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On today's episode, Mike Rizzo talks with Martin Pietrzak, founder and president of Pinch Marketing, to unpack what Google and others have called “the messy middle” of today’s buyer’s journey.
Gone are the days of the simple, linear sales funnel. Instead, buyers loop through endless cycles of exploration, evaluation, and self-education before they ever talk to sales — if they do at all. Martin shares how marketing ops pros can embrace this new reality by becoming strategic partners who help build flexible data-driven systems that enable real-time insights, better attribution, and scalable growth.
You’ll hear:
- Why the messy middle exists — and how buyers’ behavior has changed forever.
- How technology, data, and AI are reshaping go-to-market architecture.
- The critical role marketing ops plays as the “marketing scientist” in modern organizations.
- Practical steps to capture buyer signals and turn them into actionable insights.
- Why marketing ops leaders must think like product managers to architect the GTM stack.
Whether you’re building your ops career or leading teams through complex martech stacks, this episode is packed with insights you can apply right away.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mike Rizzo (00:02):
Hello and welcome in everybody.
Welcome to another episode ofOpsCast by MarketingOpscom,
powered by all of you marketingoperations professionals out
there, the MoPros.
Today I'm your host, mike Rizzo.
I'm flying solo, I get to stepin for the infamous and
incredible Mr Michael Hartman,and unfortunately, naomi did
(00:26):
have a conflict in the schedulebecause guess what, we are all
busy marketing ops professionalsand she had to go take care of
some stuff.
So we do hope that she'll beback with us again soon.
But thank you for jumping intoday joining us to talk about
this important topic of what isreferred to by our guest as the
messy middle of the modernbuyer's journey is Martin
(00:49):
Piatczyk.
So Martin is the founder andpresident of Pinch Marketing,
which is a B2B marketing andlead generation agency.
He's a marketing executive with20 years of experience in
hands-on planning andimplementing of digital and
conventional marketingstrategies that exceed revenue
targets in corporate and startupenvironments, and prior to
(01:10):
founding Pinch, he held variousmarketing and marketing
leadership roles across severalcompanies and has also worked as
a co-founder of a B2C semanticsearch company, which is awesome
.
I've been around a few semanticsearch folks.
Martin, thank you for joiningus today.
Martin Pietrzak (01:27):
Thanks for having me, mike, and hello to
the old EML pros.
Mike Rizzo (01:31):
Appreciate it.
We are excited to have you Allright, so we are going to jump
in.
It was kind of queued up rightat the intro there.
Let's start with the obviousquestion what is the messy
middle of the buyer's journeyand how would you describe it
versus other models of thebuyer's journey?
Martin Pietrzak (01:47):
Yeah, sounds good, mike, I'd love to jump
into this.
So let me maybe start off bysaying what it's not.
And I think we are.
I think we're all familiar froma marketing perspective around,
you know, the consumerfollowing this linear buyer's
path right From awareness tointerest to decision and finally
purchase.
(02:07):
It's nice, it's clean and itgoes from the step-by-step like
a ladder and hopefully at theend of the day, you know, it
finalizes with a nice, big, fatpurchase.
However, what we've observedand it's not just me, you know,
the messy middle actually comesfrom a study that was published
by Google.
So they have a million datapoints to substantiate this.
(02:28):
But the model is no longerreally that linear anymore.
It doesn't really reflect thecurrent customer behavior.
So today buyers are much moredynamic.
It's a very non-linear processreally.
I call the looping between allthese phases, between
exploration and evaluation.
(02:49):
So it's it's.
People no longer go from stepby step, by state.
They jump between any of this.
So like I like to use thisnetflix analogy.
So you know, we all watch andlove netflix, or maybe we hate
it now because there's so muchchoice.
But if you think about this, yougot to go into.
So how do we search for stuffthese days.
(03:10):
You know, maybe I'm going tolog into Netflix, I'm going to
watch a couple trailers, thenI'm going to stop there and I'm
going to maybe read a RottenTomatoes article on the side.
Maybe I'm going to.
I just remember that a buddy ofmine texted me a message about
a movie or show that they reallyloved.
So it goes back and forth.
Right, I might do this multipletimes before I make that
(03:34):
decision.
What I really want to watch.
So I think this really is thetrue reflection of what the mess
of metal is.
It's this idea of loopingbetween all these different
stages.
So what was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 mightbe 2, 3, 1, back to 3, back to
5.
So it's become much morecomplex than we ever anticipated
to be.
Mike Rizzo (03:52):
Yeah, I have to agree, I mean, arguably, in a
lot of ways it was kind ofalways complex.
I think, in particular in B2B,we tried to like, like,
oversimplify, you know, thebuyer's journey itself, and I
think what's happening on theB2B side is certainly starting
(04:14):
to show signs of exactly this.
What you're talking about,right, this messy middle On the
B2B side.
I would say, you know, thereprobably was some linear nature
in the past.
I agree with the notion, but Ialso, you know, think that there
(04:41):
was quite a bit happeningunderneath the water, right, if
you look at that duck that'sswimming in the lake, you know
people aren't necessarily likemaking, you know, super simple
decisions.
They are, you know, textingtheir friends or placing a phone
call to their parents or their,you know, whoever their, their
close constituents, right To geta sense of like, hey, what did
you use?
You've got kids, you know, didyou buy a special type of
sunscreen?
And you know, and the journeykind of goes from there.
Question for you, just ingeneral, as you think about the
(05:04):
messy middle by the way, like I,prior to us getting on today, I
was, like I swear, one of thoseother than Google, and maybe it
was Google because you calledattention to it, but I swear
that some of some publicationGartner, forrester, you name it
just like recently publishedsomething about this right, like
how, how the buyer's journey isreally complex and kind of just
(05:27):
flat.
It's just this bouncing aroundof all these things, this messy
middle, that we're talking about, but I couldn't find the visual
to support it.
Martin Pietrzak (05:37):
I think it's just.
If you think about it, it'sprobably just one messy big
cloud with a lot of lines inbetween.
Right, I completely agree,messy is right and you know, I,
I use the netflix model becauseI think that every you could all
understand it.
But from a b2b perspective, Ithink what the culprit is behind
all this is, you know, I wantto say somebody broke the
(05:58):
internet.
You know, I think before we areused to going into the store
and dealing with a salesperson,to to you knowmortar type
locations, to figure out whatthe decision is.
It's become much more complexthan that.
People, buyers, we have allthese tools available to us how
we can educate ourselves.
We read blogs, we go check outsocial media, we read reviews,
(06:22):
we talk to our friends and peers, we may be part of some events
that we go to.
So the platforms that areavailable to us as consumers
have become infinite.
Right, and I think it's so.
The digital realm made itessentially much more complex
and I think buyers today they'remuch more educated as a result
(06:45):
of that and they will look forthat information, not just about
what they want to purchase, butabout the brand that they're
transacting with.
So this is really, reallycritical to understand this
complexity going forward.
Mike Rizzo (06:57):
Yeah, yeah, and I think you touched on things that
I think I will probably unpackand another set of a segment
here.
But, you know, this idea of thetrust in the brand and the
relationship that you build withthat, right, I, I, I totally
agree, I was gonna, I was gonnasort of tee up or ask the
question from, from your side,your, your opinion on, really,
(07:19):
is it the technology that'sinfluenced the?
You know, I think it's theaccess to information, right?
You know, of course, when wethink about the buyer's journey,
before our to your point, wewere trained to say, okay, I'm
going to walk in, I'm going totalk to somebody, I'm going to
get their advice, and then I'mgoing to make a decision on
which thing I'm going topurchase and walk out the door
with.
(07:40):
And so our user behaviorpreviously was I'm going to go
to a website, I want to talk toone of the reps, they're going
to tell me about their thing,and if it's good for me, I'm
going to do another website, goto another store, check that out
and then eventually make adecision on what I want to buy.
And it seems like today it'sreally perpetuated by the access
to information.
It's just that much easier.
(08:01):
So, with that in mind, let'stalk about some of the
technology or process that youfeel like we need to have in
place to understand the buyer'sjourney.
And then you know we can'tescape it Like is AI somehow
impacting any of this?
And you know how do you thinkthat it is?
Martin Pietrzak (08:21):
Yeah, good question, mike.
