March 10, 2022 • 33 mins
Khalid El Khatib is the Head of Marketing and Communications for Stack Overflow, which reaches 100MM people per month -- more traffic than the New York Times website! Khalid shares how his career path prepared him for this role, and how he has structured his organization to serve not just Stack Overflow's developer community, but also its paid SaaS products.
You'll hear about:
- Avoiding the mistake of underinvesting in brand awareness, especially in PE-backed companies
- The wisdom of mastering how to articulate the value of a brand investment to CEOs and CFOs
- How to respond when CEOs say they need a CMO but you suspect they really need a demand gen director
- Looking around the corners when hiring, and staffing up ahead of a growth curve
- Experimenting with freelancers before hiring in-house
- Reserving regular time on the calendar for marketing to meet with other business functions – creating a forcing function for "finding synergies wherever they exist"
- The wisdom of hiring someone who fulfills the job 90% and is motivated to stay long enough to fulfill all of the job
Favorite quote: "If you don't make a brand investment, you can wonder why competitors are beating you and why demand generation isn't working….A rising tide lifts all boats and an investment in brand awareness is that rising tide."
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Key Links
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Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy. The Get is a podcast designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
This season’s theme is Solving for the Scale Journey.
The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.
If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety - rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn, or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com.
The Get is produced by Evo Terra and Simpler Media Productions.
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Erica Seidel (00:02):
Hi, you're listening to The Get, the podcast about
finding -- and keeping -- greatmarketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
I'm Erica Seidel, your host.
A lot of CEOs and boards, especiallyin private-equity-backed businesses,
expect marketing to be a sort ofdollar-in/dollar-out proposition.
How reasonable is that when you needto build a brand for the long term?
(00:25):
Today, you'll hear from a marketingleader with a lot of advice on
how to articulate the value of abrand investment to CEOs and CFOs.
Khalid El Khatib is the Head of Marketingand Communications for Stack Overflow.
You may think - that's a developerwebsite, not a SaaS company.
Actually, Stack Overflow hasenterprise SaaS products for
collaboration and knowledge sharingthat are growing like hotcakes.
Khalid makes a good point (00:48):
"If you don't make a brand investment, you can wonder
why competitors are beating you andwhy demand generation isn't working...
A rising tide lifts, all boatsand an investment in brand
awareness is that rising tide."
You'll also hear about how to respond whenCEOs say they need a CMO, but you suspect
they really need a demand gen director.
(01:08):
And you'll hear about how to lookaround the corners when hiring and
staff up ahead of a growth curve.
Let's go.
Khalid, welcome to the show.
I'm really happy to have you here today.
Thanks for joining.
Khalid el Khatib (01:22):
Thank you for having me.
Erica Seidel (01:24):
So my first question to you is you're pretty young, right?
You're, like, fifteen years intoyour career or so, and you are now
running marketing for one of the fiftymost popular websites in the world.
And so I'm curious, as a career-orientedperson, what is it about you that
made you advance as fast as you have?
Khalid el Khatib (01:43):
Sure.
Yeah.
Well, I appreciate you calling that out.
I think, you know, I think there are a fewthings, the first of which is right place,
right time, which is true of most folks'careers, people who tend to do well.
And that's been true throughout mine.
So, I started my career working in commsat Teach for America at a time when Teach
for America was very much a media darling.
So I was quite young, helping writeop-eds for Wall Street Journal, and doing
(02:05):
60 Minutes, The Today Show, et cetera.
And then from there went to an adagency that was acquired shortly after I
started and went from about twenty-fivepeople cut 250 by the time that I left.
And so I had the extraordinaryopportunity to learn sort of on the job.
And I think in every job that I had,the two or three or four years that I
stayed felt like ten in terms of thefire hose that I was drinking from.
(02:28):
I think the other thing is I've had thegood fortune of having really excellent
managers, people who cared about me, whoinvested in my professional development,
and gave me really, really candid feedbackthroughout the course of my career.
Something that I'vetried to do for others.
And then thirdly, I think one ofthe things that sort of made me
well-positioned to succeed is thatI like to think that I have some
(02:50):
self-awareness around what I'm goodat and where I could use a lot of help
and where I need to hire to help me.
And I think the one thing that I'mgood at that's really helped me as
a marketing leader is being a strongwriter and a strong communicator.
I think that we take for granted howimportant and how powerful it is to
be a good writer, especially in 2021,when a marketing leader's mandate is
(03:12):
not just positioning and messaging,but also internal communications to
employees who are going through ahighly dynamic, very challenging time.
CEO communications, when they'recommunicating to everyone from employees
to investors, to customers, andthen communicating to your own team.
So I think that that's somethingthat's really helped me.
I studied creative writing in college.
(03:33):
I've freelanced for a number ofpublications over the course of the years.
And so I really credit being a strongwriter to being a strong marketer.
Erica Seidel (03:39):
Do you find yourself using your writing skills to prepare
for those sensitive conversationsthat you're going to have?
Khalid el Khatib (03:45):
Absolutely.
You know, I think, and this willprobably be a theme throughout the
conversation that we have today, butagility is super important when you're
a marketing leader, especially in 2021.
And being a professional writer orreally investing in professional writing
skills means that you're open to edits,constantly writing and rewriting.
You're not so married to a scriptthat you're sort of one and done.
(04:09):
And I think that, you know, beinga compelling and a strong writer
or communicator doesn't just meanbeing able to write something
good and then read it quite well.
But also going back to the drawingboard, understanding different and
disparate voices and communicating todifferent audiences and things like that.
Erica Seidel (04:26):
That's interesting.
Yeah, this framework for careersuccess that, you know, this is
like me, like twenty-plus yearsinto my career, and I believe that
career success is three things.
It's good decisions,hard work, and good luck.
And so I'm glad to hear you talkabout some of those aspects here.
But I want to get into someof the decision-making.
Your business has doubled this year,Stack Overflow, and you anticipate a
(04:51):
further doubling next year, as I recall.
And we talked abouthiring ahead of the scale.
I would love to hear you talk abouthow you can look around corners for
hiring and what that looks like.
Cause that is actually,not everybody can do that.
Sometimes, you know, marketersare a little hampered and
they're like the last ones to getbudget, even during a scale-up.
Khalid el Khatib (05:10):
Sure, happy to.
I think just to level set, just sofolks understand, or maybe those
who are not familiar will stillknow what Stack Overflow does.
StackOverflow.com is one ofthe most popular websites in
the world, like you shared.
More traffic than the NewYork Times, for example.
And it's a website where developersand technologists go to troubleshoot
their code or learn to code orsolve their technical challenges.
(05:33):
And so our public platform reachesabout a hundred million people
all over the world every month.
And it's a two-sided marketplace.
So we have the public platform andthen we have two paid products.
We have Stack Overflow for Teams,which is a collaboration and
knowledge management platform.
And then we have what we call Reachand Relevance, which is an advertising
product, whether advertisingsoftware or tooling to developers
(05:54):
and technologists, or employerbranding, advertising your company as
a great place to work for developers.
And so the paid product side of thecompany is what's growing so quickly.
We've had a great year and weanticipate further growth next year,
like you said, and we're fortunateto be able to be hiring ahead.
And so as a marketing leader, whatI try to do is I try to say, which
(06:15):
resources do we need in-house andwhere can we bring on board a bench
of freelancers or permalancersto experiment before we scale?
And so to me, what that looks likeis a really solid investment in
product marketing, for example.
I believe it's very difficult, thoughnot impossible, to outsource your product
marketing efforts because not only do theyneed to know the product inside and out,
(06:37):
but that team has to both build reallystrong relationships with the product
and the sales team, and they effectivelyhave to be the connective tissue that
holds the marketing team together.
And so that's one area where wetry to invest ahead of growth.
On the other side of the coin, there'sbrand and content, for example.
So one thing that we haven'tdone historically, because we
largely market to developers, ismake a big investment in video.
(07:00):
Developers notoriouslyhave an aversion to video.
