October 9, 2025 • 55 mins
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In this episode of OpsCast, hosted by Michael Hartmann and powered by MarketingOps.com, we are joined by Chris Golec, Founder and CEO of Channel99, and Emily Gustin, Business Development Manager at LinkedIn. Chris and Emily share how the shift from individual-level to company-level attribution is transforming how B2B marketing teams measure ROI, particularly in social media.
They discuss how LinkedIn and Channel99 are partnering to provide marketers with a privacy-safe approach to connect paid and organic social engagement to website activity and pipeline impact. The conversation explores the implications for ABM and ABX strategies, the evolving landscape of view-through attribution, and how marketing operations professionals can gain deeper insight into brand reach, buyer behavior, and overall performance across the funnel.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How company-level attribution is changing B2B social measurement
- The role of privacy-safe solutions in connecting social engagement to pipeline impact
- Insights into ABM and ABX strategies informed by better data
- How MOPs teams can leverage attribution to understand brand reach and buyer behavior
This episode is perfect for marketing operations professionals, B2B marketers, and anyone looking to improve social ROI and attribution strategies.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael Hartmann (00:01):
Hello everyone.
Welcome to another episode ofOpsCast, brought to you by
MarketingOps.com, powered by allthe mo pros out there.
I'm your host, Michael Hartman,joined today by my co-host Mike
Rizzo.
It's been a while, Mike.
Mike Rizzo (00:12):
It has been a while, and I am sorry.
Just been deep in the throes ofcommunity building,
certification planning, MopsaPalooza.
Michael Hartmann (00:21):
Mopsapalooza.
Which we'll we, I think we'lltouch we'll we'll touch on
during the episode today.
So let's get into it becausewe've got a lot to tackle.
So today we are tackling one ofthe toughest challenges in B2B
marketing, provide proving ROIfor social.
For years, much of our trafficand engagement came from that
came from social, has ended uplumped into buckets like Direct
(00:41):
or other.
But that's starting to change.
So joining us today to talkabout that are two guests, which
is a little bit unusual for us.
So joining us again is ChrisGolick.
He's the founder and CEO ofChannel 99.
And uh many of you already knowhim.
Also joining is Emily Augustin,who is a business development
manager at LinkedIn, and she'sleading LinkedIn's measurement
(01:03):
and attribution partnerships,and she is working directly with
Channel 99 on new solutionsthat provide company level
visibility into paid and organicengagement.
Chris, Emily, welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you for having us.
Chris Golec (01:16):
Thanks for having me.
Michael Hartmann (01:18):
All right.
Well, let's start with somedefinitions.
And I think Emily, when wetalked before, uh we were
talking about you said somethinglike uh view through
attribution.
So why don't we start withthat?
Like definitionally, what doesthat mean to you and why,
especially given your experiencehaving worked with marketers in
your previous roles atLinkedIn, like what do you like,
(01:38):
why do you think that'srelevant for B2B marketers
today?
Emily Gustin (01:42):
Sure.
I mean, I think the definitionof view-through uh attribution
or view-through uh clicklessengagement would be stuff that
is not tracked, you know, with aclick and not tracked via UTM.
So if you think about marketingmeasurement like, I don't know,
an iceberg, I'll give thatmetaphor for today.
This would be the stuff belowthe waterline that you
oftentimes don't see, but itmakes the iceberg what it is.
(02:03):
And it's very relevant for B2Band for LinkedIn marketing,
because in B2B, you have verylong sales cycles.
So it's important to understandmore than just the last few
clicks.
Um it's also very relevant withrespect to LinkedIn marketing
because you're reaching realdecision makers.
You know, you're you'retargeting people by the criteria
that's on their LinkedInprofile.
So you know that when you youhave viewed through events,
(02:25):
they're coming from very realprofessionals, right?
This is not traffic that youshould just do away with when
you're doing your marketingmeasurement.
Michael Hartmann (02:33):
Got it.
Okay.
Yeah, I like the iceberganalogy.
I'm depending on what it is, Iuse the duck one too, sometimes,
you know, all the like all theactivity that's happening below
the surface, but iceberg seemslike a better one for this.
All right.
So, Chris, kind of tying thistogether with what you're you're
seeing and hearing from yourcustomers, and you know, what is
(02:54):
it that you've been hearingfrom them that's led to this
integration between channel 99and LinkedIn?
Chris Golec (03:03):
Yeah, I mean, a big problem for B2B marketers is
the fact that 70 or 80% of alltheir website traffic comes
through from an unknown source.
And so a lot of this is allview-through traffic.
And a lot of these legacyattribution tools have ignored
it.
And to me, you're not going toget the right answers if you're
ignoring the largest customersignal.
(03:24):
And as it relates to organicsocial, that kind of attribution
or engagement is really highvalue intent signals.
And so the integration isreally helping us understand,
you know, taking that, you know,those that level of engagement
out of the direct bucket andproperly assigning it to
(03:46):
LinkedIn, you know, whether it'sorganic or paid social.
Michael Hartmann (03:50):
Is it I'm just curious because I in my like
what I've been noticing latelywhen I'm working with teams who
are trying to grow their theiraudience, right?
It feels like social is likethe only place where you can do
that without running intoserious issues with privacy and
restrictions.
So like is it becoming a biggerissue that you're seeing,
Chris?
Emily, you too, like I don't umjust because it feels like the
(04:12):
growing an audience is becomingharder and harder without going
through social.
Chris Golec (04:17):
Well, I I'll just I'll uh I I do know that people
are clicking less.
So that the amount of viewthrough is actually growing.
And the level of view throughattribution that we see is
typically four or five timesgreater than people clicking.
And so it it's significant andit changes our OR metrics uh
(04:38):
significantly.
Emily Gustin (04:40):
I'll just add on to that.
I mean, we know that social orLinkedIn or B2B social is a
really critical means ofreaching a potential buyer.
We talk a lot in advertisingabout reaching the right person
at the right time with the rightmessage, and that's something
that can be done uniquely onsocial and on LinkedIn if you're
trying to drive a B2B purchase.
(05:01):
And organic social isparticularly interesting.
We've done a bunch of studiesat LinkedIn.
What we've seen is that thosewho interact with your company
page, the brand's presence,organic presence on LinkedIn
tend to have higher intent,which makes sense.
It's sort of of a proxy for,you know, you could think of it
almost like a G2 page or some ofthe other B2B industry spots
(05:22):
where you might go and doresearch.
So that type of engagement issuper relevant.
It's important to drive ifyou're a marketer.
It's also important tounderstand if you're doing
measurement.
Michael Hartmann (05:32):
Yeah, it makes sense.
Mike Rizzo (05:34):
So um super sorry, I'm gonna jump in right, but
it's it's really interesting tolike think think about this idea
of view through.
I mean, just from from where Isit, you know, um on the
community side, we're constantlytrying to engage with our
audience in as many ways as wecan.
(05:55):
And and uh I I'm in this, I'min this little, I don't, we we
refer to we have a silly namefor this small group of uh
founders that we're in.
There's like four of us.
We're constantly trying tofigure out like how in the heck
do we get anyone's attentionwith the message that we want to
put out there, and you know,LinkedIn happens to be our
predominant choice uh of socialplatform to use to do so.
(06:16):
And you know, and lately likethe the sort of like changes in
the way LinkedIn's algorithm hasbeen working has certainly had
a significant impact on the waywe used to perceive and measure
the success, quote unquote.
Uh air quotes for those of youjust listening, uh the success
of our of our efforts.
Um and so I'm I'm I'mparticularly excited to to hear
(06:40):
about like what's going on atLinkedIn and with channel 99
sort of layering on with the twoof you kind of uh playing nice
together, because it is hard tomeasure like the success of
what's going on, because it isit is completely different than
it was just like two years ago,roughly, right?
Where we were seeing tens ofthousands of impressions and all
(07:01):
kinds of other interactions onthe thing.
Um, and now if there's a way toactually measure some of this
back to your organization,right?
And obviously for us, it's justabout like putting the good
message out about the communityand getting more community
members in.
But for B2B organizations, youknow, driving that traffic back
to your website with real intentand signal, like that's really,
(07:24):
really exciting.
So I I don't know.
I'm just like I'm excited tohear that there's kind of a
obviously something's beencooking underneath the water
that I am gonna use the duckanalogy.
The duck's feet have beenmoving very quickly over at
LinkedIn, it sounds like.
And and I'm just I'm excited tohear it.
So yeah, anyway.
Emily Gustin (07:43):
Yeah, I think that's a fair segue to, you
know, what the heck are welaunching with channel 99?
Um, and I'll just say that Ithink for a long time, platforms
like LinkedIn didn't reallyprovide a ton of engagement data
to fit in with the source oftruth platforms that we know
that advertisers are using formeasurement.
Um, things have changed andwe're able to provide that data
(08:06):
in a privacy-first you know, wayby looking at things at a
company level.
And so whether you're thinkingabout organic engagement that
you're driving or uhinteractions with your paid ads,
we now pipe you know LinkedInengagement data into B2B
analytics and attributionplatforms like channel 99 so
that you can get that fullpicture of the buyer journey.
(08:29):
You can see below thewaterline, you can, you know,
ducks feed, whatever you want touse there, um, night vision
goggles, whatever you want,right?
How you can actually get apicture of how a company moved
from, let's say, organicallyengaging with your brand to
perhaps engaging with your paidads, but they weren't yet, you
know, a company you might havebeen calling on or you might
have pipeline tracked in yourCRM for all the way through into
(08:52):
that kind of close one, youknow, final conversion event
that everybody is trying tomeasure.
And just to like be clear aboutwhat we did not do in the past,
which is the change that we'remaking here, is we didn't
provide that full suite of uh oftouch points at the company
level.
We'd let you look at LinkedInuh paid marketing data by top X
(09:13):
number of companies you reachedor engaged, but we never gave
you the full pipeline of everyengagement event at the company
level.
And since ViewTroop is soimportant, since the B2B sales
cycle is so long, we felt likeit was about time to give
marketers that visibility thatthey deserve and that will help
to you know make their efforts alot more successful if they can
use the intelligence.
Mike Rizzo (09:34):
That's really cool.
Sorry, uh I want to doubleclick, and I apologize to take
us off off script just a littlebit.
I want to double-click on um uhbecause I I know we have really
good questions we want to askyou, but I want to ask this
question.
Um the the idea of companylevel data, and I don't know if
that's like Chris or Emily orboth, can we sort of unpack that
(09:58):
just a little bit?
Like and and more specifically,I think if I was a Mo pro,
marketing operationsprofessional, RevOps
professional, very familiar withusing data, attribution, all
kinds of things in these inthese various products.
Um, if there's now uh a datalayer that we have access to and
you're calling it this companylevel information, my next
(10:19):
immediate question is do youmean the employees who are
associated to said company?
And then it rolls up inaggregate.
So the compliance piece isbasically protected in that way.
So like I now work at okay,cool.
I'm seeing head nods.
So I'm gonna stop asking thequestion and just ask that.
Emily Gustin (10:36):
Yes.
Um, that is the answer to yourquestion is uh we aggregate, you
know, individuals' memberprofiles up to a company that
they belong to.
Um and we share this data formarketing measurement purposes
explicitly and only in a waythat would be you know extremely
privacy compliant.
So we won't report out onengagements unless there's a
(10:57):
certain minimum number of thoseengagements, and we won't report
them out until companies are acertain size.
So you're never able tode-anonymize the traffic, even
when combining it with otherdata sources.
What this meant to do isprovide an input to measurement
that is accurate because we knowthat user-level signal is
sparse, uh, that actually makessense for B2B marketing because
(11:21):
we know that it's not just anindividual that drives a
purchase.
It's a, you know, more like abuyer group of several
individuals at a company andsignal that can be gathered from
other places that are not justLinkedIn, right?
Like this practice has beengoing on for a while in the
world of account-basedmarketing.
I think LinkedIn's seeing theindustry shift more toward that
(11:41):
approach to marketing, and weare able to provide a signal
into it that we hope can justmake advertisers more successful
while being privacy, you know,first.
Chris Golec (11:52):
I think Mike, uh second part to your question
though, it it does makeattribution and kind of turns it
on his head because quite oftenwhat happens, people will read
a you know, organic post andthen they'll search on Google
and then come to the website andpaid search gets the credit,
when in fact the first touch wasorganic social.