I think that we especially Ithink, for the marketing ops
folks out there it's so criticalto understand that the
complexity of this buyingjourney also complicates with
the technologies that we usethere's no question about that
to maybe working within dataplatforms, data lakes, dpm
systems, anything that allows usto not only collect but make
(08:48):
sense of all this data that'sout there, especially if it's
being supposed to be captured atvarious stages of this journey.
It's much more complicated.
So I don't want to specificallycall any particular
technologies by name, but Ithink this complexity probably
makes the infrastructure setupalso more complex.
(09:09):
So we can no longer follow thislinear path right and saying,
oh yeah, here's a nurture I'mgoing to build out in MailChimp
and from email one to two tothree to four, it probably
requires tools that allow us tocapture not only the internal
tools that we can control, likemaybe the email platforms, maybe
the website, maybe other things, but now it's the third-party
(09:31):
data that we need to be able tobring into the mix.
So maybe the social mediainteractions, maybe third-party
review sites, tracking contenton other people's sites, which
of course, makes it much moredifficult.
So I think integrations withthose disparate systems become
critical.
So you know it might take intoconsideration not only the
current platforms you have buthow to integrate it, maybe with
(09:53):
tools like Zapier or somethinglike that, where it allows us to
connect those dots.
And then you know, how the heckdo you make sense out of all of
this, right?
You know you have all this datacoming from multiple directions
at you.
I think that's where I think youknow we talked AI.
You mentioned AI.
I think that's where AI canreally make you know, make some
(10:13):
sense of this complexity.
You know we as humans, we, bylooking for these, these nuances
and this linear, you knowconnections, we might miss some
things that AI might be able topick up.
Before we might have 10 datapoints.
Now we're going to have 5,000points.
If we have the ability to putthe AI on top of all that, that
(10:35):
might really allow us to makemore sense out of it and figure
out how to build models that area little bit more sensical in
this very complex structure.
And I think AI has the abilityperhaps to even make some sense
of it.
Maybe some predictive modelingwhere it allows you to, even in
(10:55):
this messy middle, to help usunderstand.
Okay, like if this person didthis and that there is a higher
likelihood that they will alsodo that, and that's really
critical for us to understand.
And it's much more difficult todo so, I think, manually and
maybe crunching the data inExcel.
I think AI really can shine inthis kind of scenario.
Mike Rizzo (11:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely agree there.
I think what's interestingabout just the sort of like you
know we'll call it the onslaughtand ability to sort of like
capture data, is it really atthe core of this is we're seeing
it particularly in B2B.
Like B2C arguably has beendoing marketing operations, they
(11:37):
just they've been calling itsomething else for a lot longer
than we have right.
They call it lifecyclemarketing and these other types
of terms.
B2b is like stepping into aworld where it's trying to set
up some of the things that youtalked about your data lakes and
your data warehouses to try tocreate those sort of unique IDs
that tie back to a buyer'sjourney and then create the
(12:01):
opportunity for AI topotentially show, you know, a
propensity right to take thenext step.
There was this wonderful sessionthat Ari from NVIDIA presented
on at Spring Fling just a fewweeks ago around the propensity
for anything, and it was reallythe same sort of talk that we're
(12:22):
discussing here and it's thisidea that you know, really, at
any given point, there'smultiple potential buyer groups,
multiple potential things thatare weighing in on the
business's decision to engagewith the brand, and it's just
about understanding theirpropensity to take action for
the next step, right, um, and Ithink it's forcing us I, I, you
(12:47):
know, I, I'd love sort of to godown this, this little rabbit
hole for a minute when we thinkabout, um, you know, being a
little bit tool agnostic in thisconversation, right now, the
architecture is changing, right,like, fundamentally, it feels
like it's forcing us to, like,start with the data versus
starting with the tools, whichI'm super excited about, because
(13:10):
all of us in marketing costs,we're like hey, here's this tool
that we bought and we're likegreat, what do you want to do
with this?
Yeah, so you know, I think thequestion that I'm sort of
getting to is like so, you know,I think the question that I'm
(13:33):
sort of getting to is like whatis the strategic impact that we
can now bring to the table?
When you think about, like, asyou engage with your clients,
right, and you're trying to helpthem understand how to make
sense of this messy middle, youknow what are some of the things
that you like to talk about and, in terms of, like, helping to
paint a picture of the art ofthe possible, and then, is it
changing the way in which you'reapproaching your conversations
with your customers today?
Martin Pietrzak (13:53):
yeah, that's a good question, I think.
Um, yes and yes on all thefronts you've discussed, but
(14:17):
let's start with your audience.
Marketing ops being an owner ofa can argue this one is that
have been seen as a supportmechanism to a lot of the
marketing functions and maybesales function.
Sometimes they take hybrid rolesand I think this is a huge
opportunity, I think, formarketing ops folks to really
become the strategic partners tothe business, right?
So, rather than looking at andyou know, taking the direction
(14:39):
from others, saying, hey, setthis up for me, set up this
infrastructure Now, I think theyhave a seat at the table, so to
speak, to help build theseflexible systems, to help
wrangle this complex data andsupport, really support this
consistent presence and, bybuilding this infrastructure,
(15:01):
that support to help tounderstand and influence buyers
right During this complex, messyreality, right?
So they're no longer just asupport mechanism, they are the
enabler, and I think this is anopportunity, I think, for
marketing ops to see it as such,to really help enable and help
(15:23):
accelerate the sales andmarketing initiatives that I
think companies are strugglingwith, because I think that
they're still stuck with the oldmodels.
Help them by building the rightpiping the infrastructure, the
data purview and converting thatinto intelligence that can
(15:45):
really, really help toaccelerate those business
initiatives.
So I think that's in a nutshell.
Mike Rizzo (15:55):
And there's a few things we can discuss in more
detail, but that's kind of atthe highest level.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you aresinging.
People are going to think thatI planted you onto this show
Because you are totally.
It's my 20 bucks, mike, come onlike singing the song that I
(16:18):
really like to sing, which ishow can we get these
organizations to start tounderstand that modern
go-to-market technology isreally broadly, your
go-to-market motion is enabledby various capabilities across
many solutions and, at the endof the day, it's a product in
(16:40):
and of itself and theopportunity to to your point, as
I've been sort of pushing outinto the wild too, which was you
know for for our listeners.
Martin and I didn't have achance to talk prior to this, so
I'm hearing for the first time.
I promise I didn't plant them onthe show, but I definitely have
said many time over like, hey,you are ultimately the
(17:01):
strategist and the key enablerfor the go-to-market tech stack
as a product, and building thatroadmap and helping the
organization take their goalsand apply them down to
capabilities and build a roadmapthat supports their continued
endeavors, because everybusiness has a different
hypothesis on how they want togo to market.
(17:22):
Right, some do ABM, some do SEO,da-da-da-da-da.
But the enablement factor andthe underlying data principles
that are there reallyfundamentally come down to your
product manager and you need tocreate a user story and journeys
and features and functionalityand release it and enable people
to leverage the products thatyou've acquired to go to market.
(17:43):
But I think to try to get intosome of those capabilities, why
don't you share?
I know we want to dig in alittle bit on what are some of
the nuanced types of exampleswhere a marketing ops person can
step in and help anorganization.
Maybe think about the art ofthe possible as it comes to
(18:04):
these technologies, like, maybebreak down some of those
capabilities for us.
Martin Pietrzak (18:09):
Yeah, that sounds good and I think you
touched on that a little bit,mike, when you said we haven't
really had an opportunity tochat earlier.
I think the key here is that wegot to be flexible right In
this conversation.
We got to be agile and I thinkthat's exactly the number one
thing that I think I want tosend the message to the ML pros
is that we got to be flexible.
So you have to figure out howto implement these flexible
(18:41):
workflows right, which aretrying to adapt to this
iterative process, how buyersthink about buying, allowing
multiple entry and exit pointsthroughout these campaigns right
, you know, if you think aboutif it is a linear path, but you
have all these like one, two,three, four, five, six, you know
, sometimes you know somebodymight stumble on an old blog
article that you know you'vewritten and they'll completely
miss the email nurture that youwere supposed and they'll
completely miss the emailnurture that you were supposed
(19:01):
to send to them.
So you can't controlnecessarily all these entry
points, but what you can do iscreate this adaptive workflow
that allows people to enter andexit where they choose, and I
think you can help them definethis path without defining the
path right, which is what soundsdoesn't make sense to some
(19:23):
degree, but maybe it's this ideaof we can create a playground
with all the different toys init rather than building a
railroad track, right?