They're much more likely to read a longpiece of technical content, for example.
But it's something that we want to domore around, you know, whether it's
TikTok on one end of the spectrum, ora coding tutorial video on the other.
That said, before bringing on boardtwo or three videographers or an
editor, we want to see if it works.
(07:22):
And so that's an area in which we canbring on a small, scrappy agency or
a permalancer to help us get wherewe need to go, and where I can free
up an FTE for product marketing.
Erica Seidel (07:34):
Right, right.
My feeling is that product marketing isthe hardest role to hire for right now.
Are you finding the same or do youhave this kind of one role that's
like the bane of your existence?
Khalid el Khatib (07:43):
I find that to be absolutely true.
I think, well, I read your email,your newsletter, and I think I
forwarded it to my product marketingteam, which they both appreciated
and sort of probably groaned to see.
So I think that's absolutely trueacross a couple of dimensions.
One, product marketers are reallyexpensive and the market is highly
competitive right now, as you know.
(08:04):
And then two, in a period when there areso many applications that we're seeing,
such a high volume of applications,the product marketing title can be
something of a misnomer because, as I'msure you know, so many companies hire
what they call product marketers toeffectively only do sales enablement.
Or a product marketer within asmaller SaaS company, for example.
(08:27):
It might be something of a generalist andthey might do a lot of field marketing.
So I think a true product marketer,someone who really understands
messaging and positioning and cando a pricing and packaging strategy,
is like finding a needle in ahaystack, especially in this market.
Erica Seidel (08:42):
Yeah, yeah.
It's almost like all this stuff that aCEO would do or like McKinsey Consultant
would do, and then we're expecting peoplewith very different backgrounds to kind
of coalesce it all, to do all these likesuper strategic and important things.
Khalid el Khatib (08:55):
Yeah, and I think that it's also, exactly like you said,
a unique combination of having somequants and qualitative skills, too.
So the expectation that theyreally understand the mechanics
of the business and a lot ofmetrics and KPIs, but can write the
messaging for the product as well.
Erica Seidel (09:11):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So your business is, it's sointeresting because you have a piece
that's the software as a service,and, obviously, a piece that's not.
And your background, again, you startedyour career at Teach for America.
Totally like the oppositeof a SaaS kind of business.
What's your take on bringing people intoSaaS that don't have SaaS backgrounds?
(09:32):
Because, as a recruiter, I oftengo and start a search and people
are like, well, we absolutely needsomebody who's a strong SaaS marketer.
And sometimes I challengepeople and say, do we really?
I mean, it's kind of an obvious thingto say you need, but I'm curious to
hear you talk about, do you think thatwe will see more non-SaaS marketers,
whether B2B or B2C, pivoting into B2BSaaS, and how do you think through
(09:56):
that when you do your own hiring?
Khalid el Khatib (09:58):
That's a great question.
I think the thing that's benefited methroughout my career is I have a lot of
experience around two-sided marketplaces.
So Teach for Americacertainly was not SaaS.
And then while I was at WPP, Iworked a lot with TED, both the
conference and video talk platform.
And then, most recently beforeStack, I was at GLG, insight and
knowledge platform, which has a robustbench of experts and end clients.
(10:21):
And so I think what I've learned throughworking with two-sided marketplaces
is how to prioritize and how tomarket to two disparate groups while
finding the connectivity between them,and then some efficiency in that.
But to answer your question, alittle more on the nose, I think
it largely depends on the role.
And so I think there are some rolesif you're a SaaS company looking to
(10:41):
build out your marketing team whereyou can bring someone in and it's fine,
like an events person, for example.
I think events folks, as long asthey're data-driven and super agile,
can come from B2C or any sort offield or sector and do well in SaaS.
I don't know that that's necessarilytrue among a lot of demand
generation roles, for example.
So the ABM, the account-basedmarketing motion for SaaS, is quite
(11:05):
different than it would be for, youknow, a non-technical B2B business.
And so I think that's onearea where you really benefit
from having a SaaS background.
When it comes to a brand role, again, itdepends on the role, but I do think that
there's some benefit in hiring a designerwho knows the B2C space really well and
can bring some elements of it into SaaS.
Erica Seidel (11:25):
Is there an aspect of the SaaS business model that has
been hard for people to grok thatare new to SaaS, like on your teams?
Khalid el Khatib (11:33):
That's a great question.
I think, sure, there's notone that jumps out to me.
The one thing that I will say aboutSaaS is because it's incredibly buzzy
and because it's seen such tremendousgrowth over the past few years in
particular, there are no shortageof resources that exist in the world
to help people get up to speed.
And so an example of that is some folksin our product marketing team and our
(11:55):
product marketing leader, who's excellent,didn't have a ton of analyst relations
experience working in the SaaS space.
And that was a corefocus for us this year.
And so what we did is we brought on afirm called The Skills Connection who
is comprised primarily of former Gartneranalysts to help us put together our
pitch, to help us decide which analysts weshould engage with and what our strategy
(12:17):
should be for Gartner, Forrester, and IDC.
And so that's an example of where we madea relatively small investment, monetary
investment, a big investment in time, andsaid, okay, here's what we don't know,
how can you help us get up to speed?
And we did really, really quickly.
And we didn't necessarily need tohire a bunch of folks to do it.
Erica Seidel (12:36):
That's great.
So you do a ton of hiring.
You have a big team.
What's your favorite interviewquestion that you ask that
is surprisingly revealing?
Khalid el Khatib (12:45):
That's a great question.
I manage five sort of functional teams- brand, content, communications, product
marketing, and demand generation.
And the questions differ for each role.
I think one that's particularly tellingfor most of them, you know, demand
generation, content, comms, and brands,in particular, is what is a favorite
campaign that you've seen of late?
(13:06):
And it sounds pretty simple andstraightforward, but it can be
relatively telling because I lovewhen I get a really creative answer.
An advertisement, whether it's on TVor that they saw on Instagram recently,
that has nothing to do with the field inwhich we're interviewing them for, but
sort of gives me a sense of what theirinterests are, two, what they find to
be powerful, and then three, how oftenthey consume content and the news.
(13:30):
And something that I really look forin a lot of the critical hires on our
team is someone who has their fingeron the pulse of what's happening, not
only in our space, but in the world.
Erica Seidel (13:41):
Why is that so important?
I mean, it sounds obvious, but...
Khalid el Khatib (13:44):
One, at the highest level, intellectual curiosity, I think,
makes someone much more successful in ajob than someone who is looking to check
a bunch of boxes on a job descriptionor follow their OKRs for the quarter.
So I think that that's really important.
And then the other is that Ithink external perspective and
outside expertise is so powerful.
(14:06):
And maybe that's my bias from bothTED and from GLG where the business
model is essentially focusedon bringing in outside thought.
But one thing that we try to do at Stack,and on the marketing team in particular,
is have speakers come and talk to us,employ consultants wherever it makes sense
to do so, or advisors, so that weren'tlooking beyond what we're doing in the
(14:28):
day to day to make ourselves better.
Erica Seidel (14:30):
Right, right.
That's great.
I talked to somebody else for this podcastwhose favorite interview question was,
I'll just share it because you might findthis interesting, it was tell me about
a product that is well-marketed and why.
And the guy's really listening tothe why and does somebody have a
structure for what good marketing is?
And I think yours issuggestive of that as well.
It's like, okay, does somebodyactually know what a good campaign is?
(14:53):
And what are the aspects that they thinkare really important in a campaign?
Is it just, you know, oh, that it'spretty colors or whatever, or is it
like, oh, they've thought through theiraudience, they've thought through how
they're going to measure, et cetera.
Khalid el Khatib (15:03):
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Erica Seidel (15:05):
So, can you talk a little bit more about how you
organize your marketing team tosupport the two different products?
So you have the public platformversus the P SaaS aspects?
Khalid el Khatib (15:15):
One, it's so important to be highly cross-functional in your
approach to everything that you do.
And so I work super closely with ourCPO, our chief product officer, and our
chief revenue officer on everything.