(12:13):
So you got to be able to mapthat whole journey.
Michael Hartmann (12:18):
Well, it's interesting, Emily, that you you
I was gonna I actually wasthinking in my head, this is
like sounds like something thatwould tie in with the concept of
buying groups in ABM.
So I think I think um again,just going into like how hard it
is to reach people individuallynow, like I think that's really
(12:39):
powerful.
So if you can target that basedon the the person and what they
their role may be in whateverit is your uh service or product
is gonna provide, right?
And where they'd be animportant piece of that buying
group or decision making groupis huge.
So um, yeah.
So so Chris, maybe like what isit like Emily, you've kind of
(13:03):
hit a little bit on like whatare some of like from a
marketplace standpoint, what haschanged, but like is there like
from a technology standpoint,Chris?
Like what else is like whatother changes have you seen out
there that are like have haveyou excited about what this what
this has to offer?
Chris Golec (13:18):
Well, well, number one, I think view-through
attribution happens across allchannels, you know, email,
display, uh, contentsyndication.
Uh social is one of the mostimportant to solve because it is
one of the higher intentsignals.
Um and you know, I obviouslycame up through account-based
marketing, but at the end of theday, it's it's the same thing.
(13:41):
It's company level.
And I would say, you know, CRMsystems are all architected
based on companies and accounts.
Sales teams are all organizedaround companies and accounts,
so it really helps align salesand marketing team together.
Michael Hartmann (13:58):
Yeah, it's like for me, it feels like going
back to the old school way,right?
Named accounts and selling andand all that.
That is I I I I deal with thisall the time uh with marketing
and sales teams where we talkabout attribution in terms of
people, but sales I think thisis part of the disconnect
between sales teams and andmarketing teams when it comes to
(14:21):
attributions because at the endof the day, salespeople think
about accounts andopportunities.
They don't think of people aresort of come along for the ride,
right?
So this is helping to bridgethat that gap, it feels like.
So um maybe talk about this alittle bit, maybe Christy first
and then Emily, but like how howis company level attribution
(14:44):
shift?
Like how how's that going tochange, do you think, or are you
already seeing a change in howpeople think about influence,
reach, impact, kind of all likeup and down the funnel?
Chris Golec (14:57):
It's a good question.
I mean, I think we'reeverything is becoming account
centric.
It doesn't necessarily meanABM, because it's more of a
strategy of measuring everythingat the account level and really
understanding yes, pipelineimpact and revenue is number
one, but there are a lot ofother measures along the way of
(15:17):
looking at channel efficiency.
Like what does it cost toengage a target account channel
by channel?
And how do I look at that on alevel playing field that's
unbiased?
And um, and so that's why youknow our partnership with with
LinkedIn helps us do that forthe customer.
And it's a great leadingindicator to get to Pipeline.
Emily Gustin (15:38):
I would just add, I mean, I think a few points
that this all helps you kind ofrefine your audience-based
strategy.
Um, I think what we've beenseeing for the past few years is
B2B marketers have moved towardreally centering around the
count as source of truth versusan individual, right?
So, you know, from planning toactivation to measurement, there
is now this pretty clearflywheel, right?
(16:00):
Where company or account,whatever you want to call it, is
at the center, right?
It's that currency that'stransacted, then bought, and
then measured upon.
And so this makes the flywheeleven tighter.
Now, this is the norm for B2B,which makes execution a lot
smoother.
Um, I think for the industry,it improves the focus on
reaching the right audience.
(16:21):
There's always kind of thatconcept of spraying and praying
and marketing where anyimpression or any unique
individual that you reached isequal.
Um this may be true for somebrands in B2C, though even
there, I don't know that itworks that well, but it's
certainly not true for B2B.
You know, you need to findcompanies that are actually a
fit for your product or that arein market or could be in market
(16:43):
for your product, for thatimpression to be, you know,
impression that you want tospend a dollar on.
And so I think how this allcomes together, if we are
focusing from planning toactivation to measurement
around, you know, a priorityaudience of accounts, is it
makes everybody work bettertogether, right?
Your brand and demand team,organic team, as well as sales
(17:05):
and marketing, right?
Because you're marching towardthe same goal.
So everyone can be trying tokind of like move the ball
forward together, playing theirown role versus kind of like
finger pointing about why didn'tthis group do this or do that,
or could we be doing better hereor there?
You're architecting yourstrategy around one common goal,
one common set of metrics,which at least makes the
(17:27):
strategy and the executioneasier.
Michael Hartmann (17:30):
Yeah.
No, I mean, I think it's what'sunfortunate is I still think
spray and pray, although nobodylike it's still, I still run
into teams where I really try toguide them to you know narrow
the aperture of their target sothat it's a better match for
what they're doing.
But then they get concernedabout the volume, right?
(17:50):
Because I think they're sotrained into it's a it's a
volume game, in quotes, right?
So and I think everyone'sbought into the idea, like I
can't I I don't hear a lot ofpeople arguing against the idea
of whether you call it ABM oraccount focused, right, or like
that.
But it does feel like we're ata maybe this is a tipping point.
We actually had a uh anotherepisode recently about MQAs,
(18:13):
right?
Which is kind of aligns withthis.
And it feels like like do youthink this is like maybe the
beginning of the end forindividual level lead
attribution kind of stuff?
Like I Emily, you've worked alot with different marketers,
like what's your sense for whatpeople are thinking about that
these days?
Emily Gustin (18:31):
Well, first I would just say, you know, with
respect to like a targeting oror audience strategy, um, you
know, we don't need to thinkeven as literally as you need to
have a priority account list ofa thousand or a hundred
thousand accounts, right, thatyou're going after.
It could be a type of company.
Yeah, I think the focus is onfinding the type of business
that would be well suited foryou to sell into.
(18:54):
And that might mean actuallybroadening your aperture, right?
Like thinking about like who isthe ideal customer profile
here, and then what are themyriad of companies that they
could work at or types ofcompanies?
Um, so I think you couldactually end up getting even
broader, but just smarter andbroader using, you know, a
company uh-based strategy.
And in terms of lead levelattribution, listen, I don't
(19:15):
think that it will ever go away.
Um, but I think that B2Bmarketing and sales will evolve
for the better, which is alwaysthe hope.
I mean, for marketing, youknow, MQLs, MQAs, they're not
the only metric that matters andthey they never should have
been.
Um, but similarly, like eventsthat are tracked in your CRM,
even if it's a closed one deal,aren't the only metrics that
(19:36):
matter, right?
It's important to understandthe full journey because that's
where you where you canrecognize where am I wasting
spend, where am I not drivingefficiency?
And each point matters to getthe thing that you want in the
end, right?
So I think the MQL, the MQI,whatever you want to call it, is
just one step along thatprocess.
Um, and I think for sales, youknow, there's an understanding
(19:58):
now that like this is not justan individual that you're trying
to reach, right?
So whether it's a marketingqualified lead or a sales
qualified lead, it's importantto be marketing and to be
selling into a buyer group andthen to probably update if you
really care about the tracking,your CRM hygiene accordingly.
So you're not just focusing onone person at the target company
(20:18):
that you want to sell into,right?
So I think lead metrics willnever go away.
They're an important middlestage of the funnel.
But I think it's about not onlyfocusing on that metric,
understanding the full journey,and not thinking that it's only
about one individual.
unknown (20:34):
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (20:34):
It's an and, not an or.
I love.
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (20:36):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love, I love all this.
Like I would love to see aworld where, you know, uh,
there's a, for lack of a betterterm, a dashboard, a report, a
moment in time where the teamhas said, guess what?
Here was our goal to uh lay afoundation of coverage to reach
(20:58):
these sort of ICP accounts.
And here's what we did, andhere's how many impressions we
got.
And oh, look at how many netnew connections our sales team
got with people at thesecompanies.
Those connections are now inplace.
They may not actually be namesin our database, but just the
the fact that there's aone-on-one connection with, you
(21:21):
know, 10% of our total sort ofeffort right now is headed the
right way.
Right.
Like that is just a huge win.
And like never once have I hada conversation with a group of
people that's that brought thosetwo things together, right?
Like if our sales team ismaking a connect on LinkedIn
with somebody, right?
(21:42):
Because we're able to sort ofsee view through, and and then
we just like aggregate some newdata together, says, Oh yeah,
Chris is now a first degreeconnection with whatever 20
people across our 150 accounts.
That wasn't there before,right?
We'd have to guess that that'snot just because they thought
Chris looked like a really coolguy, even though he is, right?
Emily Gustin (22:04):
Yeah, I think it bolsters a case for organic, it
also bolsters a case for brandadvertising as well, right?
Because if you're able to linklike somebody saw a brand
advertisement, they're anaccount that I care about, we
know how we move them down thefunnel.
We've always known that brandwas important and that brand
worked, right?
But we never knew how tojustify it or really how to
measure it.
So I think it, you know,whether it's organic, whether
(22:25):
it's brand, it makes a case thatagain, each of these things are
critical and they all pass tothe next.
Um, I don't know, Chris, whatyou think about that.
Chris Golec (22:31):
Yeah, I mean, the the number of times I've heard
customers ask, I want to targetjust the CIOs at the Fortune
500.
I'm like, you're gonna targetyour way out of business.
Michael Hartmann (22:42):
You and everyone else.
Chris Golec (22:45):
Yeah, so I think I think this notion of buyer
groups is really exciting andcompelling, especially for like
pipeline acceleration.
And um it's just theinnovations are just getting
tighter and tighter.
Mike Rizzo (22:59):
Well, and it's just it's nice to see the the sort of
pendulum swing a little bitback toward, you know, to your
point, Emily, right?
Like back toward brand and theimportance of getting that
coverage, right?
And and we've all now sort ofcome to fruition with the idea
that not every CIO or CTO isgonna be actively on LinkedIn
(23:19):
waiting for that email to comein.
And um, and then you know butthey want your nurture email.
But they definitely want yournurture email.
Um, and and you know, on top ofthat, I think it's just nice to
see that um we've we've I don'tknow, the whole tech sector has
had this re-equating with, youknow, it's not growth at all
(23:42):
costs, right?
And you know, we're talkingabout sort of uh an expanding
and narrowing of aperture foryour target accounts and all
those things.
And I think all of that is inthe vein of you're you're doing
your best to not spray and prayanymore, to Michael's you know,
point.
Um but like the heart of theshift is like the funding
(24:04):
changed in the market, right?
The buyer behavior has changed,and then on top of that,
technologies like this are nowenabling us to do things that
are fundamentally different,which is really, really, really
cool.
If I could just like I'm gonnajust share a nugget from our
state of the mo pro researchfrom this year for this for the
listeners, right?
Early preview sneak peek,little early preview.
(24:26):
So uh key finding number sixfrom our data says that AI and
attribution tools are the topinvestment priorities for the
next 12 months.
We had over 61% of the teamssay that they're planning to
invest invest in AI or machinelearning-based tools, and 45% of
them are gonna invest inmarketing, attribution, or
(24:46):
reporting tools.
And it's saying that the it'sreflecting sort of a broader
trend.
About 68% of our RevOps teamsare also planning to invest in
advanced analytics and AI.
So, like everybody's honing inon this idea of how do I
understand what's going onthrough the data layers that I
have access to now.
And they're thinking about, youknow, this attribution problem,
(25:08):
right?
This account-based targetingproblem.
Michael Hartmann (25:10):
I think it's very, very clear from our well,
uh it's interesting because Imean I was like struck by your
idea.
Like, I I agreed with the idea,like you don't have to have a
tar prioritized targeted set ofaccounts to target.
Like, I that's one of thepushbacks I've always given to
sales teams or other marketingteams who've come to me and said
we need to do ABM because whatthey're thinking about is buy
technology, right?
(25:31):
So I I love that idea that likeyou don't have to that, and I'm
I hadn't really thought aboutlike you could open the aperture
that there on your targeting,uh, especially when you've got
technology that enables you todo it.
It's it's almost like it's likeI think I was realizing in the
mo after that you said that thatI'm still thinking in the model
of I'm targeting people asopposed to companies or
(25:53):
accounts.
