout, and figure out if it works
or if it doesn't work,everything, I think for
(33:48):
marketing operations.
People are quote-unquote,figureoutable yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
People who give a shit and are curious and want to
make things successful.
So it's kind of the DNA.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I agree, yeah, I agree.
I think for listeners, we areall advocating and encouraging
you to say you are absolutelycapable, like you probably know
that about yourself.
But if you need someone to tellyou you are a hundred percent
capable of figuring stuff out,um, but I think in the, in the
event that you have a managerfriend that you've ever worked
(34:24):
with or has ever questioned whatthis role is all about, send
them this episode and then I amtelling them right now to next
time you are trying to hiresomeone, um, don't be like you
have to have five years ofmarquetto experience or whatever
the frick like, please.
(34:48):
Yes, I totally get it.
Okay, I run an organization now.
I get the speed and efficiencyand, like the, the ramp up time.
All those things are important.
I totally understand you wantto hit the ground running, no,
crawling, walking and runningright.
But also, just, this is one ofthose roles where, if you give
(35:09):
somebody a chance, I'll I'll dieon the hill of.
They'll probably stay at yourcompany for longer because you
gave them a chance and and thenthey got deeply entrenched into
the excitement of your businessand, as long as your culture is
a good fit, they'll probablyhang around.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
They'll give somebody else a chance that doesn't have
the experience, because they'regoing to be curious enough to
go figure that out yeah, the wayI've thought about it as a as
when I've hired as I, I willhire for attitude over aptitude,
just about any time, assumingthere's a minimum level of
aptitude.
So, yeah, if I got people withthe right attitude, who can
learn and are coachable and uh,want to achieve and, um, they're
(35:51):
willing to try stuff and knowthat they're not.
You know, I'm the kind ofleader where I'm not going to
hold it Like if they dosomething intentionally bad,
right, that's a different thing.
But if they make a mistake,right, that's a learning
opportunity.
And I think that it's funny.
I'm going to go back to thatAdam Grant episode I just
listened to.
Had a similar thing talkingabout how job descriptions are
(36:12):
so bad at describing, like allthese, aptitude things as
opposed to attitude things andtying them back to values or
culture, depending on how youwant to use them.
at the organization and therewas somebody on there I can't
remember who the guest was whosaid really you should be
(36:33):
looking for people who matchthat more than the aptitude.
Do you need people that meet acertain threshold Absolutely,
but once you get past thatcertain threshold it kind of
doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Well and I think it can be a positive thing versus
somebody that, oh, this is howI've always used this tool, this
is the way that I did it at mylast job.
This is the way that you shouldbe doing it, and then if you
have somebody that is learningit for the first time, it's
(37:06):
fresh eyes on her and theimplementations you can.
It can be so much more fruitfulif somebody is learning it for
the first time and sourcing helpfrom other marketing.
You know operationsprofessionals that have used
that before, and no matter whatthe industry, because then they
(37:27):
can take those experiences andapply it to you know what their
company is or whatever the caseis.
So I would be, yeah, sure, likeyou're saying, minimum
experience, but yeah, well, okay, so we talked about things that
are common, right?
Speaker 1 (37:44):
what do you see whether they should be or not,
right?
Speaker 3 (37:48):
things that are seem to be unique to b2c and b2b,
like where there are differencestoday this is a fun one, I
think, because it really justcomes back to marketing
principles and how you'retalking to the customer that
you're trying to sell to.
So you know we're not b2c basis.
(38:08):
You know you're selling aproduct or a service to more you
know an individual person andso you want to create that
emotional connection oremotional need with the product
or service that you're trying tosell, and so you're pulling on
the heartstrings of anindividual versus B2B.
(38:30):
You know you're trying tojustify the ROI of selling
something and you're trying to,you know, educate the potential
customer on how it will helpyour resource management or
whatever the case is.
So that is very fact-based.
So you're pulling more on ahead string versus the heart
strings of B2C Love that.
(38:53):
Yeah, Again, it's just whoyou're talking like, which are
demographic and how are theygoing to respond?
I think that there areinstances where you could pull
on the heartstrings with B2B andvice versa with B2C, but you
know for the most part, it'spretty simple.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah.
I love how different it is, Ithink uh, there's a lot of B2B
marketing that I don't know howto put it, other than it's a
little too buttoned up Right andum, I think there's room to be.
I think there should be peoplewho are more willing to realize
(39:35):
that they're.
Yes, ultimately there's goingto be some other business entity
where the check's going to comefrom for whatever they buy, but
at the end of the day, it'sindividual people who are making
the decisions and, yes, youmight think they're going to be
more, more rational than anindividual person, but I, I
(39:56):
actually don't think that's true.
I think, I mean, this is thewhole reason why behavioral
economics is around is becausepeople weren't behaving
rationally right.
So, uh, an individual level.
So, um, I mean, what's your doyou think?
Do you think there should be alittle more like?
Should those?
Should these things be morealike in b2b and bc?
Do you think there should be alittle more?
Should these things be morealike in B2B and B2C worlds?
Do you think?
Speaker 3 (40:17):
I think it comes down to who your audience is.
And if you're trying to get toknow your audience, it's just
like what's your target demo?
Like if I'm trying to sell, youknow, a spa day to somebody,
that's going to be verydifferent than if I'm trying to
sell a triathlon, or like aspartan race or something like
(40:38):
that.
You know you're going toapproach that with two totally
different messages and, um, youknow, creative and all of those
different things.
So I think that I don't thinkit's a problem that they're
different, because I think it'sjust the marketing principle of
(41:00):
weakening with your targetaudience.
But I do to what you said aboutB2B being more buttoned up.
I think there can be a littlebit more fun injected and
creativity injected into thosetypes of messages yeah, we just
too many people in b2b taketheater themselves too seriously
, you know well, they do in b2cas well.
(41:24):
Oh, they do.
Okay, that's different.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
That is the common big I've always been so excited
by, by the levers you get topull on in the b2c landscape
versus the b2b I think I thinkb2b marketing is way, way harder
, um, just because you just havefewer, fewer elements to to.
(41:47):
You know, levered I I I don'twant to pretend like like,
that's the best way I candescribe it I, you know, for
those of you who get offended bythat, I'm sorry, um, that.
I just think it's moredifficult, like you have like
more complex buying cycles thattake longer and you have less of
(42:07):
a um, the decision criteria isfar more complex.
Usually there's a stakeholdercommittee that's trying to buy
from the things that you'reselling, and so I think that
creates a more complex buyerjourney and stuff like that.
And I always enjoyed the natureor the fantasy of what it must
be like to be a B2B marketer,even though that's complex.
(42:29):
I've never really done a ton ofit.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
I've done little bits here and there, but what is the
cost of what you're selling to?