We even have a weekly check-in that wedo for thirty minutes every week, just
to see what's going on and try to seearound corners to the best of our ability.
And so the benefit in doing that, and inaddition to that check-in our teams do
(15:40):
monthly business reviews around the publicplatform and around each of our products.
So the point of doing that, and whatthat sort of unlocks, is our ability
to find synergies wherever they exist.
So if the public platform team isworking on something that we can
help or augment in some way, we candeputize a small amount of product
marketing resources or demand generationresources to promote it and vice versa.
(16:04):
So I think that's one piecethat's really important.
The second, which is related, isuncovering synergies wherever they exist.
And so our Stack Overflow for Teamsproduct is effectively a private
version of the public platform.
There are, of course, several differencesto the approach, but sometimes when
something really resonates with the publicplatform or the paid product, we can make
(16:25):
them interchangeable or we can build aroadmap that works in the other direction.
And so I think it's all about findingthose efficiencies and those synergies
and empowering everyone on your teamto think about it in that way as well.
Erica Seidel (16:38):
And so you have these monthly business reviews, so you're
saying you have product and marketingand sales altogether at those
monthly kind of NBR, so to speak?
Khalid el Khatib (16:48):
That's right, and we also have the full
leadership team there as well.
So there's representation from the legalteam, from the finance team, and the CEO,
so that cross-functionally, everyone knowswhat's happened and what's happening,
and they have the opportunity to askquestions about all of those things.
Erica Seidel (17:03):
Right, right.
That's cool.
And it gets your marketing teamto kind of have that what I
call business first, marketingsecond kind of view of the world.
Khalid el Khatib (17:10):
100%.
I mean, I think that the great thingabout Stack Overflow, and you can call
it transparency or what have you, butthere are I don't think any surprises.
We tend to be pretty good aboutcascading information to the company
and to the team around performance.
We share quarterly financials data andthen do AMAs every single month around it.
(17:31):
And the marketing team, as well, hasa pretty good view into who we're
hiring for one or two quarters aheadand what our priorities are as well.
Erica Seidel (17:40):
So, can you share an organizational choice that you've
made that you think might be a littlebit unique, that some other marketing
leaders haven't done or wouldn't do?
And that organization choicecould have worked well or poorly.
Khalid el Khatib (17:53):
One thing, and, you know, this is cheating, but one thing
that I did do, so I'd been at Stack forthree and a half years, and three years
ago or so the company itself, StackOverflow, was 40% remote at the time.
And our technical teams were muchmore remote than that, about 80%.
But I elected, because there were somany challenges around hiring great
(18:14):
marketing talent in New York, wherewe're based in London, where we have
another office, around product marketingin particular, to hire a much more
remote-first, remote-focused team.
And so the marketing team is highlydistributed, even before the pandemic.
Now, obviously things are quite different.
But I'm really, really glad that I tookthat approach because I've found some
(18:35):
really excellent talent by doing it.
And the team has sort of aremote-first DNA and muscle
memory around how to interact ona remote-first basis from day one.
So I think that sometimes marketingleaders are inclined to say, okay,
you know, sales teams, I think morethan anyone else, and especially
BDRs and SDRs tend to be in personor gravitate towards office work.
(18:58):
And sometimes a marketing leader willsay, because it's so important to
build relationships with sales teams,the marketing team should be in person
too, but I think that's a mistakebecause I think it's really possible
to build relationships remotely.
And two, I think, especially withregard to strong demand generation teams
and product marketing teams, we're nolonger going to be able to find the
(19:18):
folks that we need just looking atNew York or Chicago or San Francisco.
Erica Seidel (19:23):
Right.
Right.
I've been thinking that this kind ofremote hiring, obviously a lot of people
are doing remote hiring now, you hadsome expertise with it ahead of COVID.
Do you think it makes you have moreof like an optimizing mindset versus
a satisficing mindset with hiring?
Because there's a difference between,oh, we want to hire the best person in
(19:44):
New York, versus, oh, we can look farand wide across, not just the U.S., but
maybe also, across Europe, we're goingto find the absolute, very best person.
And do you ever see that it makes itlike you're trying to have the absolute
perfect hire and so it can take longer?
Khalid el Khatib (19:59):
That's a good question.
And that's certainly a risk, one that Ihaven't spent too much thinking about.
I mean, I try to take the approach,maybe less with hiring than
everything else, but " don't letperfect get in the way of very good."
And I think that's true of hiring andI think every position is different.
And so, you know, one question you haveto ask yourself when you bring someone
on board is do you want someone whocan do the job at a hundred percent
(20:21):
or 110% on day one, or do you wantsomeone who will do it at 90%, invest
in their professional development, andhopefully will stay two or three years?
And so I think that that's one keyconsideration, maybe one that we've
lost in a market that's this crazy.
But sometimes, you know, you want someonewho can grow into the role to some extent.
Or, and I think this is a specialty torun marketing teams, you bring someone in
(20:43):
at the manager or the director level, andyou don't have any anticipated VP recs for
two or three years and where do they go?
They're likely to leave.
Erica Seidel (20:51):
Right.
So we've talked abouthiring an organization.
Let's take a broader lens.
Can you share some mistakes for a SaaSmarketing leader to avoid when scaling up?
Khalid el Khatib (21:01):
This one is an easy one to articulate.
It's a difficult one to fix.
And I think that that's notenough SaaS marketing leaders
invest in brand marketing.
And that's especially true, as I'm sureyou've seen, in private-equity-backed
companies where it's sort of thisdollar-in/dollar-out mentality because
as every marketing leader knows,it's really difficult to prove ROI
(21:23):
for dollars that are spent on brand.
And so I think that we were fortunateto have this support of our CEO and
our CFO over time to make an investmentin brand awareness, and we've also run
longitudinal studies twice a year, brandtracking surveys, which have proven
out the value of investing in that.
We've seen awareness of StackOverflow for Teams and evangelism for
(21:46):
it go up double digit percentages.
And so I think, you know, a coupleof mistakes that are made is one,
not making any investment at all, andthen figuring out why competitors are
beating them and why your demand genteams aren't working because a rising
tide lifts all boats and investment inbrand awareness is that rising tide.
And then the other is making an investmentand talking to partners and peers
(22:10):
about how you can articulate the valueof an investment in brand awareness.
Every CEO and every CFO isdifferent, as we all know.
A brand tracking survey once ortwice a year doesn't always work.
And so there are lots of othertricks and things that you can do.
Not necessarily tricks, but sociallistening, for example, qualitative
feedback at conferences and events,anecdotal feedback from employees in
(22:32):
terms of the campaigns that their friendsand family are seeing, and that all
sort of coalesces, in my opinion, tobe a very, very powerful tool and brand
awareness and investment in brand is notsomething that should ever be neglected.
Erica Seidel (22:46):
It's so true and it is a hard conversation to have.
I like your point about thedollar-in/dollar-out expectation.
And I think the best marketers arethe ones that can go into a meeting
where somebody has that viewpointand pivot that viewpoint and have
them realize that - you know, like aformer boss of mine says, I love this,
"Today's brand is tomorrow's demand."
it's just a great way to put it.
(23:07):
Any other thoughts on keymistakes to avoid when scaling up?
Khalid el Khatib (23:12):
I think a related point is, you know, an investment in
brand doesn't mean that you need totake out an ad in the Superbowl or a
billboard in Times Square, which issometimes the misconception that a
board or a CFO or a CRO or a CEO willhave when people ask for brand dollars.
Especially in B2B SaaS, when I as forbrand dollars, I'm not saying that we
need to do a takeover of the subwaysystem in New York City because I know
(23:33):
that it's not going to lead anywhere.
And so a related point is always startsmall, scale and iterate from there.
So, I think, one approach that we tryto take when it comes to developer
awareness is looking at our key 1000accounts, where are they headquartered?
You know, increasingly a lot of them areheadquartered in Austin, for example.
A lot of developer-orientedcompanies have moved to Texas
(23:55):
over the past couple of years.