It's like even I, even thoughwe've been talking about like
even for me, it's like it's hardto break out of some of these
habits and and and get into thatmindset that that it's you know
to get into the a combinationof the two, to your point,
right?
The the lead stuff is nevergonna go away.
I think that's also true.
Mike Rizzo (26:12):
Yeah, I I mean, I also think, I mean, for for for
the sake of what uh channel 99and LinkedIn are doing, enabling
you to find those targets innew ways and measure them in new
ways, um, I think is just Imean, that's a win on the
alignment side of your sort ofbroader go-to-market strategy,
(26:34):
right?
And then educating your salesteam on here's who we're sort of
going after, let's try to makeconnections into these accounts,
but it never replaces the factthat there's a very important
step of the being likemyopically focused on a
particular account and itsparticular journey, right?
If it had just had fundingrounds and all this other stuff,
(26:54):
they're hiring, they're firing,they've just acquired new
tools.
Uh, the person graduated fromUSC, like stuff like that will
make the difference in buildingthe relationship and being able
to like use the specific rightlanguage, which is exactly what
a salesperson wants to go do.
But if we can like a good salesa good salesperson simple
(27:16):
companies across the way.
Yeah, a good salesperson.
Exactly.
Anyway, yeah, sorry, I'mrambling.
And so far, this has been a funthought experiment to go
through.
Emily Gustin (27:27):
Well, I just think to your point, Mike, on the
rise of attribution tools ormarketing measurement over the
next few years.
One, that's exciting.
Chris and I are probably bothpumped to hear that.
Um, two, uh those types oftools allow you to abstract the
like higher level finding ofwhat type of businesses should
we be going after?
How should marketing beconnecting with sales?
(27:48):
Like, how do we make thisactionable so that we generate
demand and then revenue for ourbusiness, which is the goal of
B2B marketing, if not allmarketing.
Um, and so I think the the riseof Gen AI has made marketing
measurement actually reallyexciting because measurement is
nothing if it can't be actionedon and then used to improve your
(28:10):
performance.
So I think the technology thatwe already have in place in the
last few years, what's comingdown the pike in the next few,
along with the data that'savailable via solutions like
this, allows you to get thoselike higher level findings for
how should my business orientsales and marketing, right?
This isn't just aboutmeasurement for measurement
sakes.
Like what type of accountsshould we go after?
Who could be a fit for ourbrand?
(28:32):
Those are super importantquestions to ask.
Chris Golec (28:34):
And then once you know those accounts, you know,
what are the the best channels?
Emily Gustin (28:39):
Yeah, right.
Chris Golec (28:40):
You shouldn't guess.
It should be right in front ofyou.
Michael Hartmann (28:45):
I'm trying to try to rack my brand.
I like I know of examples thatI've run across that camera
where where you know you thinkof your business as this is our
target audience, and then ifyou're paying attention to data,
you get surprised that thesepeople in this other industry
that we never thought about, orthese roles that we never
thought about, or looking at ourtool, and it like it could open
up a new possibility for whereyou're taking your product or
(29:07):
service, right?
And so I think that's becausesorry, Mike, I cut you off.
Mike Rizzo (29:11):
Oh, no, no.
It's uh it was it that's yeah,no, I I agree.
I've uh you know just to that,just to that point, it's it is
hard for organizations that youknow, I I think of Mavenlink,
for example, when I was there,like there were countless
moments that the founder wouldcome over and like be like, all
right, we're gonna be da-da-dafor da-da-da-da-da-da.
(29:33):
And it would just like change,you know, in the early days.
And so the reality is like, asyou know, there's probably a
time and a place wheretechnology like this is really,
really strong.
It it can give you the rightsignal along the way.
If but if you haven't quiteprobably figured out like what
your you know, target marketlike buyer fit actually looks
(29:55):
like, you might you mightstruggle just like any other
startup.
Um, but I think I Think wherethat takes me next, and Emily,
and uh forgive me for beingtotally ignorant to some of the
capabilities that that LinkedInis um unleashing with with Cho
99 here.
Um when I think about demandgen, which I appreciate that you
(30:15):
said generate demand, it is notleads, and that is a
fundamentally different thing.
Um when I think about thosesort of like relationships
between demand gen teams thatare often doing ad campaigns,
and uh conversion usually endsup being like a core focus,
right?
So the conversion pixel fireswhen the form is submitted or
something like that.
(30:35):
Is there, uh, or maybe this isfor Chris, uh, is there a
version of that where likeLinkedIn learns a little bit
about what is converting throughchannel 99's integration?
Like there's like a conversionpixel pixel, so to speak, a
success metrics that's passedback that helps uh this new
capability find more, I guess.
Emily Gustin (30:57):
So I think that's the hope.
Um, right now, the way thatthis integration works is we
provide our engagement data atthe company level to a platform
who's an expert in measurementand also has you know CRM
outcomes synced to the platformlike channel 99, right?
And they're able to sew thistogether to say basically, okay,
all these company engagementsfrom LinkedIn, and then these
company level, you know, trackedoutcomes in the CRM.
(31:20):
We believe there's a certaincorrelation between the two.
That's attribution, right?
In the future, what we'd liketo enable is for some of the
aggregate information about thatattribution that would be in
channel 99 to be passed back toLinkedIn.
So we would have someunderstanding of, you know, what
were the largest deals drivenor the campaigns that
(31:40):
contributed to those deals whereLinkedIn, you know, favorably
uh, you know, won credit, let'ssay, so that we can keep our
machine oriented toward drivingmore of those deals, toward the
you know, most performantcampaign types and assets and
all of that stuff.
So good question.
I think it's it's a good one tonow have out there in the in
(32:04):
the industry because hopefullyit'll get things moving uh a
little bit to be able to coverthat full circle.
Mike Rizzo (32:12):
Yeah, yeah.
It's just an it's I think I Ithink any any fairly um versus
technical marketer who's dealtwith these conversion metrics,
like might end up in a placewhere they're like, well, how do
I, how can I tell it what issuccess?
But I think the abstractionlayer, so to speak, uh where all
this data comes together fromthe data pipe that is that is
(32:33):
linked in in channel 99, I feellike that's a really sweet spot
for for channel 99.
Like you guys, I know you guysare working on tying all that
stuff together and giving theend user the ability to sort of
make those decisions themselvesanyway, which doesn't, you know,
then you then you pipe backdata right into like here's
here's my more of my targetsthat I'd like to go after.
(32:53):
So um, but that's cool.
It's it's good to it's good toknow that there's thoughts
around it.
It's that definitely naturallywhere my brain went, like as we
were thinking of like success,measuring success around uh this
motion in the market.
Chris Golec (33:06):
Yeah, I think there will be a lot more
interoperability with MCPservers and the ability to
execute campaigns automaticallyand optimize campaigns.
And it's not always justpipeline, it could be you know
targeting efficiency, like whatpercentage of my impressions are
reaching the right accounts andwhat does it cost me to engage
(33:29):
a target account?
These are all great leadingindicators of pipeline
influence.
Michael Hartmann (33:35):
Yeah.
So okay, I I I I know this iswe're still in the early days of
this kind of being rolled out,but I'm curious, like what um do
you have any examples uh orstories where you maybe two
twofold, like where you've seensuccess, right?
Where companies, uh your clubcustomers um or members are
(33:56):
seeing success for this oranything that's been a surprise.
Emily Gustin (34:00):
I'll just start by hitting kind of some of the
findings from the beta and thentakeaways.
And Chris, I'll I'll pass toyou.
Um, but to help you know thelisteners understand kind of the
magnitude of the change of thetype of data that we're sharing
over and the results that we'reseeing.
Um, when we uh egress thiscompany intelligence uh data to
(34:22):
the five partners that we'relaunching uh this solution with,
they were able to see almost300% more companies that have
been reached by LinkedIn.
Um and what that connected towas almost 100%, 96% more sales
qualified leads across, again,all of those five partners using
a range of differentattribution models.
(34:42):
81% more close one deals thatwere touched by LinkedIn, and
43% then lower cost foracquisition.
So essentially LinkedIn's costat driving a deal to close
halved uh with this dataincorporated.
So that's like the magnitude ofthe change, which I think was
not surprising to us.
We see or hear from ourcustomers a lot.
(35:04):
Like, listen, I know that youare working because if I take
you out of the mix, thingspretty much stop, but it's hard
for me to actually prove that.
And I think by giving out thesecompany level touch points to
be included in measurement,we've seen is yeah, there's a
lot more coming from LinkedInthan people thought.
Um, the biggest takeaways ormost interesting things that I
(35:24):
heard when speaking with a bunchof our, you know, beta
customers were one, kind of theagility that these marketers had
being able to optimize kind ofin real time toward what was
performant, right?
So wanting to go and create,let's say, new audiences or
refine the audience that they'recurrently targeting so they can
(35:45):
try to drive deals frompipeline to close with this type
of intelligence.
And the other was, you know, alittle unexpected for me, which
was the impact for let's call itlike brand marketers or those
with upper funnel goals.
So I expected that like this isgoing to be a hit with demand
gen marketers.
Great.
You can see how stuff isconverting to these CRM outcomes
(36:06):
and you can drive, you know,your campaigns being more
efficient from there.
Brand, we have so many verbatimfrom customers saying, like,
this makes the case for my brandinvestment, because rather than
just looking at likeimpressions and reach as kind of
my standards for success, I cannow think about the concept of
like on target, you know, reachand engagement, right?
Did I get in front of apriority account that I wanted
(36:29):
to?
And how much did it cost to doso?
So being able to win newbudgets, you know, kind of
within the month that this datawas provided for brand
advertising, which was crazyexciting to me.
Michael Hartmann (36:40):
Interesting.
Emily Gustin (36:41):
Chris, how about you?
Oh, sorry.
No, no, it's not a Chris go.
Chris Golec (36:46):
No, just reflecting, and it's like I I
think I approached LinkedInabout 18 months ago because we
had this tracking pixel to solvefor view through attribution.
And my whole message wasobviously preaching to the
choir, I'm like, you guys aregenerating so much engagement
and not getting credit for it.
Nobody's getting credit for itbecause it's sitting in this
direct bucket.
And while the the a trackingpixel was uh you know wouldn't
(37:10):
work for various privacyreasons, um there was
discussions around an API indevelopment.
So that's that's how this allall came to be.
And um, you know, solvingview-through attribution, you
can't just do it with onechannel, it has to be solved
across all channels, so that itis kind of a source of truth.
Michael Hartmann (37:29):
Right.
Chris Golec (37:30):
But you know, to Emily's point, that the factors
we're seeing are like three orfour X when you consider view
through and the other key factoris targeting efficiency.
Like what percentage of thesecompanies are in my addressable
market?
And you'll see huge differencesof looking at LinkedIn social
(37:50):
versus uh Paid Search, forexample, which is also a an a
great intent signal.
But if 80% of those clicksaren't from companies that will
ever buy anything, you got tofactor that into your cost per
target account.
Michael Hartmann (38:05):
Yeah.
Well, I think it's it'sinteresting, uh Emily, you
brought up two things thatreally caught my attention.
One was the ability to likespeed and agility, like is this
gives these teams who areprepared for it.
I'm not sure that everyone is,but they can move quickly, like
they can see results and movequickly.
It's one of the like that'shuge.
And then I'm I'm sort of blownaway about this, like to you,
(38:27):
like I'm surprised about theconnection to brand.
Um, like how how is are youexpecting that now as you go
into like start talking aboutthis with other people?
Like, are you expecting this tohelp with like budget?
Especially if we're going intolike budget season, right?
People are planning for nextyear.
Like, how are you are peoplestarting to use this for their
(38:48):
budgeting, both for brand anddemand stuff now?
Emily Gustin (38:52):
Yeah, we've seen so for demand, you know, that's
kind of again where I expectedthis to hit and to be a super
budgeting.
Um, so what we've seen ispeople want to make quick
optimizations, right?
And that normally looks likeshifting budgets around from
channel to channel based on thisdata.
The other would be deployingnet new audiences or refining,
you know, an existing audience.
(39:12):
Those are both kind of likedemand-centric budgeting um, you
know, approaches.
For brand, what we've seen islike, you know, brand tends to
be forecasted how much budget doI need based on region
frequency.