Yeah, like sure, it's all youknow for all intents and
purposes for this conversation.
Sure is easier to sell than bbsolution.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Yeah, you know, that's a much shorter fifty
thousand dollar softwarepurchase versus a you know
whatever.
Call it a fifty dollar,whatever.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Yes well, the downside of a mistake is, yeah,
or that, or the, the cost ofmistake is much lower, right, so
okay, so it's interesting, sir.
You said that's you think thereshould be a little difference,
that maybe there's some overlap,but, um, so one of the things
that and this is I'm trying toremember who it was I think it
(43:19):
was, maybe it was Chris WillisLike somebody posted on LinkedIn
not too long ago saying thatyou know, if you go back to
classical marketing training,right, you get the four p's
right, and really most marketingteams are focusing on just one
these days.
Right, the promotion piece.
And, um, I'm curious if you'reseeing anything like.
(43:42):
Are you seeing again, it's likesimilarities or differences in
the bdc world where you've been?
Are you seeing more focus onjust promotion and less about?
I can't remember if I canremember all the the four p's
evenly.
So it's product placement,pricing, promotion right, did I
get them right?
Speaker 3 (43:56):
all right, so what do you see?
Yeah, seeing the same thing inb2c across a couple of the
companies that I've worked for,and I think there's always going
to be attention.
Um, you know, okay, you setyour price and then you have the
promotion for it.
When do you pull?
You know, a percentage off or abuy one, get one, or something
(44:19):
like that when do you?
when do you go with that?
And there's always going to bethe tension between that.
Um, I think a lot of you knowin the experience that I've had
the conversations and that thattension is between are we
training our customers to be onthat?
We're always going to be onpromotion and so they're not
(44:42):
going to buy something at fullprice.
Okay, that's not good, thatyou're training your customers
to wait for this down, but butthen it also could potentially
erode their customer loyalty interms of, well, why are they
always on sale?
Is there something wrong withthe product?
Why aren't people buying it onfull price?
And so I think that in terms ofthose purchases for the
(45:08):
customers, there could be someerosion of that brand affinity
if you are always in promotion.
Now, I know that anybody that'slistening in on finance seamless
, they'll see.
In fact, you know there are twosides to that coin, um, and so
I think that that's where itcomes in again with the
(45:29):
operation of operations andlooking at data and saying, okay
, well, in that month, with thispercentage off over the last
four years, these are theresults that we've gotten.
If we add in another promotiona month before, are we just
robbing people to pay for it, oris there actually going to be
(45:51):
incremental um to yeah, yeah,it's uh, we have a unique
environment at marketingoffscomand that, like we, we have
partners that support us andsponsor us, our community, right
(46:13):
.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
And then we've got we've got a membership model and
we've got tickets and uh, andso in some ways there's this
concept of b2c happening andI've I've often brought those,
those things up right where it'slike, oh, if we you know, I
don't know run a discount formembership or we run a discount
for the tickets to Mopsapaloozaor whatever, um, people like are
(46:38):
just always going to expectthat thing.
Right, and when I was at anagency we were selling um shirts
for one of these, one of theseshirt brands out there and
they're like it was like everyother weekend.
It was like every other weekendthere was like a promo email
that was going out and all thatstuff.
And what's fascinating is thatI think, like the, the, the
(46:59):
ecosystem adapted, the MarTechecosystem adapted, and they were
like, oh, you know what'llsolve this?
Loyalty programs.
Now it can be always onpromotion, but then have loyalty
and get them to come back.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
And then it's like, okay, now we're not robbing t
for paul and all this otherstuff.
The loyalty is a free shippingthreshold and uh promise
delivery.
So am Amazon.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally Right.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Well, I can think of at least one other brand where
I'm loyal because I getconsistent deals pushed to me
and I don't go there all thatoften, but I go there often
enough where it's like it'sworth it for me to trade off
like fighting them, and I causeI know like I'm sharing a whole
bunch of data about me, what Icare about, um, but it's yeah
(47:56):
like I know that I air quotesright.
Save a bunch of money over thecourse of a year by doing that
yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
I mean, I, I don't.
I have, having been in B2B formy entire career, basically, uh,
b2b, saas at that I've alwayslike and this'll be for another
day, another, another episodemaybe Uh, but I've always like
been fascinated, like how do youcreate a loyalty program for
(48:28):
B2B business?
Like how does that happen?
Happen, because it's actuallyquite complex, you know, like
the renewal cycles and all thatother stuff, and like the
gamification models that go intothe usage of the product, and I
think we're starting to seemore of that now with the usage
based type of, at least in thesass side of things.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
but anyway, yeah, well, I think, some, I think.
I think actually, the way thatthat was done or has been done
well is through community right.
So you get your most engagedcustomers to be your own
advocates and, by the way, theyalso provide support.
(49:08):
So you don't have as manysupport people.
So and I think about that withme all the big marketing
automation platforms have thatyeah.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
It's just no, I agree with you.
I think you know we sawcompanies like influitive kind
of do this like crazy blip forfor a while, right, where they
were like this huge $10 millionwhatever entity and influencer
marketing kind of was happeningat the same time on the B2C side
.
But what's interesting aboutthe concept of loyalty
(49:43):
gamification and pricingstructures in that world,
thinking about that communityreferral, customer marketing
kind of stuff, is that like toyour point earlier, beth, right,
the pulling on the heartstringsversus the headstrings thing.
It's unintuitive for you as anemployee to feel compelled to
(50:09):
use a B2B product in service ofbenefiting your organization,
and so what I mean by that islike if I were to build a true
loyalty program, I would saythings like oh, if you um, you
know, hit this certain thresholdof usage, we're gonna guarantee
you, uh, five hundred dollarsoff your next seat.
(50:29):
That you add, right.
But the thing is is like theperson doesn't care what the
company gets.
look, yeah right, it's uh, likethat sense of gamification,
doesn't?
Like it just doesn't.
Those two things don't worktogether.
And so I've always beenchallenged like how do you do
that instrumentation?
(50:49):
But that benefits theorganization and the individual
and it's not like in fluid ofwhich was, which was an
interesting product.
But like, oh cool, hubspot saysI need to go like share this
blog post and like retweet thisthing because I was in their
marketplace, right, their hubstars thing back in the day I
was like their top advocate.
I got like a bunch of gift cardsright because I was constantly
(51:13):
doing the things and eventuallyI was kind of like over it, um,
but like, and so really itbenefited them and it benefited
me, but it did nothing for forlike I think it's like you're
not actually supporting.
You know, it's not like mycompany got a benefit of me
spending my time championing theproduct that I loved it's
(51:35):
complex random tangent sorryyeah it was.
I think it's fit.