And so, if we're going to do somethingout of home or some big display,
why don't we start it in Austin?
Why don't we take overtheir public transportation?
Or billboards in their downtown areawhere they're much more likely to be
working from the office than in NewYork, for example, or San Francisco?
So starting in a hyper-local market andscaling if it makes sense to do so, is
(24:16):
how I would approach brand awareness, asopposed to some people who get a capital
injection and then right away willtake out these massive, massive buys.
Erica Seidel (24:25):
Exactly.
Any other advice that you would giveto a CEO who is looking to hire a
marketing leader for a scale journey?
Khalid el Khatib (24:32):
I have two pieces of advice for CEOs and sort of across
the spectrum, whether they're seed orseries A or B or C or a public company.
Think long and hard and consultwith your advisors in terms of the
profile of person you're looking for.
And so occasionally, someone willreach out to me and say, whether it's
a friend or a peer or someone I wentto college with, and they'll say we
(24:53):
really need, you know, I have a seriesB company, we're doing incredibly,
we've had this massive raise, we havea great valuation, and we're close
to, or we have product market fit.
We're ready for a CMO.
We need a CMO.
And I'll say, okay, whatdo you want them to do?
And they'll bullet out ten things and I'mlike, you need a VP of demand generation.
You need someone who understands marketingautomation and can get you off of HubSpot
(25:17):
and onto a platform like Marquetto.
You need someone who can build outa field practice and ABM practice.
You do not need a CMO.
And so I think, you know, sometimesthere's this inclination to hire as
senior as possible, when in reality,you don't need someone that strategic.
You need someone who can execute andbuild out a team who is in the weeds.
So there's that piece of it.
(25:38):
The other, which is related, is whattype of marketing leader do you need?
Do you need a brand CMO?
Do you need a demand CMO?
Do you need someone with robustproduct marketing experience, more
of a communications oriented CMO?
And I think that, you know this quitewell, I'm sure, and provide a lot of
counsel on this topic, but often timesa CEO or, you know, the board will
(26:00):
have a very, very either nebulous ideaof the type of CMO that they want,
or they'll point to a specific personat a specific company, when, as you
know, CMOs often - you know, one CMO'svery, very different from the next.
Erica Seidel (26:13):
Yeah, the challenge I see is they want it all, right?
They want the person who can,as I like to say, parachute
between strategy and tactics.
It's like, oh yeah, I want the personwho's going to drive leads, but then also
they have to be a great communicator.
They have to be very analyticaland they have to be this and that.
I think the challenging thingin recruiting is that focus.
And I think it comes down tosaying okay, who do we need
for the next couple of years?
(26:34):
Because in a couple of years,the whole world will be different
and we can hire somebody else orsomebody in addition, at that point.
But I don't know.
Do you have any other tips on how tomake that conversation more productive
so that you're not just having the CEOsay, oh, I want one of everything please?
Khalid el Khatib (26:50):
One, I would just say to push back and say, it's impossible.
Right?
Like I think if you look at the sortof C-suite, the CMO is the least likely
to stay at a company beyond two years.
And I think that's largely becausethe expectations when they were
hired are entirely unrealistic.
Point two, and I think something that'ssort of makes all of this a little more
tangible to someone to say, okay, we'lldo our best to find you the most strategic
(27:13):
leader possible who's also comfortableexecuting, but who is the number one and
most critical hire you see after the CMO?
And that will often beclarifying to someone.
So for example, for me, demand generationhas been part of my mandate and several
roles that I've had, but I do not, youknow, I'm under no delusion that I am
an excellent demand generation leader.
And so, there's a VP of demand generationand it's really his bread and butter.
(27:35):
I defer to him on most things thathe does and that he brings on board.
And he's excellent at that.
And I recognize my ownlimitations in the space.
And so I often think if someone'slike, okay, we really need a new
CMO, you say, okay, but then doyou need a great VP of demand?
Do you need a great VPof product marketing?
Do you need a great VP of comms?
Who is this person'sdeputy and right hand?
Erica Seidel (27:56):
Yeah.
And then sometimes maybe that deputythat they're envisioning is all
they need, or all they need forthe next, you know, year or two.
Yeah.
That's very helpful.
So personally, thank you.
That'll be helpful to mewhen I talk to people.
Let's talk about trends.
So 2022 is, you know, next up here.
Any trends that you foreseefor B2B SaaS marketers that
(28:18):
are in scale-up mode for 2022?
Khalid el Khatib (28:20):
I think one is embrace agility.
You know, I've been saying this fortwenty months now, but it used to be
that you would set a marketing budgetat the beginning of the year, you
would maybe check in on budget versusactuals on a monthly or quarterly
basis, but you wouldn't reallyreforecast for at least six months,
most likely until the end of the year.
And that can no longer be true.
(28:41):
I think we're still figuring out what ourcadence looks like, but the leadership
team needs to at least talk quarterlyabout whether or not the budget as
it currently stands makes sense, theheadcount and org chart that you've put
together at the beginning of the yearstill makes sense relative to the needs.
And so the very tangible example ofthat is our events budget for 2022.
(29:03):
Our events budget for 2022 looks verydifferent today than it did ten days
ago, just because of everything that'shappening in the news right now.
And, you know, we're no longerbullish on the fact that we'll be
at events in February or March.
So I think that's one thing that peoplereally need to focus on, the other, and
I think a trend that's going to not goaway for a while is, we spend a lot of
(29:25):
time talking about how SaaS marketingmeters need to better partner with sales
and product organizations, and I thinkthat they've been laser-focused on that
alignment for the past couple of years.
Where the B2C space has been focusedfor quite some time is the synergies
that exist between the people orhuman resources team and marketing.
And there's been a lot offocus on employer branding.
(29:47):
So like the Facebooks of the world,the Instagrams, the Twitters, and
then all sorts of consumer brandshave really made an investment in
recruiting and employer branding.
And I think that marketingleaders and people team leaders
have worked lockstep together.
I think that's one area where theSaaS space has really fallen behind.
And so I think a big focus in 2022and beyond is going to be okay, how
(30:11):
can marketing teams, whether it's thebrand team or the content team or the
comms team, partner with people teamsto help win in this hyper-competitive
environment today and tomorrow?
Erica Seidel (30:23):
Totally agree with you on that one.
I'll be excited to see thatkind of greater synergy.
I mean, you think about HR,like everything that happened in
marketing, I dunno, five or tenyears ago, and it's still happening
is now starting to happen in HR.
Like greater reliance on technology,greater reliance on data.
The years, like this year, last year,you know, it was like the years for HR
(30:44):
folks to kind of come into their own.
Khalid el Khatib (30:46):
I think that's absolutely true.
And I think that's true from aresourcing perspective as well.
So if you think about likedevelopment resources, for example,
or engineering resources, theywere always deputized to revenue.
And this is not, I'm not speaking to StackOverflow, I'm speaking very generally.
But those development resourcestend to be allocated towards revenue
focused initiatives or product.
(31:06):
And then, to your point, at thissort of bottom of the pile is people
initiatives or the HR system API.
And it's sort of people get toit when they get around to it.
And so job descriptions are hardcoded, it's glitchy, it doesn't
sync with LinkedIn, for example.
And now it's an imperativefor the business to be able to
hire, to be able to compete.
(31:28):
And I think that companies have tostart resourcing HR teams differently
from a technical perspective andfrom a marketing perspective.
Erica Seidel (31:35):
Yeah.
So those are great trends.
Thank you so much forbeing on the show, Khalid.
This was great to hearall of your perspectives.
Khalid el Khatib (31:42):
Thank you for having me again.
Erica Seidel (31:46):
That was Khalid El Khatib, who runs marketing and
communications for Stack Overflow.
Now that you've listened, askyourself: how can you have a
more productive conversation withyour CEO and CFO and Board about
the balance of brand and demand?
Next time on The Get, you'll hearfrom Sydney Sloan, telling us about
her CMO scale journey for Salesloft.