Um, and so now rather than justthinking about again, an
eyeball is an eyeball is aneyeball, where that's the way
you're forecasting how manytotal individuals can I reach,
(39:35):
we've seen the concept of likeon target reach being used as
the baseline for brand budgets,right?
So the first movement that Isaw was people saying, oh my
gosh, brand is working betterthan I thought it was.
Okay, I should be dedicatingsome more budget here.
The second was I'm gonna planaround this with this data as
like the seed of my forecastingand my budgeting, right?
(39:58):
How large should my audiencebe?
Who should I be trying to getin front of?
And then how much of thataudience do I need to reach?
What type of frequency do Ineed to reach them with in order
to eventually drive them downfunnel?
So, I mean, this launched inbeta earlier in the summer.
It's been, you know, just a fewmonths, but seeing both the
immediate and then the longerterm budgetary movement from
(40:22):
both brand and demand-focusedadvertisers, I think is a
testament to how different thistype of intelligence is from
what existed before and howhelpful it is to a marketer.
Chris Golec (40:32):
Yeah.
The other factor there, Emily,too, is it's not just the reach.
It's, you know, given thecontextual relevance of the
LinkedIn platform, the the levelof engagement for that same
audience also is way higherversus kind of a broad-based,
you know, display type platform.
Michael Hartmann (40:52):
Yeah, interesting.
Um okay, so let's maybe shiftgears a little bit to the
marketing ops professionals whoare out there listening or
watching.
Um if they were like, oh, thisis something that would peak
interest with our teams, right?
What like what should they bedoing to prepare for for taking
advantage of this, Chris?
(41:13):
Maybe you know, with whetherit's with travel 99 or something
else, but like how what are thelike what should they be
thinking about?
Um, and maybe what could they,what would you advise them to be
like how to talk about thiswith their marketing leaders,
with their sales leaders?
Chris Golec (41:30):
Yeah.
Well, I'll I'll tell you thenumber one thing when they can
show their CMO or theirmarketing leaders that spend a
lot of time putting out thoughtleader content that it's
influencing and turning in thepipe, and these are the
companies, the rubber hits theroad.
And so, and everybody getsthat.
And you know, the CMOs love tosee that.
(41:51):
And they haven't been able tosee that before.
So that's number one.
I think the other piece is youknow, really taking the focus on
quality of what's beinggenerated, not volume.
Um, and that's where I keep onharping on, you know, targeting
efficiency and making sure youlook at view through attribution
because it the the all the KPIschange by three or four X.
(42:13):
So completely different thanwhat the numbers were last year.
Emily Gustin (42:19):
I just add on to that.
I mean, I think there's alwaysbeen an issue doing full funnel
marketing, right?
And so if you're able to bethat kind of change agent that's
able to help link differentgroups so that you can actually
have a full funnel approach frombrand to demand, tracking
against the same metrics, movingcompanies from, you know, an
engaged account to pipeline torevenue with greater efficiency
(42:42):
than you did before, to Chris'spoint, something that will
actually speak to dollars in anddollars out.
That's a really, reallypowerful place to be if you can
be that person.
So, plus one, too, that youknow, impact on revenue always
matters.
I think being able to bringtogether teams around this type
of data is what makes itactionable and also makes you
(43:06):
kind of the hero internally.
And I'll just plug for those,you know, especially
practitioners who are interestedin getting a sneak peek at what
this looks like and how to useit.
Um, we have kind of abite-sized version available in
the LinkedIn campaign managertool.
It's called companies, and youcan look at, you know, much of
this data in an abbreviatedform.
You don't get as much of it asyou do via the API in the
(43:28):
campaign manager tool.
So if you're wondering, like,what is this account level
signal that I can see?
How might I want to think aboutit for measurement, for
activation purposes, go aheadand play around in the campaign
manager tool as long as you havean ad account and you've spent
a little bit on marketing, thenyou can get access to this
today.
And then, you know, partnerslike channel 99, who are really
(43:50):
like what's needed in order tozoom out, look at things across
channels, incorporate all thesignal that you need to in order
to get a correct answer aboutwhat's driving what, you take it
from there and you can makethings even stronger.
Mike Rizzo (44:05):
Yeah, I I again forgive me for being ignorant on
product capabilities.
Uh, and and Chris, I think thisfodes for uh we need to do a no
bullshit demo uh uh with ourwith our community so they can
really see what's going on uhyou know in the product and and
what it what it does when we'retalking about across multi, you
(44:28):
know, multiple channels andtouch points, right?
At the channel 99 level.
Where my head is going aroundthis idea of like I I was I
heard you say it, right?
Like, hey, when when yourthought leader is making a post,
I can tell we can sort of startto understand is that making an
impact and an impression on theindividuals who work at the
(44:48):
accounts that we want to beselling to.
And so, you know, that means myCMO, my CEO, my CRO, they're
the ones creating content, whichI think, you know, ideally
they're the ones creatingcontent, or they have somebody
helping them to create contentto put it out there.
And I think this starts tochange the, you know, well, over
a decade ago, we saw this likerise of the social media
(45:09):
marketer.
Um, this is a totally new sortof uh opportunity, I think
that's gonna come up, backed bydata, enabled by an API layer
and and and what channel 99 isdoing.
Um and and I'm I'm wonderingthough, like, and this is
probably just better suited forlike an offline conversation or
(45:29):
maybe a no bullshit demo, butI'm like, I really want the
ability, not every post is gonnabe about the company, right?
And so I kind of want to get toa place where I imagine channel
99 can fit in, and I could say,hey, when my SVP of sales is
posting, I can tag differentsort of engagement types or uh
(45:50):
efforts as like brand focusedversus just personally focused
or whatever.
And then I can actually go backand say, hey, which one of
these two is sort of making abigger impression in the market?
Because I think that stuffmatters, right?
Where this this lay this datalayer is coming in from
LinkedIn, and you've got thesecapabilities coming in from
(46:11):
channel 99, and we're saying,hey, you're gonna be doing all
these different kinds of things.
And just to start, we're gonnabe able to uncover something
that is totally, totally new tobe able to roll that up in a new
way.
But you're probably gonna wantto start going like layers
deeper to be able to segmentout, right?
Like, uh, well, not every postobviously is just gonna be
(46:33):
promoting the company'scapabilities, right?
Um, and and I kind of want tounderstand the difference uh
between that.
We're seeing like technologiesout there that are scratching at
this idea, uh, like thisinfluencer marketing type of
type of play, right?
Um so anyway, I would just loveto get to a place where like
our audience starts to thinkabout oh, well, how could I
(46:55):
report back on this stuff,right?
And um, and Chris, I don't knowif you like from John 99th
perspective, where you guys areat.
Um we had getting a littlenerdy here.
Chris Golec (47:04):
That's okay.
I mean, we did a fairly limitedpilot, but it was very clear
the companies that were activeat in thought leadership content
were by far the most efficientin generating pipeline versus
their spend.
It wasn't it wasn't thecompanies necessarily just
spending the most that weregoing to generate the highest
returns.
It was the ones that were alsovery active in putting out
(47:27):
thought leadership content.
And we're measuring this justto be clear at an aggregate
level for the company versusindividual by individual.
Right, right.
Yeah.
unknown (47:37):
Right.
Michael Hartmann (47:38):
Is it also sorry, sorry, does it like
really point like is thatinclude though at the company
level the individuals who arepart of that company who are
posting about that or can it canit vary?
Emily Gustin (47:50):
I'll hit that one.
So what we report on now is umpaid and organic engagement at
the company level.
For organic, it would beinteractions with you as an
advertiser's company page post.
So if your CMO from hispersonal LinkedIn page is
posting, right?
(48:11):
And it's not sponsored by thebrand and ties back to the
brand's company page, thataction is not going to be
tracked.
And again, organic, this isstuff is only at the company
level.
Our intention from LinkedIn isnever to give um data out about
people, you know, individualsengaging, especially with your
organic content.
You know, people are not onLinkedIn to be tracked so that
(48:34):
their, you know, organiccomments, for example, get put
into a bunch of paid reports.
But I think we're trying to dowith this tool is help you like
think about a two by two whereyou're able to kind of put
brands into a few quadrants.
One would be like brands thatare engaging with our organic,
um, but we're not targeting themwith any paid.
(48:55):
You know, brands that you'reengaging with organic and you
are targeting with paid, butthey're not in your CRM.
There's no maybe sales isn'tcalling on them, there's no open
pipeline.
Then you have ones that areengaging across both, and there
is, you know, kind of some openpipeline against.
And then you might have thosethat are in your CRM, but you're
not marketing to at all, right?
So it's that type ofintelligence, which lets you
steer your paid and organicmarketing ship to its best
(49:19):
effect.
We don't want to go kind ofpoking around on Emily's
individual post or individualcomment because our goal is to
give businesses intelligence ina way that protects the LinkedIn
member experience.
Michael Hartmann (49:33):
Sure.
And that makes sense.
Well, and it to me, what I myhead goes to is like the
implications, even with themetrics you described, right, in
terms of understandingLinkedIn's effect on pipeline
revenue, like if you assume thatit that there's also
individuals within that companywho are both posting their own
content, but also content aboutthe company where they're at,
(49:57):
right?
Those numbers are only gonna goup, right?
So um I think that's and that'sthat's kind of where I was
going.
Well, as you kind of hinted atthis like a little bit, like
both of you like, but why we endwith like where do you see this
going?
Like what's kind of what's thedo you have any plans or vision
for where the where the theseproducts and solutions are gonna
(50:17):
go?
Uh whatever, pick your timeframe, six months, 12 months, 18
months beyond.
Emily, you want to go first?
Yeah, yeah.
Sure.
Emily Gustin (50:28):
Um, I think you know, an ideal state, and we're
already seeing this start tohappen today.
The measurement and activationbits will become, you know, much
closer connected, right?
So being able to take thisintelligence and then look at
who's engaging with your brandand automatically make updates
to your audience, LinkedInaudiences so that you can either
address, you know, those thatyou haven't in the past with pay
(50:50):
that you probably should be, oroptimize your audience, maybe
trim some names out that youdon't want to target anymore.
That's kind of the firsthorizon, I think, for this
thing.
And I think longer term, wherewe'd love to go with it, is you
know, the the topic that Mikebrought up earlier, which is,
you know, we're bringing allthis account level, company
level data into a platform likechannel 99, who does great
(51:14):
measurement, then bringing backsome of that signal to LinkedIn,
again, at the company totallyaggregate level, so that we can
optimize our machine to be mostefficient at driving those
outcomes for the buyer.
Um I think that's ineverybody's best interest, so
long as it can be done in a in aprivacy protected way, which is
(51:35):
you know the core of this ofthis solution.
Chris Golec (51:39):
Yeah, and just to, I was just gonna say almost the
same thing, like audienceactivation and having audiences
that are dynamic by nature.
So if an account is in myaddressable market but not in my
um pipeline, I may want to pushthat audience or that list of
companies to my SDR team to callinto.
(51:59):
Versus if they are on mypipeline, I might want to
retarget to the buyer groups onLinkedIn.
And these audiences changedaily, especially if you're a
large company and have you knowhundreds of thousands of people
per month coming and to set itand forget it and have all this
stuff automated is it's youknow, that's gonna be amazing
(52:19):
for for marketers.
And the other the other pieceto Emily's point, like pushing
other signals back to LinkedInso it further refines their
their engine, so uh all thebetter.
Michael Hartmann (52:31):
Terrific.
Well, uh, it feels like we justscratched the surface, but I
think we're gonna have to callit call it a day.
Um, so first off, Mike, thanksfor joining again.
I'm looking forward to to this.
Uh Emily, Chris, thank you somuch.
It's been fun.
If folks want to, this is gonnabe, I know where this question
is gonna go, but if folks wantto keep up with what you all are
(52:52):
talking about or what you'redoing, what's the best place for
them to do that?
Emily Gustin (52:56):
It would be LinkedIn.
Yeah.
They're interested in joiningthe partner program as well.
Chris Golec (53:01):
Got it.
And I would say channel99.com.
And I'd also say that Emily andI are gonna be presenting at
the MOPSA conference later thismonth.
So love to have you guysattend.
Mike Rizzo (53:14):
Awesome.
We're looking forward to thatone.
Uh, thank you both for joiningtoday.
Uh, it was fun to talk to you.