So when allowing the buyer tochoose how they want to use it,
I think that's really the keyhere, and you know we talked
about.
You know the multiple entrypoints and you know we talked
about.
You know the multiple entrypoints and with this philosophy,
(19:43):
that the customer is in thedriver's seat, not you.
So as much as we like them tobe on this highway in the left
lane, chances are they'resomewhere else and we need to
accommodate that.
So that's number one I'd sayyeah, no, it's funny.
Mike Rizzo (20:00):
Earlier in our discussion I actually had that
same sort of.
I mean, you described it aslike buildings, like defining a
path without truly putting themon one, and I think for a
marketing ops person listeningto this, that makes actually a
ton of sense to me.
For an executive who might betuning into this and be like
(20:20):
what the fuck are you talkingabout?
You're not making any sense, um, and that's okay, right?
Uh, that's exactly why you wantto hire people into the roles
and get them to help you figurethis stuff out, because it is
about engineering, um, anenvironment with the intention
to guide somebody.
And and it's these subtle cuesthat you know, if you're kind of
(20:44):
aware of the potential sort ofthe propensity to move sort of
through the funnel right, theremight be these blog posts that
are engineered to be more of adiscovery mechanism and you
might have these other resourcesthat are kind of a little bit
deeper in the layer, but you'reaware of the fact that they
might want to sort of jumparound and you have to engineer
(21:05):
that with the intention of look,I want to create as much
information gatheringopportunity for this customer as
we possibly can, but then Ineed to be able to figure out
what they're doing.
They're doing, and so I think insome of the examples that were
sort of outlined on our documentthat we're talking through
today and some of the talkingpoints we wanted to get to, I
(21:28):
think it comes down to signalsright Like there's this whole
market that's.
It's like kind of frustratingright now with the number of
like players that are in thespace around signals and real
time data, but I do think thatthere's an opportunity here.
Do you kind of want to unpackwhat maybe some of those
opportunities are?
Martin Pietrzak (21:47):
You know, Vani, you said it earlier right, you
try to minimize thewhat-the-fuck moments from your
management team, right?
And I think data can play areally, really important part in
that, can play a really, reallyimportant part in that.
And so maybe, before you jumpinto building out these models,
(22:08):
I think the first thing youmight want to also do is create
a system that allows you tomonitor and collect all these
different you could call themsignals.
So how can you collect all thisdata, hopefully in real time,
and then looking at that,observing that, maybe leveraging
some AI tools to figure out,hey, where are these people on
that journey and what are thesteps that they're taking?
(22:35):
Or at least trying to leverageanything that you know of the
buyer, maybe talking to thepeople who are good conduit to
those customers and saying, hey,how did they find out about us?
What steps did they take?
And then trying to mimic thatand trying to collect all this
data.
So this could be your internaldata sources, or maybe your
website traffic, the GoogleAnalytics of the world, your
(22:57):
social engagement, maybe throughintegrations, your email
platforms, and then integrations, your email platforms, and then
you have, you know, third-partydata.
Right, you can have.
How does the maybe third-partydata like, maybe sales
navigators of the world?
But then you married with theBambora's intent data and then
marry all that with what youalready know of these people in
(23:19):
your own CRM platforms and then,once you have that, the sensing
or listing mechanism set up,then it can really allow you to
leverage the data, hopefully inreal time, to really put the
decision making on steroidsright, and that really, I think,
gives you a lot of theammunition to go back to your
bosses and the business leadersto say, hey, the reason we're
(23:41):
doing this is because this iswhat the data actually tells us
and it's not as linear as youperhaps thought.
So you might have to challengetheir thinking a little bit, and
leveraging data is the besttool to do so.
So I think that's how I thinkabout it, but I'm not sure what
your thoughts on that, Mike, youknow your audience best, but
(24:01):
this is kind of what myobservation.
Mike Rizzo (24:04):
No, no, I think it's spot on.
You know, unfortunately, like,for better or worse, data has
been the center of theconversation for at least the
last decade and it's become evenmore prominent in the
discussions and sort of the ageof AI, but I do think that it's,
(24:25):
in some ways, I feel like it'sa chicken and egg problem with
leadership, right, if you don'thave a system in place to
capture information, just likebroadly capture data, whether it
is first party sort of webtraffic data, or first party
data at the CRM level.
(24:46):
What's fundamentally true isthat, like there has to be
something there at the bottomright, this net, if you were to
create a visual to be able tocapture that stuff and then
eventually start to find ways tomake sense of it.
And so you know, as you makethe argument for how to go
implement these things or thewhy to your business partners,
(25:08):
your leadership team, etc.
I think it's really about Iwant to enable our team to be
able to show up in the ways wewant them to show up and,
ultimately, I want to make surethat we are providing the right
sort of experience for ourcustomers during their buyer's
journey.
Right, because we fundamentallyunderstand it is going to be
(25:29):
all over the place Right now.
We need a system to be able tocapture all of that information.
I mean just very concretely,martin, look at a tool like Gong
or any other type of listeningdevice, right, like for recorded
calls.
When you start to capture thatinformation, the next phase of
this is, like what can I learn?
(25:49):
Like start asking the questions.
Right, like executives can turnto your marketing ops team and
say what can we learn from theinsights that we're gathering
from these, from this net wherewe've caught all this data?
And you can go back from thiscall recording on Gong or
whatever Fathom you name it, andstart to extrapolate, like
really, how did they find us?
(26:09):
What were their pain points?
What are the things that theycared about?
Because then you want to gopass it back up the funnel to
find a way to create thatconsistent sort of experience.
Right, and I think that that isone of the really exciting
things about being in marketingoperations is that you get to be
a steward of the brand in a lotof ways.
So I would love your thoughtson that piece of this too.
Martin Pietrzak (26:32):
Yeah, stewardship of the brand.
I'm going to get there in asecond, but something you said
really struck me, and thereality can be daunting.
It might be difficult for themarketing ops person to get all
the tools in the toolkit thatthey might need.
So, using an example like youused with Gong, I think it's
(26:55):
critical and I think on somelevel, it might require to
reframe or retrain, like the SDR, bdr functions or the AE
functions, to make sure thatthey ask the right questions
about how did you find out aboutus?
What have you read?
Where did you read it?
Who did you hear it from?
What got you there?
Obviously, it's not supposed tobe a polling question or
(27:16):
anything like that, but it'slike through the conversations.
Hopefully, and now, with theextraction of all this data and
AI, maybe it will give you allthe data points that you might
need.
So that's a great startingpoint.
I really love what you saidthere.
But, yes, I think aboutstewardship of brand.
I think it's because thecustomers take this very wild
(27:39):
journey with us as a brand.
We have to be consistent and Ithink marketing ops folks have a
unique opportunity to make sure, be that steward of that brand,
to make sure that you're alwaysshowing up consistently in the
marketplace.
Not only that you're visible,but you're also consistent, and
(28:00):
I think this visibility means toalso sell the narrative that
you got to use various channels.
You got to meet the buyerswhere they are at, not
necessarily what you think theyshould be at.
That will help you with defineyou know defining what the
decision making process are.
So I think the always onmarketing concept is really
(28:20):
critical.
So forget about one-time emailblast campaigns, forget about
this quick and dirtyadvertisement campaign.
No, start thinking more broadly.
Think about this evergreen,always-on marketing campaign
(28:41):
that can be accessed throughouttime, throughout different ways,
in different entry and extrapoints.
It could be through content,advertising, thought leadership
pieces offline, online is really, really critical.
So I think you, as a marketingops person, have an opportunity
to really tighten that grip andmaking sure that, when you see
these mistakes that I think wemake in all marketing, this
(29:04):
luring lead generation campaignthat will last three days make a
recommendation.
That's probably not theapproach that you want.
So content must be easy to find, regardless if it's a blog
article or review or whatever,and then figuring out like where
is it that you need to collectall this data.
(29:26):
So the challenge of this is umto to think about it from a
long-term perspective ratherthan just like this immediate
result and finding the balancespot it's's and it's so hard.
Mike Rizzo (29:41):
Um, you know, I think we could pause here for a
moment and say just like, like,hang on this topic for a moment
and say, hey, the funny thing is, um, um, I guess I'll kind of
hark back to last year'skerfuffle that I sort of
(30:02):
accidentally, intentionallystarted, I guess Sort of kind of
, sort of kind of I saidmarketing ops isn't marketing,
and the whole of our communityand a number of the people on
the interwebs, particularlyLinkedIn, were kind of like you
know what are you talking about?