(32:07):
You'll learn about how to think aboutyour market and your marketing, the
bets you're making on each, and the teamstructure and goal setting as you scale.
Don't miss it.
Thanks for listening to The Get.
I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Hiring great marketingleaders is not easy.
The Get is designed to inspire smartdecisions around recruiting and
(32:28):
leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
We explore the trends, tribulations,and triumphs of today's top
marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
This season's theme isSolving for the Scale Journey.
If you liked thisepisode, please share it.
For other insights on recruitinggreat marketing leaders - what I
call the 'make money' marketingleaders rather than the 'make it
pretty' ones - follow me on LinkedIn.
(32:50):
You can also sign up for mynewsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com.
The Get is produced by Evo Terraand Simpler Media Productions.
Hi, you're listening to The Get, the podcast about
finding -- and keeping -- greatmarketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
I'm Erica Seidel, your host.
A lot of CEOs and boards, especiallyin private-equity-backed businesses,
expect marketing to be a sort ofdollar-in/dollar-out proposition.
How reasonable is that when you needto build a brand for the long term?
(00:25):
Today, you'll hear from a marketingleader with a lot of advice on
how to articulate the value of abrand investment to CEOs and CFOs.
Khalid El Khatib is the Head of Marketingand Communications for Stack Overflow.
You may think - that's a developerwebsite, not a SaaS company.
Actually, Stack Overflow hasenterprise SaaS products for
collaboration and knowledge sharingthat are growing like hotcakes.
Khalid makes a good point (00:48):
"If you don't make a brand investment, you can wonder
why competitors are beating you andwhy demand generation isn't working...
A rising tide lifts, all boatsand an investment in brand
awareness is that rising tide."
You'll also hear about how to respond whenCEOs say they need a CMO, but you suspect
they really need a demand gen director.
(01:08):
And you'll hear about how to lookaround the corners when hiring and
staff up ahead of a growth curve.
Let's go.
Khalid, welcome to the show.
I'm really happy to have you here today.
Thanks for joining.
Khalid el Khatib (01:22):
Thank you for having me.
Erica Seidel (01:24):
So my first question to you is you're pretty young, right?
You're, like, fifteen years intoyour career or so, and you are now
running marketing for one of the fiftymost popular websites in the world.
And so I'm curious, as a career-orientedperson, what is it about you that
made you advance as fast as you have?
Khalid el Khatib (01:43):
Sure.
Yeah.
Well, I appreciate you calling that out.
I think, you know, I think there are a fewthings, the first of which is right place,
right time, which is true of most folks'careers, people who tend to do well.
And that's been true throughout mine.
So, I started my career working in commsat Teach for America at a time when Teach
for America was very much a media darling.
So I was quite young, helping writeop-eds for Wall Street Journal, and doing
(02:05):
60 Minutes, The Today Show, et cetera.
And then from there went to an adagency that was acquired shortly after I
started and went from about twenty-fivepeople cut 250 by the time that I left.
And so I had the extraordinaryopportunity to learn sort of on the job.
And I think in every job that I had,the two or three or four years that I
stayed felt like ten in terms of thefire hose that I was drinking from.
(02:28):
I think the other thing is I've had thegood fortune of having really excellent
managers, people who cared about me, whoinvested in my professional development,
and gave me really, really candid feedbackthroughout the course of my career.
Something that I'vetried to do for others.
And then thirdly, I think one ofthe things that sort of made me
well-positioned to succeed is thatI like to think that I have some
(02:50):
self-awareness around what I'm goodat and where I could use a lot of help
and where I need to hire to help me.
And I think the one thing that I'mgood at that's really helped me as
a marketing leader is being a strongwriter and a strong communicator.
I think that we take for granted howimportant and how powerful it is to
be a good writer, especially in 2021,when a marketing leader's mandate is
(03:12):
not just positioning and messaging,but also internal communications to
employees who are going through ahighly dynamic, very challenging time.
CEO communications, when they'recommunicating to everyone from employees
to investors, to customers, andthen communicating to your own team.
So I think that that's somethingthat's really helped me.
I studied creative writing in college.
(03:33):
I've freelanced for a number ofpublications over the course of the years.
And so I really credit being a strongwriter to being a strong marketer.
Erica Seidel (03:39):
Do you find yourself using your writing skills to prepare
for those sensitive conversationsthat you're going to have?
Khalid el Khatib (03:45):
Absolutely.
You know, I think, and this willprobably be a theme throughout the
conversation that we have today, butagility is super important when you're
a marketing leader, especially in 2021.
And being a professional writer orreally investing in professional writing
skills means that you're open to edits,constantly writing and rewriting.
You're not so married to a scriptthat you're sort of one and done.
(04:09):
And I think that, you know, beinga compelling and a strong writer
or communicator doesn't just meanbeing able to write something
good and then read it quite well.
But also going back to the drawingboard, understanding different and
disparate voices and communicating todifferent audiences and things like that.
Erica Seidel (04:26):
That's interesting.
Yeah, this framework for careersuccess that, you know, this is
like me, like twenty-plus yearsinto my career, and I believe that
career success is three things.
It's good decisions,hard work, and good luck.
And so I'm glad to hear you talkabout some of those aspects here.
But I want to get into someof the decision-making.
Your business has doubled this year,Stack Overflow, and you anticipate a
(04:51):
further doubling next year, as I recall.
And we talked abouthiring ahead of the scale.
I would love to hear you talk abouthow you can look around corners for
hiring and what that looks like.
Cause that is actually,not everybody can do that.
Sometimes, you know, marketersare a little hampered and
they're like the last ones to getbudget, even during a scale-up.
Khalid el Khatib (05:10):
Sure, happy to.
I think just to level set, just sofolks understand, or maybe those
who are not familiar will stillknow what Stack Overflow does.
StackOverflow.com is one ofthe most popular websites in
the world, like you shared.
More traffic than the NewYork Times, for example.
And it's a website where developersand technologists go to troubleshoot
their code or learn to code orsolve their technical challenges.
(05:33):
And so our public platform reachesabout a hundred million people
all over the world every month.
And it's a two-sided marketplace.
So we have the public platform andthen we have two paid products.
We have Stack Overflow for Teams,which is a collaboration and
knowledge management platform.
And then we have what we call Reachand Relevance, which is an advertising
product, whether advertisingsoftware or tooling to developers
(05:54):
and technologists, or employerbranding, advertising your company as
a great place to work for developers.
And so the paid product side of thecompany is what's growing so quickly.
We've had a great year and weanticipate further growth next year,
like you said, and we're fortunateto be able to be hiring ahead.
And so as a marketing leader, whatI try to do is I try to say, which
(06:15):
resources do we need in-house andwhere can we bring on board a bench
of freelancers or permalancersto experiment before we scale?
And so to me, what that looks likeis a really solid investment in
product marketing, for example.
I believe it's very difficult, thoughnot impossible, to outsource your product
marketing efforts because not only do theyneed to know the product inside and out,
(06:37):
but that team has to both build reallystrong relationships with the product
and the sales team, and they effectivelyhave to be the connective tissue that
holds the marketing team together.
And so that's one area where wetry to invest ahead of growth.
On the other side of the coin, there'sbrand and content, for example.
So one thing that we haven'tdone historically, because we
largely market to developers, ismake a big investment in video.
(07:00):
Developers notoriouslyhave an aversion to video.
They're much more likely to read a longpiece of technical content, for example.
But it's something that we want to domore around, you know, whether it's
TikTok on one end of the spectrum, ora coding tutorial video on the other.
That said, before bringing on boardtwo or three videographers or an
editor, we want to see if it works.
(07:22):
And so that's an area in which we canbring on a small, scrappy agency or
a permalancer to help us get wherewe need to go, and where I can free
up an FTE for product marketing.
Erica Seidel (07:34):
Right, right.
My feeling is that product marketing isthe hardest role to hire for right now.
Are you finding the same or do youhave this kind of one role that's
like the bane of your existence?
Khalid el Khatib (07:43):
I find that to be absolutely true.