And uh we'll go a little deeperat MOPSA on on some of these
capabilities.
I think um some sneak peeks arein order and all that stuff.
So if you haven't registered,folks, uh grab your ticket.
It'll be a good one.
Michael Hartmann (53:28):
That's right.
All right.
Thanks to you again, everyone.
Uh, thanks for our audience forcontinuing to support us.
If you have ideas for topics orguests or want to be a guest,
as always, you can reach out toMike, Naomi, or me, and we'd be
happy to talk to you about it.
Until next time.
Bye, everybody.
Hello everyone.
Welcome to another episode ofOpsCast, brought to you by
MarketingOps.com, powered by allthe mo pros out there.
I'm your host, Michael Hartman,joined today by my co-host Mike
Rizzo.
It's been a while, Mike.
Mike Rizzo (00:12):
It has been a while, and I am sorry.
Just been deep in the throes ofcommunity building,
certification planning, MopsaPalooza.
Michael Hartmann (00:21):
Mopsapalooza.
Which we'll we, I think we'lltouch we'll we'll touch on
during the episode today.
So let's get into it becausewe've got a lot to tackle.
So today we are tackling one ofthe toughest challenges in B2B
marketing, provide proving ROIfor social.
For years, much of our trafficand engagement came from that
came from social, has ended uplumped into buckets like Direct
(00:41):
or other.
But that's starting to change.
So joining us today to talkabout that are two guests, which
is a little bit unusual for us.
So joining us again is ChrisGolick.
He's the founder and CEO ofChannel 99.
And uh many of you already knowhim.
Also joining is Emily Augustin,who is a business development
manager at LinkedIn, and she'sleading LinkedIn's measurement
(01:03):
and attribution partnerships,and she is working directly with
Channel 99 on new solutionsthat provide company level
visibility into paid and organicengagement.
Chris, Emily, welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you for having us.
Chris Golec (01:16):
Thanks for having me.
Michael Hartmann (01:18):
All right.
Well, let's start with somedefinitions.
And I think Emily, when wetalked before, uh we were
talking about you said somethinglike uh view through
attribution.
So why don't we start withthat?
Like definitionally, what doesthat mean to you and why,
especially given your experiencehaving worked with marketers in
your previous roles atLinkedIn, like what do you like,
(01:38):
why do you think that'srelevant for B2B marketers
today?
Emily Gustin (01:42):
Sure.
I mean, I think the definitionof view-through uh attribution
or view-through uh clicklessengagement would be stuff that
is not tracked, you know, with aclick and not tracked via UTM.
So if you think about marketingmeasurement like, I don't know,
an iceberg, I'll give thatmetaphor for today.
This would be the stuff belowthe waterline that you
oftentimes don't see, but itmakes the iceberg what it is.
(02:03):
And it's very relevant for B2Band for LinkedIn marketing,
because in B2B, you have verylong sales cycles.
So it's important to understandmore than just the last few
clicks.
Um it's also very relevant withrespect to LinkedIn marketing
because you're reaching realdecision makers.
You know, you're you'retargeting people by the criteria
that's on their LinkedInprofile.
So you know that when you youhave viewed through events,
(02:25):
they're coming from very realprofessionals, right?
This is not traffic that youshould just do away with when
you're doing your marketingmeasurement.
Michael Hartmann (02:33):
Got it.
Okay.
Yeah, I like the iceberganalogy.
I'm depending on what it is, Iuse the duck one too, sometimes,
you know, all the like all theactivity that's happening below
the surface, but iceberg seemslike a better one for this.
All right.
So, Chris, kind of tying thistogether with what you're you're
seeing and hearing from yourcustomers, and you know, what is
(02:54):
it that you've been hearingfrom them that's led to this
integration between channel 99and LinkedIn?
Chris Golec (03:03):
Yeah, I mean, a big problem for B2B marketers is
the fact that 70 or 80% of alltheir website traffic comes
through from an unknown source.
And so a lot of this is allview-through traffic.
And a lot of these legacyattribution tools have ignored
it.
And to me, you're not going toget the right answers if you're
ignoring the largest customersignal.
(03:24):
And as it relates to organicsocial, that kind of attribution
or engagement is really highvalue intent signals.
And so the integration isreally helping us understand,
you know, taking that, you know,those that level of engagement
out of the direct bucket andproperly assigning it to
(03:46):
LinkedIn, you know, whether it'sorganic or paid social.
Michael Hartmann (03:50):
Is it I'm just curious because I in my like
what I've been noticing latelywhen I'm working with teams who
are trying to grow their theiraudience, right?
It feels like social is likethe only place where you can do
that without running intoserious issues with privacy and
restrictions.
So like is it becoming a biggerissue that you're seeing,
Chris?
Emily, you too, like I don't umjust because it feels like the
(04:12):
growing an audience is becomingharder and harder without going
through social.
Chris Golec (04:17):
Well, I I'll just I'll uh I I do know that people
are clicking less.
So that the amount of viewthrough is actually growing.
And the level of view throughattribution that we see is
typically four or five timesgreater than people clicking.
And so it it's significant andit changes our OR metrics uh
(04:38):
significantly.
Emily Gustin (04:40):
I'll just add on to that.
I mean, we know that social orLinkedIn or B2B social is a
really critical means ofreaching a potential buyer.
We talk a lot in advertisingabout reaching the right person
at the right time with the rightmessage, and that's something
that can be done uniquely onsocial and on LinkedIn if you're
trying to drive a B2B purchase.
(05:01):
And organic social isparticularly interesting.
We've done a bunch of studiesat LinkedIn.
What we've seen is that thosewho interact with your company
page, the brand's presence,organic presence on LinkedIn
tend to have higher intent,which makes sense.
It's sort of of a proxy for,you know, you could think of it
almost like a G2 page or some ofthe other B2B industry spots
(05:22):
where you might go and doresearch.
So that type of engagement issuper relevant.
It's important to drive ifyou're a marketer.
It's also important tounderstand if you're doing
measurement.
Michael Hartmann (05:32):
Yeah, it makes sense.
Mike Rizzo (05:34):
So um super sorry, I'm gonna jump in right, but
it's it's really interesting tolike think think about this idea
of view through.
I mean, just from from where Isit, you know, um on the
community side, we're constantlytrying to engage with our
audience in as many ways as wecan.
(05:55):
And and uh I I'm in this, I'min this little, I don't, we we
refer to we have a silly namefor this small group of uh
founders that we're in.
There's like four of us.
We're constantly trying tofigure out like how in the heck
do we get anyone's attentionwith the message that we want to
put out there, and you know,LinkedIn happens to be our
predominant choice uh of socialplatform to use to do so.
(06:16):
And you know, and lately likethe the sort of like changes in
the way LinkedIn's algorithm hasbeen working has certainly had
a significant impact on the waywe used to perceive and measure
the success, quote unquote.
Uh air quotes for those of youjust listening, uh the success
of our of our efforts.
Um and so I'm I'm I'mparticularly excited to to hear
(06:40):
about like what's going on atLinkedIn and with channel 99
sort of layering on with the twoof you kind of uh playing nice
together, because it is hard tomeasure like the success of
what's going on, because it isit is completely different than
it was just like two years ago,roughly, right?
Where we were seeing tens ofthousands of impressions and all
(07:01):
kinds of other interactions onthe thing.
Um, and now if there's a way toactually measure some of this
back to your organization,right?
And obviously for us, it's justabout like putting the good
message out about the communityand getting more community
members in.
But for B2B organizations, youknow, driving that traffic back
to your website with real intentand signal, like that's really,
(07:24):
really exciting.
So I I don't know.
I'm just like I'm excited tohear that there's kind of a
obviously something's beencooking underneath the water
that I am gonna use the duckanalogy.
The duck's feet have beenmoving very quickly over at
LinkedIn, it sounds like.
And and I'm just I'm excited tohear it.
So yeah, anyway.
Emily Gustin (07:43):
Yeah, I think that's a fair segue to, you
know, what the heck are welaunching with channel 99?
Um, and I'll just say that Ithink for a long time, platforms
like LinkedIn didn't reallyprovide a ton of engagement data
to fit in with the source oftruth platforms that we know
that advertisers are using formeasurement.
Um, things have changed andwe're able to provide that data
(08:06):
in a privacy-first you know, wayby looking at things at a
company level.
And so whether you're thinkingabout organic engagement that
you're driving or uhinteractions with your paid ads,
we now pipe you know LinkedInengagement data into B2B
analytics and attributionplatforms like channel 99 so
that you can get that fullpicture of the buyer journey.
(08:29):
You can see below thewaterline, you can, you know,
ducks feed, whatever you want touse there, um, night vision
goggles, whatever you want,right?
How you can actually get apicture of how a company moved
from, let's say, organicallyengaging with your brand to
perhaps engaging with your paidads, but they weren't yet, you
know, a company you might havebeen calling on or you might
have pipeline tracked in yourCRM for all the way through into
(08:52):
that kind of close one, youknow, final conversion event
that everybody is trying tomeasure.
And just to like be clear aboutwhat we did not do in the past,
which is the change that we'remaking here, is we didn't
provide that full suite of uh oftouch points at the company
level.
We'd let you look at LinkedInuh paid marketing data by top X
(09:13):
number of companies you reachedor engaged, but we never gave
you the full pipeline of everyengagement event at the company
level.
And since ViewTroop is soimportant, since the B2B sales
cycle is so long, we felt likeit was about time to give
marketers that visibility thatthey deserve and that will help
to you know make their efforts alot more successful if they can
use the intelligence.
Mike Rizzo (09:34):
That's really cool.
Sorry, uh I want to doubleclick, and I apologize to take
us off off script just a littlebit.
I want to double-click on um uhbecause I I know we have really
good questions we want to askyou, but I want to ask this
question.
Um the the idea of companylevel data, and I don't know if
that's like Chris or Emily orboth, can we sort of unpack that
(09:58):
just a little bit?
Like and and more specifically,I think if I was a Mo pro,
marketing operationsprofessional, RevOps
professional, very familiar withusing data, attribution, all
kinds of things in these inthese various products.
Um, if there's now uh a datalayer that we have access to and
you're calling it this companylevel information, my next
(10:19):
immediate question is do youmean the employees who are
associated to said company?
And then it rolls up inaggregate.
So the compliance piece isbasically protected in that way.
So like I now work at okay,cool.
I'm seeing head nods.
So I'm gonna stop asking thequestion and just ask that.
Emily Gustin (10:36):
Yes.
Um, that is the answer to yourquestion is uh we aggregate, you
know, individuals' memberprofiles up to a company that
they belong to.
Um and we share this data formarketing measurement purposes
explicitly and only in a waythat would be you know extremely
privacy compliant.
So we won't report out onengagements unless there's a
(10:57):
certain minimum number of thoseengagements, and we won't report
them out until companies are acertain size.
So you're never able tode-anonymize the traffic, even
when combining it with otherdata sources.
What this meant to do isprovide an input to measurement
that is accurate because we knowthat user-level signal is
sparse, uh, that actually makessense for B2B marketing because
(11:21):
we know that it's not just anindividual that drives a
purchase.
It's a, you know, more like abuyer group of several
individuals at a company andsignal that can be gathered from
other places that are not justLinkedIn, right?
Like this practice has beengoing on for a while in the
world of account-basedmarketing.
I think LinkedIn's seeing theindustry shift more toward that
(11:41):
approach to marketing, and weare able to provide a signal
into it that we hope can justmake advertisers more successful
while being privacy, you know,first.
Chris Golec (11:52):
I think Mike, uh second part to your question
though, it it does makeattribution and kind of turns it
on his head because quite oftenwhat happens, people will read
a you know, organic post andthen they'll search on Google
and then come to the website andpaid search gets the credit,
when in fact the first touch wasorganic social.
(12:13):
So you got to be able to mapthat whole journey.
Michael Hartmann (12:18):
Well, it's interesting, Emily, that you you
I was gonna I actually wasthinking in my head, this is
like sounds like something thatwould tie in with the concept of
buying groups in ABM.
So I think I think um again,just going into like how hard it
is to reach people individuallynow, like I think that's really
(12:39):
powerful.
So if you can target that basedon the the person and what they
their role may be in whateverit is your uh service or product
is gonna provide, right?