The intersections of theseworlds in martech and how
they're all supporting thesego-to-market notions is
fascinating yeah, you know whocould solve it a marketing
operation uniform, that's true.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
I totally agree.
Yeah, I think that's probably agood place for us to wrap up,
and actually we need to wrap up.
So, beth, thank you so much.
It's been great.
I've enjoyed this conversation.
I'm sure our audience will bebenefiting from it as well.
But if folks want to learn morefrom you or keep up with what
(52:15):
you're doing or talking about,what's the best way for them to
do that?
Speaker 3 (52:19):
LinkedIn Good old LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
All right, linkedin it is.
I don't even think I should askthis question anymore.
I think it's me.
That's actually not true.
There have been.
We do have guests who there aresome others.
Yeah, so again, thank you, beth,mike.
Always great to have you alongas well.
Thanks to our listeners outthere for continuing to support
(52:47):
us and coming up with ideas andsuggestions, and guests.
If you are interested in beingguests or have suggestions,
please reach out to Naomi, mikeor me and we'd be happy to chat
with you about that and keepingthings moving Until next time.
Bye, everyone.
Speaker 3 (52:56):
Bye.
Speaker 1 (52:58):
Thank, you See ya.
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by all
the MoPros out there.
I am your host.
Michael Hartman Joined todayone of my co-hosts, mike Rizzo.
Happy New Year-ish.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Happy four-year anniversary.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Four-year anniversary .
Speaker 2 (00:18):
yes, we're halfway through the month of the new
year of 2025, and are 100 in onthe fourth year of multiple or
not most fifth year.
My brain is in so many placesto them.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
We're starting year five now, right?
So?
We're starting year five yeah,and if I remember right, you get
a birthday that's happeningaround this time yep, yep,
that'll be tomorrow, tomorrowwell, by the time this gets out,
it'll be in the past, butthat's all right.
That's all right, that's allright.
Well, joining Mike and me todayto talk about the differences
(00:55):
between B2C and B2B marketingoperations is Beth Horrigan.
Beth has worked across a widerange of industries in her
career, most recently withFreefly Apparel, working in the
e-commerce operations group.
Prior to that, she worked ine-com operations and user
experience for Nespresso Nice.
Before that, she was a digitaltechnologist with Diageo,
(01:17):
supporting several brands, anddigital marketing manager with
the National Guard Bureau.
So, beth, thanks for joining ustoday.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Thanks for having me and happy anniversary.
Thank Beth.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
thanks for joining us today, thanks for having me and
happy anniversary, thank you,and have a good day.
Thanks, all of the above.
All of the above, all of theabove.
Yeah Well, we could totallyderail this and start talking
about coffee and espressomachines.
I'm refraining, I'm totallyrefraining.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I know, yeah, I think when Beth.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I'm totally refraining.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I know I'm looking at my pods over there that I'm not
making right now.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, I probably wasted like 15 minutes of our
30-minute call.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
when I first talked to Beth about doing this episode
, I didn't talk to her all daytoo.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, well, let's get started.
So you know, I did the I don'teven know like two, second, five
second rundown of your career.
So pretty much got everything,I'm sure.
But why we?
Before we get too far into the,our main topic, what could you
share a little more about yourcareer journey?
And then I know I personallylike to hear about you know, as
(02:21):
people look back on their career, um, you know, as people look
back on their career, pivotalmoments or people that made it
kind of made an outsized uhimpact on your career directory,
uh trajectory yeah, absolutely,I have had a very fun and
interesting career um workingacross a lot of different
(02:43):
industries, but I think one ofthe most pivotal moments,
probably the most pivotalmoment- is my first
Speaker 3 (02:52):
digital marketing agency, or my first digital
marketing job.
I studied marketing in collegeand my first job out of college
was with a small luxury outdoorliving spaces company.
I was the marketing coordinatorand I did everything from
emails, or rather mailers andpostcards we had a website to
(03:15):
landscape layout design totaking my boss's dog to physical
therapy so the wiring thingthat you could do it's a dog.
That didn't last very long.
One of my friends was workingat a digital agency and I got a
(03:37):
job there.
I fell in love with digitalmarketing almost right away
because I was so fascinated bythe ability to measure
everything right away, basically, and the ability then to make a
change based upon the insightsthat you were able to gather.
It sounds silly to say thattoday, but you know, that's what
I was putting, you know.
(03:57):
So we were just on the cusp ofit.
So, yeah, so I just fell inlove with it and again, um, that
was probably the most pivotalmoment, because I've never left
digital marketing, but I've done, you know, every job has been
in a different agency and it'sjust been um, a lot of fun.
(04:18):
And then, speaking about pivotalpeople, I think everybody on
this podcast and everybodylistening can say positive and
negative, because it's oldpeople that they've said in
their career.
True and so.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, I think that's funny.
You've asked that question of anumber of people.
I think you're the first personwho's brought up that sad fact.
But yes, absolutely true.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah, and I mean using that and making sure, ok,
if it was, like you know, a badmanager or whatever, the case is
that you just don't get intothat again and you know that can
change your trajectory of yourcareer as well.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, I mean, I know I learned from situations like
that the kind of leader I didnot want to be Exactly, exactly.
I'm sure Mike is Now.
Mike, you haven't run intoanything like that, have you?
You know, just like you knowpeople you'd rather not.
(05:19):
We don't need to name names,yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
No naming names.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
I won't.
I won't name names, butcertainly have, I think, just to
bring it sort of back towardssome of the normal or common
things that we hear in themarket.
Right like you fail, fail often, fail fast, like those kinds of
things, because you learn morefrom your failures, right like I
think you learn just as muchfrom situations too, uh, if not
(05:50):
more, right?
Speaker 1 (05:52):
um, I think it accelerates your ability to
understand what you value in acareer or a role, because
careers and jobs are twodifferent sort of things to talk
about, but it definitelyteaches you very quickly, right,
what you, what you want out of,uh, of your working
relationships okay yeah no doubtthat's interesting because so
(06:14):
literally earlier today I waslistening to a podcast episode
with adam grant if you know,you're familiar with him, is,
and it was about um if you know,you're familiar with him is,
and it was about um, essentiallylike how, uh, the pursuit of,
uh, culture fit can go wrong,right, and then you lose
diversity and stuff.
(06:34):
And I actually what I wasthinking about it because I've
been a big believer that culturefit was, was really important
when you look for things.
But then I thought about itafter listening to that, I think
really to me it's a values fit,right, the values align, as
opposed to culture, becauseculture is sort of, in my view,
like, either intentionally ornot, right, culture is the
(06:56):
manifestation of the real valuesof an organization and so the
signs on the wall don't reallymean a whole lot if the actual
behaviors that are reinforcedand celebrated are not aligned
with that.