I think, well, I read your email,your newsletter, and I think I
forwarded it to my product marketingteam, which they both appreciated
and sort of probably groaned to see.
So I think that's absolutely trueacross a couple of dimensions.
One, product marketers are reallyexpensive and the market is highly
competitive right now, as you know.
(08:04):
And then two, in a period when there areso many applications that we're seeing,
such a high volume of applications,the product marketing title can be
something of a misnomer because, as I'msure you know, so many companies hire
what they call product marketers toeffectively only do sales enablement.
Or a product marketer within asmaller SaaS company, for example.
(08:27):
It might be something of a generalist andthey might do a lot of field marketing.
So I think a true product marketer,someone who really understands
messaging and positioning and cando a pricing and packaging strategy,
is like finding a needle in ahaystack, especially in this market.
Erica Seidel (08:42):
Yeah, yeah.
It's almost like all this stuff that aCEO would do or like McKinsey Consultant
would do, and then we're expecting peoplewith very different backgrounds to kind
of coalesce it all, to do all these likesuper strategic and important things.
Khalid el Khatib (08:55):
Yeah, and I think that it's also, exactly like you said,
a unique combination of having somequants and qualitative skills, too.
So the expectation that theyreally understand the mechanics
of the business and a lot ofmetrics and KPIs, but can write the
messaging for the product as well.
Erica Seidel (09:11):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So your business is, it's sointeresting because you have a piece
that's the software as a service,and, obviously, a piece that's not.
And your background, again, you startedyour career at Teach for America.
Totally like the oppositeof a SaaS kind of business.
What's your take on bringing people intoSaaS that don't have SaaS backgrounds?
(09:32):
Because, as a recruiter, I oftengo and start a search and people
are like, well, we absolutely needsomebody who's a strong SaaS marketer.
And sometimes I challengepeople and say, do we really?
I mean, it's kind of an obvious thingto say you need, but I'm curious to
hear you talk about, do you think thatwe will see more non-SaaS marketers,
whether B2B or B2C, pivoting into B2BSaaS, and how do you think through
(09:56):
that when you do your own hiring?
Khalid el Khatib (09:58):
That's a great question.
I think the thing that's benefited methroughout my career is I have a lot of
experience around two-sided marketplaces.
So Teach for Americacertainly was not SaaS.
And then while I was at WPP, Iworked a lot with TED, both the
conference and video talk platform.
And then, most recently beforeStack, I was at GLG, insight and
knowledge platform, which has a robustbench of experts and end clients.
(10:21):
And so I think what I've learned throughworking with two-sided marketplaces
is how to prioritize and how tomarket to two disparate groups while
finding the connectivity between them,and then some efficiency in that.
But to answer your question, alittle more on the nose, I think
it largely depends on the role.
And so I think there are some rolesif you're a SaaS company looking to
(10:41):
build out your marketing team whereyou can bring someone in and it's fine,
like an events person, for example.
I think events folks, as long asthey're data-driven and super agile,
can come from B2C or any sort offield or sector and do well in SaaS.
I don't know that that's necessarilytrue among a lot of demand
generation roles, for example.
So the ABM, the account-basedmarketing motion for SaaS, is quite
(11:05):
different than it would be for, youknow, a non-technical B2B business.
And so I think that's onearea where you really benefit
from having a SaaS background.
When it comes to a brand role, again, itdepends on the role, but I do think that
there's some benefit in hiring a designerwho knows the B2C space really well and
can bring some elements of it into SaaS.
Erica Seidel (11:25):
Is there an aspect of the SaaS business model that has
been hard for people to grok thatare new to SaaS, like on your teams?
Khalid el Khatib (11:33):
That's a great question.
I think, sure, there's notone that jumps out to me.
The one thing that I will say aboutSaaS is because it's incredibly buzzy
and because it's seen such tremendousgrowth over the past few years in
particular, there are no shortageof resources that exist in the world
to help people get up to speed.
And so an example of that is some folksin our product marketing team and our
(11:55):
product marketing leader, who's excellent,didn't have a ton of analyst relations
experience working in the SaaS space.
And that was a corefocus for us this year.
And so what we did is we brought on afirm called The Skills Connection who
is comprised primarily of former Gartneranalysts to help us put together our
pitch, to help us decide which analysts weshould engage with and what our strategy
(12:17):
should be for Gartner, Forrester, and IDC.
And so that's an example of where we madea relatively small investment, monetary
investment, a big investment in time, andsaid, okay, here's what we don't know,
how can you help us get up to speed?
And we did really, really quickly.
And we didn't necessarily need tohire a bunch of folks to do it.
Erica Seidel (12:36):
That's great.
So you do a ton of hiring.
You have a big team.
What's your favorite interviewquestion that you ask that
is surprisingly revealing?
Khalid el Khatib (12:45):
That's a great question.
I manage five sort of functional teams- brand, content, communications, product
marketing, and demand generation.
And the questions differ for each role.
I think one that's particularly tellingfor most of them, you know, demand
generation, content, comms, and brands,in particular, is what is a favorite
campaign that you've seen of late?
(13:06):
And it sounds pretty simple andstraightforward, but it can be
relatively telling because I lovewhen I get a really creative answer.
An advertisement, whether it's on TVor that they saw on Instagram recently,
that has nothing to do with the field inwhich we're interviewing them for, but
sort of gives me a sense of what theirinterests are, two, what they find to
be powerful, and then three, how oftenthey consume content and the news.
(13:30):
And something that I really look forin a lot of the critical hires on our
team is someone who has their fingeron the pulse of what's happening, not
only in our space, but in the world.
Erica Seidel (13:41):
Why is that so important?
I mean, it sounds obvious, but...
Khalid el Khatib (13:44):
One, at the highest level, intellectual curiosity, I think,
makes someone much more successful in ajob than someone who is looking to check
a bunch of boxes on a job descriptionor follow their OKRs for the quarter.
So I think that that's really important.
And then the other is that Ithink external perspective and
outside expertise is so powerful.
(14:06):
And maybe that's my bias from bothTED and from GLG where the business
model is essentially focusedon bringing in outside thought.
But one thing that we try to do at Stack,and on the marketing team in particular,
is have speakers come and talk to us,employ consultants wherever it makes sense
to do so, or advisors, so that weren'tlooking beyond what we're doing in the
(14:28):
day to day to make ourselves better.
Erica Seidel (14:30):
Right, right.
That's great.
I talked to somebody else for this podcastwhose favorite interview question was,
I'll just share it because you might findthis interesting, it was tell me about
a product that is well-marketed and why.
And the guy's really listening tothe why and does somebody have a
structure for what good marketing is?
And I think yours issuggestive of that as well.
It's like, okay, does somebodyactually know what a good campaign is?
(14:53):
And what are the aspects that they thinkare really important in a campaign?
Is it just, you know, oh, that it'spretty colors or whatever, or is it
like, oh, they've thought through theiraudience, they've thought through how
they're going to measure, et cetera.
Khalid el Khatib (15:03):
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Erica Seidel (15:05):
So, can you talk a little bit more about how you
organize your marketing team tosupport the two different products?
So you have the public platformversus the P SaaS aspects?
Khalid el Khatib (15:15):
One, it's so important to be highly cross-functional in your
approach to everything that you do.
And so I work super closely with ourCPO, our chief product officer, and our
chief revenue officer on everything.
We even have a weekly check-in that wedo for thirty minutes every week, just
to see what's going on and try to seearound corners to the best of our ability.
And so the benefit in doing that, and inaddition to that check-in our teams do
(15:40):
monthly business reviews around the publicplatform and around each of our products.
So the point of doing that, and whatthat sort of unlocks, is our ability
to find synergies wherever they exist.
So if the public platform team isworking on something that we can
help or augment in some way, we candeputize a small amount of product
marketing resources or demand generationresources to promote it and vice versa.
(16:04):
So I think that's one piecethat's really important.
The second, which is related, isuncovering synergies wherever they exist.
And so our Stack Overflow for Teamsproduct is effectively a private
version of the public platform.