And where they'd be animportant piece of that buying
group or decision making groupis huge.
So um, yeah.
So so Chris, maybe like what isit like Emily, you've kind of
(13:03):
hit a little bit on like whatare some of like from a
marketplace standpoint, what haschanged, but like is there like
from a technology standpoint,Chris?
Like what else is like whatother changes have you seen out
there that are like have haveyou excited about what this what
this has to offer?
Chris Golec (13:18):
Well, well, number one, I think view-through
attribution happens across allchannels, you know, email,
display, uh, contentsyndication.
Uh social is one of the mostimportant to solve because it is
one of the higher intentsignals.
Um and you know, I obviouslycame up through account-based
marketing, but at the end of theday, it's it's the same thing.
(13:41):
It's company level.
And I would say, you know, CRMsystems are all architected
based on companies and accounts.
Sales teams are all organizedaround companies and accounts,
so it really helps align salesand marketing team together.
Michael Hartmann (13:58):
Yeah, it's like for me, it feels like going
back to the old school way,right?
Named accounts and selling andand all that.
That is I I I I deal with thisall the time uh with marketing
and sales teams where we talkabout attribution in terms of
people, but sales I think thisis part of the disconnect
between sales teams and andmarketing teams when it comes to
(14:21):
attributions because at the endof the day, salespeople think
about accounts andopportunities.
They don't think of people aresort of come along for the ride,
right?
So this is helping to bridgethat that gap, it feels like.
So um maybe talk about this alittle bit, maybe Christy first
and then Emily, but like how howis company level attribution
(14:44):
shift?
Like how how's that going tochange, do you think, or are you
already seeing a change in howpeople think about influence,
reach, impact, kind of all likeup and down the funnel?
Chris Golec (14:57):
It's a good question.
I mean, I think we'reeverything is becoming account
centric.
It doesn't necessarily meanABM, because it's more of a
strategy of measuring everythingat the account level and really
understanding yes, pipelineimpact and revenue is number
one, but there are a lot ofother measures along the way of
(15:17):
looking at channel efficiency.
Like what does it cost toengage a target account channel
by channel?
And how do I look at that on alevel playing field that's
unbiased?
And um, and so that's why youknow our partnership with with
LinkedIn helps us do that forthe customer.
And it's a great leadingindicator to get to Pipeline.
Emily Gustin (15:38):
I would just add, I mean, I think a few points
that this all helps you kind ofrefine your audience-based
strategy.
Um, I think what we've beenseeing for the past few years is
B2B marketers have moved towardreally centering around the
count as source of truth versusan individual, right?
So, you know, from planning toactivation to measurement, there
is now this pretty clearflywheel, right?
(16:00):
Where company or account,whatever you want to call it, is
at the center, right?
It's that currency that'stransacted, then bought, and
then measured upon.
And so this makes the flywheeleven tighter.
Now, this is the norm for B2B,which makes execution a lot
smoother.
Um, I think for the industry,it improves the focus on
reaching the right audience.
(16:21):
There's always kind of thatconcept of spraying and praying
and marketing where anyimpression or any unique
individual that you reached isequal.
Um this may be true for somebrands in B2C, though even
there, I don't know that itworks that well, but it's
certainly not true for B2B.
You know, you need to findcompanies that are actually a
fit for your product or that arein market or could be in market
(16:43):
for your product, for thatimpression to be, you know,
impression that you want tospend a dollar on.
And so I think how this allcomes together, if we are
focusing from planning toactivation to measurement
around, you know, a priorityaudience of accounts, is it
makes everybody work bettertogether, right?
Your brand and demand team,organic team, as well as sales
(17:05):
and marketing, right?
Because you're marching towardthe same goal.
So everyone can be trying tokind of like move the ball
forward together, playing theirown role versus kind of like
finger pointing about why didn'tthis group do this or do that,
or could we be doing better hereor there?
You're architecting yourstrategy around one common goal,
one common set of metrics,which at least makes the
(17:27):
strategy and the executioneasier.
Michael Hartmann (17:30):
Yeah.
No, I mean, I think it's what'sunfortunate is I still think
spray and pray, although nobodylike it's still, I still run
into teams where I really try toguide them to you know narrow
the aperture of their target sothat it's a better match for
what they're doing.
But then they get concernedabout the volume, right?
(17:50):
Because I think they're sotrained into it's a it's a
volume game, in quotes, right?
So and I think everyone'sbought into the idea, like I
can't I I don't hear a lot ofpeople arguing against the idea
of whether you call it ABM oraccount focused, right, or like
that.
But it does feel like we're ata maybe this is a tipping point.
We actually had a uh anotherepisode recently about MQAs,
(18:13):
right?
Which is kind of aligns withthis.
And it feels like like do youthink this is like maybe the
beginning of the end forindividual level lead
attribution kind of stuff?
Like I Emily, you've worked alot with different marketers,
like what's your sense for whatpeople are thinking about that
these days?
Emily Gustin (18:31):
Well, first I would just say, you know, with
respect to like a targeting oror audience strategy, um, you
know, we don't need to thinkeven as literally as you need to
have a priority account list ofa thousand or a hundred
thousand accounts, right, thatyou're going after.
It could be a type of company.
Yeah, I think the focus is onfinding the type of business
that would be well suited foryou to sell into.
(18:54):
And that might mean actuallybroadening your aperture, right?
Like thinking about like who isthe ideal customer profile
here, and then what are themyriad of companies that they
could work at or types ofcompanies?
Um, so I think you couldactually end up getting even
broader, but just smarter andbroader using, you know, a
company uh-based strategy.
And in terms of lead levelattribution, listen, I don't
(19:15):
think that it will ever go away.
Um, but I think that B2Bmarketing and sales will evolve
for the better, which is alwaysthe hope.
I mean, for marketing, youknow, MQLs, MQAs, they're not
the only metric that matters andthey they never should have
been.
Um, but similarly, like eventsthat are tracked in your CRM,
even if it's a closed one deal,aren't the only metrics that
(19:36):
matter, right?
It's important to understandthe full journey because that's
where you where you canrecognize where am I wasting
spend, where am I not drivingefficiency?
And each point matters to getthe thing that you want in the
end, right?
So I think the MQL, the MQI,whatever you want to call it, is
just one step along thatprocess.
Um, and I think for sales, youknow, there's an understanding
(19:58):
now that like this is not justan individual that you're trying
to reach, right?
So whether it's a marketingqualified lead or a sales
qualified lead, it's importantto be marketing and to be
selling into a buyer group andthen to probably update if you
really care about the tracking,your CRM hygiene accordingly.
So you're not just focusing onone person at the target company
(20:18):
that you want to sell into,right?
So I think lead metrics willnever go away.
They're an important middlestage of the funnel.
But I think it's about not onlyfocusing on that metric,
understanding the full journey,and not thinking that it's only
about one individual.
unknown (20:34):
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (20:34):
It's an and, not an or.
I love.
Yeah.
Mike Rizzo (20:36):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love, I love all this.
Like I would love to see aworld where, you know, uh,
there's a, for lack of a betterterm, a dashboard, a report, a
moment in time where the teamhas said, guess what?
Here was our goal to uh lay afoundation of coverage to reach
(20:58):
these sort of ICP accounts.
And here's what we did, andhere's how many impressions we
got.
And oh, look at how many netnew connections our sales team
got with people at thesecompanies.
Those connections are now inplace.
They may not actually be namesin our database, but just the
the fact that there's aone-on-one connection with, you
(21:21):
know, 10% of our total sort ofeffort right now is headed the
right way.
Right.
Like that is just a huge win.
And like never once have I hada conversation with a group of
people that's that brought thosetwo things together, right?
Like if our sales team ismaking a connect on LinkedIn
with somebody, right?
(21:42):
Because we're able to sort ofsee view through, and and then
we just like aggregate some newdata together, says, Oh yeah,
Chris is now a first degreeconnection with whatever 20
people across our 150 accounts.
That wasn't there before,right?
We'd have to guess that that'snot just because they thought
Chris looked like a really coolguy, even though he is, right?
Emily Gustin (22:04):
Yeah, I think it bolsters a case for organic, it
also bolsters a case for brandadvertising as well, right?
Because if you're able to linklike somebody saw a brand
advertisement, they're anaccount that I care about, we
know how we move them down thefunnel.
We've always known that brandwas important and that brand
worked, right?
But we never knew how tojustify it or really how to
measure it.
So I think it, you know,whether it's organic, whether
(22:25):
it's brand, it makes a case thatagain, each of these things are
critical and they all pass tothe next.
Um, I don't know, Chris, whatyou think about that.
Chris Golec (22:31):
Yeah, I mean, the the number of times I've heard
customers ask, I want to targetjust the CIOs at the Fortune
500.
I'm like, you're gonna targetyour way out of business.
Michael Hartmann (22:42):
You and everyone else.
Chris Golec (22:45):
Yeah, so I think I think this notion of buyer
groups is really exciting andcompelling, especially for like
pipeline acceleration.
And um it's just theinnovations are just getting
tighter and tighter.
Mike Rizzo (22:59):
Well, and it's just it's nice to see the the sort of
pendulum swing a little bitback toward, you know, to your
point, Emily, right?
Like back toward brand and theimportance of getting that
coverage, right?
And and we've all now sort ofcome to fruition with the idea
that not every CIO or CTO isgonna be actively on LinkedIn
(23:19):
waiting for that email to comein.
And um, and then you know butthey want your nurture email.
But they definitely want yournurture email.
Um, and and you know, on top ofthat, I think it's just nice to
see that um we've we've I don'tknow, the whole tech sector has
had this re-equating with, youknow, it's not growth at all
(23:42):
costs, right?
And you know, we're talkingabout sort of uh an expanding
and narrowing of aperture foryour target accounts and all
those things.
And I think all of that is inthe vein of you're you're doing
your best to not spray and prayanymore, to Michael's you know,
point.
Um but like the heart of theshift is like the funding
(24:04):
changed in the market, right?
The buyer behavior has changed,and then on top of that,
technologies like this are nowenabling us to do things that
are fundamentally different,which is really, really, really
cool.
If I could just like I'm gonnajust share a nugget from our
state of the mo pro researchfrom this year for this for the
listeners, right?
Early preview sneak peek,little early preview.
(24:26):
So uh key finding number sixfrom our data says that AI and
attribution tools are the topinvestment priorities for the
next 12 months.
We had over 61% of the teamssay that they're planning to
invest invest in AI or machinelearning-based tools, and 45% of
them are gonna invest inmarketing, attribution, or
(24:46):
reporting tools.
And it's saying that the it'sreflecting sort of a broader
trend.
About 68% of our RevOps teamsare also planning to invest in
advanced analytics and AI.
So, like everybody's honing inon this idea of how do I
understand what's going onthrough the data layers that I
have access to now.
And they're thinking about, youknow, this attribution problem,
(25:08):
right?
This account-based targetingproblem.
Michael Hartmann (25:10):
I think it's very, very clear from our well,
uh it's interesting because Imean I was like struck by your
idea.
Like, I I agreed with the idea,like you don't have to have a
tar prioritized targeted set ofaccounts to target.
Like, I that's one of thepushbacks I've always given to
sales teams or other marketingteams who've come to me and said
we need to do ABM because whatthey're thinking about is buy
technology, right?
(25:31):
So I I love that idea that likeyou don't have to that, and I'm
I hadn't really thought aboutlike you could open the aperture
that there on your targeting,uh, especially when you've got
technology that enables you todo it.
It's it's almost like it's likeI think I was realizing in the
mo after that you said that thatI'm still thinking in the model
of I'm targeting people asopposed to companies or
(25:53):
accounts.
It's like even I, even thoughwe've been talking about like
even for me, it's like it's hardto break out of some of these
habits and and and get into thatmindset that that it's you know
to get into the a combinationof the two, to your point,
right?
The the lead stuff is nevergonna go away.
I think that's also true.
Mike Rizzo (26:12):
Yeah, I I mean, I also think, I mean, for for for
the sake of what uh channel 99and LinkedIn are doing, enabling
you to find those targets innew ways and measure them in new
ways, um, I think is just Imean, that's a win on the
alignment side of your sort ofbroader go-to-market strategy,
(26:34):
right?