So, um, totally random that Ihappened to listen, well, today,
and you brought that up, butit's been at the top of my mind
(07:16):
all day it's or the back of mymind all day today well, good so
um, you know, you've you'vedone a number of things, working
different places, differentindustries.
I think it's really interestingbecause you worked in, I guess
it's sort of a quasi-governmentorganization, along with
for-profit kinds of places aswell.
What are some of the lessonsthat you've learned along the
(07:40):
way as you kind of transitionfrom one to the other?
And, uh, maybe even a littlebit about I'm throwing you a
little bit of a curveball here alittle bit about, like, how did
you, as you were pursuing newventures, right, how did you
take those other lessons thatmay not be obvious to someone in
this new industry?
Like, how did you pitch you,market yourself, if you will.
(08:03):
And then, what other ways hasit helped you, you think, along
the way to help your career?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Great questions.
I've never, yeah, as we'vetalked about, I've worked in a
bunch of different industries.
I've never worked in the sameindustry.
Job over job, every job hasbeen a new industry and I never
really thought about it assomething that was a bad thing.
(08:34):
I, you know, I just found a jobthat I liked, job description
that I liked, and a company thatI thought was cool or
interesting and went for it.
And I think, um, marketingyourself, I think no matter
which industry you're in, thesame marketing principles apply
(08:57):
and it's the levers that youpull across those industries.
Um, for example, at thenational guard, I'm a contractor
there, um, and we were workingon their support programs, um,
and bringing you know awarenessto the support programs for
guardsmen and families, and wedidn't have an advertising
(09:17):
budget.
So I had just come from adigital agency where we had all
the advertising budget I meanwhat, what?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
would you, why would you need an advertising budget
for your captured audience right?
Speaker 3 (09:28):
for, yes, true, we were also getting out the word
about it.
A lot of people have the new um, not a new entity, but
essentially an umbrella overthese.
You know seven support programsthat we had had, and so we you
know email, website, social, andthen conferences like we went
(09:49):
to conferences all over and didkeynotes and demos, and you know
wearing boots and talking toguardsmen as they would walk by
saying, hey, do you have aminute?
Hey, you know the amount ofno's that I got.
Um was incredible.
But then, moving to um diazio,we had advertising budgets and
(10:12):
things like that, but because ofthe laws in our country, some
of which I think are still fromprohibition that we haven't
gotten rid of, you couldn't selldirect on a brand website.
You couldn't sell alcohol directon brand website.
You couldn't sell alcoholdirect on a brand website.
And so the lever that we had topull was the conversion,
basically is how do you getpeople aware of my functionality
(10:36):
?
Essentially and that was thedriver that was like our
conversion of people going tothat part of the city, finding a
retailer, finding a bar orrestaurant, whatever the case is
, and so just pulling thedifferent levers and crafting a
message for your audience.
You know legally what you couldand couldn't do, and I think
(10:58):
it's the same when you go fromone industry to the other.
You can use examples of thingsthat you've done, problems that
you've solved, and you know forme now, I've worked in like five
different industries and soit's an easier, it's an easy
play or an easier conversationversus going from digital agency
(11:21):
and hospitality industry to themilitaries, to, you know,
luxury spirits.
But as you build that, itbecomes very clear that you
can't do it and you have againthe same principles apply, just
the levers that you pull will bedifferent.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
I think it's interesting and I know we're
going to talk a little bit aboutsome of the similarities and
differences between B2B and B2Coperations.
But that story you just toldabout Diageo and the limits on
what you could do in terms ofI'll call it your call to action
, right?
(12:06):
lot of b2b companies have whenit goes from advertising to, you
know, sale?
Yes, exactly.
How do you tie back what youdid as a marketer to some sort
of end result, which ultimatelyis you want people to the diageo
example is and you want peopleto go to a retailer and buy the
products, and so you've got thissort of bridge that you have to
get.
You know you have to buildbetween that activity, the, the
buyer activity and the activityyou did as a marketer.
(12:28):
So I mean, is it?
I'm curious, is this?
Now I'm really throwing acurveball like how is that?
How is that something that youlike?
How is that typically solved inthat beat is I guess it's kind
of not direct to consumers, sobut it's b2c model, like how do
you, how do you, how did youmeasure that?
Speaker 3 (12:52):
one of my colleagues actually built a dashboard so we
could live time, get what, andso each brand site that we had
was individual, but the where tobuy site or the map for the
where to buy app in a centralrepository and put it into all
(13:15):
of those, all of the brands thatDiageo owned.
So like John Walker, don Julio,kettle, wands, murdona, captain
Morgan, all Greats, guinness,and so we were able to track
which of those brands peoplewere looking for, where in the
country people were looking forthem, and so if we were doing a
(13:36):
campaign and sent out an emailor something like that, we could
start to track within thatdashboard of where people were
searching track within thatdashboard of where people were
searching.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Oh, okay, so it was a little bit about like surge in
activity and something that wasyou believe was sort of a step
in the path to purchase.
Is that a fair way of saying it?
Okay, absolutely.
Yeah, I mean that's a.
Well, mike, you were in the adtech space.
I mean, did you deal with thatwhen you were in that space,
like as well?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
yeah, a little bit.
Um, I was on the ad tech sidefor more like the, the
technology that helped deployall of the sort of retargeting
and the inventory that wasbought across.
Like, my first start wasinventory, otherwise empty
(14:30):
spaces.
Right, for those of us that aremartech nerds, it's your iframe
for better sorts.
Right, there's an iframe thatsits on a website.
Someone purchases the rights tobe able to, like, serve an ad
into it and then there's ourthese RTB, real-time bidding
activities that happen, um, andthat ad network is is spread
across.
You know the cookies and allthe things right to be able to
(14:53):
retarget people, um, so I waskind of in that space.
You know, I think back, whatever, however, whatever, however
many is probably that was over adecade ago.
Um, I think I always questionedlike how accurate is this Cause
(15:16):
?
Like you know you, you putthese like, when I went from the
ad trafficker to the accountmanager side, there's the like,
um, you know, just like, ifyou're running Google ads, for
those of you that I'veexperienced you're sort of like
figuring out which target, demosand stuff you want to go after.
I've always questioned like,okay, it says, like you know,
male, female, 30 to 50 car buyerright and it was like its own
(15:39):
proprietary, like um system, I'mlike really.
The PaaS is actually working.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
You seem like you're surprised that you just had to
say it was a decade ago, mike,yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Well, it was over a decade ago, I just don't
remember exactly how long.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
It's changed.
When I went into the mobile adtech side of things, that got
even more convoluted.
Targeting got even morespecific at that point, right
For the most part, and what'sfascinating is that there's many
layers there, right, likesometimes you're serving ads
through a game that's a freemiumproduct versus web anyway.