There are, of course, several differencesto the approach, but sometimes when
something really resonates with the publicplatform or the paid product, we can make
(16:25):
them interchangeable or we can build aroadmap that works in the other direction.
And so I think it's all about findingthose efficiencies and those synergies
and empowering everyone on your teamto think about it in that way as well.
Erica Seidel (16:38):
And so you have these monthly business reviews, so you're
saying you have product and marketingand sales altogether at those
monthly kind of NBR, so to speak?
Khalid el Khatib (16:48):
That's right, and we also have the full
leadership team there as well.
So there's representation from the legalteam, from the finance team, and the CEO,
so that cross-functionally, everyone knowswhat's happened and what's happening,
and they have the opportunity to askquestions about all of those things.
Erica Seidel (17:03):
Right, right.
That's cool.
And it gets your marketing teamto kind of have that what I
call business first, marketingsecond kind of view of the world.
Khalid el Khatib (17:10):
100%.
I mean, I think that the great thingabout Stack Overflow, and you can call
it transparency or what have you, butthere are I don't think any surprises.
We tend to be pretty good aboutcascading information to the company
and to the team around performance.
We share quarterly financials data andthen do AMAs every single month around it.
(17:31):
And the marketing team, as well, hasa pretty good view into who we're
hiring for one or two quarters aheadand what our priorities are as well.
Erica Seidel (17:40):
So, can you share an organizational choice that you've
made that you think might be a littlebit unique, that some other marketing
leaders haven't done or wouldn't do?
And that organization choicecould have worked well or poorly.
Khalid el Khatib (17:53):
One thing, and, you know, this is cheating, but one thing
that I did do, so I'd been at Stack forthree and a half years, and three years
ago or so the company itself, StackOverflow, was 40% remote at the time.
And our technical teams were muchmore remote than that, about 80%.
But I elected, because there were somany challenges around hiring great
(18:14):
marketing talent in New York, wherewe're based in London, where we have
another office, around product marketingin particular, to hire a much more
remote-first, remote-focused team.
And so the marketing team is highlydistributed, even before the pandemic.
Now, obviously things are quite different.
But I'm really, really glad that I tookthat approach because I've found some
(18:35):
really excellent talent by doing it.
And the team has sort of aremote-first DNA and muscle
memory around how to interact ona remote-first basis from day one.
So I think that sometimes marketingleaders are inclined to say, okay,
you know, sales teams, I think morethan anyone else, and especially
BDRs and SDRs tend to be in personor gravitate towards office work.
(18:58):
And sometimes a marketing leader willsay, because it's so important to
build relationships with sales teams,the marketing team should be in person
too, but I think that's a mistakebecause I think it's really possible
to build relationships remotely.
And two, I think, especially withregard to strong demand generation teams
and product marketing teams, we're nolonger going to be able to find the
(19:18):
folks that we need just looking atNew York or Chicago or San Francisco.
Erica Seidel (19:23):
Right.
Right.
I've been thinking that this kind ofremote hiring, obviously a lot of people
are doing remote hiring now, you hadsome expertise with it ahead of COVID.
Do you think it makes you have moreof like an optimizing mindset versus
a satisficing mindset with hiring?
Because there's a difference between,oh, we want to hire the best person in
(19:44):
New York, versus, oh, we can look farand wide across, not just the U.S., but
maybe also, across Europe, we're goingto find the absolute, very best person.
And do you ever see that it makes itlike you're trying to have the absolute
perfect hire and so it can take longer?
Khalid el Khatib (19:59):
That's a good question.
And that's certainly a risk, one that Ihaven't spent too much thinking about.
I mean, I try to take the approach,maybe less with hiring than
everything else, but " don't letperfect get in the way of very good."
And I think that's true of hiring andI think every position is different.
And so, you know, one question you haveto ask yourself when you bring someone
on board is do you want someone whocan do the job at a hundred percent
(20:21):
or 110% on day one, or do you wantsomeone who will do it at 90%, invest
in their professional development, andhopefully will stay two or three years?
And so I think that that's one keyconsideration, maybe one that we've
lost in a market that's this crazy.
But sometimes, you know, you want someonewho can grow into the role to some extent.
Or, and I think this is a specialty torun marketing teams, you bring someone in
(20:43):
at the manager or the director level, andyou don't have any anticipated VP recs for
two or three years and where do they go?
They're likely to leave.
Erica Seidel (20:51):
Right.
So we've talked abouthiring an organization.
Let's take a broader lens.
Can you share some mistakes for a SaaSmarketing leader to avoid when scaling up?
Khalid el Khatib (21:01):
This one is an easy one to articulate.
It's a difficult one to fix.
And I think that that's notenough SaaS marketing leaders
invest in brand marketing.
And that's especially true, as I'm sureyou've seen, in private-equity-backed
companies where it's sort of thisdollar-in/dollar-out mentality because
as every marketing leader knows,it's really difficult to prove ROI
(21:23):
for dollars that are spent on brand.
And so I think that we were fortunateto have this support of our CEO and
our CFO over time to make an investmentin brand awareness, and we've also run
longitudinal studies twice a year, brandtracking surveys, which have proven
out the value of investing in that.
We've seen awareness of StackOverflow for Teams and evangelism for
(21:46):
it go up double digit percentages.
And so I think, you know, a coupleof mistakes that are made is one,
not making any investment at all, andthen figuring out why competitors are
beating them and why your demand genteams aren't working because a rising
tide lifts all boats and investment inbrand awareness is that rising tide.
And then the other is making an investmentand talking to partners and peers
(22:10):
about how you can articulate the valueof an investment in brand awareness.
Every CEO and every CFO isdifferent, as we all know.
A brand tracking survey once ortwice a year doesn't always work.
And so there are lots of othertricks and things that you can do.
Not necessarily tricks, but sociallistening, for example, qualitative
feedback at conferences and events,anecdotal feedback from employees in
(22:32):
terms of the campaigns that their friendsand family are seeing, and that all
sort of coalesces, in my opinion, tobe a very, very powerful tool and brand
awareness and investment in brand is notsomething that should ever be neglected.
Erica Seidel (22:46):
It's so true and it is a hard conversation to have.
I like your point about thedollar-in/dollar-out expectation.
And I think the best marketers arethe ones that can go into a meeting
where somebody has that viewpointand pivot that viewpoint and have
them realize that - you know, like aformer boss of mine says, I love this,
"Today's brand is tomorrow's demand."
it's just a great way to put it.
(23:07):
Any other thoughts on keymistakes to avoid when scaling up?
Khalid el Khatib (23:12):
I think a related point is, you know, an investment in
brand doesn't mean that you need totake out an ad in the Superbowl or a
billboard in Times Square, which issometimes the misconception that a
board or a CFO or a CRO or a CEO willhave when people ask for brand dollars.
Especially in B2B SaaS, when I as forbrand dollars, I'm not saying that we
need to do a takeover of the subwaysystem in New York City because I know
(23:33):
that it's not going to lead anywhere.
And so a related point is always startsmall, scale and iterate from there.
So, I think, one approach that we tryto take when it comes to developer
awareness is looking at our key 1000accounts, where are they headquartered?
You know, increasingly a lot of them areheadquartered in Austin, for example.
A lot of developer-orientedcompanies have moved to Texas
(23:55):
over the past couple of years.
And so, if we're going to do somethingout of home or some big display,
why don't we start it in Austin?
Why don't we take overtheir public transportation?
Or billboards in their downtown areawhere they're much more likely to be
working from the office than in NewYork, for example, or San Francisco?
So starting in a hyper-local market andscaling if it makes sense to do so, is
(24:16):
how I would approach brand awareness, asopposed to some people who get a capital
injection and then right away willtake out these massive, massive buys.
Erica Seidel (24:25):
Exactly.
Any other advice that you would giveto a CEO who is looking to hire a
marketing leader for a scale journey?
Khalid el Khatib (24:32):
I have two pieces of advice for CEOs and sort of across
the spectrum, whether they're seed orseries A or B or C or a public company.