And then educating your salesteam on here's who we're sort of
going after, let's try to makeconnections into these accounts,
but it never replaces the factthat there's a very important
step of the being likemyopically focused on a
particular account and itsparticular journey, right?
If it had just had fundingrounds and all this other stuff,
(26:54):
they're hiring, they're firing,they've just acquired new
tools.
Uh, the person graduated fromUSC, like stuff like that will
make the difference in buildingthe relationship and being able
to like use the specific rightlanguage, which is exactly what
a salesperson wants to go do.
But if we can like a good salesa good salesperson simple
(27:16):
companies across the way.
Yeah, a good salesperson.
Exactly.
Anyway, yeah, sorry, I'mrambling.
And so far, this has been a funthought experiment to go
through.
Emily Gustin (27:27):
Well, I just think to your point, Mike, on the
rise of attribution tools ormarketing measurement over the
next few years.
One, that's exciting.
Chris and I are probably bothpumped to hear that.
Um, two, uh those types oftools allow you to abstract the
like higher level finding ofwhat type of businesses should
we be going after?
How should marketing beconnecting with sales?
(27:48):
Like, how do we make thisactionable so that we generate
demand and then revenue for ourbusiness, which is the goal of
B2B marketing, if not allmarketing.
Um, and so I think the the riseof Gen AI has made marketing
measurement actually reallyexciting because measurement is
nothing if it can't be actionedon and then used to improve your
(28:10):
performance.
So I think the technology thatwe already have in place in the
last few years, what's comingdown the pike in the next few,
along with the data that'savailable via solutions like
this, allows you to get thoselike higher level findings for
how should my business orientsales and marketing, right?
This isn't just aboutmeasurement for measurement
sakes.
Like what type of accountsshould we go after?
Who could be a fit for ourbrand?
(28:32):
Those are super importantquestions to ask.
Chris Golec (28:34):
And then once you know those accounts, you know,
what are the the best channels?
Emily Gustin (28:39):
Yeah, right.
Chris Golec (28:40):
You shouldn't guess.
It should be right in front ofyou.
Michael Hartmann (28:45):
I'm trying to try to rack my brand.
I like I know of examples thatI've run across that camera
where where you know you thinkof your business as this is our
target audience, and then ifyou're paying attention to data,
you get surprised that thesepeople in this other industry
that we never thought about, orthese roles that we never
thought about, or looking at ourtool, and it like it could open
up a new possibility for whereyou're taking your product or
(29:07):
service, right?
And so I think that's becausesorry, Mike, I cut you off.
Mike Rizzo (29:11):
Oh, no, no.
It's uh it was it that's yeah,no, I I agree.
I've uh you know just to that,just to that point, it's it is
hard for organizations that youknow, I I think of Mavenlink,
for example, when I was there,like there were countless
moments that the founder wouldcome over and like be like, all
right, we're gonna be da-da-dafor da-da-da-da-da-da.
(29:33):
And it would just like change,you know, in the early days.
And so the reality is like, asyou know, there's probably a
time and a place wheretechnology like this is really,
really strong.
It it can give you the rightsignal along the way.
If but if you haven't quiteprobably figured out like what
your you know, target marketlike buyer fit actually looks
(29:55):
like, you might you mightstruggle just like any other
startup.
Um, but I think I Think wherethat takes me next, and Emily,
and uh forgive me for beingtotally ignorant to some of the
capabilities that that LinkedInis um unleashing with with Cho
99 here.
Um when I think about demandgen, which I appreciate that you
(30:15):
said generate demand, it is notleads, and that is a
fundamentally different thing.
Um when I think about thosesort of like relationships
between demand gen teams thatare often doing ad campaigns,
and uh conversion usually endsup being like a core focus,
right?
So the conversion pixel fireswhen the form is submitted or
something like that.
(30:35):
Is there, uh, or maybe this isfor Chris, uh, is there a
version of that where likeLinkedIn learns a little bit
about what is converting throughchannel 99's integration?
Like there's like a conversionpixel pixel, so to speak, a
success metrics that's passedback that helps uh this new
capability find more, I guess.
Emily Gustin (30:57):
So I think that's the hope.
Um, right now, the way thatthis integration works is we
provide our engagement data atthe company level to a platform
who's an expert in measurementand also has you know CRM
outcomes synced to the platformlike channel 99, right?
And they're able to sew thistogether to say basically, okay,
all these company engagementsfrom LinkedIn, and then these
company level, you know, trackedoutcomes in the CRM.
(31:20):
We believe there's a certaincorrelation between the two.
That's attribution, right?
In the future, what we'd liketo enable is for some of the
aggregate information about thatattribution that would be in
channel 99 to be passed back toLinkedIn.
So we would have someunderstanding of, you know, what
were the largest deals drivenor the campaigns that
(31:40):
contributed to those deals whereLinkedIn, you know, favorably
uh, you know, won credit, let'ssay, so that we can keep our
machine oriented toward drivingmore of those deals, toward the
you know, most performantcampaign types and assets and
all of that stuff.
So good question.
I think it's it's a good one tonow have out there in the in
(32:04):
the industry because hopefullyit'll get things moving uh a
little bit to be able to coverthat full circle.
Mike Rizzo (32:12):
Yeah, yeah.
It's just an it's I think I Ithink any any fairly um versus
technical marketer who's dealtwith these conversion metrics,
like might end up in a placewhere they're like, well, how do
I, how can I tell it what issuccess?
But I think the abstractionlayer, so to speak, uh where all
this data comes together fromthe data pipe that is that is
(32:33):
linked in in channel 99, I feellike that's a really sweet spot
for for channel 99.
Like you guys, I know you guysare working on tying all that
stuff together and giving theend user the ability to sort of
make those decisions themselvesanyway, which doesn't, you know,
then you then you pipe backdata right into like here's
here's my more of my targetsthat I'd like to go after.
(32:53):
So um, but that's cool.
It's it's good to it's good toknow that there's thoughts
around it.
It's that definitely naturallywhere my brain went, like as we
were thinking of like success,measuring success around uh this
motion in the market.
Chris Golec (33:06):
Yeah, I think there will be a lot more
interoperability with MCPservers and the ability to
execute campaigns automaticallyand optimize campaigns.
And it's not always justpipeline, it could be you know
targeting efficiency, like whatpercentage of my impressions are
reaching the right accounts andwhat does it cost me to engage
(33:29):
a target account?
These are all great leadingindicators of pipeline
influence.
Michael Hartmann (33:35):
Yeah.
So okay, I I I I know this iswe're still in the early days of
this kind of being rolled out,but I'm curious, like what um do
you have any examples uh orstories where you maybe two
twofold, like where you've seensuccess, right?
Where companies, uh your clubcustomers um or members are
(33:56):
seeing success for this oranything that's been a surprise.
Emily Gustin (34:00):
I'll just start by hitting kind of some of the
findings from the beta and thentakeaways.
And Chris, I'll I'll pass toyou.
Um, but to help you know thelisteners understand kind of the
magnitude of the change of thetype of data that we're sharing
over and the results that we'reseeing.
Um, when we uh egress thiscompany intelligence uh data to
(34:22):
the five partners that we'relaunching uh this solution with,
they were able to see almost300% more companies that have
been reached by LinkedIn.
Um and what that connected towas almost 100%, 96% more sales
qualified leads across, again,all of those five partners using
a range of differentattribution models.
(34:42):
81% more close one deals thatwere touched by LinkedIn, and
43% then lower cost foracquisition.
So essentially LinkedIn's costat driving a deal to close
halved uh with this dataincorporated.
So that's like the magnitude ofthe change, which I think was
not surprising to us.
We see or hear from ourcustomers a lot.
(35:04):
Like, listen, I know that youare working because if I take
you out of the mix, thingspretty much stop, but it's hard
for me to actually prove that.
And I think by giving out thesecompany level touch points to
be included in measurement,we've seen is yeah, there's a
lot more coming from LinkedInthan people thought.
Um, the biggest takeaways ormost interesting things that I
(35:24):
heard when speaking with a bunchof our, you know, beta
customers were one, kind of theagility that these marketers had
being able to optimize kind ofin real time toward what was
performant, right?
So wanting to go and create,let's say, new audiences or
refine the audience that they'recurrently targeting so they can
(35:45):
try to drive deals frompipeline to close with this type
of intelligence.
And the other was, you know, alittle unexpected for me, which
was the impact for let's call itlike brand marketers or those
with upper funnel goals.
So I expected that like this isgoing to be a hit with demand
gen marketers.
Great.
You can see how stuff isconverting to these CRM outcomes
(36:06):
and you can drive, you know,your campaigns being more
efficient from there.
Brand, we have so many verbatimfrom customers saying, like,
this makes the case for my brandinvestment, because rather than
just looking at likeimpressions and reach as kind of
my standards for success, I cannow think about the concept of
like on target, you know, reachand engagement, right?
Did I get in front of apriority account that I wanted
(36:29):
to?
And how much did it cost to doso?
So being able to win newbudgets, you know, kind of
within the month that this datawas provided for brand
advertising, which was crazyexciting to me.
Michael Hartmann (36:40):
Interesting.
Emily Gustin (36:41):
Chris, how about you?
Oh, sorry.
No, no, it's not a Chris go.
Chris Golec (36:46):
No, just reflecting, and it's like I I
think I approached LinkedInabout 18 months ago because we
had this tracking pixel to solvefor view through attribution.
And my whole message wasobviously preaching to the
choir, I'm like, you guys aregenerating so much engagement
and not getting credit for it.
Nobody's getting credit for itbecause it's sitting in this
direct bucket.
And while the the a trackingpixel was uh you know wouldn't
(37:10):
work for various privacyreasons, um there was
discussions around an API indevelopment.
So that's that's how this allall came to be.
And um, you know, solvingview-through attribution, you
can't just do it with onechannel, it has to be solved
across all channels, so that itis kind of a source of truth.
Michael Hartmann (37:29):
Right.
Chris Golec (37:30):
But you know, to Emily's point, that the factors
we're seeing are like three orfour X when you consider view
through and the other key factoris targeting efficiency.
Like what percentage of thesecompanies are in my addressable
market?
And you'll see huge differencesof looking at LinkedIn social
(37:50):
versus uh Paid Search, forexample, which is also a an a
great intent signal.
But if 80% of those clicksaren't from companies that will
ever buy anything, you got tofactor that into your cost per
target account.
Michael Hartmann (38:05):
Yeah.
Well, I think it's it'sinteresting, uh Emily, you
brought up two things thatreally caught my attention.
One was the ability to likespeed and agility, like is this
gives these teams who areprepared for it.
I'm not sure that everyone is,but they can move quickly, like
they can see results and movequickly.
It's one of the like that'shuge.
And then I'm I'm sort of blownaway about this, like to you,
(38:27):
like I'm surprised about theconnection to brand.
Um, like how how is are youexpecting that now as you go
into like start talking aboutthis with other people?
Like, are you expecting this tohelp with like budget?
Especially if we're going intolike budget season, right?
People are planning for nextyear.
Like, how are you are peoplestarting to use this for their
(38:48):
budgeting, both for brand anddemand stuff now?
Emily Gustin (38:52):
Yeah, we've seen so for demand, you know, that's
kind of again where I expectedthis to hit and to be a super
budgeting.
Um, so what we've seen ispeople want to make quick
optimizations, right?
And that normally looks likeshifting budgets around from
channel to channel based on thisdata.
The other would be deployingnet new audiences or refining,
you know, an existing audience.
(39:12):
Those are both kind of likedemand-centric budgeting um, you
know, approaches.
For brand, what we've seen islike, you know, brand tends to
be forecasted how much budget doI need based on region
frequency.
Um, and so now rather than justthinking about again, an
eyeball is an eyeball is aneyeball, where that's the way
you're forecasting how manytotal individuals can I reach,
(39:35):
we've seen the concept of likeon target reach being used as
the baseline for brand budgets,right?
So the first movement that Isaw was people saying, oh my
gosh, brand is working betterthan I thought it was.
Okay, I should be dedicatingsome more budget here.
The second was I'm gonna planaround this with this data as
like the seed of my forecastingand my budgeting, right?
(39:58):
How large should my audiencebe?
Who should I be trying to getin front of?
And then how much of thataudience do I need to reach?