Did?
Martin Pietrzak (30:21):
you get booed yeah.
Mike Rizzo (30:22):
Did you get shamed?
And they were like it'sliterally in the name, from sort
of where I sit and what I seein the conversations that were
coming through and filteringthrough that discussion was the
(30:43):
the wild vacillation betweenyou're crazy.
It's absolutely marketing tothose exact same individuals
coming back to me personally andsometimes publicly, but
personally for sure a week and ahalf or two weeks later and
saying actually, maybe, not,maybe marketing in the
traditional sense really ismarketing and marketing ops is
(31:05):
something else and it's morethan just marketing and we've
touched a lot on that today.
I think at a minimum we'vetalked about understanding that
marketers in the marketingoperation role think like a
marketer.
They have to be broadly sort ofskilled across disciplines to
have a fundamental understandingof go-to-market motion.
(31:26):
They have a new and profoundunderstanding for how data and
database and object orientationworks.
Then they have to understand theramifications of ROI and the
financial side of things and howto try to tie any level of
investment that you're making inyour go-to-market motion back
to some type of success metricand then ultimately they're
(32:00):
trying to manage all of thisstuff and be compliant and make
sure that the buyer's journey issufficient and reflective of
your brand in a way that showsup consistently and it's safely
brand, safely right Opt-ins youknow there's no spamming, like
don't do a blast campaign as aone-off and you become this
individual that straddles theline between marketing, quote,
unquote, as you said.
You said, hey, if you hear thatthey're about to talk about
doing a campaign that's going tolast last three days, maybe
suggest that there's a differentpath to go down and and I think
(32:25):
that's right, right, like youbecome kind of a marketer, uh,
but really you're a strategist,you are a strategic partner,
right?
Martin Pietrzak (32:34):
like I don't know.
You know what it's interestingyou say there.
I think I've been thinking asyou were talking about this is
that marketing ops folks can begreat strategists, but it's rare
that a great strategist is alsoa great marketing ops person.
The way I think about marketingops people and the evolution of
(32:56):
the role is that you've becomewe've become marketing
scientists in a sense.
Right, it's not, but yes, Ithink the understanding of the
strategy is critical to see, toreally understand who your
buyers are.
So don't just walk in blindly asjust a technical support person
, but walk in as that scientistwho understands your business,
(33:19):
understands your goals,understands the overarching
marketing strategy, maybe yourNorth Star and all that
understanding your clients orcustomers.
But because you have the tools,you can apply the scientific
method to it by not onlyunderstanding but then adapting
all this information, all thisintel you have to helping evolve
(33:42):
that journey that customertakes with you.
So I think that's aninteresting opportunity.
So I understand why you gothand slapped that ops people are
not marketers.
But I think to make a greatmarketing operations person is
that if you really keep thatstrategic hat on at all times,
you will be a better marketingops person, because you have the
(34:03):
tools to really give you theammunition to have the tough
conversations.
So maybe this is how I'llattempt to reframe it a little
bit Become marketing scientists,you know, and we have the power
marketing scientists, you know,and we have the power.
Mike Rizzo (34:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think at the end of it,people really felt that it
resonated, it created the rightconversation for our space,
which is a lot of what we'retalking about today on this
episode with you, and that it ismarketing.
Ops is more than just marketing.
It's about so much more thanthat, and I think really, all of
this discussion today hascontinued to sort of like again,
(34:44):
folks, I didn't plant Martinhere, he's just reiterating a
lot of the stuff that I'm reallyexcited about for our category,
um, and I and I hope that, uh,in general, you've sort of
thought through, maybe how toreframe your role or how to have
different conversations andreally try to step into your
(35:06):
whether it's a consultingengagement or your businesses in
general, your business partnersand your executive teams, with
a hey, I'm here to help.
That's scientific method.
I love that idea.
That's a great shout out andsort of reframing.
Um, and you are a great like thegreat enabler for supporting a
go-to-market motion and, as youcome in, just be curious, like
(35:30):
the like the number one thing,martin, that we've seen in our
sort of anecdotal and actualdata trend, like points from,
like our annual research, forexample, is that curiosity tends
to be the thing that, like, isthe number one sort of trait
quote unquote of a marketing opsprofessional, and I think, for
(35:51):
those of you listening thataren't a practicing marketing
ops professional, I hope thissheds a little bit of light on
why you want to work withsomebody in this role.
The other skills that you mighthave as a digital marketer, as
an executive sales leader, acustomer success rep your skills
are amazing and we don't havethose, but we would love to find
(36:14):
ways to.
I mean, I can't say that foreverybody, right, but in many
cases we are.
It is a better together story.
So, like, start to partner upwith the people that are holding
these roles, or go find them inyour organization.
We are getting close to timehere, martin.
I don't want to like leaveanything on the table.
(36:35):
Do you have any other thoughtsor things that we need to make
sure that this audience hearstoday?
Martin Pietrzak (36:42):
I think we've said it all, but I mean
something that you just said.
I think this I want to treatthis as an opportunity to also
call out not only the verytalented marketing ops people
out there, but this is anopportunity with all the new
tools out there, like ai, Ithink we there's a little bit of
angst in the marketplace ofwhat does it mean to be a
marketer these days, and I thinkall the different roles within
(37:05):
marketing and I think for ops Ithink this is, you know,
navigating this new messyjourney that you know our
customers are on can be a greatopportunity to be, to really
level up, become more strategicpartners to the business.
And I think, if I had to guess,you know, with AI, the AI may
will make it probably easier onthe tactical aspect of the job,
(37:30):
maybe the build out of some ofthose workflows, but how you
think it from a globalperspective, you know, to really
truly understand how totranslate those buyer emotions
into something that hasstructure and infrastructure
around it that supports thoseflexible systems and really
making sense of all this complexdata is going to be really
(37:53):
critical and I think that's anopportunity and I would love to
see that and I'm surprised howmany times I go into clients and
I look under the hood of wherethey are at in their marketing
ops readiness and I could tellyou that it's sad sometimes.
I understand that small playersdon't really have a good
(38:13):
structure in place, but even thebig players it's a bit of an
afterthought sometimes.
So this, I think, can reallyreally be quite impactful for
the role going forward.
Mike Rizzo (38:24):
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree.
It's really an exciting time tobe in this space in general.
There's introduction of yetanother set of new buzzwords all
around go-to-marketarchitecture, go-to-market
engineering, and dah, dah, dah,dah.
Um, at the end of the day, you,in a marketing ops role, have a
(38:45):
tremendous opportunity in frontof you and, uh, and I'm really
excited and, yeah, I don't thinkI could have said it any better
.
So, martin, thank you for forsharing that.
Um, all right folks, we forsharing that.
All right folks, we, yeah,likewise, the episode is coming
to a close here.
I want to take the time to say,martin, thank you for joining
(39:09):
us today.
If our audience wants toconnect with you or reach out to
ask some more questions aboutthe messy middle, where might
they best find you?
Martin Pietrzak (39:17):
Probably easiest on LinkedIn, but if you
want to check out our website,it's probably easiest.
Versus my last name, thespelling is complicated.
So just check outpinchmarketing.
That's where we reside and ifyou reach out through that, it's
probably the easiest way toconnect.
So you can just mention thisconversation and I'd love to
(39:37):
help out and have a conversationwith whoever needs to learn a
little bit more about this.
Mike Rizzo (39:42):
Cool, awesome.
You heard that folks, so makesure to mention it, because we
want the proper credit forAttribution.
And how'd you hear about us?
Martin Pietrzak (39:52):
I love that Attribution.
Mike Rizzo (39:53):
See, it's just like I'm tired In life All right.
Well, thank you, as as always,to everybody for listening.
For those of you who are outthere, we really really
appreciate you being a part ofthis.
I did have a few folks reachout recently and say thank you
to us for hosting the show.
We appreciate that greatly.
(40:14):
In that vein, if you enjoyedthis episode, please let us know
.
We are shouting into the void.
We get to see your downloads,but that's about all we get.
If you liked it, please be sureto go, rate and review us, Give
us a sort of thumbs up or ahandful of kudos, or just share
it with a friend that you thinkshould listen to this episode.