(16:27):
So wild, wild world, but yeah,so a little bit, a little bit of
that came into my world too,but yeah, yes, okay, was there
anything we didn't, beth, thatyou wanted to touch on there?
Speaker 3 (16:49):
I don't know, I think , oh, I think one of the things
that I didn't want to mentionthat once I got to Nespresso and
you know that was directconsumer e-commerce you could
sell directly.
That is when I really startedlike that's when the operations
(17:12):
part of my career startedbecause we did have, you know,
we have an email team, we had asocial team.
We had, you know, sales team.
We had all teams and the mainpoint, you know, sales team we
had, we had all teams and, asthe main point, you know,
managing the website, and that'swhere all of our not all of our
sales, but the majority of thesales were coming through.
(17:33):
You work with a lot ofdifferent people to make sure
that what's going on this day isone accurate, two useful, um,
three, seamless for the customerto get from point A to point B
and then convert, and you knowthat involves every single
department, and so I thinkthat's really, again, that's
(17:59):
really where my operationexperience started to thrive, I
would say.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Gotcha, I love this I've been saying for so long.
Mike was up there clapping hishands for our listeners
Literally clapping as you weresaying that for our listeners.
The reason I love this is andI'll sort of try to ask you a
little bit more about this, bethbut I've been saying for a long
(18:28):
time, and I'm sure I'm not theonly one, right, but when I have
the chance I get to say, uh,b2c has been doing marketing
operations for a lot longer thanB2B has.
Uh, they just don't call itthat, right, like generally
speaking.
They sort of refer to it as allthe other names that you're
that you're naming off RightLife cycle marketers, marketing
automation, email marketers,website managers, all this other
(18:59):
stuff.
Why do you say marketingoperations isn't like a title or
like a common point ofdiscussion in that world?
Is it just because it's likeevolved from the landscape?
I don't know.
What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
I don't know, this may be a silly response, but I
think separation is too.
I I don't think it's boring,but I think people think that
the word operation is boring andso it's not as creative.
(19:37):
As marketer or website manager,you know it doesn't have that
kind of marketing, creativeappeal, but it's.
I mean, you're coordinatingacross departments to make sure
that things happen and so you'remaking sure things operate
effectively and therefore, youwill end operations.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Yeah, my word of the day is germane I do it is
germane to.
I already said that when theysay that because I used it
earlier somehow, um, but I feellike it is germane to.
I already said that I only saythat because I used it earlier
somehow, but I feel like it'sgermane to your ability to go to
market.
Modern marketing can't happenwithout MarTech and marketing
operations, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
When I think about, my first step into the marketing
realm was at a.
It was my one and really myonly B2C experience.
It was really my only B2Cexperience and I think my role
was in database marketing, whichtoday would be probably called
something different, but it hada heavy bent towards IT and I
(20:40):
think in large organizationsthat's maybe part of it too.
It's not seen as a marketingthing, it's more of a technology
thing only, although I don'tagree with that.
But do you think there's aperception Agreed?
So yeah, just as a total aside,I know I've been helping my
(21:02):
mother-in-law dealing with anot-to-be-named cable company
who could really use somebodylike you help them with their
fucking website.
I'm sorry, yeah, um it's been alovely.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
It is incredible.
It is incredible.
Another one of the cool thingsthat I did in this breath,
though, was um, user userexperience, ufui.
I didn't do the design myself,but I managed a lot of that and
Vespresso, owned by Netflix, hasobviously different markets
(21:37):
Obviously the US market, right,et cetera and so we had to work
with HQ headquarters over inSwitzerland a lot, and so I
worked with that team, theglobal team, because we just
used a template basically acrossall the different countries,
and it was incredible to see howhard we make it for people
(22:03):
sometimes to buy things thatwe're trying to sell them, and
it's not hard to change it, butI think a lot of these companies
have these legacy, potentiallyproprietary platforms that
they're using that get in theway of so much potential yeah,
(22:32):
and, and you know, can't agreemore.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Ironically, hartman, I was live chatting with my
cable company just the other dayand maybe the same one.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
I'm just saying that's the good thing.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
I mean, this is literally three days ago, my
wife's with it.
I mean, will you leave theperson alone?
Like, for once, the answer isyes.
This is ridiculous, and so thethe what.
Where I'm going with this,though, beth, is, like you know,
here you are talking about likesort of top of funnel
pre-conversion, why this is sodifficult, and then sort of like
(23:09):
, broadly speaking, the reasonwhy marketing operations and rev
ops categorically if you wantto go so far as to call it that
is so germane to everything, isthat I'm going to stop using
that for all the listeners.
I promise that'll be the lasttime today, and the is that my
experience was sort of theopposite.
(23:30):
So here it is, inside of mycustomer portal.
I can go explore new options,and it's telling me oh, there's
this price, yet I'm beingcharged $20 more a month for the
thing that is literallyadvertised as a thing that I can
sign up for.
Still, I was like, at least, atleast in my logged in
environment, don't show me themarketing one, show me the one
(23:52):
that I'm not allowed to haveanymore, which is the one that
I'm paying for.
In reality, I was just givingthe.
I was trying to be somewhatpolite, but I was trying to
illustrate the point with thecustomer person Like, hey, your
website says somethingcompletely different.
Right, I'm being charged.
I felt bad for this person.
When you think about therelevance category.
How do they know that?
(24:13):
Right, like, can theyimpersonate me Like I don't know
, but this stuff, matt like.
So I guess, for the listeners,right when I've said in the past
and and you know, beth,hopefully you agree with this
(24:35):
you have such an incredibleopportunity to look across the
customer journey and the techstack that that supports every
aspect of that, because in mostcases, you have access to most
of those tools and most otherpeople don't.
And this is your opportunity tolike, use your curiosity to go
like, figure out, like, when youhave a personal experience like
this, if you're chatting withyour cable company and you work
at one of the cable companiesand you're listening to this, go
(24:56):
log in and assist.
It's really so.
Maybe this is a problem I justexperienced myself.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
I should go see if we had that problem I don't want
to take this too far, deb, butthis is exactly why I hate,
really hate, the term internalcustomers, because my guess is
there's some sort of teamsinternally who are committed to
serving their internal customerswell, what they don't say, but
(25:25):
what happens often is that meansthat they're optimizing for
people inside the company, notfor actual customers, and and
then you have people have acustomer, actual customer
experiences that are shitty,yeah, and I think that's a big
miss, like that's one of thosethings.
So when when I hear things likeyou know we value our internal
(25:47):
customers, I'm like I don't care, we don't need them.
I mean, I understand thesentiment, but I always
Absolutely.