Think long and hard and consultwith your advisors in terms of the
profile of person you're looking for.
And so occasionally, someone willreach out to me and say, whether it's
a friend or a peer or someone I wentto college with, and they'll say we
(24:53):
really need, you know, I have a seriesB company, we're doing incredibly,
we've had this massive raise, we havea great valuation, and we're close
to, or we have product market fit.
We're ready for a CMO.
We need a CMO.
And I'll say, okay, whatdo you want them to do?
And they'll bullet out ten things and I'mlike, you need a VP of demand generation.
You need someone who understands marketingautomation and can get you off of HubSpot
(25:17):
and onto a platform like Marquetto.
You need someone who can build outa field practice and ABM practice.
You do not need a CMO.
And so I think, you know, sometimesthere's this inclination to hire as
senior as possible, when in reality,you don't need someone that strategic.
You need someone who can execute andbuild out a team who is in the weeds.
So there's that piece of it.
(25:38):
The other, which is related, is whattype of marketing leader do you need?
Do you need a brand CMO?
Do you need a demand CMO?
Do you need someone with robustproduct marketing experience, more
of a communications oriented CMO?
And I think that, you know this quitewell, I'm sure, and provide a lot of
counsel on this topic, but often timesa CEO or, you know, the board will
(26:00):
have a very, very either nebulous ideaof the type of CMO that they want,
or they'll point to a specific personat a specific company, when, as you
know, CMOs often - you know, one CMO'svery, very different from the next.
Erica Seidel (26:13):
Yeah, the challenge I see is they want it all, right?
They want the person who can,as I like to say, parachute
between strategy and tactics.
It's like, oh yeah, I want the personwho's going to drive leads, but then also
they have to be a great communicator.
They have to be very analyticaland they have to be this and that.
I think the challenging thingin recruiting is that focus.
And I think it comes down tosaying okay, who do we need
for the next couple of years?
(26:34):
Because in a couple of years,the whole world will be different
and we can hire somebody else orsomebody in addition, at that point.
But I don't know.
Do you have any other tips on how tomake that conversation more productive
so that you're not just having the CEOsay, oh, I want one of everything please?
Khalid el Khatib (26:50):
One, I would just say to push back and say, it's impossible.
Right?
Like I think if you look at the sortof C-suite, the CMO is the least likely
to stay at a company beyond two years.
And I think that's largely becausethe expectations when they were
hired are entirely unrealistic.
Point two, and I think something that'ssort of makes all of this a little more
tangible to someone to say, okay, we'lldo our best to find you the most strategic
(27:13):
leader possible who's also comfortableexecuting, but who is the number one and
most critical hire you see after the CMO?
And that will often beclarifying to someone.
So for example, for me, demand generationhas been part of my mandate and several
roles that I've had, but I do not, youknow, I'm under no delusion that I am
an excellent demand generation leader.
And so, there's a VP of demand generationand it's really his bread and butter.
(27:35):
I defer to him on most things thathe does and that he brings on board.
And he's excellent at that.
And I recognize my ownlimitations in the space.
And so I often think if someone'slike, okay, we really need a new
CMO, you say, okay, but then doyou need a great VP of demand?
Do you need a great VPof product marketing?
Do you need a great VP of comms?
Who is this person'sdeputy and right hand?
Erica Seidel (27:56):
Yeah.
And then sometimes maybe that deputythat they're envisioning is all
they need, or all they need forthe next, you know, year or two.
Yeah.
That's very helpful.
So personally, thank you.
That'll be helpful to mewhen I talk to people.
Let's talk about trends.
So 2022 is, you know, next up here.
Any trends that you foreseefor B2B SaaS marketers that
(28:18):
are in scale-up mode for 2022?
Khalid el Khatib (28:20):
I think one is embrace agility.
You know, I've been saying this fortwenty months now, but it used to be
that you would set a marketing budgetat the beginning of the year, you
would maybe check in on budget versusactuals on a monthly or quarterly
basis, but you wouldn't reallyreforecast for at least six months,
most likely until the end of the year.
And that can no longer be true.
(28:41):
I think we're still figuring out what ourcadence looks like, but the leadership
team needs to at least talk quarterlyabout whether or not the budget as
it currently stands makes sense, theheadcount and org chart that you've put
together at the beginning of the yearstill makes sense relative to the needs.
And so the very tangible example ofthat is our events budget for 2022.
(29:03):
Our events budget for 2022 looks verydifferent today than it did ten days
ago, just because of everything that'shappening in the news right now.
And, you know, we're no longerbullish on the fact that we'll be
at events in February or March.
So I think that's one thing that peoplereally need to focus on, the other, and
I think a trend that's going to not goaway for a while is, we spend a lot of
(29:25):
time talking about how SaaS marketingmeters need to better partner with sales
and product organizations, and I thinkthat they've been laser-focused on that
alignment for the past couple of years.
Where the B2C space has been focusedfor quite some time is the synergies
that exist between the people orhuman resources team and marketing.
And there's been a lot offocus on employer branding.
(29:47):
So like the Facebooks of the world,the Instagrams, the Twitters, and
then all sorts of consumer brandshave really made an investment in
recruiting and employer branding.
And I think that marketingleaders and people team leaders
have worked lockstep together.
I think that's one area where theSaaS space has really fallen behind.
And so I think a big focus in 2022and beyond is going to be okay, how
(30:11):
can marketing teams, whether it's thebrand team or the content team or the
comms team, partner with people teamsto help win in this hyper-competitive
environment today and tomorrow?
Erica Seidel (30:23):
Totally agree with you on that one.
I'll be excited to see thatkind of greater synergy.
I mean, you think about HR,like everything that happened in
marketing, I dunno, five or tenyears ago, and it's still happening
is now starting to happen in HR.
Like greater reliance on technology,greater reliance on data.
The years, like this year, last year,you know, it was like the years for HR
(30:44):
folks to kind of come into their own.
Khalid el Khatib (30:46):
I think that's absolutely true.
And I think that's true from aresourcing perspective as well.
So if you think about likedevelopment resources, for example,
or engineering resources, theywere always deputized to revenue.
And this is not, I'm not speaking to StackOverflow, I'm speaking very generally.
But those development resourcestend to be allocated towards revenue
focused initiatives or product.
(31:06):
And then, to your point, at thissort of bottom of the pile is people
initiatives or the HR system API.
And it's sort of people get toit when they get around to it.
And so job descriptions are hardcoded, it's glitchy, it doesn't
sync with LinkedIn, for example.
And now it's an imperativefor the business to be able to
hire, to be able to compete.
(31:28):
And I think that companies have tostart resourcing HR teams differently
from a technical perspective andfrom a marketing perspective.
Erica Seidel (31:35):
Yeah.
So those are great trends.
Thank you so much forbeing on the show, Khalid.
This was great to hearall of your perspectives.
Khalid el Khatib (31:42):
Thank you for having me again.
Erica Seidel (31:46):
That was Khalid El Khatib, who runs marketing and
communications for Stack Overflow.
Now that you've listened, askyourself: how can you have a
more productive conversation withyour CEO and CFO and Board about
the balance of brand and demand?
Next time on The Get, you'll hearfrom Sydney Sloan, telling us about
her CMO scale journey for Salesloft.
(32:07):
You'll learn about how to think aboutyour market and your marketing, the
bets you're making on each, and the teamstructure and goal setting as you scale.
Don't miss it.
Thanks for listening to The Get.
I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Hiring great marketingleaders is not easy.
The Get is designed to inspire smartdecisions around recruiting and
(32:28):
leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
We explore the trends, tribulations,and triumphs of today's top
marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
This season's theme isSolving for the Scale Journey.
If you liked thisepisode, please share it.
For other insights on recruitinggreat marketing leaders - what I
call the 'make money' marketingleaders rather than the 'make it
pretty' ones - follow me on LinkedIn.
(32:50):
You can also sign up for mynewsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com.
The Get is produced by Evo Terraand Simpler Media Productions.
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