So please remember to rate,review and subscribe and if you
(40:38):
yourself want to be a guest, asalways, you can reach out to us.
You can either go tomarketingopscom and go to the
contact form.
If you visit your profilemarketingopscom slash profile
there's a widget on the righthand side where you can request
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just DM any one of us Michael,Naomi or myself and we will try
(41:02):
to get you scheduled Until nexttime.
Really appreciate you alllistening.
You have a good rest of yourday.
Bye everybody, Bye everyone.
Hello and welcome in everybody.
Welcome to another episode ofOpsCast by MarketingOpscom,
powered by all of you marketingoperations professionals out
there, the MoPros.
Today I'm your host, mike Rizzo.
I'm flying solo, I get to stepin for the infamous and
incredible Mr Michael Hartman,and unfortunately, naomi did
(00:26):
have a conflict in the schedulebecause guess what, we are all
busy marketing ops professionalsand she had to go take care of
some stuff.
So we do hope that she'll beback with us again soon.
But thank you for jumping intoday joining us to talk about
this important topic of what isreferred to by our guest as the
messy middle of the modernbuyer's journey is Martin
(00:49):
Piatczyk.
So Martin is the founder andpresident of Pinch Marketing,
which is a B2B marketing andlead generation agency.
He's a marketing executive with20 years of experience in
hands-on planning andimplementing of digital and
conventional marketingstrategies that exceed revenue
targets in corporate and startupenvironments, and prior to
(01:10):
founding Pinch, he held variousmarketing and marketing
leadership roles across severalcompanies and has also worked as
a co-founder of a B2C semanticsearch company, which is awesome
.
I've been around a few semanticsearch folks.
Martin, thank you for joiningus today.
Martin Pietrzak (01:27):
Thanks for having me, mike, and hello to
the old EML pros.
Mike Rizzo (01:31):
Appreciate it.
We are excited to have you Allright, so we are going to jump
in.
It was kind of queued up rightat the intro there.
Let's start with the obviousquestion what is the messy
middle of the buyer's journeyand how would you describe it
versus other models of thebuyer's journey?
Martin Pietrzak (01:47):
Yeah, sounds good, mike, I'd love to jump
into this.
So let me maybe start off bysaying what it's not.
And I think we are.
I think we're all familiar froma marketing perspective around,
you know, the consumerfollowing this linear buyer's
path right From awareness tointerest to decision and finally
purchase.
(02:07):
It's nice, it's clean and itgoes from the step-by-step like
a ladder and hopefully at theend of the day, you know, it
finalizes with a nice, big, fatpurchase.
However, what we've observedand it's not just me, you know,
the messy middle actually comesfrom a study that was published
by Google.
So they have a million datapoints to substantiate this.
(02:28):
But the model is no longerreally that linear anymore.
It doesn't really reflect thecurrent customer behavior.
So today buyers are much moredynamic.
It's a very non-linear processreally.
I call the looping between allthese phases, between
exploration and evaluation.
(02:49):
So it's it's.
People no longer go from stepby step, by state.
They jump between any of this.
So like I like to use thisnetflix analogy.
So you know, we all watch andlove netflix, or maybe we hate
it now because there's so muchchoice.
But if you think about this, yougot to go into.
So how do we search for stuffthese days.
(03:10):
You know, maybe I'm going tolog into Netflix, I'm going to
watch a couple trailers, thenI'm going to stop there and I'm
going to maybe read a RottenTomatoes article on the side.
Maybe I'm going to.
I just remember that a buddy ofmine texted me a message about
a movie or show that they reallyloved.
So it goes back and forth.
Right, I might do this multipletimes before I make that
(03:34):
decision.
What I really want to watch.
So I think this really is thetrue reflection of what the mess
of metal is.
It's this idea of loopingbetween all these different
stages.
So what was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 mightbe 2, 3, 1, back to 3, back to
5.
So it's become much morecomplex than we ever anticipated
to be.
Mike Rizzo (03:52):
Yeah, I have to agree, I mean, arguably, in a
lot of ways it was kind ofalways complex.
I think, in particular in B2B,we tried to like, like,
oversimplify, you know, thebuyer's journey itself, and I
think what's happening on theB2B side is certainly starting
(04:14):
to show signs of exactly this.
What you're talking about,right, this messy middle On the
B2B side.
I would say, you know, thereprobably was some linear nature
in the past.
I agree with the notion, but Ialso, you know, think that there
(04:41):
was quite a bit happeningunderneath the water, right, if
you look at that duck that'sswimming in the lake, you know
people aren't necessarily likemaking, you know, super simple
decisions.
They are, you know, textingtheir friends or placing a phone
call to their parents or their,you know, whoever their, their
close constituents, right To geta sense of like, hey, what did
you use?
You've got kids, you know, didyou buy a special type of
sunscreen?
And you know, and the journeykind of goes from there.
Question for you, just ingeneral, as you think about the
(05:04):
messy middle by the way, like I,prior to us getting on today, I
was, like I swear, one of thoseother than Google, and maybe it
was Google because you calledattention to it, but I swear
that some of some publicationGartner, forrester, you name it
just like recently publishedsomething about this right, like
how, how the buyer's journey isreally complex and kind of just
(05:27):
flat.
It's just this bouncing aroundof all these things, this messy
middle, that we're talking about, but I couldn't find the visual
to support it.
Martin Pietrzak (05:37):
I think it's just.
If you think about it, it'sprobably just one messy big
cloud with a lot of lines inbetween.
Right, I completely agree,messy is right and you know, I,
I use the netflix model becauseI think that every you could all
understand it.
But from a b2b perspective, Ithink what the culprit is behind
all this is, you know, I wantto say somebody broke the
(05:58):
internet.
You know, I think before we areused to going into the store
and dealing with a salesperson,to to you knowmortar type
locations, to figure out whatthe decision is.
It's become much more complexthan that.
People, buyers, we have allthese tools available to us how
we can educate ourselves.
We read blogs, we go check outsocial media, we read reviews,
(06:22):
we talk to our friends and peers, we may be part of some events
that we go to.
So the platforms that areavailable to us as consumers
have become infinite.
Right, and I think it's so.
The digital realm made itessentially much more complex
and I think buyers today they'remuch more educated as a result
(06:45):
of that and they will look forthat information, not just about
what they want to purchase, butabout the brand that they're
transacting with.
So this is really, reallycritical to understand this
complexity going forward.
Mike Rizzo (06:57):
Yeah, yeah, and I think you touched on things that
I think I will probably unpackand another set of a segment
here.
But, you know, this idea of thetrust in the brand and the
relationship that you build withthat, right, I, I, I totally
agree, I was gonna, I was gonnasort of tee up or ask the
question from, from your side,your, your opinion on, really,
(07:19):
is it the technology that'sinfluenced the?
You know, I think it's theaccess to information, right?
You know, of course, when wethink about the buyer's journey,
before our to your point, wewere trained to say, okay, I'm
going to walk in, I'm going totalk to somebody, I'm going to
get their advice, and then I'mgoing to make a decision on
which thing I'm going topurchase and walk out the door
with.
(07:40):
And so our user behaviorpreviously was I'm going to go
to a website, I want to talk toone of the reps, they're going
to tell me about their thing,and if it's good for me, I'm
going to do another website, goto another store, check that out
and then eventually make adecision on what I want to buy.
And it seems like today it'sreally perpetuated by the access
to information.
It's just that much easier.
(08:01):
So, with that in mind, let'stalk about some of the
technology or process that youfeel like we need to have in
place to understand the buyer'sjourney.
And then you know we can'tescape it Like is AI somehow
impacting any of this?
And you know how do you thinkthat it is?
Martin Pietrzak (08:21):
Yeah, good question, mike.
I think that we especially Ithink, for the marketing ops
folks out there it's so criticalto understand that the
complexity of this buyingjourney also complicates with
the technologies that we usethere's no question about that
to maybe working within dataplatforms, data lakes, dpm
systems, anything that allows usto not only collect but make
(08:48):
sense of all this data that'sout there, especially if it's
being supposed to be captured atvarious stages of this journey.
It's much more complicated.
So I don't want to specificallycall any particular
technologies by name, but Ithink this complexity probably
makes the infrastructure setupalso more complex.