Yeah, Like, ultimately we allhave our jobs at these companies
because actual customers arepaying us for some sort of
service that they get value outof or, in Mike's case,
apparently that they're stuckwith.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yes, primarily on this, which is what I'm dealing
with.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
No matter now, but an upside there, okay, well, let's
.
So.
I didn't want I was almostready to go into this anyway
with these things, but one ofthe things I think we've danced
around a little bit here is thisnotion that there's probably
more commonality between B2B andB2C marketing and marketing
operations than there isdifferences.
(26:35):
And I think what triggered youending up here on this is that
you, I think, had read the 2024State of the MoPro report and I
think you were struck, as moreof a B2c person with some
exposure to b2b, you know howmany of the things that were top
of mind for b2b marketing opsfolks were also things that b2c
(26:58):
people were dealing with.
So maybe talk a little bitabout you know what were some of
those things that stood out toyou and why, and if you've got
examples of like what thatreally looks like in a bdc side,
I would love to hear those aswell absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
when I first, I read the report a couple of times.
Um, it's really interesting,which is why I read it a couple
of times, but I kept having toremind myself that it was B2B
people that were responding tothis Because, like you just said
, there are so many similaritiesbetween the two and there was
(27:40):
one section where I think peoplewho were taking the survey that
went into the study they couldwrite in responses of things
that are, you know, requirementsof their jobs or whatever the
case is, and I'd have a wholelist.
So it's like web management,project management, campaign
management, strategy, budget, AI, innovation, like all of those
(28:06):
things we're doing on B2B2, onthe B2B design as well.
You know, web management.
You've got to be able tocoordinate with, in addition to
developers and various thingslike that.
You've got to be able tocoordinate with the brand team
and the creative team to makesure that, again, what you're
putting up on the site iscorrect.
(28:27):
To make sure that, again, whatyou're putting up on the site is
correct.
You've got to coordinate withthe sales team to make sure that
the promos are correct, theproduct team for making sure
that all details about theproduct is correct.
I think, when you get intovendor and IT management too, we
have different platforms thatyou can use for managing a site
(28:48):
and so negotiating contracts andmaking sure that you have the
budget.
And then if you have two orthree different tools that
you're using, how do they allwork together?
We have to make sure that theyall can work together so that
we're not just spending money tospend money and then can't
actually use the thing.
You just pay the total rate.
(29:08):
And then I think this you know,AI innovation.
We've all been using AI for avery long time.
People haven't been calling itthat necessarily, but we have
been.
And but you know it's only goingto get more and more involved
and even within the ai model youhave to use a couple different
(29:35):
ones sometimes in order to getto a response.
So I think you know from a b2b,b2c pride, there's a lot of
similarities between what youknow y'all are working on and
what we are.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I could not agree more.
I keep advocating for more andmore B2C folks.
I mean honestly, like the wholeI don't want to say the whole
team but a good amount ofindividuals from Ford and Hyatt
and a number of other B2Ccompanies came to Mopsapalooza
this year and many of themwalked up to me and were like
(30:13):
love this, love everythingeverybody's talking about.
How do we get more B2C peoplehere?
Right, like we need to talkmore about this stuff
categorically and get more ofthese folks in the room.
And I'm like, yeah, let's do it, we need that and really
selfishly, and really selfishlyfor the sake of the, the
betterment of all of us in thecommunity, we need to learn from
(30:33):
the B2C folks who are dealingwith a really quite complex like
customer journeys and data set.
Their, their data models anddata sets are just larger.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
So the volume of data in the B2C world is like I
don't even know what the rightmultiple is, but it's greater
than 10x.
I think, In most instances.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yeah, so anyway, I couldn't agree more.
But to the point of all of thesethings that we're all trying to
wrap our arms around in thisrole call it market animation,
lifecycle marketer, marketingoperations, rev ops, whatever
(31:20):
Part of the reason we wanteverybody in here is to also say
, hey, let's put some guardrailsin place.
Let's, let's put some guardrailsin place, let's try to be
cautious of like, how much istoo much?
At what point do you need toappoint a specialist into a very
big part of the tech stack?
And and what is that sort ofthreshold and what are the
limitations?
(31:40):
And how do we make sure you getpaid for the value that you
bring to the organization andall that stuff?
Right?
So this is like, yes, we wanteverybody to learn from each
other, but simultaneously wewant to publish material, much
like we do in the marketing, thestate of the mo pro report to
to try to educate executiveleaders and other managers and
(32:04):
board members of like, uh, no,you cannot just throw everything
to this one magical unicornperson that, yes, can figure it
out, but like that's not fairright, absolutely, I was.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
I'm just gonna say that, so I will reiterate it.
But I will say agreed,wholeheart, yeah, I mean even
Flick.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
I think there's a real benefit to, even though
there are going to be nuancesand things that are different,
right, so maybe the specifictechnologies are different or
the specific needs for reportingand analytics are different.
I had that sort of epiphanythat there's an analog in the
B2B marketing analytics space oftrying to tie marketing
(32:52):
activity to call it revenue orbenefit to what you're dealing
with, where there's a similarchallenge that's happening in
the B2C world, particularly ifyou're not a to consumer, and
I'm like, well, maybe there'sideas that can be shared where,
okay, we figured this out, thisis how we do it in the B2C world
(33:14):
, when we're not direct toconsumer that maybe you can
apply to what you're doing in aB2B space and vice versa.
Right, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
And I think also that magical unicorn that you were
talking about, mike, if you areone of those people, you're
going to figure it out.
Even if you've never workedwith the Ford or you've never
heard of it, you can figure itout, and figure out if it works
or if it doesn't work,everything, I think for
(33:48):
marketing operations.
People are quote-unquote,figureoutable yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
People who give a shit and are curious and want to
make things successful.
So it's kind of the DNA.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I agree, yeah, I agree.
I think for listeners, we areall advocating and encouraging
you to say you are absolutelycapable, like you probably know
that about yourself.
But if you need someone to tellyou you are a hundred percent
capable of figuring stuff out,um, but I think in the, in the
event that you have a managerfriend that you've ever worked
(34:24):
with or has ever questioned whatthis role is all about, send
them this episode and then I amtelling them right now to next
time you are trying to hiresomeone, um, don't be like you
have to have five years ofmarquetto experience or whatever
the frick like, please.
(34:48):
Yes, I totally get it.
Okay, I run an organization now.
I get the speed and efficiencyand, like the, the ramp up time.
All those things are important.
I totally understand you wantto hit the ground running, no,
crawling, walking and runningright.
But also, just, this is one ofthose roles where, if you give
(35:09):
somebody a chance, I'll I'll dieon the hill of.