What type of frequency do Ineed to reach them with in order
to eventually drive them downfunnel?
So, I mean, this launched inbeta earlier in the summer.
It's been, you know, just a fewmonths, but seeing both the
immediate and then the longerterm budgetary movement from
(40:22):
both brand and demand-focusedadvertisers, I think is a
testament to how different thistype of intelligence is from
what existed before and howhelpful it is to a marketer.
Chris Golec (40:32):
Yeah.
The other factor there, Emily,too, is it's not just the reach.
It's, you know, given thecontextual relevance of the
LinkedIn platform, the the levelof engagement for that same
audience also is way higherversus kind of a broad-based,
you know, display type platform.
Michael Hartmann (40:52):
Yeah, interesting.
Um okay, so let's maybe shiftgears a little bit to the
marketing ops professionals whoare out there listening or
watching.
Um if they were like, oh, thisis something that would peak
interest with our teams, right?
What like what should they bedoing to prepare for for taking
advantage of this, Chris?
(41:13):
Maybe you know, with whetherit's with travel 99 or something
else, but like how what are thelike what should they be
thinking about?
Um, and maybe what could they,what would you advise them to be
like how to talk about thiswith their marketing leaders,
with their sales leaders?
Chris Golec (41:30):
Yeah.
Well, I'll I'll tell you thenumber one thing when they can
show their CMO or theirmarketing leaders that spend a
lot of time putting out thoughtleader content that it's
influencing and turning in thepipe, and these are the
companies, the rubber hits theroad.
And so, and everybody getsthat.
And you know, the CMOs love tosee that.
(41:51):
And they haven't been able tosee that before.
So that's number one.
I think the other piece is youknow, really taking the focus on
quality of what's beinggenerated, not volume.
Um, and that's where I keep onharping on, you know, targeting
efficiency and making sure youlook at view through attribution
because it the the all the KPIschange by three or four X.
(42:13):
So completely different thanwhat the numbers were last year.
Emily Gustin (42:19):
I just add on to that.
I mean, I think there's alwaysbeen an issue doing full funnel
marketing, right?
And so if you're able to bethat kind of change agent that's
able to help link differentgroups so that you can actually
have a full funnel approach frombrand to demand, tracking
against the same metrics, movingcompanies from, you know, an
engaged account to pipeline torevenue with greater efficiency
(42:42):
than you did before, to Chris'spoint, something that will
actually speak to dollars in anddollars out.
That's a really, reallypowerful place to be if you can
be that person.
So, plus one, too, that youknow, impact on revenue always
matters.
I think being able to bringtogether teams around this type
of data is what makes itactionable and also makes you
(43:06):
kind of the hero internally.
And I'll just plug for those,you know, especially
practitioners who are interestedin getting a sneak peek at what
this looks like and how to useit.
Um, we have kind of abite-sized version available in
the LinkedIn campaign managertool.
It's called companies, and youcan look at, you know, much of
this data in an abbreviatedform.
You don't get as much of it asyou do via the API in the
(43:28):
campaign manager tool.
So if you're wondering, like,what is this account level
signal that I can see?
How might I want to think aboutit for measurement, for
activation purposes, go aheadand play around in the campaign
manager tool as long as you havean ad account and you've spent
a little bit on marketing, thenyou can get access to this
today.
And then, you know, partnerslike channel 99, who are really
(43:50):
like what's needed in order tozoom out, look at things across
channels, incorporate all thesignal that you need to in order
to get a correct answer aboutwhat's driving what, you take it
from there and you can makethings even stronger.
Mike Rizzo (44:05):
Yeah, I I again forgive me for being ignorant on
product capabilities.
Uh, and and Chris, I think thisfodes for uh we need to do a no
bullshit demo uh uh with ourwith our community so they can
really see what's going on uhyou know in the product and and
what it what it does when we'retalking about across multi, you
(44:28):
know, multiple channels andtouch points, right?
At the channel 99 level.
Where my head is going aroundthis idea of like I I was I
heard you say it, right?
Like, hey, when when yourthought leader is making a post,
I can tell we can sort of startto understand is that making an
impact and an impression on theindividuals who work at the
(44:48):
accounts that we want to beselling to.
And so, you know, that means myCMO, my CEO, my CRO, they're
the ones creating content, whichI think, you know, ideally
they're the ones creatingcontent, or they have somebody
helping them to create contentto put it out there.
And I think this starts tochange the, you know, well, over
a decade ago, we saw this likerise of the social media
(45:09):
marketer.
Um, this is a totally new sortof uh opportunity, I think
that's gonna come up, backed bydata, enabled by an API layer
and and and what channel 99 isdoing.
Um and and I'm I'm wonderingthough, like, and this is
probably just better suited forlike an offline conversation or
(45:29):
maybe a no bullshit demo, butI'm like, I really want the
ability, not every post is gonnabe about the company, right?
And so I kind of want to get toa place where I imagine channel
99 can fit in, and I could say,hey, when my SVP of sales is
posting, I can tag differentsort of engagement types or uh
(45:50):
efforts as like brand focusedversus just personally focused
or whatever.
And then I can actually go backand say, hey, which one of
these two is sort of making abigger impression in the market?
Because I think that stuffmatters, right?
Where this this lay this datalayer is coming in from
LinkedIn, and you've got thesecapabilities coming in from
(46:11):
channel 99, and we're saying,hey, you're gonna be doing all
these different kinds of things.
And just to start, we're gonnabe able to uncover something
that is totally, totally new tobe able to roll that up in a new
way.
But you're probably gonna wantto start going like layers
deeper to be able to segmentout, right?
Like, uh, well, not every postobviously is just gonna be
(46:33):
promoting the company'scapabilities, right?
Um, and and I kind of want tounderstand the difference uh
between that.
We're seeing like technologiesout there that are scratching at
this idea, uh, like thisinfluencer marketing type of
type of play, right?
Um so anyway, I would just loveto get to a place where like
our audience starts to thinkabout oh, well, how could I
(46:55):
report back on this stuff,right?
And um, and Chris, I don't knowif you like from John 99th
perspective, where you guys areat.
Um we had getting a littlenerdy here.
Chris Golec (47:04):
That's okay.
I mean, we did a fairly limitedpilot, but it was very clear
the companies that were activeat in thought leadership content
were by far the most efficientin generating pipeline versus
their spend.
It wasn't it wasn't thecompanies necessarily just
spending the most that weregoing to generate the highest
returns.
It was the ones that were alsovery active in putting out
(47:27):
thought leadership content.
And we're measuring this justto be clear at an aggregate
level for the company versusindividual by individual.
Right, right.
Yeah.
unknown (47:37):
Right.
Michael Hartmann (47:38):
Is it also sorry, sorry, does it like
really point like is thatinclude though at the company
level the individuals who arepart of that company who are
posting about that or can it canit vary?
Emily Gustin (47:50):
I'll hit that one.
So what we report on now is umpaid and organic engagement at
the company level.
For organic, it would beinteractions with you as an
advertiser's company page post.
So if your CMO from hispersonal LinkedIn page is
posting, right?
(48:11):
And it's not sponsored by thebrand and ties back to the
brand's company page, thataction is not going to be
tracked.
And again, organic, this isstuff is only at the company
level.
Our intention from LinkedIn isnever to give um data out about
people, you know, individualsengaging, especially with your
organic content.
You know, people are not onLinkedIn to be tracked so that
(48:34):
their, you know, organiccomments, for example, get put
into a bunch of paid reports.
But I think we're trying to dowith this tool is help you like
think about a two by two whereyou're able to kind of put
brands into a few quadrants.
One would be like brands thatare engaging with our organic,
um, but we're not targeting themwith any paid.
(48:55):
You know, brands that you'reengaging with organic and you
are targeting with paid, butthey're not in your CRM.
There's no maybe sales isn'tcalling on them, there's no open
pipeline.
Then you have ones that areengaging across both, and there
is, you know, kind of some openpipeline against.
And then you might have thosethat are in your CRM, but you're
not marketing to at all, right?
So it's that type ofintelligence, which lets you
steer your paid and organicmarketing ship to its best
(49:19):
effect.
We don't want to go kind ofpoking around on Emily's
individual post or individualcomment because our goal is to
give businesses intelligence ina way that protects the LinkedIn
member experience.
Michael Hartmann (49:33):
Sure.
And that makes sense.
Well, and it to me, what I myhead goes to is like the
implications, even with themetrics you described, right, in
terms of understandingLinkedIn's effect on pipeline
revenue, like if you assume thatit that there's also
individuals within that companywho are both posting their own
content, but also content aboutthe company where they're at,
(49:57):
right?
Those numbers are only gonna goup, right?
So um I think that's and that'sthat's kind of where I was
going.
Well, as you kind of hinted atthis like a little bit, like
both of you like, but why we endwith like where do you see this
going?
Like what's kind of what's thedo you have any plans or vision
for where the where the theseproducts and solutions are gonna
(50:17):
go?
Uh whatever, pick your timeframe, six months, 12 months, 18
months beyond.
Emily, you want to go first?
Yeah, yeah.
Sure.
Emily Gustin (50:28):
Um, I think you know, an ideal state, and we're
already seeing this start tohappen today.
The measurement and activationbits will become, you know, much
closer connected, right?
So being able to take thisintelligence and then look at
who's engaging with your brandand automatically make updates
to your audience, LinkedInaudiences so that you can either
address, you know, those thatyou haven't in the past with pay
(50:50):
that you probably should be, oroptimize your audience, maybe
trim some names out that youdon't want to target anymore.
That's kind of the firsthorizon, I think, for this
thing.
And I think longer term, wherewe'd love to go with it, is you
know, the the topic that Mikebrought up earlier, which is,
you know, we're bringing allthis account level, company
level data into a platform likechannel 99, who does great
(51:14):
measurement, then bringing backsome of that signal to LinkedIn,
again, at the company totallyaggregate level, so that we can
optimize our machine to be mostefficient at driving those
outcomes for the buyer.
Um I think that's ineverybody's best interest, so
long as it can be done in a in aprivacy protected way, which is
(51:35):
you know the core of this ofthis solution.
Chris Golec (51:39):
Yeah, and just to, I was just gonna say almost the
same thing, like audienceactivation and having audiences
that are dynamic by nature.
So if an account is in myaddressable market but not in my
um pipeline, I may want to pushthat audience or that list of
companies to my SDR team to callinto.
(51:59):
Versus if they are on mypipeline, I might want to
retarget to the buyer groups onLinkedIn.
And these audiences changedaily, especially if you're a
large company and have you knowhundreds of thousands of people
per month coming and to set itand forget it and have all this
stuff automated is it's youknow, that's gonna be amazing
(52:19):
for for marketers.
And the other the other pieceto Emily's point, like pushing
other signals back to LinkedInso it further refines their
their engine, so uh all thebetter.
Michael Hartmann (52:31):
Terrific.
Well, uh, it feels like we justscratched the surface, but I
think we're gonna have to callit call it a day.
Um, so first off, Mike, thanksfor joining again.
I'm looking forward to to this.
Uh Emily, Chris, thank you somuch.
It's been fun.
If folks want to, this is gonnabe, I know where this question
is gonna go, but if folks wantto keep up with what you all are
(52:52):
talking about or what you'redoing, what's the best place for
them to do that?
Emily Gustin (52:56):
It would be LinkedIn.
Yeah.
They're interested in joiningthe partner program as well.
Chris Golec (53:01):
Got it.
And I would say channel99.com.
And I'd also say that Emily andI are gonna be presenting at
the MOPSA conference later thismonth.
So love to have you guysattend.
Mike Rizzo (53:14):
Awesome.
We're looking forward to thatone.
Uh, thank you both for joiningtoday.
Uh, it was fun to talk to you.
And uh we'll go a little deeperat MOPSA on on some of these
capabilities.
I think um some sneak peeks arein order and all that stuff.
So if you haven't registered,folks, uh grab your ticket.
It'll be a good one.
Michael Hartmann (53:28):
That's right.
All right.
Thanks to you again, everyone.
Uh, thanks for our audience forcontinuing to support us.
If you have ideas for topics orguests or want to be a guest,
as always, you can reach out toMike, Naomi, or me, and we'd be
happy to talk to you about it.
Until next time.
Bye, everybody.
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