(09:09):
So we can no longer follow thislinear path right and saying,
oh yeah, here's a nurture I'mgoing to build out in MailChimp
and from email one to two tothree to four, it probably
requires tools that allow us tocapture not only the internal
tools that we can control, likemaybe the email platforms, maybe
the website, maybe other things, but now it's the third-party
(09:31):
data that we need to be able tobring into the mix.
So maybe the social mediainteractions, maybe third-party
review sites, tracking contenton other people's sites, which
of course, makes it much moredifficult.
So I think integrations withthose disparate systems become
critical.
So you know it might take intoconsideration not only the
current platforms you have buthow to integrate it, maybe with
(09:53):
tools like Zapier or somethinglike that, where it allows us to
connect those dots.
And then you know, how the heckdo you make sense out of all of
this, right?
You know you have all this datacoming from multiple directions
at you.
I think that's where I think youknow we talked AI.
You mentioned AI.
I think that's where AI canreally make you know, make some
(10:13):
sense of this complexity.
You know we as humans, we, bylooking for these, these nuances
and this linear, you knowconnections, we might miss some
things that AI might be able topick up.
Before we might have 10 datapoints.
Now we're going to have 5,000points.
If we have the ability to putthe AI on top of all that, that
(10:35):
might really allow us to makemore sense out of it and figure
out how to build models that area little bit more sensical in
this very complex structure.
And I think AI has the abilityperhaps to even make some sense
of it.
Maybe some predictive modelingwhere it allows you to, even in
(10:55):
this messy middle, to help usunderstand.
Okay, like if this person didthis and that there is a higher
likelihood that they will alsodo that, and that's really
critical for us to understand.
And it's much more difficult todo so, I think, manually and
maybe crunching the data inExcel.
I think AI really can shine inthis kind of scenario.
Mike Rizzo (11:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely agree there.
I think what's interestingabout just the sort of like you
know we'll call it the onslaughtand ability to sort of like
capture data, is it really atthe core of this is we're seeing
it particularly in B2B.
Like B2C arguably has beendoing marketing operations, they
(11:37):
just they've been calling itsomething else for a lot longer
than we have right.
They call it lifecyclemarketing and these other types
of terms.
B2b is like stepping into aworld where it's trying to set
up some of the things that youtalked about your data lakes and
your data warehouses to try tocreate those sort of unique IDs
that tie back to a buyer'sjourney and then create the
(12:01):
opportunity for AI topotentially show, you know, a
propensity right to take thenext step.
There was this wonderful sessionthat Ari from NVIDIA presented
on at Spring Fling just a fewweeks ago around the propensity
for anything, and it was reallythe same sort of talk that we're
(12:22):
discussing here and it's thisidea that you know, really, at
any given point, there'smultiple potential buyer groups,
multiple potential things thatare weighing in on the
business's decision to engagewith the brand, and it's just
about understanding theirpropensity to take action for
the next step, right, um, and Ithink it's forcing us I, I, you
(12:47):
know, I, I'd love sort of to godown this, this little rabbit
hole for a minute when we thinkabout, um, you know, being a
little bit tool agnostic in thisconversation, right now, the
architecture is changing, right,like, fundamentally, it feels
like it's forcing us to, like,start with the data versus
starting with the tools, whichI'm super excited about, because
(13:10):
all of us in marketing costs,we're like hey, here's this tool
that we bought and we're likegreat, what do you want to do
with this?
Yeah, so you know, I think thequestion that I'm sort of
getting to is like so, you know,I think the question that I'm
(13:33):
sort of getting to is like whatis the strategic impact that we
can now bring to the table?
When you think about, like, asyou engage with your clients,
right, and you're trying to helpthem understand how to make
sense of this messy middle, youknow what are some of the things
that you like to talk about and, in terms of, like, helping to
paint a picture of the art ofthe possible, and then, is it
changing the way in which you'reapproaching your conversations
with your customers today?
Martin Pietrzak (13:53):
yeah, that's a good question, I think.
Um, yes and yes on all thefronts you've discussed, but
(14:17):
let's start with your audience.
Marketing ops being an owner ofa can argue this one is that
have been seen as a supportmechanism to a lot of the
marketing functions and maybesales function.
Sometimes they take hybrid rolesand I think this is a huge
opportunity, I think, formarketing ops folks to really
become the strategic partners tothe business, right?
So, rather than looking at andyou know, taking the direction
(14:39):
from others, saying, hey, setthis up for me, set up this
infrastructure Now, I think theyhave a seat at the table, so to
speak, to help build theseflexible systems, to help
wrangle this complex data andsupport, really support this
consistent presence and, bybuilding this infrastructure,
(15:01):
that support to help tounderstand and influence buyers
right During this complex, messyreality, right?
So they're no longer just asupport mechanism, they are the
enabler, and I think this is anopportunity, I think, for
marketing ops to see it as such,to really help enable and help
(15:23):
accelerate the sales andmarketing initiatives that I
think companies are strugglingwith, because I think that
they're still stuck with the oldmodels.
Help them by building the rightpiping the infrastructure, the
data purview and converting thatinto intelligence that can
(15:45):
really, really help toaccelerate those business
initiatives.
So I think that's in a nutshell.
Mike Rizzo (15:55):
And there's a few things we can discuss in more
detail, but that's kind of atthe highest level.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you aresinging.
People are going to think thatI planted you onto this show
Because you are totally.
It's my 20 bucks, mike, come onlike singing the song that I
(16:18):
really like to sing, which ishow can we get these
organizations to start tounderstand that modern
go-to-market technology isreally broadly, your
go-to-market motion is enabledby various capabilities across
many solutions and, at the endof the day, it's a product in
(16:40):
and of itself and theopportunity to to your point, as
I've been sort of pushing outinto the wild too, which was you
know for for our listeners.
Martin and I didn't have achance to talk prior to this, so
I'm hearing for the first time.
I promise I didn't plant them onthe show, but I definitely have
said many time over like, hey,you are ultimately the
(17:01):
strategist and the key enablerfor the go-to-market tech stack
as a product, and building thatroadmap and helping the
organization take their goalsand apply them down to
capabilities and build a roadmapthat supports their continued
endeavors, because everybusiness has a different
hypothesis on how they want togo to market.
(17:22):
Right, some do ABM, some do SEO,da-da-da-da-da.
But the enablement factor andthe underlying data principles
that are there reallyfundamentally come down to your
product manager and you need tocreate a user story and journeys
and features and functionalityand release it and enable people
to leverage the products thatyou've acquired to go to market.
(17:43):
But I think to try to get intosome of those capabilities, why
don't you share?
I know we want to dig in alittle bit on what are some of
the nuanced types of exampleswhere a marketing ops person can
step in and help anorganization.
Maybe think about the art ofthe possible as it comes to
(18:04):
these technologies, like, maybebreak down some of those
capabilities for us.
Martin Pietrzak (18:09):
Yeah, that sounds good and I think you
touched on that a little bit,mike, when you said we haven't
really had an opportunity tochat earlier.
I think the key here is that wegot to be flexible right In
this conversation.
We got to be agile and I thinkthat's exactly the number one
thing that I think I want tosend the message to the ML pros
is that we got to be flexible.
So you have to figure out howto implement these flexible
(18:41):
workflows right, which aretrying to adapt to this
iterative process, how buyersthink about buying, allowing
multiple entry and exit pointsthroughout these campaigns right
, you know, if you think aboutif it is a linear path, but you
have all these like one, two,three, four, five, six, you know
, sometimes you know somebodymight stumble on an old blog
article that you know you'vewritten and they'll completely
miss the email nurture that youwere supposed and they'll
completely miss the emailnurture that you were supposed
(19:01):
to send to them.
So you can't controlnecessarily all these entry
points, but what you can do iscreate this adaptive workflow
that allows people to enter andexit where they choose, and I
think you can help them definethis path without defining the
path right, which is what soundsdoesn't make sense to some
(19:23):
degree, but maybe it's this ideaof we can create a playground
with all the different toys init rather than building a
railroad track, right?
So when allowing the buyer tochoose how they want to use it,
I think that's really the keyhere, and you know we talked
about.
You know the multiple entrypoints and you know we talked
about.
You know the multiple entrypoints and with this philosophy,
(19:43):
that the customer is in thedriver's seat, not you.
So as much as we like them tobe on this highway in the left
lane, chances are they'resomewhere else and we need to
accommodate that.
So that's number one I'd sayyeah, no, it's funny.