They'll probably stay at yourcompany for longer because you
gave them a chance and and thenthey got deeply entrenched into
the excitement of your businessand, as long as your culture is
a good fit, they'll probablyhang around.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
They'll give somebody else a chance that doesn't have
the experience, because they'regoing to be curious enough to
go figure that out yeah, the wayI've thought about it as a as
when I've hired as I, I willhire for attitude over aptitude,
just about any time, assumingthere's a minimum level of
aptitude.
So, yeah, if I got people withthe right attitude, who can
learn and are coachable and uh,want to achieve and, um, they're
(35:51):
willing to try stuff and knowthat they're not.
You know, I'm the kind ofleader where I'm not going to
hold it Like if they dosomething intentionally bad,
right, that's a different thing.
But if they make a mistake,right, that's a learning
opportunity.
And I think that it's funny.
I'm going to go back to thatAdam Grant episode I just
listened to.
Had a similar thing talkingabout how job descriptions are
(36:12):
so bad at describing, like allthese, aptitude things as
opposed to attitude things andtying them back to values or
culture, depending on how youwant to use them.
at the organization and therewas somebody on there I can't
remember who the guest was whosaid really you should be
(36:33):
looking for people who matchthat more than the aptitude.
Do you need people that meet acertain threshold Absolutely,
but once you get past thatcertain threshold it kind of
doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Well and I think it can be a positive thing versus
somebody that, oh, this is howI've always used this tool, this
is the way that I did it at mylast job.
This is the way that you shouldbe doing it, and then if you
have somebody that is learningit for the first time, it's
(37:06):
fresh eyes on her and theimplementations you can.
It can be so much more fruitfulif somebody is learning it for
the first time and sourcing helpfrom other marketing.
You know operationsprofessionals that have used
that before, and no matter whatthe industry, because then they
(37:27):
can take those experiences andapply it to you know what their
company is or whatever the caseis.
So I would be, yeah, sure, likeyou're saying, minimum
experience, but yeah, well, okay, so we talked about things that
are common, right?
Speaker 1 (37:44):
what do you see whether they should be or not,
right?
Speaker 3 (37:48):
things that are seem to be unique to b2c and b2b,
like where there are differencestoday this is a fun one, I
think, because it really justcomes back to marketing
principles and how you'retalking to the customer that
you're trying to sell to.
So you know we're not b2c basis.
(38:08):
You know you're selling aproduct or a service to more you
know an individual person andso you want to create that
emotional connection oremotional need with the product
or service that you're trying tosell, and so you're pulling on
the heartstrings of anindividual versus B2B.
(38:30):
You know you're trying tojustify the ROI of selling
something and you're trying to,you know, educate the potential
customer on how it will helpyour resource management or
whatever the case is.
So that is very fact-based.
So you're pulling more on ahead string versus the heart
strings of B2C Love that.
(38:53):
Yeah, Again, it's just whoyou're talking like, which are
demographic and how are theygoing to respond?
I think that there areinstances where you could pull
on the heartstrings with B2B andvice versa with B2C, but you
know for the most part, it'spretty simple.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah.
I love how different it is, Ithink uh, there's a lot of B2B
marketing that I don't know howto put it, other than it's a
little too buttoned up Right andum, I think there's room to be.
I think there should be peoplewho are more willing to realize
(39:35):
that they're.
Yes, ultimately there's goingto be some other business entity
where the check's going to comefrom for whatever they buy, but
at the end of the day, it'sindividual people who are making
the decisions and, yes, youmight think they're going to be
more, more rational than anindividual person, but I, I
(39:56):
actually don't think that's true.
I think, I mean, this is thewhole reason why behavioral
economics is around is becausepeople weren't behaving
rationally right.
So, uh, an individual level.
So, um, I mean, what's your doyou think?
Do you think there should be alittle more like?
Should those?
Should these things be morealike in b2b and bc?
Do you think there should be alittle more?
Should these things be morealike in B2B and B2C worlds?
Do you think?
Speaker 3 (40:17):
I think it comes down to who your audience is.
And if you're trying to get toknow your audience, it's just
like what's your target demo?
Like if I'm trying to sell, youknow, a spa day to somebody,
that's going to be verydifferent than if I'm trying to
sell a triathlon, or like aspartan race or something like
(40:38):
that.
You know you're going toapproach that with two totally
different messages and, um, youknow, creative and all of those
different things.
So I think that I don't thinkit's a problem that they're
different, because I think it'sjust the marketing principle of
(41:00):
weakening with your targetaudience.
But I do to what you said aboutB2B being more buttoned up.
I think there can be a littlebit more fun injected and
creativity injected into thosetypes of messages yeah, we just
too many people in b2b taketheater themselves too seriously
, you know well, they do in b2cas well.
(41:24):
Oh, they do.
Okay, that's different.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
That is the common big I've always been so excited
by, by the levers you get topull on in the b2c landscape
versus the b2b I think I thinkb2b marketing is way, way harder
, um, just because you just havefewer, fewer elements to to.
(41:47):
You know, levered I I I don'twant to pretend like like,
that's the best way I candescribe it I, you know, for
those of you who get offended bythat, I'm sorry, um, that.
I just think it's moredifficult, like you have like
more complex buying cycles thattake longer and you have less of
(42:07):
a um, the decision criteria isfar more complex.
Usually there's a stakeholdercommittee that's trying to buy
from the things that you'reselling, and so I think that
creates a more complex buyerjourney and stuff like that.
And I always enjoyed the natureor the fantasy of what it must
be like to be a B2B marketer,even though that's complex.
(42:29):
I've never really done a ton ofit.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
I've done little bits here and there, but what is the
cost of what you're selling to?
Yeah, like sure, it's all youknow for all intents and
purposes for this conversation.
Sure is easier to sell than bbsolution.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Yeah, you know, that's a much shorter fifty
thousand dollar softwarepurchase versus a you know
whatever.
Call it a fifty dollar,whatever.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Yes well, the downside of a mistake is, yeah,
or that, or the, the cost ofmistake is much lower, right, so
okay, so it's interesting, sir.
You said that's you think thereshould be a little difference,
that maybe there's some overlap,but, um, so one of the things
that and this is I'm trying toremember who it was I think it
(43:19):
was, maybe it was Chris WillisLike somebody posted on LinkedIn
not too long ago saying thatyou know, if you go back to
classical marketing training,right, you get the four p's
right, and really most marketingteams are focusing on just one
these days.
Right, the promotion piece.
And, um, I'm curious if you'reseeing anything like.
(43:42):
Are you seeing again, it's likesimilarities or differences in
the bdc world where you've been?
Are you seeing more focus onjust promotion and less about?
I can't remember if I canremember all the the four p's
evenly.
So it's product placement,pricing, promotion right, did I
get them right?
Speaker 3 (43:56):
all right, so what do you see?