Mike Rizzo (20:00):
Earlier in our discussion I actually had that
same sort of.
I mean, you described it aslike buildings, like defining a
path without truly putting themon one, and I think for a
marketing ops person listeningto this, that makes actually a
ton of sense to me.
For an executive who might betuning into this and be like
(20:20):
what the fuck are you talkingabout?
You're not making any sense, um, and that's okay, right?
Uh, that's exactly why you wantto hire people into the roles
and get them to help you figurethis stuff out, because it is
about engineering, um, anenvironment with the intention
to guide somebody.
And and it's these subtle cuesthat you know, if you're kind of
(20:44):
aware of the potential sort ofthe propensity to move sort of
through the funnel right, theremight be these blog posts that
are engineered to be more of adiscovery mechanism and you
might have these other resourcesthat are kind of a little bit
deeper in the layer, but you'reaware of the fact that they
might want to sort of jumparound and you have to engineer
(21:05):
that with the intention of look,I want to create as much
information gatheringopportunity for this customer as
we possibly can, but then Ineed to be able to figure out
what they're doing.
They're doing, and so I think insome of the examples that were
sort of outlined on our documentthat we're talking through
today and some of the talkingpoints we wanted to get to, I
(21:28):
think it comes down to signalsright Like there's this whole
market that's.
It's like kind of frustratingright now with the number of
like players that are in thespace around signals and real
time data, but I do think thatthere's an opportunity here.
Do you kind of want to unpackwhat maybe some of those
opportunities are?
Martin Pietrzak (21:47):
You know, Vani, you said it earlier right, you
try to minimize thewhat-the-fuck moments from your
management team, right?
And I think data can play areally, really important part in
that, can play a really, reallyimportant part in that.
And so maybe, before you jumpinto building out these models,
(22:08):
I think the first thing youmight want to also do is create
a system that allows you tomonitor and collect all these
different you could call themsignals.
So how can you collect all thisdata, hopefully in real time,
and then looking at that,observing that, maybe leveraging
some AI tools to figure out,hey, where are these people on
that journey and what are thesteps that they're taking?
(22:35):
Or at least trying to leverageanything that you know of the
buyer, maybe talking to thepeople who are good conduit to
those customers and saying, hey,how did they find out about us?
What steps did they take?
And then trying to mimic thatand trying to collect all this
data.
So this could be your internaldata sources, or maybe your
website traffic, the GoogleAnalytics of the world, your
(22:57):
social engagement, maybe throughintegrations, your email
platforms, and then integrations, your email platforms, and then
you have, you know, third-partydata.
Right, you can have.
How does the maybe third-partydata like, maybe sales
navigators of the world?
But then you married with theBambora's intent data and then
marry all that with what youalready know of these people in
(23:19):
your own CRM platforms and then,once you have that, the sensing
or listing mechanism set up,then it can really allow you to
leverage the data, hopefully inreal time, to really put the
decision making on steroidsright, and that really, I think,
gives you a lot of theammunition to go back to your
bosses and the business leadersto say, hey, the reason we're
(23:41):
doing this is because this iswhat the data actually tells us
and it's not as linear as youperhaps thought.
So you might have to challengetheir thinking a little bit, and
leveraging data is the besttool to do so.
So I think that's how I thinkabout it, but I'm not sure what
your thoughts on that, Mike, youknow your audience best, but
(24:01):
this is kind of what myobservation.
Mike Rizzo (24:04):
No, no, I think it's spot on.
You know, unfortunately, like,for better or worse, data has
been the center of theconversation for at least the
last decade and it's become evenmore prominent in the
discussions and sort of the ageof AI, but I do think that it's,
(24:25):
in some ways, I feel like it'sa chicken and egg problem with
leadership, right, if you don'thave a system in place to
capture information, just likebroadly capture data, whether it
is first party sort of webtraffic data, or first party
data at the CRM level.
(24:46):
What's fundamentally true isthat, like there has to be
something there at the bottomright, this net, if you were to
create a visual to be able tocapture that stuff and then
eventually start to find ways tomake sense of it.
And so you know, as you makethe argument for how to go
implement these things or thewhy to your business partners,
(25:08):
your leadership team, etc.
I think it's really about Iwant to enable our team to be
able to show up in the ways wewant them to show up and,
ultimately, I want to make surethat we are providing the right
sort of experience for ourcustomers during their buyer's
journey.
Right, because we fundamentallyunderstand it is going to be
(25:29):
all over the place Right now.
We need a system to be able tocapture all of that information.
I mean just very concretely,martin, look at a tool like Gong
or any other type of listeningdevice, right, like for recorded
calls.
When you start to capture thatinformation, the next phase of
this is, like what can I learn?
(25:49):
Like start asking the questions.
Right, like executives can turnto your marketing ops team and
say what can we learn from theinsights that we're gathering
from these, from this net wherewe've caught all this data?
And you can go back from thiscall recording on Gong or
whatever Fathom you name it, andstart to extrapolate, like
really, how did they find us?
(26:09):
What were their pain points?
What are the things that theycared about?
Because then you want to gopass it back up the funnel to
find a way to create thatconsistent sort of experience.
Right, and I think that that isone of the really exciting
things about being in marketingoperations is that you get to be
a steward of the brand in a lotof ways.
So I would love your thoughtson that piece of this too.
Martin Pietrzak (26:32):
Yeah, stewardship of the brand.
I'm going to get there in asecond, but something you said
really struck me, and thereality can be daunting.
It might be difficult for themarketing ops person to get all
the tools in the toolkit thatthey might need.
So, using an example like youused with Gong, I think it's
(26:55):
critical and I think on somelevel, it might require to
reframe or retrain, like the SDR, bdr functions or the AE
functions, to make sure thatthey ask the right questions
about how did you find out aboutus?
What have you read?
Where did you read it?
Who did you hear it from?
What got you there?
Obviously, it's not supposed tobe a polling question or
(27:16):
anything like that, but it'slike through the conversations.
Hopefully, and now, with theextraction of all this data and
AI, maybe it will give you allthe data points that you might
need.
So that's a great startingpoint.
I really love what you saidthere.
But, yes, I think aboutstewardship of brand.
I think it's because thecustomers take this very wild
(27:39):
journey with us as a brand.
We have to be consistent and Ithink marketing ops folks have a
unique opportunity to make sure, be that steward of that brand,
to make sure that you're alwaysshowing up consistently in the
marketplace.
Not only that you're visible,but you're also consistent, and
(28:00):
I think this visibility means toalso sell the narrative that
you got to use various channels.
You got to meet the buyerswhere they are at, not
necessarily what you think theyshould be at.
That will help you with defineyou know defining what the
decision making process are.
So I think the always onmarketing concept is really
(28:20):
critical.
So forget about one-time emailblast campaigns, forget about
this quick and dirtyadvertisement campaign.
No, start thinking more broadly.
Think about this evergreen,always-on marketing campaign
(28:41):
that can be accessed throughouttime, throughout different ways,
in different entry and extrapoints.
It could be through content,advertising, thought leadership
pieces offline, online is really, really critical.
So I think you, as a marketingops person, have an opportunity
to really tighten that grip andmaking sure that, when you see
these mistakes that I think wemake in all marketing, this
(29:04):
luring lead generation campaignthat will last three days make a
recommendation.
That's probably not theapproach that you want.
So content must be easy to find, regardless if it's a blog
article or review or whatever,and then figuring out like where
is it that you need to collectall this data.
(29:26):
So the challenge of this is umto to think about it from a
long-term perspective ratherthan just like this immediate
result and finding the balancespot it's's and it's so hard.
Mike Rizzo (29:41):
Um, you know, I think we could pause here for a
moment and say just like, like,hang on this topic for a moment
and say, hey, the funny thing is, um, um, I guess I'll kind of
hark back to last year'skerfuffle that I sort of
(30:02):
accidentally, intentionallystarted, I guess Sort of kind of
, sort of kind of I saidmarketing ops isn't marketing,
and the whole of our communityand a number of the people on
the interwebs, particularlyLinkedIn, were kind of like you
know what are you talking about?
Did?
Martin Pietrzak (30:21):
you get booed yeah.
Mike Rizzo (30:22):
Did you get shamed?
And they were like it'sliterally in the name, from sort
of where I sit and what I seein the conversations that were
coming through and filteringthrough that discussion was the
(30:43):
the wild vacillation betweenyou're crazy.
It's absolutely marketing tothose exact same individuals
coming back to me personally andsometimes publicly, but
personally for sure a week and ahalf or two weeks later and
saying actually, maybe, not,maybe marketing in the
traditional sense really ismarketing and marketing ops is
(31:05):
something else and it's morethan just marketing and we've
touched a lot on that today.
I think at a minimum we'vetalked about understanding that
marketers in the marketingoperation role think like a
marketer.
They have to be broadly sort ofskilled across disciplines to
have a fundamental understandingof go-to-market motion.
(31:26):
They have a new and profoundunderstanding for how data and
database and object orientationworks.
Then they have to understand theramifications of ROI and the
financial side of things and howto try to tie any level of
investment that you're making inyour go-to-market motion back
to some type of success metricand then ultimately they're
(32:00):
trying to manage all of thisstuff and be compliant and make
sure that the buyer's journey issufficient and reflective of
your brand in a way that showsup consistently and it's safely
brand, safely right Opt-ins youknow there's no spamming, like
don't do a blast campaign as aone-off and you become this
individual that straddles theline between marketing, quote,
unquote, as you said.
You said, hey, if you hear thatthey're about to talk about
doing a campaign that's going tolast last three days, maybe
suggest that there's a differentpath to go down and and I think
(32:25):
that's right, right, like youbecome kind of a marketer, uh,
but really you're a strategist,you are a strategic partner,
right?
Martin Pietrzak (32:34):
like I don't know.
You know what it's interestingyou say there.
I think I've been thinking asyou were talking about this is
that marketing ops folks can begreat strategists, but it's rare
that a great strategist is alsoa great marketing ops person.
The way I think about marketingops people and the evolution of
(32:56):
the role is that you've becomewe've become marketing
scientists in a sense.
Right, it's not, but yes, Ithink the understanding of the
strategy is critical to see, toreally understand who your
buyers are.
So don't just walk in blindly asjust a technical support person
, but walk in as that scientistwho understands your business,
(33:19):
understands your goals,understands the overarching
marketing strategy, maybe yourNorth Star and all that
understanding your clients orcustomers.
But because you have the tools,you can apply the scientific
method to it by not onlyunderstanding but then adapting
all this information, all thisintel you have to helping evolve
(33:42):
that journey that customertakes with you.
So I think that's aninteresting opportunity.
So I understand why you gothand slapped that ops people are
not marketers.
But I think to make a greatmarketing operations person is
that if you really keep thatstrategic hat on at all times,
you will be a better marketingops person, because you have the
(34:03):
tools to really give you theammunition to have the tough
conversations.
So maybe this is how I'llattempt to reframe it a little
bit Become marketing scientists,you know, and we have the power
marketing scientists, you know,and we have the power.
Mike Rizzo (34:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think at the end of it,people really felt that it
resonated, it created the rightconversation for our space,
which is a lot of what we'retalking about today on this
episode with you, and that it ismarketing.
Ops is more than just marketing.
It's about so much more thanthat, and I think really, all of
this discussion today hascontinued to sort of like again,
(34:44):
folks, I didn't plant Martinhere, he's just reiterating a
lot of the stuff that I'm reallyexcited about for our category,
um, and I and I hope that, uh,in general, you've sort of
thought through, maybe how toreframe your role or how to have
different conversations andreally try to step into your
(35:06):
whether it's a consultingengagement or your businesses in
general, your business partnersand your executive teams, with
a hey, I'm here to help.
That's scientific method.
I love that idea.
That's a great shout out andsort of reframing.
Um, and you are a great like thegreat enabler for supporting a
go-to-market motion and, as youcome in, just be curious, like
(35:30):
the like the number one thing,martin, that we've seen in our
sort of anecdotal and actualdata trend, like points from,
like our annual research, forexample, is that curiosity tends
to be the thing that, like, isthe number one sort of trait
quote unquote of a marketing opsprofessional, and I think, for
(35:51):
those of you listening thataren't a practicing marketing
ops professional, I hope thissheds a little bit of light on
why you want to work withsomebody in this role.
The other skills that you mighthave as a digital marketer, as
an executive sales leader, acustomer success rep your skills
are amazing and we don't havethose, but we would love to find
(36:14):
ways to.
I mean, I can't say that foreverybody, right, but in many
cases we are.
It is a better together story.
So, like, start to partner upwith the people that are holding
these roles, or go find them inyour organization.
We are getting close to timehere, martin.
I don't want to like leaveanything on the table.
(36:35):
Do you have any other thoughtsor things that we need to make
sure that this audience hearstoday?
Martin Pietrzak (36:42):
I think we've said it all, but I mean
something that you just said.
I think this I want to treatthis as an opportunity to also
call out not only the verytalented marketing ops people
out there, but this is anopportunity with all the new
tools out there, like ai, Ithink we there's a little bit of
angst in the marketplace ofwhat does it mean to be a
marketer these days, and I thinkall the different roles within
(37:05):
marketing and I think for ops Ithink this is, you know,
navigating this new messyjourney that you know our
customers are on can be a greatopportunity to be, to really
level up, become more strategicpartners to the business.
And I think, if I had to guess,you know, with AI, the AI may
will make it probably easier onthe tactical aspect of the job,
(37:30):
maybe the build out of some ofthose workflows, but how you
think it from a globalperspective, you know, to really
truly understand how totranslate those buyer emotions
into something that hasstructure and infrastructure
around it that supports thoseflexible systems and really
making sense of all this complexdata is going to be really
(37:53):
critical and I think that's anopportunity and I would love to
see that and I'm surprised howmany times I go into clients and
I look under the hood of wherethey are at in their marketing
ops readiness and I could tellyou that it's sad sometimes.
I understand that small playersdon't really have a good
(38:13):
structure in place, but even thebig players it's a bit of an
afterthought sometimes.
So this, I think, can reallyreally be quite impactful for
the role going forward.
Mike Rizzo (38:24):
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree.
It's really an exciting time tobe in this space in general.
There's introduction of yetanother set of new buzzwords all
around go-to-marketarchitecture, go-to-market
engineering, and dah, dah, dah,dah.
Um, at the end of the day, you,in a marketing ops role, have a
(38:45):
tremendous opportunity in frontof you and, uh, and I'm really
excited and, yeah, I don't thinkI could have said it any better
.
So, martin, thank you for forsharing that.
Um, all right folks, we forsharing that.
All right folks, we, yeah,likewise, the episode is coming
to a close here.
I want to take the time to say,martin, thank you for joining
(39:09):
us today.
If our audience wants toconnect with you or reach out to
ask some more questions aboutthe messy middle, where might
they best find you?
Martin Pietrzak (39:17):
Probably easiest on LinkedIn, but if you
want to check out our website,it's probably easiest.
Versus my last name, thespelling is complicated.
So just check outpinchmarketing.
That's where we reside and ifyou reach out through that, it's
probably the easiest way toconnect.
So you can just mention thisconversation and I'd love to
(39:37):
help out and have a conversationwith whoever needs to learn a
little bit more about this.
Mike Rizzo (39:42):
Cool, awesome.
You heard that folks, so makesure to mention it, because we
want the proper credit forAttribution.
And how'd you hear about us?
Martin Pietrzak (39:52):
I love that Attribution.
Mike Rizzo (39:53):
See, it's just like I'm tired In life All right.
Well, thank you, as as always,to everybody for listening.
For those of you who are outthere, we really really
appreciate you being a part ofthis.
I did have a few folks reachout recently and say thank you
to us for hosting the show.
We appreciate that greatly.
(40:14):
In that vein, if you enjoyedthis episode, please let us know
.
We are shouting into the void.
We get to see your downloads,but that's about all we get.
If you liked it, please be sureto go, rate and review us, Give
us a sort of thumbs up or ahandful of kudos, or just share
it with a friend that you thinkshould listen to this episode.
So please remember to rate,review and subscribe and if you
(40:38):
yourself want to be a guest, asalways, you can reach out to us.
You can either go tomarketingopscom and go to the
contact form.
If you visit your profilemarketingopscom slash profile
there's a widget on the righthand side where you can request
to join us as a guest on opscast, or you can, or you can
just DM any one of us Michael,Naomi or myself and we will try
(41:02):
to get you scheduled Until nexttime.
Really appreciate you alllistening.
You have a good rest of yourday.
Bye everybody, Bye everyone.
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