Yeah, seeing the same thing inb2c across a couple of the
companies that I've worked for,and I think there's always going
to be attention.
Um, you know, okay, you setyour price and then you have the
promotion for it.
When do you pull?
You know, a percentage off or abuy one, get one, or something
(44:19):
like that when do you?
when do you go with that?
And there's always going to bethe tension between that.
Um, I think a lot of you knowin the experience that I've had
the conversations and that thattension is between are we
training our customers to be onthat?
We're always going to be onpromotion and so they're not
(44:42):
going to buy something at fullprice.
Okay, that's not good, thatyou're training your customers
to wait for this down, but butthen it also could potentially
erode their customer loyalty interms of, well, why are they
always on sale?
Is there something wrong withthe product?
Why aren't people buying it onfull price?
And so I think that in terms ofthose purchases for the
(45:08):
customers, there could be someerosion of that brand affinity
if you are always in promotion.
Now, I know that anybody that'slistening in on finance seamless
, they'll see.
In fact, you know there are twosides to that coin, um, and so
I think that that's where itcomes in again with the
(45:29):
operation of operations andlooking at data and saying, okay
, well, in that month, with thispercentage off over the last
four years, these are theresults that we've gotten.
If we add in another promotiona month before, are we just
robbing people to pay for it, oris there actually going to be
(45:51):
incremental um to yeah, yeah,it's uh, we have a unique
environment at marketingoffscomand that, like we, we have
partners that support us andsponsor us, our community, right
(46:13):
.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
And then we've got we've got a membership model and
we've got tickets and uh, andso in some ways there's this
concept of b2c happening andI've I've often brought those,
those things up right where it'slike, oh, if we you know, I
don't know run a discount formembership or we run a discount
for the tickets to Mopsapaloozaor whatever, um, people like are
(46:38):
just always going to expectthat thing.
Right, and when I was at anagency we were selling um shirts
for one of these, one of theseshirt brands out there and
they're like it was like everyother weekend.
It was like every other weekendthere was like a promo email
that was going out and all thatstuff.
And what's fascinating is thatI think, like the, the, the
(46:59):
ecosystem adapted, the MarTechecosystem adapted, and they were
like, oh, you know what'llsolve this?
Loyalty programs.
Now it can be always onpromotion, but then have loyalty
and get them to come back.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
And then it's like, okay, now we're not robbing t
for paul and all this otherstuff.
The loyalty is a free shippingthreshold and uh promise
delivery.
So am Amazon.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally Right.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Well, I can think of at least one other brand where
I'm loyal because I getconsistent deals pushed to me
and I don't go there all thatoften, but I go there often
enough where it's like it'sworth it for me to trade off
like fighting them, and I causeI know like I'm sharing a whole
bunch of data about me, what Icare about, um, but it's yeah
(47:56):
like I know that I air quotesright.
Save a bunch of money over thecourse of a year by doing that
yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
I mean, I, I don't.
I have, having been in B2B formy entire career, basically, uh,
b2b, saas at that I've alwayslike and this'll be for another
day, another, another episodemaybe Uh, but I've always like
been fascinated, like how do youcreate a loyalty program for
(48:28):
B2B business?
Like how does that happen?
Happen, because it's actuallyquite complex, you know, like
the renewal cycles and all thatother stuff, and like the
gamification models that go intothe usage of the product, and I
think we're starting to seemore of that now with the usage
based type of, at least in thesass side of things.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
but anyway, yeah, well, I think, some, I think.
I think actually, the way thatthat was done or has been done
well is through community right.
So you get your most engagedcustomers to be your own
advocates and, by the way, theyalso provide support.
(49:08):
So you don't have as manysupport people.
So and I think about that withme all the big marketing
automation platforms have thatyeah.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
It's just no, I agree with you.
I think you know we sawcompanies like influitive kind
of do this like crazy blip forfor a while, right, where they
were like this huge $10 millionwhatever entity and influencer
marketing kind of was happeningat the same time on the B2C side
.
But what's interesting aboutthe concept of loyalty
(49:43):
gamification and pricingstructures in that world,
thinking about that communityreferral, customer marketing
kind of stuff, is that like toyour point earlier, beth, right,
the pulling on the heartstringsversus the headstrings thing.
It's unintuitive for you as anemployee to feel compelled to
(50:09):
use a B2B product in service ofbenefiting your organization,
and so what I mean by that islike if I were to build a true
loyalty program, I would saythings like oh, if you um, you
know, hit this certain thresholdof usage, we're gonna guarantee
you, uh, five hundred dollarsoff your next seat.
(50:29):
That you add, right.
But the thing is is like theperson doesn't care what the
company gets.
look, yeah right, it's uh, likethat sense of gamification,
doesn't?
Like it just doesn't.
Those two things don't worktogether.
And so I've always beenchallenged like how do you do
that instrumentation?
(50:49):
But that benefits theorganization and the individual
and it's not like in fluid ofwhich was, which was an
interesting product.
But like, oh cool, hubspot saysI need to go like share this
blog post and like retweet thisthing because I was in their
marketplace, right, their hubstars thing back in the day I
was like their top advocate.
I got like a bunch of gift cardsright because I was constantly
(51:13):
doing the things and eventuallyI was kind of like over it, um,
but like, and so really itbenefited them and it benefited
me, but it did nothing for forlike I think it's like you're
not actually supporting.
You know, it's not like mycompany got a benefit of me
spending my time championing theproduct that I loved it's
(51:35):
complex random tangent sorryyeah it was.
I think it's fit.
The intersections of theseworlds in martech and how
they're all supporting thesego-to-market notions is
fascinating yeah, you know whocould solve it a marketing
operation uniform, that's true.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
I totally agree.
Yeah, I think that's probably agood place for us to wrap up,
and actually we need to wrap up.
So, beth, thank you so much.
It's been great.
I've enjoyed this conversation.
I'm sure our audience will bebenefiting from it as well.
But if folks want to learn morefrom you or keep up with what
(52:15):
you're doing or talking about,what's the best way for them to
do that?
Speaker 3 (52:19):
LinkedIn Good old LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
All right, linkedin it is.
I don't even think I should askthis question anymore.
I think it's me.
That's actually not true.
There have been.
We do have guests who there aresome others.
Yeah, so again, thank you, beth,mike.
Always great to have you alongas well.
Thanks to our listeners outthere for continuing to support
(52:47):
us and coming up with ideas andsuggestions, and guests.
If you are interested in beingguests or have suggestions,
please reach out to Naomi, mikeor me and we'd be happy to chat
with you about that and keepingthings moving Until next time.
Bye, everyone.
Speaker 3 (52:56):
Bye.
Speaker 1 (52:58):
Thank, you See ya.
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